viewtopic.php?f=6&t=13217&p=115711
Now, the thread linked is also a great idea, which I do believe was adapted into the UST.

Now, onto my idea.

Political Favor and Exotic matter both have next to no trade value, due to a lack of uses. EM goes into the base, meaning that you get maybe 1 or 2 buy requests here and there, but mostly you end up with alot of people with a surplus of exotic matter.

Now, Dan mentioned up there ^ that he wanted to bring Political Favour more into the equation by adding more means of generating and using it.

So, to generate it:
Matched NPC - Stryll Transport
Description: The Stryll use Transports to transfer political prisoners from prisons to interrogation centres, however, they are not accustomed to making a return journey.
Uncommon, with high stats, probably akin to Stryll Assassins.
Drops: 95% 1 Political Favour
5% Rescued Prisoner

OR

Repeatable Mission - Schmoozing the high counsel
Description: Running errands may not seem like the most glamorous of tasks, but it is a vital one in order to generate political favour.
Reward Per Completion: 5 political favour

Now, onto using them.

Political Favour could have a use under "Special Operations". These would be a variety of missions, for which you can pay a varying amount of Political Favour in order to enhance your success rate of the operation. These operations would have a range of uses. All would have a shared cool-down.

Spy on Faction:
Send spies to spy on NPC factions.
Success effect: Locates an elite NPC of the faction specified.
Failure effect: Common NPCs of that faction have a 50% attack and defence buff. (Who's up for spying on the Crimson Blades...?)

Spy on Player:
Send spies to spy on an enemy player.
Success effect: Allows you to know whether a player is online, and acts as a real-time Resource probe. Duration is effected by how much Political Favour you pay. Assuming you succeed, they will not be alerted.
Failure effect: You get put into enemy logs. Should have paid those spies more not to talk...

Spy on Legion:
Send spies to hunt around an enemy base.
Success effect: Reveals the stats of the enemy's base, and has a small chance of revealing what planets are alerted.
Failure effect: You're put into the logs of ALL players from the legion.

Hire mercenary fighter:
Pay political favour to hire a mercenary fighter for a duration set by the political favour amount. This fighter would have stats generated randomly.

Sabotage Enemy Systems:
Success effect: Randomly break 3 modules of a player who has attacked you in the past 24 hours. Success chance doubled if "Saboteur" profession.
Failure effect: Loss of crew. Placed in enemy player's logs.

Sabotage Enemy Base:
Send saboteurs to break modules installed on a base you have locked. Has a legion-wide cooldown.
Success: Break standard 3 modules at random.
Failure: Placed into the logs of all enemy legion. Base is placed on "high alert" which will increase attack by 20% for the remainder of the battle.

Infiltrate Enemy Base:
Send undercover operatives to steal funds from an enemy installation.
Success: Loot 1% of the base funds from within a base, capped at 500mil*BaseLevel
Failure: Placed into log of all enemy legion

Feel free to suggest more.

+1 to any idea that incorporates the use of Political Favour, that and all the ideas are solid, not too OP considering the failure effects and generally something people would use on a day-to-day basis.

Got any more ideas for other effects?

Infiltrate Enemy Base:

Success: Steal a % of enemy base funds based on amount of Political Favor (Maximum 1b cr OR 1% of Base Funds, whichever is lower)
Failure: Be alerted to enemy legion (Or any other suggestions?)

Edit: Changed maximum loot

+1 Sounds like a solid idea

1 problem I can see with my own idea, is that they would all have to have a varying, but shared cooldown. I have no idea at what kind of duration the cooldown should be though.

+1

Dan you are online now please look at this asap

More tactics in interlegion warfare? Heck yes!

A couple more ideas:

Spread Dissent:
Drops the moral of enemy troops, reducing raid effectiveness.
Targeted legion takes a 12 hour 10% unstackable, but uncageable raiding debuff. Applies to both attack and defence.
Loss action could be that the opposite happens.

Poison Food Supplies:
Slip toxic chemicals into the food supplies of an enemy ship, causing some crew members to become ill and temporarily out of action.
Win: Random % (1-20) penalty to enemy crew effectiveness.
Lose: Into enemy logs
Crit Lose: Random % (1-10) penalty to your crew effectiveness, into enemy logs

Very good ideas .. +1 to most

Matched NPC - Stryll Transport - doubt the rescued prisoners would fly so how about 95% pol favor drop(1 if enemy is common, 5 if uncommon) 5% item drop used for bigger mission (ransomed prisoner or something payout of 100 pol favor and large credit payout) +1

Repeatable mission +1 like it .. would make it a daily and a slightly higher payout

Spy on Faction: - +1 alter pol favor requirement based on faction ie 5 for sha'din. 15 for crimson 50 for T.O .. if enemy faction npc planets come into play this could be a great mechanism to finding them.

Spy on Player: - ~~~ not sure on this .. Would you have to have an active link? Or would spying allow you to create an active link to the player? (which could be interesting for bounty hits)

Spy on Legion: +1 cool reward to see any active legion share (enemy, planets, npc's?) Spy on the dysos and they just happen to have a kelethor up and shared mmm out of legion link to your npc .. how cool is that..

Hire mercenary fighter: +/-1 no special thoughts on this .. so many other ways to get buffs this almost doesn't seem neccessary

Sabotage Enemy Systems: - we have the blue badge item to do this not sure if its neccesary to have another avenue

Sabotage Enemy Base: too op in that form .. but a temporary 10% defense or attack debuff for 15 minutes with a 2 hour cool down?? maybe?? at the cost of a GOOD chunk of pol favor .. I could be onboard for that

Infiltrate Enemy Base: +1 probably could be OP as then you start messing with maintenance and abuse if used by more than one legion .. but I like

Regarding the sabotage base, they would quickly be able to rebuild it, so you would either have to keep applying it, which would be costly and not particularly effective or go without. If anything I'd think it underpowered.

The infiltrate base could be tweaked to deposit into your legion base, and have a legion-wide cooldown.

The Spy on Enemy Player would require a link.

And if it broke 3 hulls? hullo instakill base not to mention the 15 bill to replace them .. or 3 defenses -11k defe (+buffs) even for 2 minutes .. insane amount of damage .. and a good chunk of change to repair .. a sab that does a straight% to defense or offense or Shield regen for a very short period of time or something I think would be a good addition

Infiltrade Base- again I like it .. but the uproar of a base getting raided then not making maintenance or something .. I just smell bad pr there

Spy on enemy player - Creating a link to a player for 500 political favor and seeing if they are online .. sounds more fun

Destroying 3 hulls would leave 9, but yes it is pretty overpowered. A % debuff would work nicely.

Obtaining a link for no reason seems abusable to me.

I feel like capping the amount stolen to the lesser of 1% or 1 billion wouldn't really have too big of an effect on missing upkeep.

I suggest a change to the ship infiltration, don't break modules (costs a lot), only lower 60% modul health

Then what's the point of it exactly?

The point is that it costs them alot. As of right now, there is no real way to punish players.

It only costs them a lot if they're
a) Expensive modules.
b) Modules they usually install/uninstall.