Tranports vs Caps

[Zapp]

6.7 Attacking freighters, transports, liners or demanding cargo from the same is not allowed for cruisers and battleships.

Exceptions to this rule are:

a) Official faction tagged house ships in their respective house space ONLY.
b) Terrorist, Nomad, Wild, Phantom ID players;
c) LSF or Liberty Navy Guard vessels operating within Zone 21 or Alaska;
d) Order Guard vessels operating within Alaska or Omicron Minor;
e) Blood Dragon Guard vessels within Chugoku;
f) Corsair Guard vessels within Omicron Gamma;
g) Outcast Guard vessels within Omicron Alpha;
h) Guard ID players in their -own- associated Guard system.
i) Special OP players within the guidelines of their approved RP.


Traders whom are attacked in these areas may be pursued and destroyed beyond them

There have been two threads recently centered around this rule. Both were seeking for ways to remove it. It is indeed a very cumbersome rule, with no less than nine exceptions. Why? I'll pull my opinion out of one of those threads:

My opinion: screw transports, they get off too easy anyways. Remove the rule altogether with no changes. The number of pirate cruisers is really low compared to how it used to be, plus it'd finally give some use to SRPing a Scylla or Rheinland Pirate Cruiser.

If a transport can't escape a battleship, it deserves to die.

Many balance issues were raised regarding transports and capital ships in those threads. What it comes down to, however, is that transports don't have to fight their way out of everything. They can avoid situations, they can 'hire escorts' (I won't go further into that, as it's been beaten to death), they can watch the chat menu for questionable names and levels. Most cases of transports being pirated is sheer carelessness. Why should there be rules to protect that? They already get out of the 4-hour rule. We've already beefed up transports so that there are ones on par with gunboats as far as firepower.

The question is, should this rule be removed entirely or not?

Also, I'd like an admin to come in and give the reasoning behind the rule. Is it just to protect transports, or is it to avoid abuse of capital ships being used? If it's the latter, keep in mind that most pirate (not counting Outcast, Corsair, and Hessian) factions no longer have access to cruisers without an SRP. And why bother going for the SRP? There's not really much reason beyond attacking other capital ships.

Vote, express opinions, argue with me. I will ignore flame posts, and I'd rather they were deleted. We can discuss this like rational human beings.

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