All 3 alpha 1 islands used to be directly linked.  It was called the golden triangle for awhile because of the transport mission payouts at each station that you could run back to back until your soul ran out on you. 

They deliberately destroyed that awesome connectivity for newbies for no apparent reason and messed up all the teleport connections inside the islands into a jumbled mess as well.  Vets just beacon over alphas now I don't know anyone who is on one.  The carebears are all on alpha 2 (Tellesis/Hershfield/Shinjalar).

They've also specifically not allowed remote market access and other things from one station to another only the ability to see what's in your personal cargo somewhere else.

As to why they did/didn't do all these things? No idea, AC's logic is often baffling to me.

EDIT: Before Gamma and even Alpha 2 the Alpha 1 island outposts were the market hubs of the game with ICSA being top and Cadavria probably 2nd.  After Alpha 2 those new islands became the hubs because of better production primarily and having all facilities in one OP being invaluable.  Now with Gamma and the *** up island layout for maximal travel time, there are no real hubs any more like there used to be.  Unfortunately the game is too small to not have one.  Tellesis is probably the closest right now but even it has massive holes in its market.

I think a lot of that would be negated by dropping the instability timer for jumping with tps/beacons from alpha to alpha as well as having the charge up for all the beacons be faster.  But I do agree with you the travel times are tedious.  They are still significantly worse than they used to be before Gamma and in some cases fun spots were totally removed from the game like haddonwol which used to be where 2 different beta islands and an alpha island all came together on new viriginia at cad 2 tp and you could jump between the 3.. which were sometimes occupied by opposing forces who would sometimes fight multi-sided battles on that tp.  That kind of engagement is gone now; completely.

EDIT: Although, at least they left the dead tps in so that you can beacon to them for staging and whatnot.

Wrong.

Stop listening to these people:

1. Dynamic Ore spawns a Great Idea
  -Key points of arguement:  It will be good to see people trading geoscan results for nic.  People need more to do then just sit around and goto the same spot and mine, interesting to see different parts of the island.
What Happened:Massive fields of fragmentation, fields under spawns that ECM and have less then 30 second respawn.  Having to have combat and logistic support around miners on alpha.  New player frustration when unable to mine a field due to low EP extensions.  9 tiles of green minerals in the middle of no where the geoscanner takes you too.  Geoscanning results are not being traded due to like Ville said: "Who in their right mind would pay someone to do something that they already do for themselves."

2.  Removing Observers from Alpha
  -Key points of argument:  They keep ghanking our lithus and poor new players.  Beta is the only place NPCs belong.
What Happened:Alpha corps were no longer able to compete with Beta corps in research, further reducing the gap between alpha producers and beta producers.  Players no longer got a free shot at a group event that yeilded challenge and teamwork.  Argano market sells went down   Afking mining becomes viable again and liquid markets become flooded.

3.  5th Star Spawns should be removed from Alpha
  -Key points of argument:  There is not risk verus reward on alpha farming the hardest spawn on alpha.
What Happened:Yet another alpha nerf greatly stunting the gap between alpha producers and Beta producers.  What happened to this?  You guessed it Alpha market collapses in all major trading hubs.  Lack of player base in the market collapsed caused people to stop logging in.  Let's be honest it was only 2~3 5th tier mobs, every 10 mins, it's not like it was OMFG THIS SPAWN SO 1337 MY FACE HURTS.

4.  Let's Make the game world feel bigger by Changing the Teleport layout and adding more islands!
  -Key Points of argument:  The game just feels too small.  It should take some time to have to travel between places!  Also it would open a world of transportation careers up for all those specced into the golden Triangle!
What Happened:In doing this, we killed pvp.  Walking to one side of the island to the other takes atleast 30 mins.  In order to roam an island now you have to either invest in a sequer with 20 teleport beacons or you have to run for 30 mins.  Game population is at 200.  Let's add 30 more islands!  That away 5 ~7 people can have an island to their own!  PVP is scarice due to lack of bodies present in areas.  This game feels more like a ghost town in some zones. 

