SOE has the foundation for an interesting alert type in Pumpkin alerts.

We've had the alerts we have for awhile. Very little in the ways of mixing it up, but introducing new alert types to diversify would go a long ways towards assisting the meta of the game.

As such, pumpkin alerts are currently poorly done, with no real other way to state it. There's simply no point in engaging the enemy, aka, the point of the game. No territory control, no need for anything other then skyguards and sky chariots.

But the foundation is there. The concept of territory control is in the game. But is it really? We control hexes, sometimes defensible locations. But an entire area? Why would you want to control deadzones, outlying buildings, or other tactically unimportant things?

Enter the new pumpkin alert. The alert starts and rather then pumpkins spawning everywhere, criteria is set out and met internally.

A handful of selected bases that best meet the criteria and change every half an hour, depending on if the criteria shifts. The base should best be:

- Has to be on a frontline border.
- Does not have an active battle in it or near it. (explanation why down below)
- Is not the warp gate or directly next to it.
- Is weighted with factional territory control. Having less territory means there is a greater chance of one of your territories are selected.

Once chosen, ideally with a good spread across the borders, the hex is turned neutral. Any facilities bonuses are provided to the faction that 'lost' the facility. Then, an 'infestation' begins and pumpkins spawn in that hex. Their concentration depends on the facility selected. Amp stations, tech plants, and biolabs have their pumpkin concentration primarily inside the facility itself. Large outposts provide a concentration that is spread between inside the base and outside. Small outposts have theirs primarily outside the base.

The battle status is important to provide a little more balance. If a faction is entrenched in the base from just having defended or capturing it, the bordering faction has *** all chance to really get in to secure pumpkins. Shifting the bases every so often will keep the alert more fresh and help stop stagnation. Continental shifts would be cool, too, to provide a more ample base selection.

The end result is an alert that doesn't focus on capturing bases but securing the actual territory. You want safety to grab pumpkins. Spawn concentration is suited to what sort of battles the bases can support. Facilities are used to being stuffed to the gills, and large outposts less so. Smaller ones suffer, so their concentration is outside, making field fights.

This idea can then be salvaged after Holloween and tweaked to provide non base secure areas to harvest, say, auraxium. Or we keep the alert type and sub in space anomalies or something. No use tossing the work. I've based my idea on the simplest presentation as possible for the speediest implementation. Pumpkin spawns can be slapped into a noise generator and thrown onto the center of a base with some simple rules to prevent spawns in geometry and such.

Oh, and adjust how seeds are granted. Treat it like XP. Driver assist, damage, etc. You touch the pumpkin or help someone do it, you get a seed. It'd be nice to give them large HP pools to the Galactic pumpkins to grant more seeds in that way, using the current damage=assist XP rulings.