I think one very important aspect that the current game desperately needs back is the opportunities for player-coordinated missions and opportunities for team pvp a la 3.1 ctf. This thread is for suggestions regarding technologically viable (as in easy to add without major coding) missions and gameplay elements to satisfy this.

Here are mine:

First of all, there should be something to encourage invasions into enemy territory. For example,

1) The capitol stations around secro/itani homeworlds could have a guarded special cargo hold where technology plans are stored. Stealing this cargo and bringing it to a friendly station would mean reduced prices/new weapons for the attacking nation and an opposite effect for the defending nation. This could also be scored and the team to steal most technology in a month would be granted exclusive use to a completely new weapon/ship for a short time.

2) A very heavy "station disable gun" could be introduced, which would fill 40 cus of space, have an insane mass, and disable the turbo abilities of the ship carriying it. To be fired, the carrier would have to be stationary and very close to the station for 30 seconds. A succesful hit would mean that this station would be undockable for its owner and all ships homed there would spawn in a neighborhood sector. The attacking ships would be able to dock there and would have access to all enemy technology they would otherwaise have no access to. Coupled with some kind of uber-cloaking device (which would be extremely expensive/hard to obtain) this could yield to some very interesting pvp strategies.

3) Some kind of reward needs to be introduced for itani/serco killing each other. For example, a player could recieve monetary rewards for killing a member of the opposing team (the amount would depend on the levels and pvp kill/death ratio of the opposing player). Distinguished pvp'ers would recieve medals each month.

4) Right now defbots and strike forces make any kind of major invasion into enemy space very hard and unrewarding. While the fact that this protects newbies is undeniably good, it also denies some interesting gameplay. I think newbie areas should be separated from the main systems such that they would have good defences, and the rest of the national defences should be toned down.

5) Another way of dealing with the defbots would be having highly defended comm satellites at border stations. Destroying both sattelites (at opposite ends of a nations space) would disable a nations defences for 20 minutes(completely disabling any strike forces and half/all the debots), after which a new sattelite would be warped into the systems by repair crews with an additional temporary defbot squad.

REMINDER: Please suggest things here which would be implementable using the current game state, not OMG CAPITAL SHIP!!!1.

Thanks, and sorry about the longish post.

I like the idea of incursions into enemy space. Here is one of my posts from a month ago stated that occupied territory was like a good idea.

Of course, this was posted before the Serco/Itani cargo wars, but it could be the next step in the war.

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It might be interesting to make it possible for nations to occupy enemy border territories. It would help focus PvP a little more and make it so people wouldn't feel they need to become pirates to fight another player.

Obvious, you'd want to make sure that there are still unclaimed territories for the pirates, so my idea would keep unclaimed/unmonitored space from affecting faction.

You'd also want to make sure that an entire nation can't get overrun, so you can only have border systems invaded.

Basically, my idea is that nations that want to make an attack on a neighbor, will have to build a supply depot in the target sector. The invading nation will have to protect this depot inorder to continue attacking the enemies bases. The absence of such depot, would mean that it is impossible to capture any stations.

In order to capture an enemy station, attacking players need to disable a stations defenses by getting armor down sufficiently (although I should be impossible to destroy a station). After the armor is sufficiently lowered, attacking players would also have to have invasion troops contained in their cargo bay as well as a weapon called a "Troop pod launcher" or something like that. Troops need to be launched at a station until the station is sufficiently under the attacker's control. Once a station is captured, there is no longer a need for a supply depot in the system. Once all stations in the system are capture, the system is then under the attacker's control.

In order for the defender to retake a fully captured system, they must build a supply depot in that system in the same way the original attackers did.

If the developers want to encourage a ongoing story line, they can have nations declare peace and war at different times during the course of the game. Peace times make it impossible to build a supply depot.

Just a few ideas that might help cut down on random serial killers and bring more focus to the PvP. Why would players want to station camp or wormhole camp when there are more glorious battles to be fought. (Pirates would still exist, they'd just be less in number and they'd be after cargo rather than the thrill of the kill.) Capturing systems would give players goals and prestige. Plus, it would make another profession that players can use... Nation military pilot.

I'm sure there are a couple flaws in my idea, but it would make for some good starting point for ideas.