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[SuomiWarder]

Ok, going to try to squeeze a big idea into as few words as I can.

With what I believe to be a few simple naming and battle organizing tricks, I believe community warfare could be "faked" until they get all the planet tracking and other stuff worked out.

Battles would be of the following types: House Skirmish, Civil Unrest, Pirate / Raider. The exact type of game doesn't matter that much. We just need three fictional categories.

House Skirmishes represent fights between House factions. One side is aggressor and other defender. If you lose while defending in a House Skirmish you get more pay for the mission by a little than the others. The Great House is helping support your defense of their territory. Risk averse players will find these battles more forgiving over a string of losses. Obviously house factions fight for their side, and lone wolves or mercs can pick which house they want to fight for on a drop by drop basis.

Civil Unrest is revolts, local lords arguing with personal mech forces, etc. These are drawn internally from one house with lone wolves and mercs allowed to choose this combat as well. Ability to pick "Agitator" or "Defender of Status Quo" would be nice to have for role play purposes. Maybe limit to heavies or less in weight assuming the assaults are kept under better lock and key by the house authorities.

Pirate/Raider battles pit a force of mechs with a weight or speed requirements against whatever the defenders bring. (Assumption is that covert transport restricts slow assaults from being used). These pay more for a win if the aggressor. This are the daring gambler's preferred mission. Raiding forces are black op, special attacks against select targets. Pirates are the classic smash and grab. House members will call themselves raiders, Lone Wolves probably pirates. Mercs can be either. The ability to chose to chase Pirates/Raiders (to "defend") or be the raider (to "attack") would be important here.

A little bit of tracking by week of civil unrest, skirmish success between houses, and success of pirate activity on the main site would help create an illusion that something was going on in a vast universe.

Some people will probably form unofficial pirate groups. Some merc units may decide to focus on defending / protecting a given house or on chasing pirates (or be pirates). Parts of a house might decide they represent one of the many independence movements and organize on the forums to wage their "revolt". If house skirmish results are a cumulative of wins of X time (days or weeks) then House players will use the forums to organize campaigns to keep the pressure up against another house, or rack up wins in a losing skirmish cycle.

If the house skirmishes are restricted to House X vs House Y for a given time (2 weeks or whatever) then switch so that the houses end up playing each other over time regardless of the map, then the player base will see different opponents over time keeping things fresh.