Roaming the beta islands with a trustry group of light bots, I envisioned a potential feature that would really enhance players' stake in controlling territory.  One of my favorite features of Star Wars Galaxies (before it was made into an arcade game) was roaming the landscape to see the dynamic and creative influences of the players as they created player communities.  Instead of a generic corp-owned station, I pictured a community of player houses and a few communal structures arranged in a defenseable layout on those picturesce rolling hills.

  Of course, there were restrictions about where player structures could be placed scuh as minimum distances from public areas and such and the same should be applied in Perpetuum.  The player structures enhance the game's landscape, not take it over.   So, maximum footprints or numbers of structures could be implemented as needed or - as SWG did - left to the players' own sense of aesthetics and crowd tolerances.  I never found unwanted sprawl to be an issue in SWG.

As to Perpetuum specifically, the game would, IMO, be enhanced by a feature that was quite popular in its previous implementation and give corps and alliances an even more personal stake in defending and fighting for "homes" in which each member had a peronal touch ("I put that structure there and helped decorate/buy/etc it").  Decisions will have to be made - soliciting community input here - on whether to make these structures entirely risk-able (like a POS in Eve) in that they can be destroyed after a certain defender's grace period (like "reinforcing a POS") or whether ownership of the structure (or rather the community as each "house" wouldn't have to be shot seperately) would simply be switched if the assault were successful.  One idea is to have ownership switched to successful assaulter, but no modifications or destruction for a set amount of time (1 week? 2?) such that the losing party would have 1 more chance to mount a counter-attack.

Limited placeable defenses (turrents, shield mods, ECM) could be considered to protect communities but should represent a community investment and should suffer interference to avoid defense blobbing.  Obviously, timezone and AFK factors have to be considered scuh that communities aren't being ninja switched but it must also be the fact that rich corps/alliances can't make their bases un-assaultable.  Player bots are the backbone of the defense, not NPC mods/guns.

Anyway, for those that played SWG you probably have a good mental picture, for the rest, imagine a purchaseable item with a set footprint that can placed on the landscape away from highways and stations to call your own.  You and your corp arrange your community as you see fit and defend it in your shiny bots.  Taking your enemies "homes" away from them is even more satisfying when they placed the structure themselves and paid for some nice pink (alien) flamingos to adorn their lawns.

Drop your thoughts here and happy hunting.