Ok, most of these ideas are smallish suggestions, but the last one is a bit elaborate.

First off a convoy needs to be more than 1 or 2 transports. A group of 6 or 7 transports escorted by about 3 assults, 2 gaurdians and a couple of players sounds about right. Spread them out more (to make them a bit less commonplace, 1 big convoy an hour might generate more interest on both sides than 5 little ones)

second, The warning for a convoy getting ready to leave also needs to be a bit longer. I think a 10 or even 15 minute warning would be better. right now a 5 minute warning only allows people within about 3 systems radius to get there and participate, so some players are looking at the message and going "bleh, cant get there, not gonna bother"

third, there needs to be a penalty for attaking a convoy bot. A reputation hit is definitely in order. The escorts would surely be in contact with someone about who is blowing up the transports. As it is now there is no repercusion at all for killing a convoy transport.
I know they are out in "un-monitored" space, but seriously, an escorted convoy should count as "gaurded" for reputation purposes. The faction hit doesnt have to be drastic, 100 or so points is enough. A carrer convoy raider should not be welcome in the home systems of the nation whose convoys he is blowing up.

Now for the longer term suggestions.

I'd like to see some missions centered around the convoys. Having them fly automatically is nice, but the AI is rathar predictable.
I would like to maybe see something along the lines of the following set up;

Players of a high enough level can go to a station that convoys for their nation are known to originate from, (maybe serco convoys come from NS4 stations and Itani convoys come from NS3 stations?) ans select a "lead convoy" mission.
The stations are set to generate 1 convoy every hour, that player now gets to lead the next convoy scheduled to depart.
(probably how much time that player has till the convoy leaves would be a good thing to include in the mission info)

If a player is the convoy leader, he/she literally leads the convoy, the bots follow like puppies. if the player gets too far away from the convoy then the AI takes over and the convoy resumes its normal behavior until that player returns to within a certain radius.

A convoy leader would allow players to plot different courses through space, dodge asteroid belts, take detours around sectors they know are gaurded, etc (try flying a convoy up through dau and back down arta celestes to avoid a camper at the latos/uraki WH, makes the attackers spread out a bit also. )

great idea :)
and if the convoy groups get big enough, we could have leaders under one Commander, splitting the convoy a little so we don't have to travel as the Great Flying Blob

These are all great ideas, Spellcast. I think you're on to something here.

"The faction hit doesnt have to be drastic, 100 or so points is enough"

I only have about 900 serco faction.... isn't 100 too much?

ummm, not if you are attacking a serco convoy carrying vital materiels to fuel the war effort. there should be some consequence to attacking a convoy.

+1 thumbs up. Kudos on the great idea, Spellcast!!

dyg|RK

+10 badass points

I like this idea a lot.

My only input- Faction hits should only count if your attack fails. If you destroy the entire convoy then nothing can report you attacked it. OR Make the faction hit less and on a dynamic scale.

YES @ Spellcast

Durgia, the convoy would have some form of interstellar communication with their base. Same principal the police use. They try to pull you over, you run, they call in more of their friends. Why should this be any different?

Would you lose faction points for shooting but not killing the transport? Because sometimes you have to shoot it to get it to move, or run into it fast.

shooting it should cause the defenders to attack you, but a faction hit for damaging it might be a little extreme.

Hopefully the transports will get smart enough that you dont have to give them that friendly little "nudge" to get them moving again.

The defenders dont attack me, and shooting doesnt do very much damage, it just gets it going.

How about a temporary KOS for anyone who shoots or destroys a transport, and a permanent faction hit of -100 (or so). I had the problem of a UIT in good standing (and thus showed up friendly) destroying a transport, and being able to get away because I wasn't able to immediately target him.

thats pretty much exactly what i was going for pigeon. A KOS for oh 5 minutes or so and a permanant rep hit of -100 sounds pretty good

Here's a couple ideas I'd like to add:

UIT Pirates: When a UIT destroys a transport or picks up cargo from a transport, he has to return it to one of the two sides' ports. Why? Why not have the UIT beable to use the cargo or sell it to some third party for money. This will negatively impact their reputation with the owner of the transport, but maybe TPG will give a boost because of some sort of TPG under-mining going on. And the UIT shouldn't HAVE to give it to TPG, they should beable to give it to anyone. The mere fact that the UIT player stopped the convoy should be enough for TPG to increase it's standing.

(TPG is just an example, not final by any means)

Another idea is have the convoys carry something useful, such as weapons and batteries. I noticed that all the devices now have a cargo value (though ATM they are all 1, which I'm assuming is jut a default SQL value), so eventually convoys of actual equipment would be pretty cool. That way, if it were pirated, it would actually be useful to someone. The occasional "serco secret datapad" tossed in wouldn't be such a bad idea either. Maybe the information is so secret they had to keep it low profile, so they sent it with an average, every-day convoy fleet as a camoflauge. These datapads, when returned to the opposite team, would yield incredible funds and prestige boost since it would be "secret and vital" information abotu the enemy.

Anyways, just a couple ideas. All in all, the convoys are a neat addition and are a lot of fun...

Spellcast, how about a temporary KOS until the player gets rid of the cargo. The pilots allied with the convoy are already marked for death because if the convoy dies and the allies save the cargo, they're the next targets, but if a non-allied pilot takes the cargo, and doesn't head off on a least-time route to the original intended destination, that pilot is marked KOS so that all other players know to whack him or her off to try to retrieve the cargo.

personally id be happy for a convoy that actually warps when it reaches 3k and goes to a wormhole point and not warps by itself 7k away from the wormhole.

oh yea...and if all the ships participating in the convoy actually warped together instead of just one going off by itself that'd be great too