[jimbob]

Batman said:

That way the guild has to have a constant influx of resources to a) maintain warp point openers, and b) build new ones.

I'd also suggest making the guild dependent upon the other houses by making the warp openners use a lot of supplies. This way, they must resupply before each jump... but they wouldn't necessarily have a base at which they can resupply... thus the need to dock at a resupply station of one of the houses.

I think it would be good for the warp closing devices to be cheap and not be 'destroyed upon use', but to need some spice to build.

It also puts a nice lower bound on the cost of a warp jump (i.e. you have to at least supply value equal to the organics cost of the component)

I'm not sure I understand.

Andres: For this I'd suggest the game maker produce a handful of neutral planets with highly efficient (non-researchable) research buildings on them. Maybe downgrade the normal research facilities by a notch or two. Then, in addition to fighting over the one spice world, everyone can fight over the two or three tech worlds too!