well its "world pvp" and in games like this, the act of pvp alone with no rewards outside killing a player is seriously a big thing. World of Warcraft through vanilla only had 3 battlegrounds and no arena(arena came out in BC), and world pvp with no actual reward outside stats, was the most common form of pvp. Honestly it never changed over the years til the end of cataclysm with the xrealm shit they pulled. Its the same with any survival game out there, Rust, Ark, New Z, and even deadside where the reward is pvp itself. Sure your opponent may drop something nice(MAY but most of those players set their gear before going into a game, so w/e you drop, they probably can easily purcase with ingame currency), but most of these games(other than wow) don't even have a combat statistic recorder(Player Kills, Deaths to Players, Accuracy, etc.) where as Starbase has this and much more, statistic stat wise. So for majority of your FPS gamers, combat statistics is all that matters to them anyway. After your leveled and you got all the guns and perks unlocked, most COD players only care about their stats. Which starbase with the CV has done pretty well so far in development that they have shown us.
Then you want to add in the factor of theft without real gain. There are tons and tons of players who enjoy nothing more than the chaos a game like this brings over profit. Some players would much rather watch your ship explode and burn than trying to take it entact for profit. Some folks call those guys griefers but in reality they are just pvpers, maybe with a little RP flash thrown in. Then there is griefers! Guys who just assault and attack anyone and everyone, not for pvp, not for profit, but the enjoyment of making others suffer. Those kind of players will cause a rally of other players just out of shear frustration, people did it all the time in World's Adrift against the guild Join or Die. And that always causes grudges and wars that go on for a long time, both side fueling the other.
Then there is the mega player factions who will be opening up their own stations in space, moons, and planets with the numbers to get shit done. The nomad, thief, raider, pirate style players(which are a lot of) will always view this as opportunities to attack, since they will have stocked warehouses with ships, weapons, material, fuel, cargo and mining ships coming and going, conveys of station parts and materials. Hence this will also cause wars between the companies being rolled and the groups doing the robbing.
Plus tons of profit is made for games like this through pvp warring. Archeage is a great example, since it too has two main factions and a pirate faction, it also has player ran splinter factions that fight and war over territories. Because territories in AA like starbase are profits, for example a station near a belt that doesn't take much to get back and forth from. So in AA, every week and every month at the warring times, the market place goods on the AH will skyrocket on prices for materials pertaining to siege weapons and vehicles, health and buff pots for pvp, and pretty much anything else viewed as needed to win a war. That will be the same with Starbase, wars equal ships being damaged and destroyed, so either credits or materials to fix it(and in the 20th patch notes they talk about a player ingame market/auction house). Salvaged and abandoned ships after the fight can be utilized for credits or parts on your ship(cannons that are good to use that are better than yours, or at least good enough to sell). Claiming an area of space where your company/faction has its trade routes, material routes, etc will be better maintained by larger warring factions, making it less likely that pirates will risk their ship in area flooded with people who would aid the one they targeted.
Once there are many player stations out in the universe, tax will come into play a lot. People fighting over goods and area can sell their gains at various stations with different set tax. So if a company has a station far out near a belt, they could set the tax a little high on the goods but would be better to turn in there and not risk a long flight, where the buyer then will setup full cargo ships of the goods and run them into a place with a very low tax rate to gain even more off his buy.
lot of reasons to go to war in this game such as profit, territory, revenge, justice, but ultimately because people will be able to and some people just love to pvp.
