Ok I was thinking on this and have a reasonable idea for allowing players to capture stations which shouldnt be too hard for you to implement.
To put it simply first, make it so there is a limited amount of turrets/strike force ships at each station, and that there is a minimum amount of time to respawn said ships.
For instance, perhaps make only turrets on the station in stock, and perhaps an hour each turret to respawn (Time could very well need adjusting, I am not sure how hardcore turrets are). For the strike force ships, make them take 15 minutes a ship to respawn, and give them an instation stock of around 20.
This would allow a player or group of players to actually remove all of a stations defenses without making it permanent. Once all the forces are removed you should make it so the player (or any player for instance) can dock there, regardless of thier faction standing, and have access to all of a stations inventory at a drastically reduced price, once again, regardless of faction standing.
This would allow KOS players access to eq they normally wouldnt have, but it would not be easy access. It would give groups things to do, and possibly heat up the nation war quite a bit. It could be possible to write a string of missions for it too, like capturing all of the enemy nations stations in said system.
A lot of this could be added later, but the core of it doesnt seem to me to be too hard to do.

1. Limit the reserves a station has of turrets and strike forces.
2. Set a minimum regeneration rate for set reserves, and do not replenish them all at once.
3. Allow ANY player to dock at the station once all defenses are removed.
4. Once defenses regenerate (even a single ship) only players who could normally dock can dock again.

Thats the basics, and seems like it would be fairly simple to implement, perhaps as a test do it only to grey space stations first to work out the bugs, that way we dont bork important nation space.

/me humps the idea

/me likey

yeah this goes well with my "raid" idea. if you capture a station, you get some spoils from it, from the bar of the station and perhaps from some player's cargo holds.

that i s a pretty awsome idea [stamp of approval]

Bingo!!!

Yeah, I'd like that, too.

This has potential.

ah and make stations have an amount of cargo that goes up with deliveries and when you dock with it you may loot half the stuff for free when the station gets defenses again prices are high until voys and players deliver

and make the station have 3 ship of each kind loot able

this would make raiding enemy space useful to go get some free loot and enemy ships

This is something we've considered for a long time. It'll probably make its first appearance when we make Deneb a system with possible "conquest", although with longer term repercussions. Obviously, it isn't something we want to enable for any station, as it makes protecting newbies at say.. capitols, a more problematic thing. But it might have potential for border stations.

I also support this idea FWIW. Based on tramshed\'s idea, maybe the spawn rate could be increased closer to the capitols to make it more difficult to capture / retain core stations.

Also, I think it would be better if, rather than a time limit, the retention of a station should be based purely on retaliation. Spawn special forces every so often for the player/group to defend from, and once all players have been eliminated, the station is liberated. Turrets should only spawn after this has occurred.

Also, I think a nation chat announcement should be made if a station is captured to allow for players to come to the aid of their station. That would make it a lot more difficult for anyone to retain a station for long periods of time. A reward can then be given to the liberating player.

Players who capture a station lose control once they (or all members of a group) log out.

I too like the idea tramshed , but it may be that players who only play occaisionally have resources stored , and it would be unfair if they returned to the game and found their stuff gone .

The way round this would be create some new stations which are optimised for this type of play , and would provide a platform for experiment and debugging .

Ecka

Aye, I agree on that one. I dont think anything of a players should be taken, as that would give a disadvantage to a player who doesnt play much. If any free loot is given, it should be from the station inventory only, not the player inventory.

davejohn:

when tramshed said "access to a station's full inventory" I believe he meant access to all the items that that station sells. NOT the actual player inventories stored at that station

But that would actually make the game fun and validate its name. We'd have real Vendette, then.

I see the problems with this, but we have non-consensual PvP combat, with the developers' intentions of making it virtually ubiquitous, so why not extend it to this?

There could be a failsafe that no more than a certain percentage of a player's stored items could be stolen within a given timeframe, and some things like exceptional equipment or trade goods could be ineligible for pillaging.

Just one additional thought - if you capture a station, is the purpose of that capture a strategic one for your nation or purely for personal gain/glory?

I\'d prefer the former myself, and when the devs implement the new economy, this could fit quite nicely alongside that idea.

Imagine that a Serco group capture an Itani station on the edge of blue space. While that station is under their control, any other Serco can dock with that station to buy items which may not usually be available to them and complete missions given by that station. The extra revenue generated by this would boost the Serco economy and be a benefit to all Serco players.

As this is a community game I\'d favour this over the \'capture a station and seize its assets\' idea. You could be taking plunder from another player from your nation with a good other-nation standing who happens to have left items there. And suppose a different team captures a different station every hour. It wouldn\'t take long for a player to lose all his stored possessions.

Also, as this game is set in the future, don\'t you think that a players assets would be stored in some kind of uber-secure vault with a locking mechanism only they could operate?

Wait a sec.....
Did they nerfed the idea of player owned stations and replaced it with temporarily capturing already set ones?!?!?
NOOOO!!!1!one!!