it's possible to wingbug every ship in the game, just some ships (like the vulture) are easier than others.

Looking at the CVS history shows that this was fixed on our end 2/23/2005. So it was possible in the past to exploit this but is fixed now.

The XP penalties are being removed, so that will no longer be exploitable either.

no xp loss for killing newbies or for getting ram killed?

The newbie XP loss is being removed.

The faction/suicide thing was fixed many moons ago, as I suspected (I do remember it being an issue at one time).

its being removed?

oh. ok.

teach those damn newbs to keep out of grey space.

It's not that I don't want to protect them, but it is an opening for exploitation. I intend to replace it with a better game mechanic. In the meantime, well, they'll have to stick to Monitored space.

Perhaps you could have it check the ships location at the time of death. If the two ships are less than x meters apart at the time of death then no penalty. I know it's then possible for somebody to ram a noob to kill him w/o an xp hit but it's easy enough to avoid being rammed anyway.

In regards to the ec88 bus...I was bouncing off asteroids early this morning in a fit of what do I do now boredom, and I noticed the same thing about this bus...I could bounce at full turbo, and only take about 20% damage, wheras in a loaded centuar a lighter hit could issue me. Go figure, it must be covered with Nerf material...

Nah, it's the egg-shaped design that makes it stronger. The Centaur's neck just snaps like a twig.

Oh I thought that they just put a giant rubber bumper on the front because it's for new pilots.

Actually they are inside an invisible gerbil ball.