It lacked precision when I said 100 "players"; I meant 100 "ships (moving objects that are involved in combat) controlled by players". (Edit: In my second post, I even said "ships", not "players".) Avatars who are inside ships just follow the movement of the ship (plus some movement relative to it if they move inside the ship), which shouldn't increase the server load in a battle significantly (should be close to zero if an avatar is required to be seated at his station to operate the controls in battle).
Small, manually controlled fighter crafts should of course not be able to take out a cruiser one on one (but should have a chance of survival if flown by a skilled pilot because of superior speed and agility). The most effective strike forces should be cruisers accompanied by fighters, not just cruisers or just fighters. Cruisers should not be effective for quick, precise destruction of specific parts of a ship or installaton, but should be the highly armored backbone (perhaps refuel / rearm / repair platform) of a squadron which can't be destroyed quickly.
That could indeed make piloting skills relevant for combat even with a target lock system, good idea. A pilot who just hits a button and leans back shouldn't have a chance to win, and an attacked pilot who doesn't fly evasive maneuvers should be dead quick. If DU implements such a system instead of EVE- style "press a button and watch the dice rolling", I will give it a try. But it may be a small step from such a system to full-blown manual combat which I would still prefer.
Cruisers just need to be sufficiantly armored to survive long battles instead of having boringly sluggish battles.
But it makes no sense to sacrifice one of these target audiences - and the third target audience who would like to do both - without necessity. A game can be balanced to cater for all of these playstyles and some more.
I dont see a problem here at all. Of course smaller crafts should be easier and quicker to build and replace, but also easier to destroy to balance things out - easy. And keep in mind it wil be hard and take time to design / build / script a ship from scratch, but once you have the blueprint and the necessary ressources, replacing it wil be considerably easier and quicker.
Of course, I completely agree with that. I am by no means a player who is just focussed on fighting, I hate simple shooter games. But as soon as fighting is an element of a game, it should be made interesting, and then it can also be an interesting ingredient to spice up exploration. Only spicing it up occasionaly, not the main focus, I totally agree.
I don't get what you mean here (perhaps due to my limited English). You mean there should not be just human avatars, but also alien avatars? And by avatars you mean players, not NPCs? - In that case I don't agree. All aliens (and their ships) should be AI and all humans (and their ships) should be players to avoid confusion. I hate it if AI as stupid as a brick pretends to be human in an MMO, that's highly immersion-breaking for me, and I want to know quickly if I am facing a player or an NPC.AI as aliens (or machines) is way more plausible than as pseudo-humans because their lack of communication and non-human behaviour can be explaind by their otherness.