DevTracker: About Pirates and Crimes

Wanted Ships and Crimes

"I detect a ship, I basic scan, it is "Wanted", can I attack safely?" Yes, with one exception: no-fire zones around starports – starport security takes a dim view of fighting near them, so you'll likely get spanked. Currently, I think you *will* get a rep hit, but we are going (at some point!) to change this.

Turrets – these should not be generating issues, as ships only turn hostile when they cause a hit (thus gaining a crime and starting the insta-scan). Obviously, until the fix for insta-scan goes in you won't be able to appreciate this!

Authority ships – unless you are near a starport, then authority ships should not attack bounty hunting players (players attacking a ship that they have scanned and detected a bounty on *in that location*! This last bit is important. Just because a ship has a bounty, you are only allowed to attack it if it is "wanted" right where you are now. (And obviously the insta-scan bug means that until the fix goes in, you *must* perform a basic scan before attacking).

Of course, once the Five-O turn up, you need to make sure you don't accidentally shoot them, or any other innocent bystander, as this will net you a bounty and plenty of incoming fire.

"I have turned off report crimes against me – what are my rights?" At the moment – not much. Your opponent will not have committed any crime, so unless they are already wanted, you would be committing a crime by retaliating.

A note about "report crimes against me": if you turn this off, folk can attack you with impunity, as no crime will be reported. The main reason you would want to do this is if you don't want the police to turn up (for example, you might be clean at your location, but carrying a lot of stolen goods).

"A ship attacks me, it turns red, but it's still "Clean". What gives?" Well, off the top of my head, the only circumstances I can see this being valid are:

1. You are wanted.
2. You are in an anarchy
3. You have turned "report crimes against me" off

Crimes in anarchy systems

No crimes are logged in anarchies. Period. If you get crimes occurring (fines or bounties), it's a bug!

Reputation with minor and major factions *does* get logged in anarchies. So if you continually destroy Federal ships in an anarchy, the Federation will become increasingly annoyed with you.

Pirates

Not all pirates have cargo scanners. The ones that don't simply make opportune attacks, because they're dastardly like that.

Currently if you're in an anarchy, I think all ship criminal statuses show as "clean", which is not quite right – at some point we'll get them to say "unavailable", which is a roundabout way of saying "watch out, this is an anarchy, no crimes are logged!"

We shouldn't really have any pirates lurking around with no bounty on them, so my guess is that you are being attacked by pirates in an anarchy. If you get attacked by clean pirates outside of an anarchy then raise a ticket (not because we don't think it's right, but because we don't have any pirate loudouts that don't have a bounty, so something would be mechanically going wrong).