With the addition of Border Skirmish in Deneb B-12, Serco pilots taking the Border Patrol mission have to run the gauntlet of capships and NPCs that are often camping the wormhole on the other side just to get to C-10. This frequently results in the pilots being damaged before they even get to C-10, and it tilts the results of the mission even further towards the Itani's favor. (This, added to the mission being in an Itani system and the extra time needed for Serco pilots to fly back into the sector, among other things.)

I have two suggestions, both of which would involve making Border Patrol a Deliverator-based mission, but only one of which would drastically change the way the mission is played:

1) Make the Skirmish NPCs ignore Patrol mission-takers unless they fire upon an NPC or player in B-12. This would reduce the damage taken by Serco pilots from capships and NPCs while flying in through the wormhole, but it wouldn't do anything about the players; not that the players are really under the control of the server anyway.

2) Completely redo the Border Patrol mission. Make the BP mission work throughout the Deneb system, don't restrict it to a single sector. Serco could go into the station sectors and kill the guards and strike forces for the kills; Itani could kill Serco in any sector, etc. This would work best once the NFZ issues are completely fixed (ie, once pilots can fire upon those who attack them without triggering the NFZ). Because BP is a constantly-running mission, have it dispense XP and credits every ten or fifteen minutes based on the number of kills made by all players on a given side taking the mission during that time period--this would effectively allow entire guilds to take BP missions without the 8-person group hinderance. The only issue that I can see with that would be the problem of people with lower levels not being able to tag along like they can now.

Its an assault on Itani Space.
Let Itani make the rules.
But give me Deneb already, Serco can't kick ass any harder.

It's an assault on Itani space, agreed.
But that doesn't mean the rules of the mission should be tilted in their favor. I'm with Miha on this.

I agree with you, but making the BP mission involve more than just one sector with the few players that we have at the moment will result in a lot less player vs player contact during the mission.

Just spitballing here, what if BS was dependent upon BP? So that if Serco won BP then a BS mission would begin. You could then move BP to B12 as well, getting rid of the problem of Serco warping through BS. Then perhaps if Itani won BP, just another BP mission would become active.

I've yet to be seriously hindered by the BS while doing the BP.

another twist on the issue: a two-staged border skirmish/mission thing.

first, a border skirmish mission runs. if the serco wins, then the border patroll mission kicks off in c-10.

if the itanis win the border skirmish, then border patroll actually gets run serco-side, reversing the trend.

then border skirmish happens serco side and the winner determines the next cycle all over again.

Better idea- create a true contested system, with some Itani stations, some Serco stations, and maybe even a few indys.

I humbly disagree with both suggestions, for the time being at least.

1) Seems a little counter-intuitive. It doesn't really make sense that two opposing military forces would ignore each other because they are on different types of missions.

2) Is a cool idea, but it would greatly disperse the conflict, and given the average number of players online I don't think that's a good idea right now. Once we have hundreds of players involved in the border war simultaneously, then 2) would make a lot more sense.

I bet the border skirmish mission will be redone when the border war goes dynamic. Then specific conflicts might be seen at different areas of interest at different times.

I'm with Dark Knight on this, a contested sytem between Geira and Deneb, a real "War Zone", which could change hands dyamically depending on, say, BPs or BSs completed.
Add some nice ruined stations and wrecked capships for atmosphere, multi BP destinations within the sytem, instead of just C10, so the border appears more fluid
Also a "Liquidation" type mission aimed at players/guilds getting the most BP/BS kills ie
"Itani pilot Gooball is a constant thorn in our side, dissuade him from further action for $$$$$$$$$"

Devs said once that the ultimate goal for the War is that entire EXISTING systems can change hands, given enough results. So Betheshee can become Itani once more or Eo could be pillaged by the Serco again. No need for a system that's nuetral in between.

Also, anything to help the Serco, imo, is really really dumb. They are the agressors. They are attacking Deneb. The Itani are defending themselves. So if there happens to be a capship near the wormhole once in a while, I call that good defense.

Also, making the BP mission possibly switch and invade Serco space as well isn't a good idea. The Itani are on a defensive stance this entire War. They have yet to invade a Serco system even once. Unless you can rile up another Akan, invading the Dominion ain't gonna happen.

The rules of the BP mission aren't tiled in the Itani's favor. The border defenses are. And please tell me what country doesn't have a border defense. I'd like to get a ragtag team of 50 with AKs and steal a patch of land for myself.

Hm...

Good point, moldyman. The problem is, if you force these rules upon the current playerbase, quite a few Itani would suddenly blush, and a good portion of the Serco Dominion would be very sad indeed.

For the sake of fun, there needs to be a bit of both (attck and defense) in either nation for players to do.

Okay, so how about this:

Let the Serco build a station on the Deneb side of the Deneb-Giera WH. Mark and treat Deneb as grey space. Set (add or change, it doesn't matter) a single small (~20-30 clustered 'roids) asteroid field sector in Deneb as the border skirmish sector and set border patrol to be active for all non-station sectors. The asteroid field should have high concentrations of Xithricite and other rare ores; it should also preferably have a significant Hive presence.

how about instead of being called grey space it is called disputed territory. After all a war is going on there. I'd like to see the territory winable in the future

We all know the territory will be winable in the future, Yuutuu. This is an interim thing until the circle can be made half red and half blue and have that mean something.

How about we let the devs do it the way they want to instead of having a half assed interim thing that may piss people off because of its crappiness?

Just like with player pilotable capships. Everyone is so impatient until they get a crappy interface and then they'd whine...

One of my ideas was that deneb was an oddly shaped sector (due to a blackhole, happy looking effects on the nav, yays) so it was only a narrow 'strip' of traversable space. Thus, no hive, and no ion storms. This would mean that incarnate could custom-make the entire sector for pvp and we could actually find people easily. It would make everything so much easier.

The map would look like :
s_bbbbbbbb _
s- bbbbbbb_
ss -s -s - s-

The b's being where the blackhole animation/picture would be. The -'s the actually sectors you can be in. It'd look kinda cool...Devs, we have faith in you :D