Dealing with silent power traders isn't only a pirate or law enforcement frustration either, @The_Godslayer. Believe me.
I stepped away from Discovery for a span of about four to five months while I got my IRL shit in order. Moving across the entire span of the planet (from the Midwest US back home to Guam) tends to leave very little room for any fun hobbies or games. When I came back, I decided to run a little Freelance trading empire called Horizons (some of you might have seen the posts regarding it). I kept it mostly in house and just for myself to have fun ferrying goods around, RPing with people that I came across, and even fomenting enjoyable roleplay sessions with The Brotherhood and DTR who came across my Serenity regularly shuffling goods around to various POBs. I always did my best to interact with everyone I came across, and with exception to a few random players and the TBH and DTR pilots I ran into in the Omicrons and Sigmas, I was met with complete silence when I said anything. Usually my response when I hear nothing back is "Good talk" as a slight jab but rarely, if ever, do I get even a response from that. Honestly, it pisses me off seeing these silent power traders using these ID's to stake by with minimal RP when I'm putting in the efforts to counter act that...it gives those players who actually try to roleplay with these ID's in these scenarios a bad name. (I've been busy with work to answer comms. regarding Horizons, I promise I will get to it soon.)
When I did LGN (another one of my errant attempts at making a faction, I have a problem, leave me alone, I just wanna have fun), I would pirate people and get no response. I'd blow them up and get verbally abused by the player in PM's, sometimes not even in English. I would try to discuss it with them and help them to understand why they got killed but much of the time they'd just log out or keep spewing nonsense at me. As a direct result of that abuse, I gave up on LGN before anyone could even join or before the faction could even get off the ground. It just wasn't worth the effort.
Most of the concerns people have listed with the rule changes around Transports I agree with, but silent power traders need to be dealt with before we start making these kinds of changes. Perhaps a rule instituted to make AFK trading something sanctionable? It would be exceedingly difficult to prove, but at least it would fix one small part of the issue that might lead to more in the future.
EDIT: ...and I even mentioned silent power traders at nearly the very beginning of this post.
(05-21-2025, 07:04 AM)Leo Wrote: On another note, I'd like to see some kind of rule changes in the future targeting silent power traders. I realize it would be difficult to enforce and would be a slippery slope but the amount of these silent power traders on the server nowadays is quite disheartening when trying to find someone to roleplay with while flying around. Many of these silent power traders are AFK trading, maybe something can be done about that?
You fear oblivion. Yet you forget. The universe remembers every atom of your being. Even dust hums your name in the dark. Roleplay is dead. Long live Powertraders and PvP I guess.
