New ships

Sorry mate, I can be wrong but I think that the eagle turret fire forward.

Anyway that is not the point, the point is that many ship builerds would be bankrupted if they depend of players to buy them, lol.

it's funy how eagle can handle with the most of the new VHF.

I have a few SUGGESTIONS to fix these problems:
-Ask around, which are the most used ships.
-Get rid of ships that no one is using (saving a lot megabytes.)
-Changing and fixing the existing ships.
-Make existing ships buyable in multiple places, not just one (good to avoid shroud incidents. No offense Gunny, but sometimes it's pathetic what's going on around about this).
-Changing and fixing existing capital ships (all vessels would have unique stats and different tactics).
-Make some other capital ships buyable (for example: Order ships, but something tells me that OP will make them buyable in Sol... I hope...)

And the Eagle's turret fires backwards. Only the Sabre's turret has 360 degree fire range from the top-line in vanilla Freelancer.

Suggestion...

No removal of any ships, just make the ones not used worth flying.

If the ships were more balanced, and each had different factors/abilities which netted to the same amount (if you where to give points values to characteristics and weapons etc..) then the ships could be chosen by players depending on their style of play.

Example....

Freighters...
Sarafina= class 7 sheild, mostly class 7-8 guns, special ability 2 CMs.

Bullpup3= Class 10 all over, Special ability 2 thrusters.

Hence Bullpup is totally hands down winner, and anyone flying Sarafina is toast.

Now if you was to make the Serafina all class 10 like the bullpup3 then it would merely be a choice of whether you want extra CM or extra Thrusters. This might be because your fighting style is different, or you just like the looks of the other ship.

If its about ships we like from the TV - i vote for NX01 Enterprise but i guess it wont fly here