5.  Terraformable islandzors and let's be able to build walls.
  -Key Points of argument:  I want more sand in my sandbox.
What Happened:This my friend was the death nail for perpetuum.  Although walls and probes were a good idea they have NO place on Beta islands.  Walls and probes replaced people and defenses designed to give people something to do.  Light ewar gangs were destroyed.  CHEAP pvp was destroyed.  It turned tactics of showing up running around provoking a force for a good chase and pvp action turn into:  Find a mining spot and log off and log on during peak times to kill someone.  Sneaky stealth tactics become obsolete, pvp evolves.   NPCs stay broken for monthes during the expansion.  Many people leave due to this.  NPCs on Gamma are so sad right now I want to stab myself in the fin eye.

I beg of the devs to stop listening to people like Obi Wan Kenobi, because they clearly don't think about the rammifications of the actions prior to the implmentation.  It's may sound good right now, but perpetuum is a unique game by itself that is great and stop stealing snips of stEVE to appease a couple of explayers.  Stay ONE course and do what you want and not what whiney players keep suggesting.  o7

The first reason why I don't articulate my answer is because the sheer idiocy behind the idea(s) should be obvious to any sandbox player.

What is Perpetuum right now? Perpetuum is the only child of overprotective parents that never let it experience the outside. This child can never ever play in the sandbox because sandbox has bacterias. This child is in the incubator. This child as a consequence has no immune system, because every time someone steps off the rails there's the parent-developers right around the corner waiting to "sanitize the bacteria".

1. During Beta when M2S exploited police towers/started suicide ganking, instead of fixing the problem with the police towers, the developers removed the towers completely and made Alpha a full no-PVP zone.

2. When the EVE players came, there was 1 particular individual who used the game mechanics in a specific way. Ohh Yeah baited people with flagged Arkhes on Alpha, then when they flagged up on the Arkhe he'd jump out in a real bot and kill them. Ohh Yeah was banned as a result of this.

These are just examples that demonstrate the overprotective parent panicking and trying to keep their child safe, inadvertably dooming it to spend the rest of its life in an incubator. There have been 25,000 accounts registered since release, why are only ~500 at best still around? Because Perpetuum right now, is a mechwarrior team-deathmatch game on rails. Not a sandbox.

Inevitably that is why all the advertising in the world won't help because people don't care or read about "innovative new sandboxes that just happen to be 2 years old with 200 people playing" adverts by indy developers. People read about drama, wars, cutthroat politics and all the juicy stuff that inspires them to try and be a part of a living breathing world.

The second reason why I don't articulate is because I'm neither a fanboy nor a volunteer. I'm paying them to play their game, they're not paying me to fix their game or be a soundboard for their ideas. Therefore, I'm getting my money's worth. Should try it sometimes, its very relaxing and quite easy.

The central island I proposed is a teleport hub. I think I said no market, but maybe a terminal for corporations to drop stuff into for other corpmates. I suggested an arena style pvp site on this imaginary island, but that is just a suggestion that I'm not heavily promoting. There should not be a market on this island, or platform.

I'm not proposing a change to PVP mechanics, or terraforming. And no, we definitely don't need a central island trade hub similar to Jita in Eve.

Someone hijacked my thread!!

+1 for an island which is connected to all 3 alpha 1 islands, but has NO terminals.

Wrong thread?

And btw, people didn't look at Jita and thought "lets make a market hub here". It was a combinations of factors, main ones being that it had easy high level mission access(and therefore a lot of people started to sell their cr*p there) and it was within 1 jump from 3 regions. Nice seeing you talk about things you don't know about.

A little bit of topic, but still a good post. I didn't know that Ohh Yeah got banned, that's *** ***...

To whiners:
Market will decide on it's own (ffs it's *** sandbox) which terminal/outpost will be a tradehub, we don't need new features which will give us that one. GO BACK TO WOW PLEASE...

"you're not in an MMO to make friends, you're there to make enemies "

I think I should have titled this thread "Central Teleport Hub Island" instead of the way I titled it. Or maybe "Central Teleport Island". I think by titling it the way I did it got confused with "market hub" and that was not my intent.