As William Shatner said; "Do what I do, believe in what I believe, for your own good, or I'll kill you!?! I can't get behind that!"

So the long and short of it is that Perp needs to churn out some quality content asap or start to really fade away?

Well they can't be to overpowered; what would be the point of crafting? It'll be interesting to see what the T4+ engineering, ewar and electronics bits are like. 

Does anyone know just how far one of these beacon bacon battles can escalate?

Cool, thanks for the quick response

please be patient with the wall of text.  I think I've had a good idea here

    Setting up buy orders remotely (distance determined by skill)

    Adjusting orders from a distance (only same station by default)

Could easily be tied to corp relations levels; perhaps adding a skill which allows you to contract other players to complete missions for you. Something like Contract Management.

e.g.; you accept a Combat Mission and then hire mercs to complete said mission for you.  You get a bonus to your relations for completeing the mission but suffer no negative rep that may have otherwise been associated with the mission.  A skill like this could be very usefull for those who wish to opperate on both Alpha and Beta islands as traders; allowing 100% relations status with all three major Corps. 

This kind of skill could be used as a prerequisit for the above mentioned extended trade skills.  Insofar as those extended trade skills go; just make them a matter of invested EP.  You need Basic Robotics 4 to use an Assault Bot; implement a similer scale of bonus for EP invested or perhaps allow the stations 'colour/type' and the associated level of Agent influence/standing to effect the number of stations of that kind which can be traded at using the proposed 'extended trade network' skill. 

The Agent would then have to choose some stations (up to 10) at which he can trade remotly but the 'slot cost' of each station would depent on the Agents relationship level. E.g.: you have Extended Trade: 10, you have 100% relations with ICS, 66% with TM and 33% with Asintec. So, you could choose 1 Asintec outpost(3), 2 TM Outposts(2,2) and 3 ICS Outposts(1,1,1).  Of course if you've invested in skills which allow you to build max reputation with all three you can build a real trade network, remotely trading at 10 different stations.

Now, I know player corps can own outposts and limit the availablity of said outposts to other players... these skills would make trade and diplomacy a more important aspect of player vs. player economics.  Take the above example and change it to;  you have Extended Trade: 10, you have 100% relations with ICS, 66% with TM and 33% with Asintec.  You are neutral with CIR(no denoted coulour), friendly with TOG(blue) and wary of FOOM(yellow). So, you could choose 1 Asintec outpost or FOOM outpost(3), 2 TM Outposts or CIR Outposts(2,2) and 3 ICS Outposts or TOG Outposts(1,1,1).  Of course if you've invested in skills and in game relationships which allow you to build max reputation with all(and sundry) three you can build a real trade network, remotely trading at 10 different stations.

This would also allow corps to trade at outposts they could not dock at(when the new intrusion method is implemented) provided someone could get their goods there.  Might also be worth introducing an Advanced Economics(tax evasion) skill to supplement this. 

feedback?

A good secondary to this would be the more trade you do at a high relationship terminal the less tax you pay compared to the regular agent, hence the more your influance degrades.  Meaning you have to keep working to keep your level of influence high.  It would also be nice to see the actions of an Agent in game impact on their relationships status... they sell all of their plasma to TM... ICS and Asintec give them a nudge by dropping their relationship status a bit.

EDIT: edited to highlight the OP concepts I was expanding on

I think you might be right.

So what happens when there's no one left to fight?  Or when no one wants to fight you?

How does the above methodology benifit the game and its community?  The ethos you've just outlined leads to a "do what I do, belive in what I belive, for your own good... or I'll kill you" scenario.

There's also the risk versus reward aspect.  In the above scenario anyone with a big enough head-start will invariably win.  There is no risk for the corp and it's players so the only rewards, one would deduce, are personal and lie outside of the game. 

By that rationale you have all of the members of x communal corp working dilligently to reach an arbitrary goal defined by the personal rewarding of their CEO or 'officer corps'; ergo the existance of the communal corp is an extension of an individual ego.

Now, players may do the victory dance for a while but what happens when they want to dance to their own tune? Do they eat Epitron pie or do they meet Commissar Seth?

Because purchasing power exists in any market based system; what happens to a big gun with nothing to shoot?  It rusts and becoms dull and useless to it's user(s).

Right now there are a few very simple methods for individuls to make self sustaining bank; the Golden Triangle for example.  Once quick fix stuff like this is removed then people will have to plan their money making.  If player made terrain/outpost features are introduced one would hope they are damned expensive.

As to your point on the Communist system being more efficient; you're assuming that everyone stays happy with it and there will always be enough seats at the table.  The downside to a communist system within a larger market based system is that it'll draw constant negative attention and this doesn't always mean 'great, more PvP'.  I'll refer you back to the 'cold war vs. total war' comments made in an earlier post; "you end up with a dull Cold War(interrupted by occasional Blob-fights)  instead of a cool total war where people aren't too concerned that every foray into Beta will be met by a mass of guns from all over the game community.". 

In the instance of insular non-trading commune corps they may find that the 'guns' from all over the community end up pointing their way; again, this can just as easily lead to irrelevance as it can constant PvP.  Good quality PvPers will invariably seek a challange; if their chosen corp becomes a 'Sysphus rock' they will inevitably move on, 'greed is good' after all and in PvP the risk is the reward.  Remove the risk and what have you to offer?

I understand your reasoning and it is correct in theory.  The reason for the question was to pre-empt one of the most common issues in MMO games.  NIC sinks are always an option but in a persistant, player driven world the idea of an arbitrary sink to curb inflation may not go over well with the games community; who votes for higher taxes?

I perhaps should have placed more emphasis on this in the original post.

As to PvP as an individual NIC sink Syndic; works provided you're not a commune corp. Otherwise it becomes negligable as the NIC sink equates to the cost of production and is removed from the games wider dynamic market.