It is patently strange that ships of a legion cannot defend their base directly against attack. Here is my suggestion:

Similar to guarding a planet, you can guard a base. The similarities end there. When guarding a base:

1) A fifteen minute timer kicks off. This timer cannot be aborted by the player and is immune to time manipulators.
2) If you were guarding a planet, you are taken off guard duty.
3) You cannot attack during the timer (similar to old Halc)
4) You cannot be attacked during the timer (similar to current Halc)
5) You cannot trigger artifacts during the timer (a new kind of limitation)
6) You are immune to new artifacts during the timer (a new kind of limitation)
7) The base gains a buff of 2% to Attack and 2% to defense for each person actively on guard duty.

When the timer ends, you are taken off guard duty, can again participate in PvP and can again use and be affected by artifacts. The base loses the buff for you as well. If the base is disabled prior to the timer running out, this triggers immediately (ie the timer essentially runs out at that moment).

My rationale:
People who don't PvP, or don't have the ability to be really effective against an oncoming legion need a way to participate directly in the defense of their base. And from a logical viewpoint it makes no sense that people cannot fly their ship in to defend the base.

The fifteen minute timer is short enough that legionmates have to actually participate to be effective long term. It also is short enough to allow the attacking legion opportunities to sllip in attacks as people "fall off" due to the timer. The bonus is high enough that it is useful for legionmates to defend, but not so high as to make it a foregone conclusion that everyone will defend or make PvPers and folks with a lot of debuff artifacts feel bad that they aren't defending.

As for the limitations on PvP and artifacts - that should be obvious. If you give everyone the chance to defend and get a buff, AND Attack, most will. Ditto if you give them the ability to defend and thow artifacts at people on the BT or who are alerted. The immunity to attacks and artifacts is just fair play - you can't attack or use artifacts, it isn't fair to let you be attacked and have artifacts used on you.

1 Question....once the 15min timer runs out can u re-defend activating all the effects again, coz if not then all an attacking legion has to do is wait 15min then BAM, base goes down depending. So if we would be allowed to re-defend then there should be a cooldown timer i reckon....15mins cooldown maybe.

interesting idea, I would suggest one limitation though, a max of 5 or maybe 10 members at a time because even with a time limit of 15 min you could potentially have 60% boosts running at all times while the base is under attack.

agreed. 10 members on for 20% boost, then the % from the base comm interlinks gives a more than chunky boost before you even look at abilities