I like a lot of this - lots of things in there which would be useful even to groups which weren't into either BGS or combat PvP and just generally make it easier to do community stuff of all sorts in-game.



With that in mind, a few ideas to make it more useful to the looser exploration community and similar groups.



1) Allow people to make their own groups without having to have a home system and faction at all (faction in that case just takes the name of the founder player and some tabs get greyed out). You could then use it for things like exploration expeditions where the IFF and faction chat features are still very useful, and maybe even use the Orders feature to advertise the next waypoint.



2) While for simplicity people should only be able to be part of one group at any time, let the admins whitelist people as being able to rejoin at their current rank (automatically cancelled if suspended or kicked, of course) - that way someone could join an expedition group, then rejoin their BGS group on their return (or switch into the BGS group occasionally to see if there's any crises they need to rush home for, for that matter).



3) Show all (online+same mode) members of your faction on the map and your comms panel.







On the BGS side I think faction-owned megaships of that nature would be extremely powerful (especially with the ability to stop non-members docking or even finding it, but even without that). At the very least I think you'd have to be limited to moving it to systems you were already present in and even that has some cans of worms around conflicts and retreat states. Canonn's being under partial FDev control and in the hands of a group that isn't particularly BGS-focused might be okay ... but I'm not sure it should set a precedent of anyone else getting one until we've seen how that first one works out.



One thing I see BGS groups wishing for a lot is a way to avoid wars with allied/friendly groups they share a system with, or to voluntarily retreat from a system they're letting another group have. A "concede" button which ended a war/election that tick, giving up any assets staked (if both sides press it, it's a mutual peace treaty and no assets change hands) or guaranteeing that a retreat succeeded at the end of its active period, I think would be very popular. On the other hand, like the megaship, giving that much direct control over faction activity (even if all it apparently does in this case is let you lose faster) might be a bit too good and make it hard to stop a player faction with anything but direct war with another player faction.