Favorite server contests
My personal favorite was a nomad hunting contest. Forget which server this was on, as they left about a year ago. The object was to kill nomad ships and tractor in their weapons to earn points. nomad blasters were 1 point, cannons 2 points. whoever earns the most points wins of course. The prize was usually whatever ship, ship parts, faction, weapons, even costume the winner wanted. basically we were allowed to customize our character anyway we wanted, long as it's legal for the server anyway.
the host starts by backing up everyone's account, then wiping them all from the game. When contest time came around, we all logged in with new players and about 3mil spending money. We started out at freeport 9 in the omicron theta system and were told to spend the next 20 minutes buying our preferred ship and weapons. After that, the host jumped all of us to omicron minor of all places. From there, we head over to the alien jumpgate and as soon as host gives us the signal, we enter the omicron major system into a free-for-all against every nomad ship in sight. Those who remembered playing the SP campaign to the end knows the nomads defended this area like a swarm of angry bees. Host modified the nomad ships to the strongest type with level 3 nomad lasers or something, so it gets quite messy in there. I've seen players in those titan tanks get blown apart in 5 minutes after being hit by 3 squads of nomad ships. Still is the most fun I've had in any server contest.