We've though about this too, but the same issue applies. If we're helping other corps, even small ones in their conquest efforts, how can we consider ourselves neutral?

I agree with this, it will maintain your neutrality as long as you show no favoritism. Have a set fee per student for PCs that is open to anyone looking for people and have whoever is online take up those contracts, this would also benefit anyone who might have trouble fielding the full team they need. As far as I know few corps would have the renown or the size to fill such a role, small corps could possibly fill the PC slots of larger ones if they are short but unless corps take on smaller ones as fill-in alliances but then it is hard to know who is actually have decent and who isn't (let alone find them).

I think the suggestion was for your students to be true mercenaries in those cases, fighting for anyone and everyone who will give them a slot instead of for their own territory.

In that way, your support is completely neutral from a diplomatic standpoint.

"Oh, I'm sorry that you were upset that some of our students fought against you when Carebears, Inc. attacked you last night. If you'd like, I'd be happy to put together a squad for you guys tonight when they attack again."

"Oh, I'm sorry that you were upset that some of our students fought against you when Carebears, Inc. attacked you last night. If you'd like, I'd be happy to put together a squad for you guys tonight when they attack again."

I've made a similar point in the boardroom. We'd either need near full support of the mercenary community thus reinforcing our neutrality, or this may not be feasible.

We also realize we have work to do regarding our training methodology (tool restrictions asside) and welcome help from the community in that regard as well!

A good point. You would have to freely allow your students to fight for any side they wish (even students on both sides of a battle), and Dust U could take no compensation for it.

I cannot promise anything as I have no power in PRO, but I will talk with ContraBanJoe and see what he says.
Ideally we can:
1.Provide protection for the few districts you own
2.Own the other districts on the same planet
3.Let our PRO newbies fight Dust Uni players so both get valuable training

This is mutually beneficial which is why I believe ContraBanJoe will help.

But again, I can't promise anything, its up to Joe on what to do, and all I can do is inform him of the option.

I am concerned about allowing the community to influence this decision too much. Please reflect on the reasons the Uni no longer holds sovereignty in New Eden and allow the wisdom of past experiences be the major deciding factor. Though I commend you for including the community in this discussion. The fact is there is a reason the Uni does not hold sovereignty and I truly believe those same reason will apply to owning districts as well.

The main problem I see with this is recruits will be broke as kitten. If Dust University is to succeed, it needs venture capital funding. Owning districts and selling clones will help them achieve that.

If they are to train their recruits, fitting will become expensive and will become expensive fast. They either need high level donations or make their own income. And if you are training recruits they also need to be trained of various dropsuit levels and mods. Gets expensive fast.

And I'll admit, this is my main concern...that and exposure to the new mechanic...

We appreciate the offer Cat Merc...but the objective is community support, not PRO as bodyguard. We want to remain neutral and the flipside to that is we can't be tied too closely to a single non-educational institution.

Indeed, another valid reason for going with the community-protected "Planet of Education" model is that the neutral training corps could fight against each other for control of "spare" districts as part of the training. This would enable Dust Uni and some others to be a bit like Red-vs-Blue in EVE.

For instance, if three training corps control a 12 district planet, each one could get three "fixed" districts and the other three could be "sacrificial" districts.

If this arrangement was enforced by the Major League corps/alliances, it would provide a useful training ground for all sides.

Potentionally challenging mission, particularly since we have so little information regarding district distribution, but this sounds like a very interesting model...

... that and exposure to the new mechanic...

Anyone acting like holding a district or two is somehow 'violating neutrality', is forgetting three things:

1) Dust 514 is not persistent like EVe online is.
2) There are plenty of ways to make a ton of ISK in Eve without holding any territory, while Dusts main source will be the districts.
3) holding ONE district is not going to affect anything so long as D Uni is strict about keeping it to one.

I like that too, though considering how PC mechanics work it would be a logistics nightmare to enforce it.
Hopefully once we get more details we will see if that's possible.

How would you finance them? What are your suggestions for them to generate income?

Its easy to tell someone not to do something. Could you please provide alternatives?

Well, here is my "vision" for how this might work:

In EVE, there are "coalitions" of alliances. These groups have no in-game mechanic enforcing their behavior, just a mutual agreement.

If we establish a "Scholarship Coalition" that includes say three "Major-League" alliances and three "Colleges", this system is easily enforceable.

Essentially, once the first big wave of colonization ends, the Major Leaguers look at their borders and work with the Colleges to pick a planet that is roughly in the middle. All of the members of the Scholarship Coalition pledge to maintain the planet as a preserve for the colleges and to mutually defend it if someone attacks it outside of an arranged educational battle.

The Major Leaguers are under no obligation to respect each others' borders (they can keep fighting each other all they want). The colleges never attack off-world, so they pose no threat to the Major Leagues whose sheer power keeps other would-be attackers at bay. The Major Leagues, in turn, have established goodwill from the colleges and will likely have a better chance of recruiting the best students.

This is something that must be considered. Even though only the leadership will be involved in managing districts they will need that experience in order to pass it on to their recruits.

My comments are in regards to their ability to maintain neutrality and maintain the Uni culture. How they finance themselves in not my problem and has historically been through donations. Not tech moons or ratting or other forms of income that sovereignty would provide. PConquest is equall to sovereignty as far as I'm concerned and I do not believe the Uni can justify holding it here.

Though there are great suggestions already posted such as having the uni participate in a mercenary like fashion.

I knew that's what they meant.
But the problem is if game mechanics will allow it.

This is a relatively minor thing. What I am expecting in P.C is a completely different tactical objective. From what I read it sound like the attackers objective is killing as many clones as possible while keeping your own mcc alive the longest possible time. notice no focus on destroying the hostile MCC. Where as the defenders it will be the complete reverse, Primary target is the hostile MCC while attempting to keep as many clones as possible.

If I'm right, or even close to it with that assessment (and that we will only really get to see once P.C is implemented) there will be 2 very distinct play styles and tactics used exclusively for P.C. It is that mentality and understanding I want us to be able to pass on to our students ideally before they move on to there home corp.

I feel that failing to teach them this aspect of DUST would leave us passing on student that are not tactically aware or skilled for these fights. To my mind it would be like training students to fight PvE in EVE and then sending them off as PvP pilots.

That would be a catastrophic failure on our part.

Academy, College, and University then "conquer" their assigned "fixed" districts in staged crap battles with the Major Leagues.

Did we just suggest the same thing at the same time?