I'm sure that many players have discovered that killing a few AI moths and selling their cargo can be a highly profitable enterprise. The downside is that these players pay a price in verisimilitude. Now, I am the last to demand absolute realism, but I would like to think that the game world of VO is intelligent enough for stations to realize when their own cargo is being sold back to them, particularly when, only moments before, the player selling the cargo killed the moth carrying it directly outside of the station.

Many players are probably familiar with this trope from RPG's like Oblivion, where shop owners will actually report you (if I remember correctly) when you try to sell their own items back to them, and only certain characters accept sales of stolen goods. Keeping all of this in mind, I propose the following changes, which I hope will help to foster a dynamic, believable faction relations system that responds to the actions of the player in a way that is both interesting and conducive to strategic gameplay. I would add that such a system (or a similar variant) is becoming standard in new RPG's and contributes to a richer, more immersive game environment.

1. "Stolen" goods cannot be sold back to their owning faction. If a player docks with goods stolen from the same faction that owns the station, then the goods will be repossessed.

2. Killing faction NPC's or stealing cargo results in a bounty on the player's head that must be reaped either by a bounty hunter or by paying the bounty amount to the faction while docked in one of that faction's stations; repossessed cargo counts towards this bounty. While the bounty is still active, the player's standing with that faction is set to Neutral or less.

3. Stolen goods are "marked" somehow, either with a color differentiation (as with CtC drops), or by changing the name of the items. The original owner needs to be designated.

4. In addition to collecting a bounty on players who have stolen cargo, bounty hunters may return the cargo to the original owning faction to receive a bonus.

5. Stolen goods can only be sold in gray, perhaps only to a certain faction--Corvus, perhaps?

I see someone's not familiar with guarded/monitored/unmonitored yet. That's cute.

Swing and a miss.

I'm fully aware of the faction relations and bounty systems currently in place, and I think my suggestions offer a few valuable changes that are decidedly different.

Your suggestion ignores that those distinctions are in place; you implicitly suggest either that they no longer apply for purposes of convoy kills, or, that your suggestion is actually less universal and more complex than you describe.

Maybe you'll deign to grace your readers with an explanation of which it actually is.

Would you care to explain what "distinctions" you are referring to? Points 1-5 in my original post are not a part of the game--correct me if I'm wrong--and they constitute the whole of my suggestion, which you do not appear to have read. I will not repeat these points, but if you care to look over them again, I would be happy to clear up any misunderstandings that you or I may have.

I'm fully aware of the faction relations . . . system[] currently in place

Apparently you're not as aware as you think you are.

Here's a hint as to why: 2. Killing faction NPC's or stealing cargo results in a bounty on the player's head . . . . While the bounty is still active, the player's standing with that faction is set to Neutral or less.

As far as I know, that is not a part of the game, and bounties accrue only when a player kills another player within monitored space. If there is an error in my post(s), why don't you explain where I went wrong rather than engaging in this kind of pretentious, cryptic bullshit?

Also, to avoid any further misunderstandings, I want to emphasize that points 1-5 are my suggestions for changing the game, and not statements about the current faction relations system.

You seem confused about who bears the burdens of explanation and persuasion re: suggestions.

That, too, is cute.

Troll boy just doesnt want you to close the loop hole that lets rats earn an infinate amount of easy money....

Restricting stolen cargo to corvus is interesting but what if it was corvus cargo that was stolen?

UIT?

Even if I were mistaken in any way, Lecter, there is still merit to my suggestion. But I am beginning to suspect that this point is irrelevant to any response that I can expect from you. After all, if your purpose were to advance the conversation rather than mire it in pubescent egotism and uncultivated condescension, or if you were half as smart as your posts are uncivil, then you would recognize that you, too, share the burden of explanation, since you have, after all, posted several useless responses. You lack both clarity and a sufficient cause for your petty rudeness, other than the indulgence, it seems, of an underdeveloped and misdirected ego that seeps through your posts not only here, in your snide, "That's cute," but also in your hasty and erroneous grammatical objections, in your ad hominem insults (look up the definition again--you seem to think that there is only one meaning per word), and in your generally barbaric demeanor. Rather than furthering the conversation, your posts consistently locate pleasure in the advancement of a sadistic and adversarial politics grounded, perhaps, in the fantasy that you really are somehow better than the other people on this board, that our insufficient and groveling minds can only enunciate what is naively "cute" to your own superiority. But the reality is quite opposite to the implicit self-narrative of your posts: you lack the charity and careful attention to sympathy and detail that are the hallmarks of a sound and cultivated intelligence, and your posts overflow with an abundance of arrogance and a dearth of civility. Your function on this board, in other words, is that of a parasite, and a dull one at that, one that suffers from an excess of the cliche, and a persistent poverty of imagination.

That said, I would still be interested in hearing what others think about my suggestion.

Edit: I agree with tarenty's answer to PaKettle.

This thread is so supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!

First, it's not "a" word; it's a phrase composed of two words. Do try to keep up.

Second, I never said it had only one meaning - merely one relevant meaning in the context in which you're (less than admirably) attempting to use it.

Third, there has been a wonderful invention called the paragraph. Please look into it.

Finally, if you're proposing to fundamentally change the meaning of "unmonitored space" you should probably explain that a bit better and justify the departure from the norm.

Pls hndl. thx.

The way I had interpreted it, the convoys purchase their cargo from the station. They may have the same faction as the station they originate from, but that doesn't mean they work for that station. I am UIT, but the UIT stations still require me to pay for their goods. So if I rob a convoy that just left a Tunguska station, I only robbed the convoy itself, not necessarily the station. The station has already been paid for the goods.

So far I have never seen something sell at a station for more than I had to pay to buy it from that same station.

If you put those two concepts together, you can see how the stations might not mind my looting of convoys. They get to sell high and buy low, only to resell it high again to the next group of idiots who fly into my stream of fire.

Of course, more reputable dealers are not willing to put up with such activities. Those dealers constrain their operations to nation-space. The dealers who don't care hang out in greyspace.

UIT is composed of a number of law abiding corporations...I suspect they would not be involved with fencing stolen goods unless you were highly respected... for a large fee of course.

I am thinking along the the lines of how a pawn shop would operate with payment based on a percentage of retail and your local reputation.

Disliked - 5%
Neutral - 10%
Repected - 15%
Admired - 20%
POS - 25%

The cargo would have to be marked which would mean adding a flag or using the upper bit of the item number which would cut the number of possible items in half. Flagging which faction it was stolen from might prove to be a bit much. Guild would have to determine the method.

As long as the pirate takes a faction hit for killing an npc in monitored space I cant really see worrying too much over where the stolen goods came from...

Unmonitored space should never cause a faction loss - unless a member of the convoy survives to report the identity of the attacker.

PaKettle: unless a member of the convoy survives to report the identity of the attacker.

Well, in this weird universe where NPCs does not know to use communications, and forget everything in every jump, this would be an welcome change...

Like, if any member of convoy survives and docks to a station, the attacker(s) gets a penalty and cargo is marked as stolen. Similar to OP proposal.

Also, NPCs should have persistent memory of who attacks them...

Same applies to aborting a convoy then attacking it.