The current belts already have a beacon at the warp in point. So that beacon can serve the same purpose as the buoy.
The following is something from a conversation I had in another thread.
As Altara pointed out in that thread, EVE’s asteroid belts are more like Lagrange points orbiting planets than specifically “belts.” To expand the exploration system and meld it into the mission / dungeon site generation system, we would make use of spawn zones that would exist along splines. These would orbit both stars and gas giants.
So when you get a mission site that had notable mining resources in it, it would spawn on one of these splines. Also, mining anomalies would also spawn here. Furthermore, the exploration system would allow the player to hunt through these belts to find rare ore.
The mining scanner only goes out a few kilometers, so developing another mining exploration tool that’s a more visceral experience would be useful. Something that wouldn’t pin down the exact location of the thing you’re looking for, but would get you close enough so you could use your asteroid scanning module.
As for what that tool would look like, firefall’s scanhammer comes to mind. The wave moves in the direction of the peak of the deposit, and the higher the vertical the wave, the more ore is in that location. If I recall correctly, the color corresponded to the type of mineral.
Obviously, that being a terrestrial game, and EVE being in space, it wouldn’t work quite like that. But it does go to show that you can create visual experiences in the environment to act as your scanner… you don’t need to have everything in a window.
So I guess the eve version of that would be something like this:
or this:
or maybe something like this:
around the ship.
In order to give those factions pve content, all you have to do is make sure there are empire friendly / neutral npcs in various places. Also, if a pirate mission agent gives out a mission in highsec, the generator would place the proper npcs in position for that. They’d either be civilian or empire military targets.