After spending a considerable time as a discovery police officer I can say those little side trips to the border worlds are usually fun. When it's quiet at home travelling out of the built up area to clear out the highway is a nice change. Those areas are not isolated wastelands as some seem to imply but are rather the high volume traffic highways are connect the major houses to each other are and are subject to the heavy traffic that is typical of the economy of industrious houses.
Of course we can still escort ships back and forth or come to their aid, but I find it troubling that a pirate could attack a transport, destroy it before help arrives and calmly walk away saying "who me?" to the arriving officer. Pirates are not the only interest the border worlds, smugglers are wandering around as well and contraband items illegal in every house and in some cases by international law between two houses created purely for those systems. Such as slaves, can now be happily transported without fear. Somehow "Oh look, that fellow reads as having 1000 people cramped into his sole cargo container. Well never mind." doesn't seem like a realistic walk-the-other-way situation.
This move doesn't seem like it's there to enhance the RP and lore of the border worlds. Despite the fact that many houses have already lost considerable breathing room to various hostile takeovers it seems more like this change is here to stifle the spread of house factions, who are now having to suck it in. I'll point out that limiting actions to hostile 'houses' is indeed very much in favor to pirates, if the description of pirate can still be applied to those faction sporting cruisers and battleships capable of going head to head with the best the military has to offer. Why is it purely limited to hostile houses when there are pirate groups out there who are capable of being just as much a threat? It's seems to be based on the simple twisted logic that there are two governments who are at war, and war goes above all laws, while pirates no matter how well equipped are still merely pirates and thus do not warranted the same attention. If the military is allowed to attack their counter parts in the border worlds then the police forces should be allowed to attack theirs. The nonsense that a since a house is at war every resource is devoted to that is absurd, the police factions are there for the sole reason of enforcing the law, taking out pirates and catching smugglers. If we wanted to be out there defending the nation against hostile invaders we'd have joined the military.
All is not lost for police factions though, the solution to ZOI limitations has already been tried and tested. I'm of course referring to the [M]olly's 'Wild Geese" mercenary sub faction. All police factions need to do is request the use of a secondary generic ID (e.g Mercenary), create a sub faction listed with the purpose 'Outsourced Security Contractors" and then place them on the house bounty board. Therefore, their members to simply need to switch out the ID on their usual ships and not only can they now target any faction or indie listed on the board in the border worlds but, with some minor cooperation between houses, can travel virtually Sirius wide tracking their targets. If the [M]ollys can create a merc group to shoot Corsairs across Sirius in Gamma then I can make one to hunt pirates next door.
