As suggested by impaktor - I am moving the discussion on crime, penalties and tweaking the law & order system to this forum. To understand the framework of this discussion + see my main comments and suggestions please see https://github.com/pioneerspacesim/pioneer/issues/3497.
I believe we have a great opportunity here to make the player conscious of local space and politics, as well as to create a partly dynamic universe (from the viewpoint of the player) - without requiring major changes. Feel free to tear my ideas apart. I work in science - I'm used to that :).
Crime penalties and consequences of a criminal lifestyle
Re: Crime penalties and consequences of a criminal lifestyle
I think it might be warranted to treat "unlawful weapons discharge" in a special way, since that compounds the fines so fast. It's not like there's a problem that you "accidentally" murder 100 ships/persons while playing with the controls of your craft close to a station.
Re: Crime penalties and consequences of a criminal lifestyle
Would it be feasible to split this offense?
"Unlawful weapons discharge" should be a minor offense, where each shot does not contribute to the fine, but every hour where any number of shots are fired in the vicinity of a certain station counts as an individual fee.
On the other hand - destroying a ship within x-radius of a station might be a much more serious offense with a much higher fine.
That way accidentally firing a shot won't cause serious problems. But if you fire like a maniac every time you visit the station the fines increase (according to my model) and you become known as the dangerously crazy person you are.
"Unlawful weapons discharge" should be a minor offense, where each shot does not contribute to the fine, but every hour where any number of shots are fired in the vicinity of a certain station counts as an individual fee.
On the other hand - destroying a ship within x-radius of a station might be a much more serious offense with a much higher fine.
That way accidentally firing a shot won't cause serious problems. But if you fire like a maniac every time you visit the station the fines increase (according to my model) and you become known as the dangerously crazy person you are.
Re: Crime penalties and consequences of a criminal lifestyle
I have one, rather dramatic change in mind when it comes to crime detection:
Make it depend on line of sight to the spaceports rather than distance.
In space everyone can see everything, so no matter how far are you in the system, if you are in open space port authorities will see your heat signature (since they have the equipment and presumably have it sweeping the sky) and be able to track it.
What should effectively hide you are astronomical bodies, infrastructure (both between you and observer and, to a lesser degree as your backdrop) and atmospheres (in both cases the detection should be distance based and require observer to be pretty close - as in at most thousands of km).
So, deep space thuggery should require either switched off transponder or a spoofed one (flying around with no transponder should trigger request to switch it on immediately, followed by armed response from the authorities, also it should only work if you weren't observed switching it on or off) or not being so deep space and take place close to material objects - which is more interesting than always duking it out in the middle of nowhere.
Additionally NPC ships could have random and range based chance of reporting you (details depending on how the orbital map works for you - can you see if a bunch of ships are duking it out half the system away), also affected by lawfulness of the system itself.
Finally, taking damage while engaging in criminal activities should increase chances of getting caught even when flying with spoofed/inactive transponder (authorities matching damage patterns on your ship to that on the unknown assailant).
Make it depend on line of sight to the spaceports rather than distance.
In space everyone can see everything, so no matter how far are you in the system, if you are in open space port authorities will see your heat signature (since they have the equipment and presumably have it sweeping the sky) and be able to track it.
What should effectively hide you are astronomical bodies, infrastructure (both between you and observer and, to a lesser degree as your backdrop) and atmospheres (in both cases the detection should be distance based and require observer to be pretty close - as in at most thousands of km).
So, deep space thuggery should require either switched off transponder or a spoofed one (flying around with no transponder should trigger request to switch it on immediately, followed by armed response from the authorities, also it should only work if you weren't observed switching it on or off) or not being so deep space and take place close to material objects - which is more interesting than always duking it out in the middle of nowhere.
Additionally NPC ships could have random and range based chance of reporting you (details depending on how the orbital map works for you - can you see if a bunch of ships are duking it out half the system away), also affected by lawfulness of the system itself.
Finally, taking damage while engaging in criminal activities should increase chances of getting caught even when flying with spoofed/inactive transponder (authorities matching damage patterns on your ship to that on the unknown assailant).