because of the effort required to keep a base alive, functioning properly and smoothly.. you spend all that time keeping it alive and trying to make it grow into something bigger.
then when it has a chance to actually help you out, oh sorry you cant dock. sorry but this is pointless and favorites only pirates and unlawful mercs.
also why is it only player bases that do this? why only the base you need to actually put some hardcore game time in to make it work, where as the ones that have been around since the universe popped into existence 9 years ago let you dock even if 900 battleships were all spamming heavy mortars at them?
it makes no sense inrp or oorp, you work hard to make the base but cant dock on it when you need to, you dont have to do crap all for the other bases and you can still go and dock on those whenever you like.
also the margin of what is considered an "attack" needs to be made way bigger than just a few tickles with some fighter weaponry and whoops the shield is up, cant dock.
the shield should stay up once its up until somebody deactivates it, that way at least it is safe forever until somebody can be around to do something about it.