Yes, I suppose that NPC-granted immunity would be too much for the beta islands. My chief concern is that even if you arranged to be friendly with the alliance that controlled the island, it would be impossible to protect your assets at all hours of the day. Some sort of feature that enabled auto-protection (like turrets or hired NPC bots) would at least grant players the ability to purchase a sort of insurance against the inevitable target painted on their most expensive assets. I agree with you that 'Might makes right', especially on the beta islands, so I think economic might should also have some form of expression.

This is a great idea, makes me want to be a combat pilot.

How would you suggest determining the tier of the kernel? An average of equipped modules maybe?

I think this is an interesting topic really. As an industrial player I've lost a couple Arganos already and I actually never even thought of deleting my cargo before being killed. The principle reason was that I believed that I still had a chance to save it and my bot so I didn't just give up and wait to be killed. There has been a lot of talk about the "right" to a kill's loot, and I can see the argument for it. It doesn't seem fair that 10x a combat bots cargo hold in goods could be instantly evaporated, yet at the same time this is a science fiction universe where every agent's consciousness is sent through a wormhole to infect an intelligent alien robot or three. However, the one argument I haven't seen posed is the failure of the pvper or pirate to coordinate the ambush effectively. For example, initiating an attack when the target is close to a safe zone, but just out of reach, would give the pilot pause in destroying his or her cargo long enough for the attackers to destroy his or her bot. This does make the pvpers job more difficult, but on the flip side, it is also considerably difficult to get through a beta island trade route unmolested which will only cause less and less Sequers to pass through. However, whether or not the deletion characteristic is fixed I would never destroy my cargo simply because the advantages of depriving a potential future enemy of resources do not outweigh the disadvantages of antagonizing that same enemy into making you a permanent member of their hit list.

My point wasn't that the overall effort of production was reduced, just the individual effort required by an agent (and costs associated with that effort) due to the distribution throughout a corporation.

I believe this concept has some merit but I also think that it is far too powerful as stated. What you are suggesting is actually a drastic improvement of a corporations efficiency, yes, but it is also a removal of a key role and market limitation for the industry-oriented character. The "niche" that has been pointed out as being usurped is referring to the role of logistics. Transporting the sometimes vast amounts of ore and materials needed to have an efficient production line forces the player to carefully consider the cost/benefit ratio of every production to see if those seemingly high profit margins are in fact worth going after. If this feature were removed, it would severely depress the prices of goods because the effort involved in production would be drastically decreased, especially for well organized corporations; This would also limit new players ability to jump into an economy where the opportunities are few and far between.

However, despite the downsides of a fully integrated corporate production line, I do think that a partial implementation of the features would be a good thing. For example, perhaps delegating ownership to CTs or at least enabling them to be traded would allow players to specialize in reverse engineering. Also, an option to only output the production lines into the corporate hangar would not have to much of an overall destabilizing effect but it would allow players to interact with their corp mates in different time zones. Anyways, that's just my two cents.

While I see what you're saying, the number of times I've had to move something into or out of a deactivated bot's cargo is much less than when interacting with the bot currently activated.

Still, anything at all, including a color or symbol, would work fine for me.