Just a random thought; what about including a PvE “Raid” mission aimed at faction-wide involvement?
Here’s a rough overview for an Empire themed raid.
A Sector is under attack by the Armada: the Wardens Order is calling upon all pilots to defend their territory!
This scenario will become available for one game cycle. During this time any Empire Corp member can join the event. Matches are for up to eight players and consist of a truly monstrous battle - a mass brawl against seemingly endless waves of drone fighters and bosses. Each ship has a set number of points assigned to it - basic enemies are worth 10pts; more powerful enemies are worth 50-100pts; bosses might be worth several hundred, even thousands.
In addition, objectives can activate for the players to complete, such as defend a station for x seconds, or capture a beacon in y seconds. Completing these earn yet more points.
Players keep playing until they are killed or all waves are vanquished. There would be at least eight waves with no breaks in between.
Completing a raid offers a reward, but this is relatively poor compared to conventional scenarios. However, the raid has a super-reward that is only available if a set number of points are earned by the entire faction…
Using the above example, let’s imagine that the Empire players earn 100,000,000 points within the 12 hour period. When this happens, everyone who participated earns additional rewards - credits, free synergy, faction loyalty, Iridium or even Gold Standards could all be viable loot. The amount of loot scales with how many points you earned, up to a predetermined cap (to stop things getting really silly).
The goal of these missions is the sense of communal effort - no one squad could hope to beat it alone. It requires the whole faction to pull together and clock some flight time, or at least a large chunk of it. Rewards could likewise be tweaked based on Corp participation; the more members of a Corp take part, the more the whole Corp is rewarded.
Thoughts?