your reasoning is wrong

I'm shocked that a large corporation would disagree with me. How is my reasoning wrong, exactly?

And why limit the facilities to crap? Having some that are worth something gives people things to fight over. No epriton on any of them makes them pointless and meaningless, and no good spawns means no way to make money outside of mining.

The only reason I could see you wanting these islands to be crap is because you already have control of a large island. Shock! You do have control! But that means you're biased towards wanting a monopoly on all the good stuff, whereas the solo/small group players simply don't care for that. The game needs more diversity - don't let your greed ruin the game's longevity.

1) They wouldn't necessarily be secluded. Some could be connected to the alpha islands, as extra pathways to the larger beta islands.
2) Miners would be easily ganked, as gates would be nearby at all times on a smaller island, and any traffic through would be able to see them.
3) As soon as cloaks enter the game, small islands become highly vulnerable to small roaming gangs.
4) With so few resources that you could have on an island, you wouldn't want many people on your island. "easy to defend" changes when you only have 15-30 people on the island and a larger corporation sends 100 to take it from you.

Not everything should be on par with larger islands, but some islands with epriton (possibly random moving spawns to prevent the dysporium effect) should exist.

A smaller crappy island does not mean people won't blob. Blobs will happen at every level of the game until they are fixed.

I like the idea. Gives smaller corps something to fight over.

Think of it like hamlets in agon on the mainland. While the alliances control the outer islands in the corners.

Having 2-3 big alliances duke it out for everything on the board is boring. I want to see smaller wars going on as well.

Take them back. Why would a large corp protect a small less useful outpost. It would be up to players not to extend alliance territory to include these islands however.

Although I see a flaw with the current block mechanic. Make it that blocks can only be used for same size outposts or something.

eve hs thousands and thousands of tiny islands yet has insane amounts of blob action

even wormholes suffer from blobs and they just need to be more planned due to mass limits

fact is any game were there is no friendly fire/ bots dont block LOS and a bigger group almost secures victory will have issues with blob warfare

The devs said they'd expand on the islands when there was enough population to support it.

I think we're getting close to it.  Right now anyone else who tries to get a foothold in beta will just get roflstomped if they dont have a very strong player base.  Not to say that any corp should be able to set up shop anywhere they want, but right now its very limiting.

Agreed. But I think this is also caused by how easy it is to have a few teams camp each teleport and deny all entry. I personally dislike this one alliance = one island gameplay.

Loco,

Agreed, trying to cover small Islands would be a logistical strain, but the point I was trying to make was if there was something of value on the Island, then a Big Corp, or an ally of that Corp, would find a way.

Like Neoxx said though, if it was just a small Island with nothing of value it wouldn't be worth the effort of taking or keeping it.

If they do implement small Islands, and a corporation manages to 'improve' the Island somehow to make it valuable, they had better get protection from a larger corp, or they will find themselves being the target of the next Intrusion. This will happen for sure as the 'Big' corps get more and more pilots and start looking at expanding as opposed to just barely holding what they have.

So, I agree with Seridur and others, smaller less valuable Islands could have the result the OP is looking for, which is smaller engagements.