Yesterday, I was heading to defend my nations cargo ship, but I didn't make it in time. However, I did manage get there in time to see who took the Ore, so I chased them and they quickly went through a wormhole in the opposite direction that they need to get to deliver the cargo, so I decided to chase them through.

This person fled the wormhole and instead of warping out of the sector, we just far enough away from me to log off.

Now, I don't have any problems with someone needing to log off in the middle of a mission, but I do have a problem with someone exploiting their ability to log off as a means to prevent from being chased. This person was clearly using an exploit, because I decided to leave the sector after a while and ten minutes later, I saw a report of him delivering the cargo.

Perhaps 10 seconds isn't a long enough logoff timer when someone is not docked. Maybe something like 30 seconds. Or maybe 30 seconds when someone has this type of cargo.

Maybe logging off on purpose should cause the cargo to be jettisoned?

Or the other way around... You can't log off while you have cargo?

This would allow for lost connections...
The problem then would be people disconnecting from the 'net to get away.
I guess there is no way to stop this without hurting people with flaky connections.

This has been a problem for an ungodly long time. It used to be they could log off in a wormhole which was 10x worse. As it is now they have to be vunerable again before they can log off.

It does suck however traders would really not like not being able to log off without loosing their cargo. I cannot see any feesable solutions at this time that would work for everybody in the game.

you loose the cargo if you log off while having it. I'm not sure if its jettisoned into space, or not, but its not there when you log back.

empirically tested earlier, check the bugs forum.

I think there may be no better way to deal with this than having some kind of group of Moderators/Immortals/Appointed Game Judges to whom you could report a purposeful logoff to flee. The group of people would then arbitrate a settlement of some kind and keep track of how many times a person has been accused of this.

You can't really program a computer to get to the bottom of a disagreement or situation, or to make a judgement call. I think this problem is most easily solved with a human touch.

As for who this magical group should be comprised of, i don't know. Devoted vets?