The safe areas that are being generated by Novaquark are a great idea, but I feel they may lead to some problematic game elements.
Players will likely build in safe areas and only journey outside of them to mine.
Players in safe areas will likely be neighbors with bitter enemies.
Trolls could interrupt multi-hex building projects by claiming hexes in the path of development.
There is less of a reason for people to band together to form protection if it is inherent to the game.
I am a huge believer in emergent gameplay, and this game relies almost entirely on it. Emergent gameplay is the idea that rules and systems are established which sort of "Make sense," and then players find ways to extract value, power, and fun from them in ways that the devs may not have initially intended. An example is movement patterns in Starcraft 1, Wormhole pirate guilds in EVE online, and metagame strategies in almost every game.
I propose a system which in a simple manner mimics the way real cities were formed. When a new hex territory is claimed grant it "Frontier" status which offers little or no protection. Once it is surrounded by other claimed hex tiles grant the center tile an upgraded protection status and a new name like Rural area. When all the frontier hexes bordering this rural area are surrounded by frontier hexes, they become rural and the center hex becomes suburban. Continue in this pattern for a number of layers, a progression such as:
Frontier
Rural
Suburban
Urban
Metropolis
Adding and removing layers, changing costs of territories, and modifying levels of protection at each status would give devs control over game balance while still feeling fair for pvp. In addition, this gives groups an incentive to build together as a troll or bad neighbor building near the city would only have frontier status and likely be soon destroyed.
There may also need to be other controls like a minimum of a couple of days at each status level (so that a level 5 protected zone cant be sprung up instantly)
This would be a simple system which mimics the way cities start small and grow.
I also don't think this should replace safe zones, but be in addition to safe zones.