Many players have incentives for playing the faction part of this game with CtC, on the borders of greyspace. Deneb warfare is fun, however the consequence of the same system and the same incentives give a sense of sequentially repeating content.

I propose a simple copy paste of stations from both factions placed into certain parts of grey space, with the idea of them being constructed by the factions at hand (all 3, UIT wants to jump on this lore-wise), to exploit the rare ores and trade routes within the greyspace.

A bunch of different events taking place: mining and returning ore through missions increases profits gained in the faction's space by lowering the cost of goods.

Traders would be able to sell certain commodities from the greyspace corperation stations for high prices at the faction owned stations, however this happens maybe like twice a week, adding the ability of risk from pirates and the opposite factions. This gives a whole new incentive of player access to the resources of greyspace, and provides an active playground for many guilds to get involved, along with pirates to spice up all the fun going on.

Stations are technically conquerable, however the way to conquer them would be a mix between deneb border war events mixed with hard timers. Basically, the procedural capitol ship + fighters would be activated, however the reinforcements get repleneshed over a 12 hour period, to ensure the process is involved and cant be done at a time where not many players are on. Some type of balance for this would be implemented in some way, maybe hard to do objectives like destroying some type of structure that bars access from the station from a different faction, and the beacon has INCREDIBLE amounts of health, which capital ship turrets can do extra damage too (bringing back bombers as a needed role). Timers can't be started all the time, and require a cooldown period before attackers can try and claim the station and its resources for their own.

Obviously this cycle can be exploited by majority rule: so, to make up for that, there can be a reduction on the hard timers for how long a faction has had control of a station.

for the faction space incentives, there could be a system implemented where the actions of these situations impact the economy and space of the faction; the actions of those risking their ships out there impact the actual space each faction holds. This can be done easily by just adjusting certain prices for stations, allowing traders to show some care in how their faction is doing, as we all know it is insanely easier to do commerce within safe faction-guarded space. Note that this isn't a complete replacement - it should be way more profitable to do commerce by interacting with greyspace, as it is way more dangerous and provides player involvement.

Of course, there would have to be not too little and not to much faction stations out there in greyspace, and there should always be the ability for pirates to fuck it all up for each faction (destroying miners trying to capitalize, intercepting the transport routes, amazing profit from drops).

Now, a major function of this whole thing delves deeper to something core of the gameplay of VO at the moment.

Consider: Two times each month, every station will have randomly generated battles from the 3 factions. However, during this time, all players, reguardless of faction, can accept one of 3 missions, one for each faction, and as you accept that mission you will be on that factions friendly list/ on the opposing factions hostile list, for whatever side you chose (players will also be given the friendly/hostile forms on rader depending on what side they chose, but however there is always friendly fire no matter what).

Now, when one is to accept the mission, they will from the time they accept the mission and stay within certain sectors (station/sector from which the mission was got, and station/sector of the battle), that these players, will be fully reimbursed for the destruction of their capital ships by the opposing faction.

This is a huge, huge incentive to get capital ships out there, being seen within the world, and for twice a month the huge risk is gone just for a time to let the capship owners get out and have some fun with their babies. This also balances the incredible value of the capital ships, as these missions will be the only time you dont need to worry about your baby getting blown up, a costly, costly, costly endevour.

The faction missions can be taken by anyone (if you're itani, you can join the serco side if you really want and you will be friendly to npcs/players on your side).

i also propose things like missions from faction space to go to these stations and sell needed commodities like food, water, things stations need to keep the effort going.

NOTE: hopefully this is clear, but there should be bolstered incentives for the player owned conquerable station to have some more advantages than these greyspace faction owned stations, as obviously there needs to be reason for these stations to be used by players and fought over by players.

anyways, this sounds cool :)

National-aligned stations in GS is a terrible idea.

why do you think so? and i think you're misinterpreting the suggestion, its not about making greyspace owned by any faction, it's just some sectors within greyspace can be switching sides and has an effect on the entire gameworld.

So basically a conq sector. -1 whats the point.

tl; dr much of it.

"nation aligned stations in GS is a terrible idea"
Ukari has a UIT station, and Helios has a serco station, but I get what you are saying ;P

I believe that grey is fairly player controlled, thus doesn't need national oversight.