How about, in between the biweekly missions, or every Sunday or something, there is a "galactic invasion"? It'd work like this:

*The invasion timer begins, lasting 24-48 hours.

*During this time, the invading "race" will have some new NPCs appear. (Eg, Zolazin Separatists, TO advance force, Sha'din infiltration fleet).

*This will spawn some new, matched NPCs, which will be available to every player.

*EDIT: There would be a range of NPCs - common (no drop), Uncommon (small drop, similar to data disk or a temporary boost), Rare (Solo, Gives a permanent boost of some sort or a nice cache) and elites (Planet structures/modules).
OLD:(The NPCs will drop (potentially) some nice artifacts. I'm thinking something like Tech collector strength, and their rarity would be similar to the crimson overlords (a more common uncommon, or an uncommon common). The drops would be 1/5 or similar.)

*The drops could be caches, Modules, structures, and single use boosts. EDIT: See above, and by caches I meant fixed/saled, small resource drops

*During the "invasion", a health bar will appear on the news page. It's "health" will be somewhere in the thousands, probably 10-100 thousand. Every time a player kills an NPC , the health bar will go down. Once it's at zero, the invasion will be repelled.

*EDIT: The elites you get at the end would be based on the effort you put in (Say 1 elite for every (Rank/4) *5 NPCs you kill. This would give, to a rank 200, 1 elite for every 250 NPCs they kill).
OLD:If the invasion is repelled, everyone will get 2 New Elites spawn on their tabs. These have a time limit, which will be until the end of the invasion (so a 24 hour invasion repelled within 12 hours will give everyone 12 hours to kill their elites).

*These elites will drop some VERY nice things. QSEs, Modules, that sort of thing.

what if you FAIL to repel the invading force?

+1. nice idea spyder.

then you dont get your 2 elites, i think.

Haven't thought of that part yet... Maybe some kind of universal planet effect of -10% production for a few days? I was hoping others would help a little on this one.

And you wouldn't get the elites.

I do like the idea of this, perhaps some tweaking. I do not like the idea of losing production if the whole galaxy doesn't kill the entire force. People are going to blame others for not doing their part, some are going to sit back and reap benefits. I like the idea for the first half. The part about what happens after, lots of holes there that need work. Overall doable idea though since we already have bases in place and can invite other legions, so the coding is essentially already there. The drops shouldn't be that high though, caches ... sweet! Those of us that rapidly NPC would be very happy. I do like the idea of modules though, maybe a cache on a very rare NPC (if it's from the dark smugglers), maybe qse's slightly higher than what they are now (but still very rare) if it's TO.

+1

There could be a range of NPCs - common (no drop), Uncommon (small drop, similar to data disk or a temporary boost), Rare (Solo, Gives a permanent boost of some sort or a nice cache) and elites (Planet structures/modules).

The elites you get at the end would be based on the effort you put in (Say 1 elite for every (Rank/4) *5 NPCs you kill. This would give, to a rank 200, 1 elite for every 250 NPCs they kill).

As I said, any ideas for "failure" are welcome.

Like it, came up with a very similar idea before, but too lazy to go retrieve it for you.

+1, could also increase the trade tariff if we fail, until we succeed. No crying about failing!

Yes, some sort of trade embargo or something for the duration, like what happened with the Mylari (I think) mission.

failed effect can be based on the invading race... i'm not very familiar with the racial mythologies so i won't match each race with a specific debuff, but here are a few ideas:
-5% all production
-10% mine
-10% research
-10% artifact
trade embargo
1.5x colonization costs
-30% NPC attack against the specific race, non cageable
-30% NPC defence against the specific race, non cageable
-10% base productions(because base are usually specialized, I won't break it down like the planet ones)
chance to take random dmg while performing ANY action that cost energy(chance and/or amount of dmg can scale with energy used)
reduced spawn chance of certain NPCs of races other than the invading race (but to be a punishment, this should only apply to the good ones, like sil queen, T.O. Carrier etc)
increased spawn rate(or just add the spawn) of some really hard to kill but minimal reward NPCs(the brood clone from the last biweekly come to mind, but no drops)

All above with a duration of say... 48 hours.
PPl who have killed a "fair share" of the NPC will be immune to the debuff, as they have protected their own personal space. The "fair share" will be based on rank of the player. Not very familiar with NPC mass kill rank ranges so... I'll leave the formula to device that up to the experts. This "fair share" concept will make ppl unable to really blame others for the fail.

love this idea, and I think this ^ finishes off the great idea, this would be epic and is very well thought out

i would like a new active NCP race thats one the BT but also invade and takes unoccupied planets

But its going be alot of work for dan...

THIS, along with THIS:
Could be the solution. If you "win", those who put more in get more rewards. If you "lose", those who put more in don't lose anything.

+1.

This would be lots of fun.

Would be nice if bigger elites (dark nexus, hives, etc.) were made rarer during the invasion

You can even have different size NPC's to go along with the rarity. That way it reflects a real invading force. In other words, lots of the small solo NPCs and then the 3,10, 12 and 15 player NPCs. Could go even larger muwahahahah.

That's what I was thinking. Something like 5 commons, 3 uncommons, 2 rares and 1 ex rares per invasion.
Rares and elite would be 3, 10 and 15 man bosses.