I know it's been discussed before (though it's not on the Big List™), but one thing that I think would make VO more fun at the moment would be to make stations able to be taken over. Despite whatever's been said before, here's an idea on how it could work.

First, limit the number of defbots at a station at any given time. (For sake of discussion, defbots = def & strike.) Make those bots spawn at a central station and then travel to their assigned station. There could be a minimum number of defbots that a nation tries to keep at each station.

Then, if you (with a group) manage to eliminate all the defbots at a rival station, an opportunity would be given to "claim" that station for your nation.

Once a station is claimed/contested, defbots of your nation are deployed to the station. This would take considerable time, so enemy reinforcements would have to be thwarted. As soon as one nation's defbots reach a station and dock, the station effectively belongs to that nation. There could be some notion of official occupation, but it really just boils down to whose defbots are at the station.

As stations are contested closer to a nation's capitol, the response time of new defbots (and players hopefully) would be shorter, and the other side's reinforcements would take longer to reach the station. This way, it would be very very difficult to over-run an entire nation. It would however make a dynamic battle front and a goal for blood-thirsty players to aim for.

There could be a problem if a player is homed at a station that gets contested and taken over. Maybe change their home to the nearest friendly station or the central capitol station.

Sure, it's a gimmick, since the bots would still spawn indefinitely, but it would be a much more enjoyable. And the devs have shown that they're not opposed to giving us gimmicks (ie. CTF) to keep us busy while they prepare better things for us.

What say you?

I say that having stations in gray space something you could fight over would be a good idea.

I personally feel that _all bots_ should take 10 minutes to respawn.

The key to taking over a station would be:

1) Objects could be given a 'parent', so that a group of objects could be defined as belonging to the same thing. (For all I know, this is already possible). Damage to any of the objects would trigger the damage handler for the parent of the object. (which hopefully could be designed to handle area of effect weapon, choosing the most damaging effect, and dropping the redundant events otherwise this idea is pretty much pointless).

2) Stations which recieved a certain ammount of damage would surrender (taking station defences offline temporarily). Surrendered stations could then be occuppied if at least one member of the hostile faction docked there.

3) This whole thing would be somewhat pointless unless factions recieved some tangible benifit for owning a station. That's were the real trouble starts. We would need some sort of station management interface, a whole new government system, a new taxation/fee/tariff system (so governments could earn a profit) and so forth.

It generally makes for a bad game to allow the actual stations of a faction to be overrun. Games just don't simulate reality closely enough, notably, in a game you are on just a small portion of the day rather than the 24/7 you are required to devote to life.

Right. Any station that can assumed to be capable of manufacturing bots could be considered a bot spawn point, and it couldn't be taken over without extra mechanisms in the game.

The stations in the Serco/Itani border systems should be like this. Just to have the front move around a little. That's mostly what I'm talking about for the immediate future.

And if bots had to travel after spawning, they could respawn instantly.. since it would take some time to get back to their post.