Look at the top picture in
this article. Remind you of anything? It's a very interesting article if you have any interest in invertebrate biology or evolution. (WARNING: Parasitic squishy jellyfish worm things with microscopic harpoons).
It makes me wonder if the next part of the UA story might be about the station infection being the next stage of the UA's "life cycle". As the article states, and you can look up, most parasites have to infect multiple different types of hosts to complete their life cycle. So, we have "spores" (the UAs) that infect the first host (ships), which are in turn transferred to the next host (stations). If this is the case we might see the UAs change form somehow because they're in a new host. Now, the stations could be the final host before more UAs are sent out to to start the cycle over, OR there may be one more (or two or three?) hosts the UAs need. Stations aren't highly mobile (except Jacques station, right? I still don't get how that works in game), but they are a place where you might find a lot of humans wandering around in atmosphere sans protective space suits. So, maybe the next host is us?
Hmm... I think this tinfoil might be past its expiration. Anyway, if it happens like I've just written, I'll be happy to claim that it was my idea and the developers stole it from me.
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Also, I still think the trying to shut down black markets thing is a good idea. It can be done, right? We could shut down black markets on stations that haven't yet had actual services removed to try to halt their decline. Then (or simultaneously) we could shut down black markets in a certain radius from the affected stations and/or a certain distance from the UA bubble. I'm sure it would take a ton of work and honestly I don't understand how those mechanics work, but I think it could be done. Maybe it's an idea for a community goal?
(This is all assuming that the UAs are the cause. I think that's pretty well established even if the mechanism is not.)
