200k score? That would meant that only 100% botters or bad pirates (ahem) would get to talk. What about the non-violent people? No talkey for us?

no, of course not!
seriously, i am against a score-dependent chat system. Karma would be much better IMO.

I'm against an anything-based global chat. Take it out, and put it in a menu outside the game universe.

That's too radical Camps. I think /say_sector should be the default and global chat an option. The game gets mighty boring without global chat during off-peak hours.

Reputation systems have been described by several different posters in the past. I assume that the devs have thier own ideas. I don't know anything about what they are thinking, but would assume that eventually the reputation system would replace the bounty system we have now.

Reputation systems really do need to be 'with respect to a faction' or 'with respect to a sector'. That is, while blowing up gold ships should decrease my reputation as far as gold is concerned, it shouldn't meaningfully hurt my reputation with red in anyway. In fact, it might well help my reputation if blowing up gold ships was part of fulfilling a red faction mission.

What it might do is get me labeled a pirate by gold, resulting in gold increasing my bounty (making me a more attractive target), me being unable to dock with stations in gold controled sectors, automatic hostility by gold NPC's, and eventually (should my reputation sink low enough), NPC bounty hunters that would chase me from sector to sector at regular intervals.

Or at lower levels of 'bad reputation', it might only mean that merchants in gold controlled sectors won't give me as good of a price as they would otherwise, or might refuse to sell me weapons, or some such.

Also, bad reputation might mean that if you had attacked a ship in a neutral sector, that the neutral NPC's would attack you, and that the station would refuse to allow you to dock.

There are some things a reputation system can take into account, and others that it can't. One thing that it can't take into account is intention. It can't determine that you fired in self-defence to preemptively stop someone from rocket ramming you. It only knows who fired first, or who was damaged first, or who destroyed who first. Suppose you have this sequence, you fire on a hostile bot and miss. Then someone fires on you and damages you. The system can't know who you intended to shoot, so if the system depends on who fired first, then its going to note that when you were damaged by your attacker, you had just fired. Obviously you are the aggressor, right? Or, suppose you are fired on by a pirate, but you dodge the rocket, and slam him with tri-gauss. If the system depends on who was damaged first, the obviously you are the aggressor, right?

So don't expect a reputation system to be perfect. A reasonably good one measures a fairly complex set of cases, but I doubt anyone of them will work for every case.

That still will be much better than either nothing, or a system that depends on player votes. The only thing that player votes are good for is letting mods know who to keep an eye on.

The "self-defense" thing is a big factor in reputations. Suppose someone was to attack me in a rocket-bus. It would be pretty absurd of me to run away, but killing the bus would hurt my reputation. It's an issue that needs to be ironed out. Maybe a "combat mode" will have to be instituted where targetting a "hostile" puts you on alert and firing the weapon puts you in "combat mode" with respect to that player or bot. Maybe attacking a player on another team while they are in "combat mode" with respect to another member of your nation or group should not count against you, but otherwise, whoever goes into "combat mode" first gets the black-mark against them. I have no idea how it would be implemented or what kind of havoc it would wreack with network load, but it's the only approach I can think of.

As a side effect, it may be that a reputation system will actually, indirectly, force us to adopt some form of "rules of engagement" when it comes to combat to minimize the effects of attacking.

What about having trade routes where you can't fire weapons? They would be like those race track tubes but much larger and weapons would be disabled inside of them or maybe have police bots patrol them or even have turrets at certain intervals that fire at hostile players.

These routes would only take you to common areas where you could make a moderate profit in safety but areas with huge profits would be in open space and would leave you vunrable to pirates.

...and only pilots with good karma could access them

Ok, ok, this is all good, but it has a topic of its own.

http://vendetta.guildsoftware.com/?action=msgboard&thread=3668&page=1

I hath vented my spleen.

What I think would be a good idea is a forced filter on the most offensive words "fuck", "nigger", "cunt" etc (pardon my french) or simply an automute if these words were used frequently. Although this doesnt take care of the unnecessary web of bullshit that is created by a few, it would be a good start. Oh, and colored stars after names. Green for saintly (awarded by guides for good behaviour, defusing hostile exchanges) blue for standard, yellow after swearwords have been picked up, and red after a guide has stepped in. After that, mutes. Or something.

Oh yeah, and put the "Be Nice" on the page linking to the board in HUGE CAPITAL LETTERS in flashing rainbow colors. And maybe do a similar thing when logging into Vendetta, on the loading screen; "BE NICE! BE NICE! BE NICE! BE NICE!" scrolling across as the game loads.

Hell! Make it pop up every time someone swears and make it hang there for 5 seconds, impeding the culprit's view!

A: "are you hostile?"

*zapzapzapzapzap*

B: "die nigger"

*BE NICE flashes up in neon colors on foulmouth's screen*

B: "AHH WTFOMG"

*boom*

Problem solved!

The devs have said that casual swearing is okay, though. If I get mad and start swearing when my keyboard freezes, should I really get halfway to muted for that?

"If I get mad and start swearing when my keyboard freezes, should I really get halfway to muted for that?"

-Don't swear. Pick up a thesaurus or something.

Instead of: "G*DA*MN IT I HATE THIS F*CK*NG PIECE OF SH*T C*NT WH*RING C*CKS*CK*NG KEYBOARD!!!

You could say: "I find this keyboard's propensity to cease functioning to be abominable and extremely frustrating and I don't much care for it at all. As a matter of fact, I intend to write a strongly worded letter to my cretinous little brother for spilling his grapejuice all over it."

Or something like that.

I cringed when someone mentioned weaponless traderoutes. You can give pirates reputations, you can flood sectors with police bots, you can even send bounty bots to dog them sector to sector, but to create systems where they cannot go is ludicrous. If you want safe traderoutes, go from your home sector to its adjacent. That's what they're there for. If you go anywhere else, you will have to expect the appearance of pirates.

As far as global chat goes, I wouldn't mind seeing it go. Maybe you could create a bar in every station where people could go and chat globally, or some such. It might be an interesting way to pick up some jobs...

Hmm, no global chat but there is a bar which does... Great idea! That way each sector could communicate with each other, but it wouldn't be constantly.