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If you do the slightest crime, and you don't immediately pay the fines, you are treated with fire until dead. Essentially, if your debt in crime is over 300, you're branded for destruction and a police patrol, either around a station or when bumping into you after a jump, will open fire until you're dead or manages to flee. Until that happens the law enforcement is rather anonymous unless you deliberately clicks on the police station on a base to read your standing. To put the 300 limit in context, the lowest base fine is 500.

I propose:

[ ] 1. Increase the fine limit to something larger to give a bit of margin. You could accidentally press the spacebar or jump too early. Those things happen. [Assigned: @zonkmachine] Fixed in https://github.com/pioneerspacesim/pioneer/pull/6128

[ ] 2. Add a flag [❗] over the police badge to indicate that the police want your attention.
[Assigned: @zonkmachine] Fixed in https://github.com/pioneerspacesim/pioneer/pull/6128 by Sturnclaw and bszlrd

[ ] 3. Have the police just nag a bit if your fines are on the lower side.
[Assigned: @zonkmachine] Fixed in https://github.com/pioneerspacesim/pioneer/pull/6128 with reminders by patrol on scanning when arriving to a system and automated reminder on docking.

[ ] 4. Have the station draw fines that are within your budget automatically if you are within a lawful bureaucratic faction.

[ ] 5. If you don't respond fire from a police patrol, have the police escort you to the nearest station for further processing.

[ ] 6. Revoked take off clearance. This is already implemented as a message when requesting permission to take off but it isn't enforced. It could have an "illegal take off" offense to Legal.lua and perhaps some other implications. Like making you the responsible if an accident happens while taking off and you haven't requested permission to take off.

Some further ideas:

Maybe you can go to prison and spend some time on 'Tranquility' only to be released after a couple of months and if your assets didn't cover your leagal fees/fines, the ship has been stripped from things that can be sold, weapons first, or if the costs are large, the ship itself been sold and you'll end up having to buy a cheaper ship than you started out with, or the game simply ends if you can't even afford a Xylophis. Don't do crime or if you insist, be good at it.

When you buy/sell goods that are illegal, the criminal charge is 'Trading illegal goods'. Maybe there should be another term, 'Smuggling', that is essentially the same charge but for when you enter an area with illegal goods.

1. Player can abort hyperjump, but that's beside the point. Change threshold to something that works.
2. Sounds like a plan
3. Nag in comms log? Sounds fine by me
4. Only if player has reached some medium to high level of "wanted"-level, I think.
5. Indeed. so police will only follow you, but not shoot? Or police will give player X minutes to keep within X meters from the police?

If player goes to prison, is that 0 time for the player? Or do you enter some kind of mini-game for making it out of prison, like Tango & Cash (yeah, beyond our resources to do)

impaktor wrote: ↑Sun May 04, 2025 3:35 pm 1. Player can abort hyperjump, but that's beside the point. Change threshold to something that works.

Yes. You, can abort, but I recently got hammered by a patrol and didn't know why. When I checked the latest save it turned out that I had somewhere made an illegal jump. No idea how that happened. The only improvised jump I did was when I escaped pirates earlier by jumping from Sol to Proxima Centauri.

impaktor wrote: ↑Sun May 04, 2025 3:35 pm 2. Sounds like a plan

I've looked into it but this one seem a bit hard. The icon is shield_other is selected in 07-police.lua but the drawing is done in.. tab-view.lua (?).
So what is needed is for tab-view.lua to be extended to take an optional color for the icon. Something like that. It sounds a bit over my capacity at this moment.

impaktor wrote: ↑Sun May 04, 2025 3:35 pm 3. Nag in comms log? Sounds fine by me

I'm on it.

impaktor wrote: ↑Sun May 04, 2025 3:35 pm 4. Only if player has reached some medium to high level of "wanted"-level, I think.

Yes. You need to earn it.

impaktor wrote: ↑Sun May 04, 2025 3:35 pm 5. Indeed. so police will only follow you, but not shoot? Or police will give player X minutes to keep within X meters from the police?

Yes. I'm thinking it would look something like this.
Ship places themselves on the side and behind.
Message: "OK Cowboy, you've had your fun. Now follow us back to {station}. I'll make it clear for you. Select the leader ship and choose 'Set as navigation target'. Yes, I mean the auto-pilot and you do have one. No fast movements and we know if you activate the guns. Be a good little captain and play it safe."

Something like that but probably shorter. Intimidating, funny, and pedagogic.

impaktor wrote: ↑Sun May 04, 2025 3:35 pm If player goes to prison, is that 0 time for the player? Or do you enter some kind of mini-game for making it out of prison, like Tango & Cash (yeah, beyond our resources to do)

Maybe you can have some interaction with other prisoners similarly like the 'Crew for hire' module. You could perhaps learn some new skills there. Where to find naughty missions and who to look up after you're released for a future in that kind of business.

Maybe you can have some interaction with other prisoners similarly like the 'Crew for hire' module. You could perhaps learn some new skills there.

A MS Minesweeper embedded in Pioneer. Or solitaire.

Commander Keen 4-6 had paddle board game in the menu, for some reason.

On serious note: Mass Effect has the renegade & paragon character points (separate mechanisms, that do not interact). Going to prison increases "renegade", and unlocks assassination missions.

Just shooting ideas, not committing anything.

impaktor wrote: ↑Sun May 04, 2025 5:49 pm ...and unlocks assassination missions.

If assassinations could be handled off the BBS or on some dedicated crime syndicate BBS that would be great.

Assassination missions (and goods trader) are to be removed from BBS, and moved to the (future) Bar, as I mention/dream about here:
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=454

Before pigui I started working on a "bar"-tab / station view using NewUI. This is why the icon set contains a martini-glass (and beer-glass), but I didn't get beyond the initial stages.

I could do an icon variation for when there's business with the police. Like a little notification dot. I think I can't color it selectively though

First draft here: https://github.com/pioneerspacesim/pioneer/pull/6128

bszlrd wrote: ↑Sun May 04, 2025 9:32 pm I could do an icon variation for when there's business with the police. Like a little notification dot. I think I can't color it selectively though

Yes, an alternative icon, if no color, would be possible for me to add. Please! :)

impaktor wrote: ↑Sun May 04, 2025 6:37 pm Assassination missions (and goods trader) are to be removed from BBS, and moved to the (future) Bar, as I mention/dream about here:
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=454

Yes, I've seen that post. Good idea. It's the way it's done in Vega Strike. A main concourse with branches to traders, ship market, bar etc.

Number 1, 2 and 3 are fixed in https://github.com/pioneerspacesim/pioneer/pull/6128 which is now ready for review.

The PR is ready for test and review: https://github.com/pioneerspacesim/pioneer/pull/6128

As a last change I added some timers around the events of the police scan for better flow. Instead of the police either being there waiting for you on arrival it will now take some time for the ships to turn up and some more time still for the scan to start.

You are especially needed if you are involved with the translations. I've tried and combine three separate strings in the final message to give some variation. In all it will give you 4 * 4 * 8 which means 128 different strings. They are not particularly complex though so I don't foresee any great difficulties with the translation.