Re: Space maps
The tickets is a percentage indication of how much of your fleet remains. Plain and simple. It's a great way of checking at a glance who currently has the upper hand number-wise. I can glance at the ticket count and go 'Hmm, 75 to 50, OK, so we've lost one ship, they've lost two'. Or 'our tickets have gone down 25 points, looks like we've lost that frigate, then'.
Simple Solution:
1000 Tickets for each side, 200 - 250 for every lost Capital ship, 1 - 5 Tickets for each fighter...
"Cheaper" fighters like the TIE-Fighter should cost less Tickets than "Valuable" Fighters like the B-Wing...
As for camping your own staging area, after our huge victory yesterday on Taloraan we had a discussion on this in the tester chat room. Maybe there'll be changes for 1.2, maybe not, I don't know. Wait and see
Camping at your own staging area has an other benefit:
You don't have to fly across the whole Map with your fighter / bomber to defend your own / attack the enemy ships...
I personally rearm at my gallofree/bulk freighter when out of warheads, but there needs to be a stronger incentive to stay alive rather than just crashing your fighter.
I strongly agree: rearming should be faster, repairing should be left as it is.
Personally I have some other points I didn't like in Space Combat:
1.) I miss the commander.
Without commander there is no coordination of the different Squads / capital ships.
2.) I miss the Squadplay
Squads are quickly spread across the whole map - it took a long time to move your fighter from the spawnpoint to the place there the squadleader wants you to be.
It took even longer if you wait until the needed ship (like a Bomber) is aviable.
I think the best solution would be a change of the Spawnpoints.
Let the Squadmembers spawn near the Position of the Squadleader, in a fighter of the same type.
Make a limit for Bombers / Interceptors an let spawn a "smaller" class of fighter if the maximum amount of limited Fighters has been reached.
Example:
B-Wings are limited to 2, next smaller fighter is a X-Wing (limited to 12) A-Wings are unlimited.
So if a Squadleader flys a B-Wing (and the other B-Wing is destroyed) the next Squadmember who spwans next to his Squadleader gets a B-Wing.
If no B wing is aviable, he gets a X-Wing, if no X-Wing is aviable he gets an A-Wing.
This give Squadleaders who stay alive an great benefit, Players in Squads don't have to fly across the whole map (as long as their Squadleader stays alive and near the target).
And the Squad gets a great punch because they have the same type of fighter.
Smaller Changes:
"Better Squadtags"
Give the Squadmembers Green Brackets around their fighters, and let these Brackets Flash if the Pilot is calling for Backup.
Use the Net.bat system of BF 2142 to give enemy fighters marked by squadmates Red Brackets.
"Emergency Jumppoints"
In a fleet engament like "Battle of Taloraan" there should be Jumppoints for Capital ships.
If a ship lefts the Battle, the ship counts as destroyed, but only with half of his points.
This gives the option to break the engament and try to rescue the ship by driving it to an emergency jumppoint.
Other Jumppoints may be still possible - like an regular Jumppoint (no ticket lose).
The amount of tickets lost may be diffrent from scenario to scenario.
In "Battle of Taloraan" the destruction of a transport may be more valuable as the destruction of an capital ship, because this ship is carring high valuable supplies.
In a real space battle like the Battle of Endor transports may be less valuable.
Oh, and Voice Overs for destroyed ships ("They hit the hospital ship!") or jumped ships would be nice