actually, they put forth effort to take those districts, and are putting forth a lot of effort right now to defend them. "No real effort" is not accurate at all. That being said, there needs to be some sort of "work" or "upkeep" that goes into maintaining districts. This will limit the amount of districts a clan\corp\alliance will maintain to help fit their playerbase. Sure, you want them to still get a benefit out of it, such as profit, clone production, equipment production etc... But at the same time, it can't just be a flag in the ground that pumps out money.

In EVE there are multiple levels, POS required fuel.. so there was upkeep... PI required busy work to generate income... etc etc... Create a mechanic that puts a natural "cap" or limit to the amount of land a playerbase will control. The more active a playerbase is - obviously the more land they can control. The mechanic could be something simple to start out with such as: Win x amount of public matches per day for a specific type of district. If the quota is not met, production stops. This is a simple mechanic, could promote competitiveness in public matches, Corporate contracts on your corporations behalf (giving meaning to contracts both private and public) - and can easily be replaced when more advanced mechanics are put in place... such as, PVE, fuel upkeep, etc.

For instance, (this is an example only) Outer Heaven is very active. They have 50 players that play on a daily basis and by daily i mean for hours on end every day. with 75+ total members. PRO has 1000 members but not nearly as active membership so their output wouldn't be too far removed from each other on the "upkeep" end. This gives meaning to smaller corps or lesser skilled player bases. Gives them something to "win" for when they may not be able to hold Land themselves... they can take contracts and work to fulfill them... gives the whole of the playerbase an effect, not just the very top end elite organizations. Of course anyone that owns land, will still have to defend it... on top of the upkeep systems.

Also, make different pieces of land mean something. Not All land is the same. In EVE, you have some planets or moons that are more valuable. Make it the same here. The top corps\alliances will fight over the richer environments and may not bother with the mid or bottom tier planets, whereas those may be valuable to the middle\lesser tier corps\alliances.

Obviously these are not the greatest of ideas, but it would provide a more rich environment for the ENTIRE playerbase, promoting land "cap" for what they can afford to control (in time and resources)... This would give true meaning to the "can't hold more than they can maintain".

Later down the road there will be other features in the game such as PVE that can be incorporated into all this. If TeamPlayers doesn't want to PVE at all, they don't have to...they contract that to the corps that are willing to... or that's what hte alliance is for... or maybe they set up a division in their corp to do it for them, recruiting some chinese farmers just for that purpose alone... etc.

But something has to change, because I think most everyone will agree that as of right now.. it ain't working.