Game must spawn 1-3 detachments to attack player upon detection. After all how do they know you are not some maniacal pirate king who want to bombard the planet just for fun. Better to scrap stealth raids altogether - the idea of huge fleet hiding in low orbit is questionable. If you want to raid - get ready for war.
Agree. If you want to raid, then accept the hit to your rep. Don't go around "playing" pirate. Be a pirate and deal with it.
I disagree. As an analogy, here, if this were "real life-esque" setting, I'm trying to rob a bank - not bomb an ever living hell out of quarter of a city. I pop in, grab the goodies, pop out, before any authorities show up. Done well, the worst I should be expecting is an investigation that ultimately fails to find the culprit. What I should NOT be expecting is the whole nation instantly knowing who I am, declaring war on me, carpet bombing my apartment etc.
In Starsector universe I imagine it's perfectly possible for a fleet to park safely away from the planet's surface, send dropships to sneak up on the colony's defenses, hit the least defended spots and steal valuables from some warehouses, then disappear before anyone knows who that was. It's not like there's any registration plates on the ships or nametags on necks of the marines. It's a whole different story when I'm deliberately introducing myself by having a transponder on, or pirating too many times - small rep hits accumulating over time reflect a rising amount of witnesses whom authorities of the faction slowly begin listening to and believing that, in fact, it was me behind all this piracy.
They keep going up to you because they're in the military and it's their job to do so.
Actually fighting you though, once you refuse to turn it on? Yea, that's dumb if you're vastly more powerful. As is not fleeing once you turn it on and recognize as a hostile entity.
If you're hostile with the faction, you get stopped and agree to turn on TP, they
do actually flee.
Screenshot:
In any case,
I have absolutely no problem in them going after me and stopping me, even if they're small fleets. It's reasonable. What I DO have a problem with is that they go Leeroy Jenkins at me and suicide against my super-fleet. Being in military does not justify such unreasonable behavior, unless maybe it's Luddic Path - they're fanatic extremists after all.
I don't think its fair to complain about the rep loss however. You're doing something illegal. Always being able to run with your transponder off is incredibly powerful as well. If you don't want rep loss, run dark, don't fly along common routes.
The problem with this is that you get this rep loss
several times during one operation - if there are multiple patrols, they will go up to you one after another and each time you refuse to turn on your TP you get a double rep penalty (once for being stopped, once for refusal).
This rapidly builds up and in the end you lose more reputation from arguing about the transponder with the patrols than actually attacking the planet, which is absurd. You could actively fight the faction and murder its main battle fleets for a while and you probably wouldn't accumulate more reputation loss with that.