I'm really looking forward to all this these changes, which are needed, looks great. Nothing there that I didn't know about really.

So, Perpetuum staff is growing and more investors coming?  I still hope you have learned from past mistakes. There is a real need for a new vision for the game, this needs to be communicated to the players, to get their confidence back in the developers.

Finally a thought out process that treats new and old corps alike.

Instance out the tutorials and let them drive Mk2 Heavys with perfect skills that will keep them coming

All in all a much needed PVE revamp

2nd Quarter 2013 PVP loving ? Pleeeeeease E-war on kill mail?

I hope the new bots are coming soon

Small assignment terminals: mentioned in the latest blog, are these 'dock-able' terminals or just a place on terrain to get the assignments?

There is also nothing mentioned to improve 'gamma PVE', anything coming to improve that? Other than chase roamers or do beacons there is nothing else to do in gamma.

Small assignment terminals would be just an interface that brings up the assignment select window.

And yes I also think those dungeons would be a nice addition to gamma.

Looks good, maybe i will finally start researching stuff, also interested in what the other potential uses will be and instanced PVP sounds interesting, just as long as it doesn't take away from current PVP

Are there plans on what the other possible uses for research would be?

well took a while to find some time to write this down becouse of various reasons... (away on holidays, work, stuck in bed with a cold ... ...)

first of all i think this is all a big step in the right directions.

increasing your team and getting this game forward is a good step and i hope this all goes well and the way you planed.

instances
instances are needed but as you pointed it out quite nicely you have to use them with reason. also even if you create a open word instance for example on a gamma island you can make it that way that the entrance stays open. so you are still not totaly save in there. you have here many options and i will not go too deep into that matter.
so there is always the "open instance" and the "closed instance". both have their benefits and i think this game has use for both of them.

Assighnments and PVE:
the general problem with assighnments that we have in this game is that the 2d world will not hold enough room for thousands of players. eve here has it more easy because the masive empty space can create enough pockets and you can create even millions of mission sites in one system if nessessary.

the problem is how to haldle this. a lot of games use instances for that, but i think this will only work to a small content and will not fit this game in the great scheme.

the best thing i can think of atm is a dynamic world for pve.
what does that mean? well i want bring up the sample of guildwars2. they have a changeing world dependent on what the players do. well its is very simple done in gw2 but it can be done way better.
the concept is that there is actually happening things in the world a the players can get in hand to things. dependent on their success tings will change in the world.
npcs are attacking outposts or structures. if they succeed the will start to fortify them. they might build defences and start mining operations, make supply trains for them ... ... all that can be objectives for the players. kill the miners, capture the supply, recapture the base ... ...
and this can only be one small stone in a big puzzle of one alpha island.
the content is permanently changeing dependent on what the players do.
you can even have multible of these in itself closed mission lines on one island. and there will be another area where its content depends on the status of all the other ones around it.

this can get very intresting. the only thing is this will be a lot of work and not just a small mission site to create. there has to be a big script and a masterplan for each island.

Research System:
what i want to talk about here are the changes in the research system. i have some conserns, and also some other ideads that i had besides the ones i posted in this forum a while ago.

first of all i like good and complex systems. thats why i think you should not simplify it too much. i can understand your reasons why you want to reduse the number of different kernels, but on the other hand there are also good reasons against it.

for example if you have that limited number of different kernels then you have little things you can do about the distribution of the tech levels over the npc tiers. basicly you only have high tech and new tech. basicly you will be able to grind t4 item tech on low level npcs. only thing you have to make it more intresting for the higher ones is to increase the ammount of droped kernels on the higher tier npcs. and even so you have to take into consideration that you can kill lower tier npcs faster, so this might even cancel out the lower drop rate to some point.

another idea for research system:
there still will be kernels and they still will hold research points. but they will hold different kinds of research points. even a single kernel can hold multible types of research points.
but you can not consume the kernels. you have to use them in the research interface on a outpost (might even make up for a new facility) to unlock the tech.
lets give a example.
reserch categories might be: thelodica, nuimqol, pelistal, common, high tech, new tech, weponary, electronics, tech levels (1-4...) ... ... (you might want to have more or less categories dependent on how far you want to get this).
you now can give different kernels a set of RP. and the research project also needs a number of different RP in various quantity.

another clue will be that you will only have a limited number of research slots. means you can only bring in a limited number of different kernel types. you can this even make this different for different projects.

once you have it done you can klick research and you have the tech, or you add some more extentions and it will take some time to research. makes room for time and paralell research projects extentions.

the problem you have with this system compared to the simple one suggested by the devs is that this system needs a way bigger pool of different kernels (just like what we have atm.)

the trick in this system is that you can nearly never use all the research points in a kernel. sometimes you can even use it very inefficient when you get some points you need from a rather uncommon sorce. for example you get your thelodica research obiously from thelodica kernels while you get the engineering tech from pelistal kernels that you just seam to be avalible. the other points in these kernels will be wasted.

last words
i know i tryed to talk about rather complex thinks in relative simple sentences. not everything might be completely clear, but i hope i could give a picture of that what i have in mind. if you want to talk to me about this more voicecoms might be more easy for this then i would prefer to leave the writeing complete novels to my guide.