Currently boss battles are strikingly similar to common NPC's. Only real difference is the attack/defense, drops, and sometimes the random abilities they have. Why not break it up a bit, give it a sense of strategy or at least make it a bit more fun?
Break boss npc bases into sections with the ability to target individual systems?

For instance the Lazuli Refinery Center.
This boss has 15,000 hull, no shields, 1,100 attack and 1,200 defense. That's a fine mob you have there but it isnt really special to players unless they get top 3 damage and even then the drops can be so-so sometimes.
How about when the refinery is on your shared boss tab you have a high chance to find mining drones or shipping drones in your battle tab who drop minerals?
Or perhaps you can target individual systems such as cooling stacks which have 2,000 hp with the normal 1,100 attack and 1,200 defense but once destroyed cause a drop in defense to 800.
Maybe 3-4 control towers that each have 1,500 hp but reduce its attack by 150 when destroyed?
Each of these would not cause direct damage to the station (for instance if all 4 control towers and the cooling stacks where destroyed but nothing else was attacked it would still have 15,000 hull) but would hurt it in other ways.

Situations like this would allow for a greatly increased playability for NPC bosses. Here's just a few things
Weaker members of the legion to participate in the attack. This would be because sub systems of the boss might have lower attack or defense ratings or only be able to be hit by smaller ships widening the combat a bit. (instead of rank 50-150 it could open to 20-70 for a module of the ship)
Reason to engage NPCs other then for their primary drops (shipping drones or drops from control towers/cooling stacks ect)
Something that can carry over to how players may fight legion bases when combat gets up and running.

this could be instresting +1

Reviving, and excellent idea. Once I get a new alert, I'll try to mock something up in paint.

nice, but the refinery for us is usually down in 5 minutes or less, not real good for us

I could imagine this for Base battles, but it sounds like he's got some interesting ideas for that already.

5 minutes? Wow, ours usually last about 19 seconds after the alert goes out...

I do really like this idea. However, it would be much, much better used on much tougher NPCs like on Graxis, Hypergrid, Dark Nexus, and Silthion Hive Convoys. Those are much stronger. There could also be a large new generation of uber NPCs that could have these features...

To you and everyone else complaining about the refinery this was only to illustrate the idea, what I would really want is ALL or at least all of the elites to have this sort of battle system.
This could especially apply to new mobs who could start with ridiculous attack power.
Here is an entirely custom suggestion that might work for you high ranked players.

Dark High Command (main structure)
Shields 200,000
Hull 500,000

Attack 15,000
Defense 15,000
expires after 96 hours (4 days)

Alerting legion gives all players these on their battle tabs:
Dark High Command Titan (x3)
High command phase plasma replicator (x2)
High command repair bays (x4)

Titans have
shields 15,000
hull 15,000
attack 2,000
defense 2,000
killing one rewards you with 500 exp and lowers main structure defense by 2,000 and attack 2,000 (6,000 total defense and attack lowered for killing all 3)

plasma replicator
hull 25,000
attack 0
defense 4,000
Effect: 10% chance while attacking this to receive 500 damage
killing one rewards you with 150 exp and lowers main structure shields by 75,000 and attack by 2,500 (150,000 and 5,000 total shield and attack lowered for killing both)

repair bays
shield 20,000
hull 20,000
attack 1,000
defense 4,000
effect: regenerates 1,000 hull and shield every hour to any Dark high command structures and ships
killing one rewards you with 200 exp and lowers main structure defense by 500 and hull by 50,000 (2,000 defense and 200,000 hull for killing all 4)

Each structure has rewards for top 5 to top 10 damagers
main structure has rewards for top 15 damagers
Rewards for killing the main structure are
750 exp + all substructure exp (150+200+500 if you killed one of each)
artifact: repair bay; adds a repair timer to your ship similar to shields. Repairs 1 hull every 5 minutes. Max 2 per ship (2 hull every 5 minutes) size 15
artifact: plasma replicator; boosts shields by 10%, boosts weapon power by 10%. Max 1 size 50

The artifacts are just random ideas, but these kinds of battles should yield some interesting drops.
Again this is only an example and by no means will this be EVERY elite or boss battle. The general idea however i hope is what gets implemented.

lol the 19 seconds... I just tagged a okkilor that lasted exactly 10 seconds after someone alerted it and chatted that he did

Lol , Silithion Queens and Lazuli Fabrication planets die before i even get the alert -.-

lol tk i sit there clicking NEWS so i get the alert before it pops up

The general idea isn't explicitly for current NPC bosses, yes it can be applied which will make current battles more fun, but the main idea is much stronger with new mobs then it is with old ones.

It could also apply to player bases though due to the fact players would be the ones custom making each base to fit this that might get a bit complicated.

way to resurrect a dead thread LOL