Um, using my recent example, that's like the Luftwaffe and the Royal Air Force saying, "Let's fight off the coast of America, and whoever wins gets either England or Germany." It makes no sense at all....
Like I said in OP, in my case the battle is happening over a dead unlandable ice moon out in the middle of nowhere, not close or in between to ANY system assets.
If you want to argue further, I recommend we take it over to some random exploration thread and fight there, LOL.
While my first reply was quite tongue-in-cheek, it does fit what happens in the game - the two factions fight over literally nothing until one side gives in and pays reparations to their opponent. "Let's fight in orbit of this distant dead moon, and whoever wins gets either Wilfredson Orbital or Darren's Rest".
It basically has all the hallmarks of some kind of proxy war or gentleman's agreement. There's literally no reason to fight over a designated conflict zone outside of some kind of agreement to keep collateral damage to a minimum. It possibly involves faction heads meeting, acknowledging the tension between their peoples and preparing a suitable scenario to vent these tensions with the minimum amount of economic damage to both parties. Conflict in ED is a show of economic force and a way to remove surplus SLF pilots from the workforce rather than proper campaign over assets or to annihilate an opponent.
If war were to be an actual cutthroat battle of attrition, persistent CZs would be based around stations, RESs, Nav Beacons and megaships/capitals, while temporary CZs would be constantly cropping up as a result of interdictions of freighters and mercenaries as each side tries to grind the other into dust.
It's dumb, yes, but that's what it is currently.
Overall, I do agree that there should be more scope in the game for actual warfare rather than these agreed-upon skirmishes that we currently have. Maybe some kind of differentiation between "war" states and "total war", with the former being the current skirmishing as a show of force while the latter becomes the outright "us vs them" conflict that plunges the entire system into conflict, complete with pledges being system-wide and combat bonds being handed out for destroying even civilian ships of the opposing faction?
