Originally by: Mioelnir

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Just a bit of brainstorming here on stuff I experienced over the last 4 years in nullsec that I think should be thought of (and could think of right now):

The average grunt will have all the tools, except at the instant you actually look because you need him to. Then he won't.
The core truth of nullsec from which everything else can be derived.

And suddenly... stuff

Every working 0.0 entity has, on some scale, logistics wizards in the background. They mostly like to stay in the background. Being able to keep them in the background is also a strategic advantage of supply line safety. This should weigh in against more overt types of logistics.
Their value (as players) means they are mostly in charge of vital stuff. Losing one of them is not as immediate, but often more crippling, than losing an FC.

Sutlers

Players with access to better logistics capabilities will often boost their income or fund their entire pvp by selling prefit ships to comrades or working delivery contracts for them. Well known staging areas are also often supplied by third parties with all kinds of stuff. These are player created professions that enrich EVE and should be protected. Delivering goods to a warzone should not require that I am able to repel the parties waging war. Being able to do so could be beneficial though.

Now you see it. Now you don't

I think I've seen the last noticeable amounts of nullsec freighter runs in the early days of Revelations. When one hand was still enough to count all titan bridges and travel in general was a lot slower. But even back then, regardless of whether one chose to web the freighters and hope to get through unseen, or bubble and secure the entire route - the freighters themselves were protected by logging them off.
There is an entire profession (suicide ganking) living off the fact, that it is inherently impossible to protect a single ship through group effort while the ship is logged in, undocked and moving. This is, bluntly, bad design.

There is only so much to go around...

The age-old issue of every mining fleet. Having 10 people bored protecting them means 10 players not doing anything useful and/or earning ISK, thus making a viable activity for those directly doing it ineffective for the group. If the value of an activity is not directly influenced by the amount of players involved, we will find a way to streamline it down to the absolute required minimum. In case of hauling stuff, usually 1. Having the "escort" do other stuff is often effective enough to compensate occasional hauling losses.

Associative volumes

The needed volume of supplies an entity requires scales with its size. But it also scales with activity, so unless a big entity has requirements that are not shared with small entities (like... ships), everything creating a weakspot for the large entity will create a proportionally larger weakspot for the smaller one ("punishing them for actually playing the game").

Eve law of free markets

The amount of hostile market manipulation rises with the amount of stuff available.
Everyone without outpost access can buy and resell stuff. While in general this is good, there are entities ingame which you do not want to challenge to a size comparison when it comes to wallet depth. These manipulations also tend to decrease confidence in local markets. Supply line confidence is huge for long term nullsec commitments. A grunt will only be disappointed by the local market (and get shouted at by the FC) so many times until he starts ignoring it (and get stuff in Jita). Alliance contracts do not scale well beyond low volume premium items (7/14days vs 90 days, click-orgy).

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