Wanting to pitch in an idea that may or may not have been submitted before. A derelict puzzle base of sorts. Excuse the formatting and scatter-brainness of this. Just trying to get all my thoughts out before it's properly strung together.
The idea of this base is to be super interactive. You discover this invisible solar, and begin a sequence where you'd bypass multiple layers of decision making and puzzles before reaching the centre. Once you reach the centre, you're rewarded with some kind of item to sell / use / mount.
Once this base is found, you'd find it to be gigantic in size. There'd be internal tunnels and rooms large enough to accommodate up to gunboats to fly within. Once you find this station, you'd use a command or try to dock with it. This would initiate the puzzle. Now, my thoughts on this is to bring in every piece of interactivity the game offers and apply it to this puzzle. Let me explain this part further. Initiating the puzzle would look like this:
You would be presented with two options to enter the station, one is to destroy a battery powering the door, or to enter a command to solve a maths equation or other question related to the environment (there may be wrecks or other items scattered with infocards with the answer.) Mind you, these are just examples of the two decisions or options. They may vary or be set in stone. The idea is that they are different, not just pew this or pew that.
One of these will open the door, the other would freeze the station. If you choose correct, you can go further in, travel to the next puzzle area. If you get it wrong, depending on how far in you are, certain threats or fatal situations would occur. You will need to escape / leave and wait until next server restart or following week to try opening the station again.
Every puzzle layer has two options, one is correct, one will stop you. Each layer brings you closer to the centre of the station, or the main room, reactor, something. The climax. Each of these layers will have a different piece of interactivity, like I mentioned before, one would be using the dock command, using a server command is another, destroying a battery or other destructible solar, cleaning a room of debris like a mining zone. The threats that emerge when you make the wrong choice would be having frenzied weapons platforms activating if your just getting started, or a radiation leak if you're already inside, or a fullblown countdown to a reactor explosion if you're close to the final room, forcing you to get out quickly before you die if you're within a 10K radius when the count hits 0.
These are my thoughts so far, I will edit this to be more streamlined and easier to read. Was thinking the station to be called "Edgecliff" as if you make the wrong move, it'll fall off the cliff and get destroyed. On the nose I think, but it's just a concept after all.
There may be other pieces I'll think of to flesh out this idea, but for now this is what I got.
I like the idea a lot, and I can add more to that. I got some suggestions that might help spice up the idea more too
The puzzle can contain some materials/equipment/pieces that can only be obtained by RPing with another faction to get it from them.
There is more idea, but I just woke up 2 hours ago and fixed my car radiator ffs... The heat is hilarious this summer, so I ll post again more details soon
We've had "puzzle derelict stations" before, as well as ones that required multiple keys that you'd only get from other derelict stations to open, and they were always genuinely very enjoyable, so I don't see why not.
Last words are for fools who have not yet said enough.