VO's governments are too lax, especially the non-UIT ones. They need to be made more oppressive.

They should impose taxes on your profits.

They should fine you if you overcook a roid, or turbo too fast near a station, or bump a station too hard.

When you are inside nation space, your chat filter should automatically (and forceably) turn itself on for the duration of your visit, and the nation should impose fines each time you violate it (first give a warning, then start at 100c and increase with each offense per month until it reaches 100k or so).

The simple clear-cut and exploitable punishing of the killers of Admired ships should continue existing exactly as it currently does. Contraband and smuggling should be added, as described by many other threads, complete with penalties, fines, and confiscation if found out.

Using equipment you obtained and equipped in greyspace, but are not licensed for in nation space, should also be a finable offense if detected by the border guard.

Ferrying in unwelcome individuals via capships or turrets should carry a fine and penalty.

Etc. The punishments don't have to be excessively huge or anything. The idea here is just to make the government's presence more tangible, thus giving more contrast between nation space and greyspace. The three governments can implement different subsets of oppression, and to different extents, to help give them each a unique feel.

When you are inside nation space, your chat filter should automatically (and forceably) turn itself on for the duration of your visit

Hahaha. :)

+1, except:

Ensure that this is optional. If you are fined, give the player a deadline (i.e. one hour) to pay a marshal the fee, and increase the penalties if the deadline is not met, including faction loss. As for the chat filter, I get your point, but even I feel that might be going too far. :p

If a player is hated or KOS with a nation, none of these rules and regulations should apply to them, but they should be assaulted on sight as it works now.

The rents for storage space in VO is Too Damned Low!

+1 to everything here. This would give value and consequences to ones standing. Also, each nation and sub faction should operate a bit differently so that it feels more natural than a standard one size fits all mechanic

-1. Keep your government out of my spaceship! All these extra rules will just add further confusion and required reading to the valiant VO newb who decided to try this game out, and thus contribute to their quick retreat back to other more interesting things, such as RL or marijuana.

Gawd help us, no. Who the hell wants a game to be full of the crap that governments force on them in RL . We play to escape from all of that for a while.

Really, I want to drink whisky and fly a ship . I want to mess about with guns and things that go bang. I want to slam ships into stations while not watching where I'm going. I don't want to wear a seat belt to fly, I don't give a toss about red lights and bus lanes in space.

Don't even get me started on tax. No really not a good idea. What next , VAT on roids depending on whether the local faction thinks they are cakes or biscuits?

I agree with Greenwall, it would just be confusing for new folk, and damn annoying for the rest .

Sure, sort the faction system out but as for the rest, nope.

What the hell ecka - Your position makes no sense, on the one hand you stand firmly for VO having a real political sandbox, proper conflict and all that jazz, but when it comes to the sorts of in-game mechanics that we need to give it more depth, suddenly we don't want the game to be full of all this realistic stuff?

Here's my vision for how 'oppression' should be achieved in VO's sandbox environment:

First, establish a set of tools for regulating the trade relations of constituent stations. This toolset should allow the governing players to change things like:

1) Sell price of commodities to different races and based on different criteria (i.e. the ability to set specific trade rules for each station or on the basis of licenses/race bla bla bla bla)
2) Banned Items/Weapons/Goods
3) Taxes, tarrifs etc..
4) blacklist of individuals who are licensed to trade with the faction/nation

The governance of this toolset should be determined differently for each of the three nations, giving a real roleplay difference to nation choice:

Itani select their trade governance in the 'enlightened' and democratic way, a general vote by all members

UIT governance is determined by the senate, with seats given to corporate representatives from each of the constituent corporations - the corporations themselves should have different methods of selecting the representatives, but once these have been selected they form the senate that votes like a council on changes to trade policy via the toolset.

Serco use the military ranking system and the generals or highest ranking officers select who determines the trade policy and has access to the toolset

By comparison, greyspace remains a completely free market, with no governance at all.

Despite this, the easiest way to differentiate greyspace from nation space at this point would be to make Corvus/UIT mutually exclusive with the proviso that when you tank your UIT, you are given standing with corvus (ya know, so you can dock).

lol TRS that is all SO beyond what we'll ever get in this game, you know that.

"Really, I want to drink whisky and fly a ship . I want to mess about with guns and things that go bang. I want to slam ships into stations while not watching where I'm going. I don't want to wear a seat belt to fly, I don't give a toss about red lights and bus lanes in space. "

And that is precisely what greyspace is for.

Well if i don't post it there's absolutely no chance is there.

Yes it is news to nobody that ecka had the personality profile of a pirate

Well, that wasn't quite my point. Greyspace isn't just for pirates. It's for anybody who is more interested in freedom than safety.

+1 What Rin said.

I pretty much live in grey, and I'd laugh at anyone calling me a pirate...

That said, +1 to Eps's ideas (and the OP, though some of those I disagree with), although applying mutual exclusivity to Corvus/UIT will probably upset the current status-quo for the pirates. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing would remain to be seen.
Various taxes and tariffs would also act as a credit-sink, which I don't think would not be a bad thing. Docking fees and such...

Faille.

Aye, all right, but long term. Really what would it do for short term gameplay?

I stand by my point about being seriously pissed off by petty officialdom in RL and not wanting to see any great amount of it in a game.

I have just written a letter to my mp about the oppression of living under a government that requires me to register the fact that I do not own a television set. Yep that is right, I have to be on a register of people that don't own a televison. What part of " first against the wall when the revolution comes " do these people not understand ?

Well I don't own a television, but that's only because if I want to watch a TV show, I will just download it. You watch television if you want to be sold things. Perhaps the register is so they can telemarket to you instead, LOL! (It's probably got more to do with emergency services, but still)

Also, the difference between having it in-game and real life is that you get the option of responding to it in a way you cannot in real life. That is the point is Sci-Fi; it's a social metaphor that explores what you would do if circumstances were different and the possibilities were different than they are today.

So long term, governments should be dynamic and oppressive, short term we should have mutual exclusivity for UIT/Corvus.

Pirates get a fricken ridiculous good deal as it is. They get to spend absolutely no time contributing to the Itani nation, and yet and still allowed to purchase the top military fighter so they can go out and extort other Itani traders trying to import trade goods into the Itani Nation.

It's about time they started acting like outcasts of society not posterboy Itani mercenaries.

Which leads me to think, it really wouldn't be a bad idea for Corvus to have some extensive mutual exclusivity rules. It certainly would make things interesting if you couldn't have standing with the major nations in order to have corvus standing.

+1 to general idea, except chat filter, as I see it as a sort of "CB radio" or open chat channels. Almost off-game.

Each FACTION and nation should have its own ruleset of (banned items, actions, fees, penalties) to be imposed. This is obvious. And lower taxes or prohibitions should attract more people...

This should be associated with "SET HOME" action, as you are subject to the ruleset applied to where you are homed. Consider it like a quick way to affiliate with any given faction, while keeping your citizenship.

Corvus should be mutually exclusive with UI only, and neutral to other nations. I posted a quadratic political map:

..............UIT..............
..Ax.....Bi...|...Or....Va..
Serco....--TPG=-....Itani
..Ae....In....|....Xx....Tu..
.............Corvus...........

Swapped BI/Or per TRS note. As for Inc's dynamic state, that is added to existing map, being more likely between factions in opposing sides of map, being TPG a sort of neutral party, as it sells to everybody.

Don't already have a tax system? The worse your standing is, the more you pay for goods.

No. That's just the faction offering the local hero a better deal.

Having a good reputation with K-Mart doesn't mean they charge you less sales tax when you shop there.