Faa
I cannot give a definite opinion if the current cats production is enough or not. Not playing like I used to play years ago to have first hand data. But if people complain about it, there must be some problem. Usually in Ryzom an issue gets to the forums long after part of the population feel its consequences.
But I did vote "other" because the limited number of OPs that didn't change for the last how many? 8 years? encourage political ownership instead of guild content. More OPs with current cats spawn (or at least less cats spawn than in the past) would allow guilds to chose their real allies not be forced to work only as big alliances. It may enocurage smaller scale pvp as well.
More OPs of q50-150 at surface would encourage newcomers to form new guilds. OPs mean a fantastic guild content and they have a psychological importance that supercedes by far cats and mats one. An OP is a guild "home". Strong hard to attack/defend OPs in the q250 areas or in the PR would allow older guilds to make a point of honour in keeping them.
In short: keep rate low but increase OPs numbers.
Yes this is very much the case, i can say that Soul viewed its outpost in FF as "home" even though it was rocked by war countless times it has a feel of worth to us even now regardless of its cat production of which most was given away to other guilds anyway.
More level 50 to 150's would encourage more guilds to get involved and be created though if you included lala's suggestion in some form or another about maintaining outposts through either resources, missions or a combination would reduce the number of outposts a guild can hold this would also encourage more guilds to get involved, alliances being formed between guilds to help each other hold them etc.
A nice mix would be encourage guild growth, guild activity and politic's
P.S Nice to see you again Faa btw ;)