Best Of

I love huge swaths of this, but this is Big Projects. I think we should start small:
big, wide-open maps for each planet, some with hazards (like taking so much dps if you stand in Too Hot or Too Cold rooms), some with not. And locations (randomly generated?) where land has been cleared and replaced by autofactories and refineries. 

Why?

To tie systems together. Right now, everything feels split apart. If I'm a miner, PVP and PVE are inconveniences I have to deal with or avoid, not necessarily something I am thinking about as part of the system. But the systems should be interlinked if we want a unique and interesting experience, in my opinion. Make every economy piece a tactical objective and it creates a lot of opportunity for roleplay, for interaction, and for (primarily) fun!

I realize this is also a Big Thing, but not quite as big as what was above. I still love those ideas and think they are great to go on the map (no pun intended)!

Right now, I see several big problems with the cosmpiercer system:

Problem 1: If you land on a cosmpiercer and die, your ship is stuck there until the generators respawn. If your side loses, you have to pay ship insurance costs and lose all your cargo.
Solution 1A: Allow INSURANCE TOWREQUEST <ship> to function on ships docked at cosmpiercers in addition to ships floating in space.
Solution 1B: Remove/reduce cargo loss/insurance fees when a ship is destroyed in an open PvP zone.
Solution 1C: Alter ship PvP costs to be less punishing in general, in hopes of encouraging more ship PvP.

Problem 2: Space combat in cosmpiercer fights rarely exists, but when it does exist, it eclipses all other stages of the contest.
Solution 2A: Introduce a space combat objective that comes after the the hacking objective is completed. For example, a second set of generators at the end of the hacking which needs to be destroyed to complete the transfer.
Solution 2B: Introduce a space combat objective that is simultaneous with the hacking. For example, instead of giving points directly, hacking a terminal spawns a 'communications satellite' aligned with the terminal's prior owner and destroying that in space causes points to start accumulating.
Solution 2C: Introduce a 5 minute window at the start of a cosmpiercer attempt during which all players can use SHIP WARP.
Problem 3: The Engineer skills Heartstart and Wormhole have an outsized effect during cosmpiercers, as these skills allow defeated players to return to the fight much quicker than they can otherwise.
Solution 3A: Change wormholes not to work on cosmpiercers or ships docked at cosmpiercers; likewise cause death onboard a cosmpiercer to destroy corpses and leave only INRs.
Solution 3B: Introduce a 5 minute cooldown, starting upon revival by any means (cloning, heartstart, timeline revert, etc.) during which heartstart fails to revive them and wormholes cannot be used.
Solution 3C: Give anyone who's faction controls at least one terminal the ability to wormhole onto a cosmpiercer without using a ship.

Problem 4: Best play for the defensive team requires constant hypervigilance and a willingness to drop everything in order to defend on zero notice. This makes it difficult to make time for in depth roleplay events, incursions, space mining, bashing or anything else that requires considerable uninterrupted periods of online time.
Solution 4A: Change cosmpiercer openings to have considerable overlap, but be less frequent. Having 6 cosmpiercers open up every 5 hours has desirable traits here, as it provides a good spread of possible targets while giving a minimum of 3 hours of down time for hunting, mining and RP between possible defenses. Also, it causes the timing of openings to gradually drift across timezones, ensuring opportunities for non-peak players.
Solution 4B: Require that cosmpiercer attempts be declared in advance somehow.