This is a very well thought out post.

Thank you and welcome to the community.

Now then. I do not feel that all stations themselves should be controllable by individual factions, there should always be somewhere in a sector that anyone can go to and dock regardless of affiliation. However, as I believe that the devs have made some references to player owned parts of stations, or additional stations wholly owned by players within the sector that could have docking requirements limiting those portions to guildmemers or people invited in by guild members(manufacturing plants, warehouses etc) I certantly feel that it might be an option for factions to blockade or otherwise stagnate the modules owned by another faction. (I think the option of destroying them outright would be bad, not a whole lot of fun if your guild just spent millions on a new warehouse module and while you are all offline due to real life a whole bunch of people with more time on their hands decide to blow it up)

I forsee competition between the various factions to be more economic than anything (destroying the other factions trading ships DOES count as economic pressure btw) And if the various modules have maintinance costs, an effectve blockade could make it a drain on resources instead of an advantage. This also brings up requirements for stations to have attachment points availible. And maybe even Guild owned Power plants and structural segments. provide powere for your own modules and sell excess to the station for a profit :). Charge other people rent to attach their component module to your station. etc etc.

Supply becomes an issue then. Especially if there were modules for ship construction where if you supply them with the appropriate component parts, you can produce ships of various classes for reduced cost for guild members. Hence, the New Itani Shipwrights Guild provides funds to send out traders to bring back uhhh (for example) Air filters, Power Plants, Electronic Wigets and Metal Ores. Then has them delievered to the shipyard module to produce a Valkarie for Guildmember Joe Schmoe, and All Joe schmoe pays is the cost of the basic wigets. This Also brings in the supply chain that the dynamic economy will hopefully develop into and links it with the faction system.

hmm i appear to be rambling so i think I'll stop now.. I'll probably edit this post later for coherence and spelling/grammer.

I don't have the time to write the sort of responce this post deserves (no its not bad), but I'll say for starts that one way MMORPG's I'm familiar with handle the problem is make a certain number of 'bases' invunerable, so that each faction always has a home to go home to, and leaves a certain number available for conquest.

We've talked about this before, but its been a very long time (and certain individuals got the old archives removed), and your post raises some questions and ideas we haven't talked about before. Unfortunately, I won't have time to think about this extensively before this weekend.

The faction system will hopefully be fleshed out soon in upcoming patches. I am interested in how the (eventual) mission system will work with it and its impact on multi-player ships. First off, I've been reviewing the threads on capital ships and specifically how players should be able to control them. Since individual players are at this time limited to single-player ships, the group organization that many players want is limited. Their is no in-game function that allows players to organize, plan and strategize, other than chat. I am hoping that with the introduction of the faction system, guilds and government type organizations will be the driving force for community and true-multiplayer interaction. For instance, because of high value of capital ships (whatever their final form) their ownership by a single player is questionable because the focus of the game is on community play, and ownership of such a powerful vessel by one individual makes the playing field much less fair. Guilds, governments etc. are in the unique position of being organizations and as such are best suited to 1) organizing the construction of capital ships (if that becomes a feature); 2) gathering quality players to command and operate them; and 3) those players would be responsible for the ship they command and operate as well as be responsible to the organization they are working for. Factions (I hope) should be able to organize and develop their "war-plans" for fighting the other factions and/or small independent trade guilds, etc. Territory should be "won" or "lost," and by that I mean gaining control of stations in sectors, or similar actions.

In the game's (actually the Test's) current form, their are three pre-determined nations. If as I suggest, that factions are able to actually "own" territory, it would be possible in theory to completely wipe out a rival faction. I see this as both a problem and a benefit. First, if one faction completely dominates and eliminates others, there is no fun afterward and impetus for competition is eliminated. On the other hand, with the introduction of factions, total victory by one faction can be seen as the ultimate goal, it is the ultimate test of each faction's abilities, skills, and determination. Everything depends on what the developers want in terms of inter-faction interaction. If all they want is battles between three factions with guild control only over command and leadership of ships, and the like, while ownership of territory is predetermined, thats one thing. The developers have stated they want an ever-expanding universe, with no periodic universe resets. The problems with how stations develop and ownership becomes apparent.

I am relatively new to the Vendetta community, and as such please don't totally bash my comments. Constructive discussion about the future direction of the game please. I understand I may have left key items out which may render what I said somewhat less relevent, but I have made an effort to seek out information, and be as in-the-know as possible.