The situation with the Nomads on this server is what you get when you have an exclusive faction amongst the common rabble.
Why it had to be exclusive is admittedly a mystery to me but I have my hunches based on life experience and interaction with people in general. So here we go.
Some players come up with an idea for a Nomad player faction. They put a lot of work in creating lore and a backstory for their idea of a Nomad faction. A labor of love that would be guarded somewhat jealously.
In an older mod version (the old timers could confirm this) it wasn't an uncommon sight to see mercenary IDed Nomad BSes roaming about New York and other such nonsense. Well, situations like that were just silly, so Nomad tech was consolidated under the protection of a single Nomad player faction. Nomad ships and gear became rare, adding more mystique to the Nomad faction as a whole. A positive development in Nomad and server RP - at least initially.
However, exclusivity had its drawbacks. Because the Nomad player faction's players were hand-picked and tightly controlled, it was decided that they should have more freedoms than the average player, freedoms that were also justified with canon lore. Thus, Nomads get the equivalent of a terrorist ID.
Nomad players become the target of RP and OORP aggression. They get ganked. They point this problem out to the devs, so ships and gear become adjusted accordingly. They continue to get ganked, the reason being that it is near impossible to beat them with even numbers.
Getting constantly ganked is no fun at all, so the Nomad players aren't terribly keen in logging on with their Nomad characters. End result: Order and BHG Core activity dies off and Nomad Space becomes a zone of soul-numbing boredom.
This is my spin on the current Nomad situation. It isn't inarguably true, but nonetheless I'm pretty sure I'm close to the mark on some issues.
If players are really serious about increasing Nomad activity, some attitudes on all sides have to change.
1.) Opening up the Nomads to all players. That means access to all ships and tech.
2.) Establishing a separate ZoI for indie Nomads, for both snubs and caps. The K'Hara get their ZoI and the regular Nomads get theirs, although ZoIs will overlap in some regions.
3.) Granting the Nomad player faction to establish basic RP guidelines that must be followed by indie Nomad players, i.e. telepathic communication protocols.
4.) RP preceding combat, which is more the norm anyway. I don't think I've ever had a Nomad encounter without being the object of some sort of telepathic communication first.
