Quite a workable idea that I would overall love to see implemented, but I'd also prefer to see a few alterations from the OP's suggestion.



Firstly, I don't much like the idea of exclusively limiting it to open play and PvP. One of the issues regarding CQC is the lack of bots and player involvement which has led to a spiraling decline due to a lack of competition and long queue times. However, I can also see the argument for having a player-centric tournament environment, which I would fix by simply flagging some matches/leagues/tournaments/whatever as being special "pilots federation" sponsored games that are players only, while all others include NPCs in their rosters. This could then result in multiple concurrent tournaments with particular twists and variables but there would always be the option for entering the default players-only pilots' federation matches for those that just want to slug it out in PvP.



I don't think making the rewards and rebuys simply based on normal rebuy costs would work, as ship performance does definitely not scale linearly with cost. This would overall just result in entire tournaments being filled with tiny expendable ships rather than all ships having their place. Considering how ship performance scales with exponential performance at best, it would make more sense to make rewards and rebuys scale based on a logarithmic scale based on ship cost. For example using the formula 100,000 Ln (Cost in thousands) for both rewards and rebuys in the matches, this would see a heavily kitted out Eagle (cost of 2 million credits) with a reward/rebuy of 760k credits, while a kitted out Krait (cost of 150 million) would have a RR value of almost 1.19 million, a fully outfitted 'Vette (cost of 500 million) would instead go up to a RR value of 1.32 million. This would overall make the cost and reward structure much closer to the actual power curve of the ships, as well as giving a simple way of balancing teams as they could simply ensure that each team has equal rebuys, for example pitting a wing of 4 Corvettes (total rebuy of 5.3 million) against a swarm of 12 efficiently kitted out Sidewinders (cost of ~83k each) or 7 properly equipped Eagles.



The arenas could also be tied much more into the world in general, with factions offering missions for players to go and represent them at CQC tournaments. Accepting these contracts would result in the victory in these events being attributed to the faction rather than the player but the faction would subsidise the rebuy cost of any ships lost in the event. Players would still have the option to enter as an independent though if they are out for personal glory or if any of their favourite factions aren't requiring anyone to champion them in the arenas. This could be expanded further, with some sponsorships coming from ship manufacturers that would only subsidise rebuys for ships produced by them; this could go further into opposing superpower sponsored matches which would see Alliance (Lakon), Federation (Core Dynamics) and Imperial (Gutamaaya) all slugging it out for their respective superpower's glory in the arenas in team matches. For certain contracts, a player might be asked to instead fly a particular ship and loadout that would be presented to them for the matches to represent something in particular (certain factions might have particular favourite ships or modules, or it could be due to some in-game event) or for in-universe testing purposes (this would be a great way to beta-test new modules and ships in-game to gather player opinions and data before unleashing them into the game at large).



I'm not sure what to do about crew members, as it seems harsh to have them killed off for sport, maybe giving all ships some kind of default crew members or perhaps just saying that your crew telepresence in from the CQC station rather than the ship itself.