In my head I was imagining a Dyson sphere with stabilizing legs to anchor it to the ground. Additionally, I was thinking that once it was either hacked or called in by a particular team, the only way to hack the sphere for the opposing side would be to harvest yourself to the sphere, terminating your clone. The sacrificial clone would be further rewarded at the end of the match if the friendly team held onto that node in which the player processes themselves to capture.

I got the impression that if a single player is the team's sole Dyson sacrifice that they would still receive the 15% bonus no mater how many times they entered the spheres. If that works in the context of having to share a sacrifice bonus with other team members who harvest themselves, the lowest your bonus would be is 1/16th of the 15%. Even that example of 35 clones perishing within range of the harvester would net a player about 52,000 isk if all members of team harvested themselves at one point during the game.

Remember, any death, even sphere suicides add to the biomass capacity of a harvester. More deaths around them equate to a more valuable harvester at the time of match extraction.

On the contrary, I definitely think suiciding in public areas should count toward the biomass value of the harvester. Technically, hacking the harvester is suicide, however leaving the opportunity for players to chose the location and time of death in the context of adding value to harvester only opens up new ways of thinking about the war economy and value of life in the New Eden universe.

When you go into a battle you still have the ability to choose warpoint-centric options which net you additional experience in matches. On the other hand, you have the choice to boost your bank by securing control of biomass harvesters and adding to their value with your own body (Remember: this action of suicide to the harvester does not net warpoints, and in turn faster skill progression). Sometimes the goals associated with these choices overlap and sometimes they don't. The key point is the choice exists. I see novel potential here. Possibility to warp a lot of the conventions of win states we've come to understand in many first person shooters.

Sure it may subvert public contracts and faction warfare making their outcomes far more volatile. However, if you are concerned with the behavior of the other players on your team, go ahead and join or start a corporation that shares your ideals.

Hack time depends on current shield and health strength at the moment a player connects with the harvester. Attaching to the harvester sphere doesn't immediately kill the sacrificing player. What does occur is the sphere deconstructs the player at a constant rate of 60 hp/sec. A player in a deconstruction phase cannot be 'killed' technically by small arms, as such fire only speeds up their deconstruction process. This includes headshots. The only way to prevent a player from successfully changing control of a harvester is to forceably dislodge their husk from the terminal via a one hit kill concussive explosion. This can be done with remote explosives, grenades, and forge guns for example.

I was thinking 4 (small) and 8 (large container) clones per transport.
The powergrid requirement of the large container would relegate it to being used on a logistics based tank for example.

I'm not a fan of that. Also, refrigerants are usually inert gasses. Sure you might get a pressure explosion and a toxic vapor cloud, but no flame.

Normally biomass will be transported to the MCC, however when a vehicle or foot solider is in range with the correct transport module the Harvester's protocols change and divert incomming biomass to that player.
The harvester does not hold reverse biomass, so a player must wait near the harvester while soliders are dying within its range.

Certainly, the weight of additional biomass should slow a player down. I don't think it should slow vehicles down. With vehicles I am thinking that certain classes of vehicles have a certain number of attachment slots to which the containers are affixed to while in transport. Logistics based vehicles would obviously have more open slots.

Containers would be exposed for the most part and have decent level of hit points before being destroyed. With what I talked about with MySpaceTom, destroyed canisters would damage a vehicle over a period of time with corrosive based attributes. That means the more biomass that container the longer contents would leak out and corrode the vehicle's integrity. This could be a 1 to 1 sec relationship, meaning a full 12 clone can would provide a 12 second area burn.

The amount of damage the corrosive burn does is up from discussion.

Now you just need a Dev or CPM tag to draw some more attention to the topic.

Just be careful with talking about lasers around CCP Mintchip. She can take you off on quite a tangent.

Yeah, that could be an issue. You could draw a comparison to how friendlies killed in precision strikes count against your friendly fire count. An argument could be made that while both systems give you warning sound before their area of effect damage takes effect, harvesters are stationary objects that you approach at your own risk. You have a better sense of battlefield awareness with a harvester's when a gamma blast is likely to occur. The two main red flags are the solider approaching a terminal and the subsequent sound of a player in deconstruction phase building up to a gamma blast. That should give you enough warning if you are vigilant to get out of the blast area.