I'm hoping you'll be able to dock with capital ships and take control of them, or that a mod will come around that'll allow you to do that.
Also hope the combat isn't as iffy
I'm much happier now, i was looking on the forums for tips for the current X game and came across some interesting info on rebirth
Capital ship control
Where the drones are your preferred vehicles for specialized tasks inside and near the surface of a station, capital ships are your vehicle of choice for all the many "big" tasks. From transportation of goods, collecting of resources like ore, gas or plasma up to large carriers and destroyers. They all exist in X Rebirth and you can of course own and operate many of them!
You can in fact even land on these beasts and get out of your playership to meet NPCs while watching the large ship move around in space FROM the deck of the ship!
You won't be sitting in the cockpit and steer such a capital ship from the first person perspective anymore simply because that is boring. Steering huge and slowly-turning ships manually just doesnt make sense. It would force us to make them turn and move unrealistically quick and even then they would be impossible to maneuver near our huge and complex shaped stations.
Instead the steering is done by NPCs who work for you but closely follow your orders. You can control capital ships who work for you in many new ways.
so it seems you will still be able to land on your capital ships and control it while docked on it. I feel a better about having this ability and i think this would be more enjoyable than flying them in the previous games and we can stuill be inside the ship and issue commands and watch how its going from inside the ship.
http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=306576 - link to the info