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Shout out to everyone who's been hard at work tweaking mechanics regarding CPs and hearing the player population out. :pleased:

I realize that we're still at a developmental stage in Starmourn and that future content may better supplement the current cosmpiercer system, but I just wanted to highlight some challenges with it and consider some changes. There's a mixture of low-hanging fruit and more ambitious propositions here, but it's worthwhile to start some dialogue anyway.

Hot take: Changing the guard and control mechanics was a step in the right direction to encourage PVP, but there are still some fundamental shortcomings as related to cosmpiercer accessibility and incentives to participate. 

By intrinsic design, your faction-mates should be scattered across the Sector at any given time, making unanticipated "grouping up" to defend a cosmpiercer a non-trivial affair. As such, aggressors will always have the advantage by initiating conflict. The shield generator phase affords some delay, but as compared to the time it takes to muster a defense and to travel, this is insufficient. Moreover, a prepared aggressor who can use Engineer Wormholes has an even bigger advantage. Having at least two online engineers is effectively becoming an entry requirement to remote PVP, and this places too much bias and need on this class for a game with fluctuating population and with no classflex option. Presently, it's far better to just attack another cosmpiercer instead of defending your own, which is also a pretty undesirable tactic.

This is just my take on some possible solutions and mitigations.
1. Consider a portal mechanic on cosmpiercers, for ships or for players (latter probably preferable). I'd propose a teleportation station that links to and can only be used by the controlling faction that deposits in or outside the cosmpiercer, depending on the player or ship version. This would give much-needed help to defenders, and would also help dissuade factions from just responding to attacks by attacking somewhere else. This may need some limitations, like a cooldown on use. If you want to get fancy, allow the teleporter to be hacked by aggressors to disable it for a 5-min reboot. 

2. Enable installing cloning facilities on ships to allow for local redeploy. If implemented with the above, this would be a comparable counter to a defender portal. May also need some limitations - longer cloning time, number of uses, etc.

3. Create an item that may be deployed in a room and targeted for an Engineer's wormhole, destroyed after 30 mins or some duration - removes requirement for two Engineers, and enables the wormhole target to be other classes.

4. Introduce some ship-to-ship (or basically space-to-space) wormhole mechanic - allows one pilot to reach the destination and to facilitate grouping/coordinated engagement from a common point back home. (This could be a cool consumable reward from the Y'saari, maybe - like a portable voidgate tech thingo, hey)

5. Add classflex - better enables accessibility to Engineer/Wormhole.

6. Add a teleportation mechanic to return players to their faction's station from anywhere. Alternatively but preferably additionally, create a command to voluntarily kill your current clone.

In the current system, given the investment into ships, ship supplies, ship insurance, and cloning fees, the marks trickle from capturing cosmpiercers is not even remotely worthwhile. Cosmpiercer surveying is also not an apparently useful benefit.

1. If not increasing the marks for economy reasons, consider adding other rewards: discounted voidgates, extended ship beacon in controlled zones, faction xp boost, TBD cool shiz???

2. Faction influence: This currently only applies to Song and Scatterhome, but I imagine this is rarely utilized in either case. Consider some active benefit to influence; e.g., allow spending influence to earn a faction favor. I'd also be a proponent for decaying faction influence for other reasons, but won't get into that here.

3. Enable COSMPIERCER SURVEY [FULL] to be used remotely to locate mining resources, and/or create a command to ping all controlled CPs to search for a particular resource.

4. I have to believe that there is some future vision for cosmpiercers that further incentivizes the "sensor station" element of it - something like having rare/fleeting resources that are reported to the controlling faction if it appears within CP sensor range. But, it'd be nice to give meaning to controlling or monitoring the CP space that ties into future conflict events or other content.