In a nutshell: A manufacturing mission available at conquerable stations that produces another AI-controlled station guard. Add a limit of say 20 guards at max. However, once destroyed, the station guards would not come back (aside from the original 2 that should continue to respawn as normal).

Eventually, I would like to see different types of station guards other than vultures being available to manufacture to re-create a "strike force" that chases faction-hated players in monitored space.

The idea is to add more ways to defend a station than having someone online at all times. Currently, most people just ignore the station guards in their turret bombing runs. They're more of an annoyance than a threat. Having lots of station guards would increase their threat level and require a more coordinated attack from someone wishing to take the station.

+1 to manued pcb furies in conq stations

PCB furies exist?

+1 but then make the conquer worthwhile i.e. the conqueror gains all the ships and cargo at the station.

In fact, wouldn't it be great if you could conquer any station even if only temporarily until the nation mustered up an invasion force to retake it and repatriate all the cargo to their rightful owners.

That's a little drastic there SlashGordon. I would never ever want my cargo and ships exposed to someone else while in a station. Stations are supposed to be the one "safe" place to put cargo. Of course, when a station is taken, un-key'd players who have cargo at that station are unable to access their items.

That said, I like the essence of your idea and think it deserves its own thread. Basically, adding in a mechanism to capture any station (outside of stations in the nation capital) that disallows unkeyed players from docking at that station. It would also temporarily remove any faction repercussions from combat and the NFZ while conquered. I imagine taking a nation owned station should be extremely difficult, requiring coordinated effort of multiple people, and the nation would send waves of increasingly more difficult squadrons to attempt to retake the station. Imagine if a group of pirates took control of Nyrius F-6, or if a large serco force took control of Jallik E-15. I think it could add some interesting game play and maybe encourage some capship battles!

To Spry:
Manufacturable Station Guards is a non sense since guards aren't bots but people.
Ask to manufacture seekers or furies.

:p

To Slash, it was suggested when conquering a station to be able to steal one item from each inventory it got a lot of -1 at the time, good luck with that one
:p

You're manufacturing the ships that the guards use. If people wanted, a different system could be implemented to pay a "salary" to the guards.

+1

You could just bring in a ship for the guards to use, and "donate" it through a mission. They would get it exactly how it was equipped.