Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Having seen this thread I think the idea of the Escort carrier is good, but it is also not a new one since it has been proposed several times.
I would like to see these ships added, but I guess one of the main issues is the difficulty of defining a role for the ship class that sets it a part from other existing ships.
Below are a few random ideas I thought about in relation to Escort carriers. Please note that I have no experience with carriers (or other Capital ships) so these ideas are probably very bad.

Concerning the role, I was thinking of the ability to defend other ships:

1. The ability to defend a number of ships (depending on skill level) so that it absorbs the Lock when the defended ships are being targeted, i.e. the Escort carrier will be targeted instead of the defended ships.
2. Give the Escort carrier a bonus to running and the effect of a target spectrum breaker. The effect applies to Escort carrier and the defended ships (Again the Escort carrier has the ability to defend other ships as mentioned under point 1).
3. Provide a range bonus to remote reps but not necessary on anything else.
4. No jump drive. Must use gates. Can be used in hisec.
5. Fitting service.

Concerning the use of drones fighters:

1. Let the ship be able to use drones.
2. Fighters are probably a no-go but my idea is that the Escort carrier can use fighters (not bombers), but in order to do this it will need to fit drone control units to a max of 5 (the escort carrier will probably need to have some role fitting bonus to the module). The aim is that in the fitting it is necessary to make a tradeoff on the number of fighters and the rest of the fitting of the ship. This also means that the Escort carriers should have at least 5 high slots.
3. Provide a bonus rep drones.

Anyway these are my (bad) ideas.

I hope we will see these ships in the game at some point, but I do not have high hopes about it.