Alternative Options

[Blodo]

While your point is valid and under most circumstances this will not lead to any severe consequences from the admins; i frequently hear assumptions from players about some of these 'rules'. Many believe they are integrated into the discovery server rules somehow and this information is adapted by most newbies (that often tend to be the ones that breach them). In this sense it is safe to say that it is now common knowledge; like firing around a zoner base for example is a no-go, not so much because of the RP, but because of the supposed ooRP consequences.

This is true and I saw it myself. But the main issue with these players is that they aren't really on forums to begin with, so they can't educate themselves. I'm open to ideas how we can communicate to players that house laws are different from server rules, and can be broken with only possible RP consequences as opposed to hard sanctions.

Now this to me seems like obsessive balancing. There will always be shortcuts, and there has always been a risk entailed when travelling through hessian/corsair contested space. That was the price of a shortcut in vanilla which some of us may remember was demonstrated perfectly with the S13 <-> Berlin hole way back when. While it was lulzy, there was a clear option between taking the shortcut and likely getting pirated, or taking the safe route through frankfurt. This has never really been a bad thing in my opinion. It's unfortunate to see the geography of the mod changed to force people into positions that will better serve the RP of the mod as a whole. Cross road systems are a terrible idea that wastes time and creates space that nobody knows what to do with. Our opinions obviously differ on this as I think directing activity back to trade lanes is a poor excuse for creating a new system; especially with all of the calls from the community to integrate system ideas.

Here's the thing about that: the shortcut eventually became "the one true way", as was the case with diamond niob (which was on top of everything else also overpowered as a commodity anyway). When it becomes "the one true way", it is like a black hole and sucks the activity away from the surrounding area. During 4.84 diamond niob times the only activity in Rheinland was found in New Berlin around the S-13 JH, and everyone else you found was either heading to or from the jump hole. That's not even a minor imbalance, that's just meh. Sure, I had fun camping the hole in my Hessian and killing everything and everyone and it being a constant battle for survival, but also blowing up the same BHG BC gets old after some time too. Maybe I want a change of scenery? I can't get it because everything and everyone is in New Berlin and heading out. So instead of an uncontrolled shortcut, we create a controlled one, and it's also a more obvious one where one can easily associate lanes with traffic, potential piracy and the need for security.

But yea, once again I'm open to suggestions what to do about O-9 for example other than deleting it.