Superior Phantom ships/weapons

[FooFighter]

Then I think you have not had many interactions with Phantoms, also, the problem is, when we start to talk to people, they start to shoot. Same reason the Keepers are involved in alot of PVP. To say the Phantoms is a "PVP" faction just goes to show the skewed view people have of it. The main problem is tat when people see the Phantom ID, it means to them that it's PVP time. You try and RP in your fighter when you have 5 fighters and 2 caps attacking you. We do RP, we do it in private comms, we do it in group chat, we do it in system chat, none the less, when people see Phantoms, they dont want to roleplay, they want to attack us. If you are ever there for the beginning of a Phantom interaction, you will see a whole lot of rp, but yes, once the pew pew starts, it's hard for us to continue to type in messages when we are getting attacked usually at least 2 to 1.

Easy solution to avoid getting pewpew'd when you just want to RP...fly above the plane or somewhere else nobody ever goes, and stay there, just like everybody else does it.

Another good step to give the Phantoms a better image would be to cease being a Admin/Admin-friend only faction. I completely understand why you don't want Phantom indies (I wouldn't want Nomad/Coalition indies either), just as I can see why recruiting people for the Phantoms is a quite...well, difficult thing. But how's about that - stop saying "don't apply", and instead say "you want to RP as a Phantom? Great, contact user X, he'll see if you could fit into our faction and if you do, I'm sure we could work something out".