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[Megas]

Just thinking if player faction, after it gets big and powerful enough, has deserters in a future version.

Say you have two or more nice size 8+ worlds, and your faction is at least as powerful as the strongest major faction.  You have defectors from time to time joining the rogue gallery of other deserters in piracy.  It seems a bit silly for your own faction posting bounties like other factions to pay you bounties for killing defectors from your own faction.  (If anything, the player should be the one posting bounties for NPCs to kill them.)  Would deserters be handled by an event?  Would there be any penalties suffered by your faction, similar to pirate activity?  If the player hunted down his deserters and personally dealt with the problem, would the player get a reward (beyond making penalties go away), like say, a temporary morale bonus for your worlds?

[goduranus]

Ohhh I would love to fight deserters from my own faction! Facing down 6 Astrals and 4 Moras and 10 Herons and 10 Drovers, or 10 Paragons

[RawCode]

deserters are immersion breaking...

player must drag around large number of cargo ships to sustain self, at same time deserters just "stay" for 90 days without any supplies just fine.

10 paragons not viable without 20 cargo ships to drag supply and fuel.

[Megas]

I guess that is why deserters only last 90 days.  Pirates, being Chaotic Stupid Evil as they are, get stranded at their hidey-hole because they forgot to bring enough fuel and supplies, then hang around to die (because they cannot gate out of the system), either by murder-hobo player or by time (no more supplies).

I generally have no problem with deserters.  They clearly exist for the player to mug for money and rep.  So far, my only problem with them is deserters appear too early due to time scaling.

But mugging for money and rep does not feel like it would work for deserters that come from your own faction.

One alternate idea for pirate activity is instead of (or in addition to) the usual "kill pirate base before it sends hundreds of ships to raid your colonies", you need to hunt down deserters instead.

[Tei]

I guess that is why deserters only last 90 days.  Pirates, being Chaotic Stupid Evil as they are, get stranded at their hidey-hole because they forgot to bring enough fuel and supplies, then hang around to die (because they cannot gate out of the system), either by murder-hobo player or by time (no more supplies).

I generally have no problem with deserters.  They clearly exist for the player to mug for money and rep.  So far, my only problem with them is deserters appear too early due to time scaling.

But mugging for money and rep does not feel like it would work for deserters that come from your own faction.

One alternate idea for pirate activity is instead of (or in addition to) the usual "kill pirate base before it sends hundreds of ships to raid your colonies", you need to hunt down deserters instead.

Or just have the pirate guy hang out around or dock at a pirate station and handwave it as resupplying from time to time. Or maybe they will join in in the fun when its pirate deathball raiding time.

[SCC]

The reason why pirates just hang out in random far away places is because that's one way to avoid having them sniped by someone else. It does feel a bit gamey, though.
It would be nice if there were better-than-normal bounties on pirates that do fly around and attack traders and whatnot, with lesser certainty being offset by higher payout. It could even go into privateer territory, where the best paying contracts aren't on a given faction's deserters, but on that factions loyal and active members. There still is a chance that they die due to some unrelated activity, but again, bigger risk, bigger money. And it would make sense why other factions want to get rid of them.