Hi, I'd like to do some kind of Event for our first major newsletter / mass-email posting. Does anyone have any suggestions for some cool event(s)? They would be fully supported by (and potentially joined by) the developer staff. They'd probably occur on a weekend, in the afternoon or early evening (CST).

Excellent. I suggest a battle between pirates and some corporation. A evil coperation decides to cut in on pirate activities. Two sides, Pirates and the corporation.

Each side would have different advantages; The corporation would pay in cash per kill, and provide temporally cheap items (maximum 5 every 2 minutes, to prevent people exploiting the discount). They are going system by system trying to kill pirates; Anyone who is grey/has a corvus standing of over 600+ (Unless they have accepted the "Crackdown" mission)
This includes defending convoys of heavy weps that are to supply the 'front' lines'

Pirates get paid in 'status points' that allow them to buy special weps/ships, and also get more xp per kill, along with a couple of pirate npcs that are more powerful as you get more kills (in essence, you earn better wingmen)

you get the idea.
There's the first thing that popped out of my mind.

Fireworks show? Maybe with some of those cargo pinwheels a1k0n used to make? Like the release party we had in Sector 7.

Semi-quoted from my email to you a loong time ago...

Pick a system where there are two identical stations (In ownership and type. I'm thinking Odia J9 and K12?), and turn off station guards. Itani take one while Serco take the other. UIT can pick a side to fight for. Each of them get ten minutes or so to mine or otherwise "set up" their station, and then we can do a station v. station game where the object could be...

1) Plant a "bomb" widget (120cu so moths only and make it pretty heavy) in the other teams station (Maybe we could get a channel alert when this is done?)
2) Buy a free "Serco Flag" or "Itani Flag" widget offered only at the other team's station, size 120cu (so moths only, and make it pretty heavy) and bring it back to yours (Maybe we could get a channel alert when this is done?)
3) Land X pilots in the other team's base

Or something else

In the name of keeping things simple, I would suggest having something like a best of 7 (or best of 3) nation war series with dev sponsored prizes. Then maybe a last man standing competition to top it off. I know the ideas are nothing new, but they're the most successful player run events in the history of post-launch vendetta. Capture the flag would be fun as well.

Either that or a completely player run escort contest. One team has to escort specified players in specified transport ships from A to B within a certain amount of time. After the transports reach the destination or are destroyed, the second team gets the opportunity to do the same. Whoever gets the most transports to their destination wins. Kind of like CtC except no NPCs.

Or we could temporarily drop everyone's standing and have one gigantic mix and match two sided battle. We could randomly assign players or even pick teams. Might be fun to fight alongside your enemies for a change, or against your friends.

CTF re-implementation would be sexy.

I'd rather Keep It Simple if possible. Stuff that doesn't need new code to be written or new major features to be implemented. Prizes are cool though. And we can have capships and stuff involved, to some extent.

Does turning off station guards take code changes? It seemed pretty simple way back when it happened in D14 for a while. If so, then I like all of ghost's ideas! Picking teams would be fun, a nice schoolyard throwback and fun way to mix it up.

How hard would this be?

"Hostile Salvage"

Teams - Each team would base from a Trident. Players aligned with one team should not be allowed to dock with the Tridents of opposing teams.

Players could create their own teams or enter for their nation. This would allow guilds to play as a team instead of forcing the nation split.

Arena - Cluster of Hive Queens in the center with the teams about 4500m away. The Tridents for each team would be spaced so there would be some sort of separation from opposing teams. If a team's Trident is destroyed it would drop its cargo and be re-spawned after a short period.

Maybe a levi ring with a queen cluster in the center and the team's base ships just outside it.

Goal - The cluster of Hive Queens in the center of the arena would be filled with some sort of score keeping widget. The goal is to destroy the Queens and bring as many widgets as possible into your team's Trident. At the end of the round the team that recovered the most widgets wins. It would also be possible to destroy the Tridents of opposing teams causing their recovered cargo to drop.

Aye , I like Irys idea.

Few ideas,

Moth race with samo.

Moth XC battles,

gov bus with 100% gov loadout battle against the hive,

UNRATS,

mining event(s),

scavenger hunt with trade goods from the stations,

relay race using objects from stations and with hostile ships like unrats/npc's/etc..,

release some new mission(s) at least for a temp time period,

that socer type game :)

spawn hostile hive in station sector(s) and watch the strike force got nuts.

Any number and/or combo's of this would work with what we have now.

FiReMaGe made some pretty sweet stuff, you could ask him too. :P

Player only, BS kill countdown style FFA nation war in gray space, not the usual last man standing NW model we use today.

Roid War 5! Money, trophy widgets, special awards, and super easy to hold! just turn FF off for M14 and you're golden!

blacknet, slime73: Yeah, I can offer that Bumper Ball game (soccer in space) that the developers are familiar with.

But regardless of what event happens, I'll he happy to supply a variety of fireworks too.

shweet. weed need a better ball tho
even the fennus gardian isn't round enough

LeberMac's crazy idea: TUBEZ WARZ

I say make two giant racing tubes, mebbe 5x wider than the standard tubes. Enter at one end, exit at the other. The entrances should be almost right next to each other. There should be a station somewhere near the entrances, maybe 500 m away. The station would be temporary for this event, and would be unaligned so any player could dock there, and this station would not have guards. It would, however, have as many exits as possible, maybe, like 10 or so. It should also sell most items and ships.

Make weapons unable to penetrate the tubes. (Sos people outside can't shoot people inside.)

Divide into 2 teams. (limited by group size - 8 players)

All weapons and ships are allowed.

The objective is to enter the tube and exit it as many times as possible in a predetermined length of time.

The first team to 25 "exits" wins, or whichever team has more "exits" in 15 minutes or so. Timespan should be up for discussion.

Anyone can come and choose to shoot the teams, or mine the exits, or shoot avalons into the tube entrances. Hell, a mercenary can come to shoot one team, and accept a bribe to switch allegiances during the match and begin shooting the other side.

Any tactics are allowed: mining the tubes, mining the station, griefing players at the station, swarming, running, ganking, smack-talking, etc.

The only mods that I see that would be necessary to build this game would be:
1. Plop an unaligned station with 0 guards in Sedina somewhere.
2. Use the toolkit to make 2 straight tubes the exact same length and girth.
3. Modify the race timer script to count exits from the same people in one group and maintain a running total. It will have to accept "registration" from group leaders.
4. End the mission when one group exits 25 times, or when the timer expires, announce the winning group.
5. Devs would need to eliminate FF rules universally in this sector.

Come to think of it, this would work with more than 2 groups. Might be quite the spectacle. We'd need a tube for each group, tho.

or have all the teams race on the same tube, and they can attack each other as they race if they want

OK, even better. If the programming is easier that way, then kickass.