Yes, it's PvP only. Building bases on safe islands would make gamma islands obsolete, and the available space would quickly run out too...

We're not writing it off, I reckon the question was about "these islands", and this patch

What I'm thinking here, is what we've mentioned before, about putting Alpha-III islands in, but that these 'safe' islands are on the other side of the gamma teleportation system.

Meaning, once you get there, Syndicate's got your back, but the trip there is dangerous... and of course, the need to add in other mechanics to stop 600m phallic symbols and terminal overcrowding.

We're also thinking in land rental fees but so far we couldn't come up with a feasible system for the whole thing. (How do you take over land from another player, etc.)

How about needing 11,000 kernels to unlock the Alpha Terminal foundation.... (j/k, sortof)

One idea, is simply that you can't 'lock' alpha terminals. Meaning anyone can come in and use the facilities. The proceeds go to the corp that owns the facility of course, a % that is.

The overall process would be something like:

Syndicate opens up a parcel of land for auction - parcel is large enough for 1 terminal, 1 reactor, and 1 foundation, with left over space for energy xfer and (4) upgrades.

Winning Corp (corp bidding only) now has a 30 day lease, which is renewable every 30 days. Lease amount has a base value + value on each building.

As long as the corp continues to pay the lease, they own it.

New Parcels, in a semi-random pattern across the Island, provide the occasional opportunity for the Corp above to bid on land adgacent to the first, but most of the parcles on a new island will be remote, which makes them less attractive to a single corp trying to bid on all of them.

If the lease payments too high, corps can just delete structures (having the deconstruct mechanic would be too cumbersome, and without it the decision to 'destroy' instead of move the foundation has more consequence).

If the lease is not paid, the terminal is taken offline, and the parcle will go back into the semi-random auction.

The winning bidder can either destroy or use the buildings on the land.

With (3) of these Islands - one for each faction - with rotating the parcel auctions 1 per island every week, it would be many months before it was 'full'; there could also be a mechanism based on tokens where a corp could 'trigger' an auction early, but the chances of that parcel being where they needed it would still be random.

TF can only be done on parcels that you own.

Edit: the idea behind not being able to lock the terminal means that even if the island tends to fill up after a few months, non-owner players can still take advantage of the island resources. Using someone else's terminal however, always comes with the risk that they will not pay, and your assets can get locked in, or they can shut, take factories offline, when they aren't using them.

Sales, the amount of sales
Production, the amount of production
Research, the amount of research

All 3 areas in a terminal determine part of a percentage of ownership (this can be combined with rental fees). It's a way to boost the Perpetuum market and it is all about prestige. Fairly unique but you can see it as trade wars (pvp-ing in pve land via markets), these are cutthroat and very competitive markets.

Those restrictions are trivial to bypass though with alt corps.

If beta/gamma corps wan't an alpha base they should be able to bid for the space.