Another idea I just had: when you're killed by someone, his standing is automaticaly reduced... Maybe it's up to you to decide instead of having the game do it for you? As in: "You were killed by X. Report this incident and lower his standing with your nation?" and then two buttons: "yes" and "no". This way if you get killed by accident, or if you're a pirate or military pilot with a sense of honour, you can spare the opponent YOU just attacked the penalty associated with killing you. On the other hand, if you get pirated or attacked for no apparent reason by someone, you could "report the incident" and lower his stats with your nation. After all, this guy IS a threat to your fellow citizens.

Also, the impact of these reports should depend on how much the person reporting it is liked by his own nation: if someone who's not liked by his own nation reports an incident with the aim of lowering the opponent's standings, why should the nation believe him instead of his opponent? If your reputation is low, so will be your credibility. The more ppl like you, the more impact your reports will have, but below a certain point they will have no more impact whatsoever.

Also, the person you kill might not be popular among his fellow citizens at all; just because some number in his record states so doesn't mean any of his fellow players like him.

I for one think that the faction system is flawed right now. It doesn't reflect any real relationships. Example: I like several serco pilots and consider them mates, yet whenever they show up on radar, they're identified as the enemy. I'd rather see the current faction system complemented by a system where one could list individual players and assign his own standing towards them, which overrides the game mandated standing.

Other than that: sometimes you just have to kill someone because they attack you first, because they pose a threat. Why the hell should my standing with another faction suffer from me defending my life against one of theirs? Why should I be unable to dock with the neutral territories just because some neut. pirate happens to chase me the whole time? Probably the neutrals are very well aware that this player is a pirate and look down upon his actions, and don't mind me killing him in the least, but as far as the game is concerned, I killed him, so my standing suffers. To protect against this, there should also be some sort of way that influential players (think: the ones making up the government) could assign nation standings towards certain players, both from other nations and their own. This way they could reflect the fact that they dislike the pirate, in which case the standing penalty for killing him is reduced, negated or even inverted into a reward instead of a penalty, and they could also make sure that some "foreigners" which behave themselves well are granted some sort of diplomatic immunity by changing the nation standing towards these players into neutral, like, love or whatever they feel like.

Anyway, in both cases, the game engine should not be the decisive factor; individual players should.

ps: why the hell do neutrals show up as red dots and get selected when you select the nearest enemy, and they just happen to be the nearest ship? The neutrals are supposed to be neutral, so as long as their standing with your nation is OK, they should show up as neutral, not as hostile. The game should be updated to reflect this; now it's not just "us and the enemy" anymore, but "us, the ones we tolerate or like, and the ones we dislike".

So to wrap it up: I think these elements are a good idea to implement, without going into details of the implementation itself since it's trivial where the data gets stored etc... and the devs don't need my input on this:

1) governments with government officials who can change the nations standing towards individual players; the interface should allow for them to edit the standing and attach a note explaining why it's so.

2) Players should be able to assign individual standings to other players, again the interface should allow for attaching a note.

3) Players should be able to switch back and forth between personal standing stats and game-mandated stats, in case of an emergency. Imagine an invasion where some of your friends partake in the action, you want to be able to target them as well to repell the invasion.

4) Players should be able to consent to drop the faction penalty for killing them, so they can have a nice duel without any negative side effects.

Main idea here: players should be able to shape their own ingame relationships; something the game can never do for them. If you disallow players to decide for themselves whether or not they happen to like individual players on the other side, you're creating a very dull environment to play in.

Also, it might be time to introduce a nation's militia. The current situation is ridiculous. A bunch of traders and other civilians fighting each other because they belong to different nations. Traders don't care, civilians don't care, all they want is to make a quick buck.

ps: no negative criticism intended. Just giving my $0.02... I'm sure the devs have already considered most of what I said so it's probably redundant anyway, but still, it's a beta test and providing input is what we're here for.

So while the faction system has lots of cool things involved with it, I'm worried that it has also signalled a death to dueling. Especially among NT pilots who treasure good relations with all factions. If it is decided that there ought to be a "field of honor" in which scores could be settled we would need to have a duel mode. At first I was thinking of something like the racing sectors, but I decided that such an arrangement wouldn't be feasible in a 1000 sector universe. So some sort of mode you could engage in which two consenting parties, be they teams or just individuals may consent to duel. The outcome of the battle between those two would leave no trace on the faction and ranking systems and anyone who interrupts a duel would be severely punished by the factions involved.

Dueling could even be turned into a gambling event that takes place in black-market sectors like 10 or 15.

I suggest that there be sectors where the whole standing system is disabled. These could be (the) hidden sectors with lots of dubious stuff going on - blackmarket, assassination missions, pirating drones, gambling, maybe even some 'organized crime' by drones - the "bad" sectors of vendetta.

You could always duel in the racing sectors.

you still take a faction hit with the nation of the person you kill.

Nighty, that is a profoundly perfect suggestion. As a matter of fact, I think that's the single most brilliant thing I've ever seen posted. Bravo!

Aww, shucks, now yous made me blush... ;)

*bump for the devs to read and impliment*

This would be an EXCELLENT idea Nighty. Would your standing go down with your nation as you kill more people? So if you've killed 100, and say this guy attacked you first, no ones going to listen?

Hmm, didn't think of it that way... But I guess that would be a bit tricky; sometimes it's necessary to kill someone. For example when on a military mission for your nation, or when they attacked you first.

So I'd say, let's just try and implement the system where the game supports a politics/guild system, and the leaders can affect nation standings towards individuals in order to negate the effects of you killing those people because they attack you first or something. I suppose most nations would look down on pirates, so they would be pretty much banished from society by their own nation, just like criminals are in our world, hence killing them would not be frowned upon as severely as would be killing of people they actually like.

Part of this could be automated perhaps, but the current faction system can only be justified for testing purposes, and I'm sure the devs will already have an idea for something better, but they just need to test the system first before making it more complicated than it is already.

if im not mistaken the racing sectors have been eliminated from the game... i prolly am, but somebody asked about it and dint nobody answered. i told them that the racing sectors werent planned for the final version, however i dint know if they were/are still there now...

yes, your ideas were great indeed Nighty. for such a complex idea, you found a way for even me to understand the idea in its own.