I have tested this too, actually. It was part of my unrealesed plug with missile escorts. It's still having problems, but you definitly can break the escort limit with carried fighters, but no, you cannot break the maximum ship limit with anything. That's actually the main problem.

C'mon guys, read the topic. It is well known that escorts are different to carried fighters and mission special ships.

@archon, on Oct 9 2007, 01:54 PM, said in Crewless ship can capture escorts:

@eegras-studios, on Oct 9 2007, 01:28 PM, said in Crewless ship can capture escorts:
Do the ships given to you in a mission count as those six, or are they just totally different?

They're totally different, unfortunately.

Speaking of the maximum ship limit though, I've discovered that the effective limit is actually only 55 ships plus the player. I believe this is a safeguard to prevent people from maxing out the ships and then trying to dominate a stellar - defence ships are allowed to take up the remainder up to the real 64 ship limit.