you know, reading over your post and I have to say I do actually like this concept in fact i’ve been working on towards making a suggestion similar to it recently.
I can see where you’re trying to go with the idea, but I feel for the concept it is unfortunately the wrong direction, I also can see why people have voiced their disaproval.
perhaps I could offer an addendum here which i feel would be better suited would work similary to what you have suggested.
in another thread someone has suggested “small structures” so this concept will work off of that concept of using a small structure. my thinking would be something along the lines of the old reaction silo’s for POS’s, maybe a few re-design tweeks and a slap of new paint will do, but I digress.
my thinking would be top have an anchorable structure, which can be loaded with fighters, you equally then fill that structure with Marines
what then happens is this structure will have a set radius similar to the anchorable anti cloak devices we have.
if any friendly ship is detected within that range, it will “launch fighters”
using the old code from carriers WAAAAY back when which allowed pilots to warp fighters across whole solar system. you could then apply this to these new friendly “Diamond Fighters”
recently there was a titan attack in high sec, where the titan literally DD’d the planet, to me this suggests CCP still retains their old code in the game. assuming this is the case this is what i propose.
that the fighters launched from those structures are the new Diamond combat ships, however they are not frigate sized they’re simply just fighters, standard in game made off the shelf fighters.
this can work in all regions of space, high, low, null, WH, T-space etc.
the structure becomes under attack and the fighters will launch and mount their own defence fleet.
this also means people wanting to secure structures as “forward operating locations” can actually now do so especially for large alliance / coalition wars.
limit it to one structure per system per corp, each one holds X amount of fighters and equally marines.
keep sqaudron sizes the same, but combine those two features.
this actually means every corp or alliance has a way of protecting their sov or at least their players during times when there is low player activity, if i played in late US but had people in AUS and they wanted to do stuff but felt limited by no back up, this puts the playing ground on all fronts.
the fighters would be purely responsive, so in the event of a player being attacked in the solar system, they launch, warp to 0 and support, this is applicable across all regions of space.
having that little extra land on grid to help fight off one guy trying to gank you or to simply buy you more time will always be useful, you might get away you might not.
on another thread I posted about corrupting invading pilots genetic structure, it kills the clone but turns the ship into a friendly Diamond ship.
that concepted got mixed reactions
yes to the diamond ship
no to the corruption.
however having some kind of “Rapid Response Structure” could help people out, for smaller groups this could be a huge benefit but to large groups not so much. if limited to say one structure per system.
i like the idea of being out in a belt somewhere minding my own business enjoying the simpliciy of the game, mining away and someone lands on grid, i switch drones because i’m already tackled, then a few squads of back up fighters land on grid to help me out.
this is just my two cents on the subject though. i personally like the idea of distress calls
TLDR: my idea is to have rapid response diamond fighters launch from a new / exisiting structure and assist people actively taking damage on grid.
how that is managed i don’t know, the PANIC module seems like a smart one to use (this would be awesome for rorqs in concept) but i have no idea, i just think it should be automatically detected as background mechanic and it just happened, the reason why i think this is so if multiple people were attacked in the same system, the fighters would warp from one location to another dealing with things as best they could.