In order to have long term appeal in a number of its systems, perpetuum needs to have players risking their bots to the posibility of destruction. Before you read this thread, consider the fact that just because there is a low population doesn't mean we can't at least try to make the games systems function well for current and future populations. Lets keep the population argument out of this.

When players don't risk things there are a number of serious side effects that manifest over time, lets go down the list.

1. Miners and industrialists have no purpose besides to be bean counters watching numbers go up (not their NIC, their hanger numbers). There wont be as much market games or competition without people taking risks and bots being destroyed. Buy/sell orders will stagnate, this is very very bad for a game with a player driven economy.

2. People get bored of the same static gameplay and same static rewards over time. Add some risk and reward into the equation can create interesting player driven dynamic gameplay.

3. Without the possibility of loss in everyday gameplay PvP will suffer greatly. When people are not taking risks in the gameworld there are no targets for people looking for PvP. This means there can never be any sort of potential escalations like happened early on in the game. Enter island, look for targets, maybe kill something, get chased off and maybe killed, etc. This is interesting player driven gameplay.

Now you may be convinced that Perpetuum already has plenty of risk. You are right, it already has plenty of "All or nothing" type risk. This is a type of risk that doesn't affect everyday gameplay most of the time. For example, the possibility of a gamma base being destroyed. While this type of risk is needed to, there needs to be more than just this type of risk or everyday gameplay will suffer for all the reasons above. Perpetuum has enough of this type of risk already via Gamma base destruction and Beta outpost lockout. What we need more of is everday risk. Neither type of risk can totally replace eachother or you wind up with the current situation.

There needs to be a ballance between those taking risks and those attempting to capitalize on said risk taking. Neither side should be given features that completely negate a certain type of risk. Give us tools to mitigate, not completely eradicate said risk and we will see interesting gameplay develop around it.

Bring back the everyday risk to perpetuum!

EDIT:

Added a counter argument for "all or nothing" type risk replacing "everyday" risk.