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« on: September 02, 2018, 04:37:01 PM »
Lately I've been mining in pirate controlled space. When a stray Hegemony patrol happened by and noticed my very civilian looking fleet (freighters, mining ships and escort frigates) loitering around a resource rich planet with it's transponder off, I was chased down and ordered to turn my transponder on... right next to a giant pirate fleet that had been ignoring me. I had two options, and both of them sucked. I chose to engage and destroy the Hegemony patrol. (Not an easy fight on paper, but many of my mining ships and freighters had hammer class torpedoes, so their Venture class cruiser was not much of an issue.) Thus begun my life as an outlaw.
Can we please have this issue fixed? Possible suggestions:
1. Patrols will not enforce "transponders on" rules outside of a certain radius of the station or planet the patrol originated from, thus giving them a sort of "faction controlled space boundary." Having this appear on the system map, with a warning upon entering or exiting a boundary would be tremendously helpful.
2. Upon being stopped by a patrol, you have a dialogue option to request to stay transponder dark without penalty if you have a sufficiently high reputation with the patrol's faction.
3. Patrols either ignore fleets which lack a significant number of combat ships, or make them a lower priority. They would still hunt smugglers and preform cargo scans, but wouldn't actively try to chase down and destroy transponder dark fleets which are primarily composed of freighters or industrial vessels.