Alright someone is actually capable of reading these giant walls of text organize the ideas (I would do this but i just got back from a camp thingy and I dont have time to read these in detail), I think we might just have to test some of these out in the test server, though I do have a suggestion.

Factions

The way of finding out who is an enemy and who is not in the game is pretty much you attack me i attack you, I bring my friends and you bring yours, someone gives up and eventually the other does too.
You could call this essentially FFA though legions do stop the game from completely being FFA at any time you can unfriend someone and turn in them.

Now what I suggest is that something equivalent to what guild wars has set up is put into place, 2 factions at war that a player can join or leave at any time (not without some consequences though).
Now this only really works in GW because players arnt normally able to PVP unless they go to specific PVP areas where everyone either chooses or is given a team.
We could apply this to GL by allowing what EVE has where the more dangerous an area is the more resources(or atleast value of them) can be found. i.e. by putting yourself under PVP fire (guarding a planet would have to not count as this) you gain a multiplier to your resource production. Factions could be either just preset up groups like GW has or the player controlled groups (large size ones) that we were discussing earlier.

Again I think we may just have to test these out and see what dosnt F the game up the most because from what im seeing something has to be changed, and this isnt going to be a small one.

In response to tk3, you cant base these kinds of things off rank because rank does not equal power directly, if you put all your research into energy, you can be rank 100 and be as powerful when the time comes for it as a rank 1.

I'm not sure what you mean... Are you referring to 2. The energy it costs to find the ship would be scaled based on the levels of both ships.?

I added that mainly because of the post about Star Destroyers and Blockade Runners. The idea is that larger ships (more decks, bigger crew, etc) would have a harder time finding smaller ships, or more specifically that larger ships are easier to find than smaller, through residual energy trails, subspace chatter, etc. Therefore, I just assumed it would take more energy to find smaller ships.

Perhaps a better way to handle it would be:

2. The energy it costs to search for the ship would be based on the ship's size.

What do you think?

I think that the equations for determining things should have their variables limited to the stats that refrain to the thing's situation. AKA Basing something like this off decks= ok basing something like this off rank= not ok

The reason for this is because a higher rank does not mean that a person of higher rank has a large amount of a specific stat and to assume this in a mmorpg is like taking a chainsaw and going to town on the rpg part. it kills ppl's ability to play their style and in a game thats most defining characteristic is that its the only mmorpg on FB where the rpg part is taken seriously and treated with respect.