Saw posts complaining that corps/alliances/territories are too large. Here is an idea:
Each alliance has HQ - the further an owned structure is, the smaller the timers on it. Or something else that makes it easier to capture or destroy.
Lore: some control signal gets weaker. May be a calculation taking both HQ and alliance HQ distances into account.
This effectively puts a limit on territory owned, unless a disproportionate amount of effort is put to defend.
Possibly also introduce penalties if surrounding territories are too peaceful.
The goal is to give advantage to smaller corps/alliances to grow up to a certain size.
Well, I hate to piss on your parade, but the problem with that is that you can just put your structures into various holding corps to ensure that none of your structures are ever too far away from an HQ.
Anyway, I fully support mechanics that incentivize smart play over n+1 strategies, but all of the ideas I’ve heard so far have workarounds. So, I’m not sure what such mechanics would actually be.
That’s where the second part comes in about penalizing peaceful territories too.
It’s just to spur some thinking, naturally the actual solution has to be more intricate.
That is neither lore nor realistic. It’s the complete and total opposite of realistic. Structures are standalone and 100% independent of each other. There is no reason to introduced via lore or gameplay some kind of centralization or signal control. This would also fall apart instantly by virtue of the ability to field shell corps outside of alliances that give perms to alliances + coalitions + all other blues, thereby eliminating the whole signal issue. All you need is an Alpha account is house a corp to pose 100% full strength at any given point. So it’s not practical, nor desirable, and is 100% exploitable.
There is literally no mechanism (nor justifiable lore reason) by which such a thing could be evaluated or enforced. In LS/NS, wardecs aren’t exactly a thing to a tenth of the extent that they are in HS - so how exactly are you going to measure peacefulness in a way that is sensible?
Your proposal does not do anything to make it easier for small groups to grow. The POSes fielded by a small group are just as flimsy after the change and will fall down just as quickly and violently.
There are simpler solutions that more directly address these concerns without bulldozing other forms of player interactions in undesirable fashions.