In a lot of battles I have seen players trading bats and bots during combat. This seems to be oorp, there really is no in character mechanism in the game to transport these to another ship in battle.
You can F1 out also, so it's not what you can do, it's what should be allowed.
Look at it like this is a RP server for instance, how are those bats and bots getting from one ship to the other in the middle of that battle? Are there transporters built into the ships?
Isn't it more realistic that things that are traded are dropped and tractored in, and trading is just a game mechanism? If that's the case then in a battle trading should not be used, but jettisoning and tractoring would be more in line with RP, right?
I have an character i RP that is in a repair ship and carrys a merc ID, for a price, if contracted, it will happily ressupply you with batts/bots during a battle, regardless of affiliation.
In my opinion, you could see the transfer as an automatic and directed tractor beam. Instead of scooping something in space, you scoop something from the other person cargo hold (after X codes are exchanged between both ships).
Fair enough? After all, you can tractor things with objects in-between. Why not a hull? And you can explain the inability to do it without the other person clearance (trade) as some kind of security measure, EM field or something, which requires access codes.
Given that bots/batts use the same "unit" measurement as cargo, we can assume that (in RP) they are stored in canisters with an attachment for a ship's systems. So all a ship has to do is tractor the canisters from its ally's hold into its own (once codes have been given). No RP problem therefore no rule violation.
No longer active online due to a dwindling amount of non-PvP (trading, pirating, mining, etc.) fun in the new version.
Hang on... This thread isn't even asking whether it is ooRP or not, you've just assumed everyone is on your side automatically... Different questions need to be asked before this one.
As for the idea of ruling out trading bots and bats in mid fight, well, it's quite hard to enforce.
There are plenty of sources of nanobots and shield batteries, recently destroyed ships may have had a full load, what's to prove you got your re-gens from there rather than another player? I'm sure there'd be plenty of other situations where that'd be so.
I dont like it either, but until they put that repair beam gun into the mod this is the only way repair ships have of making themselves useful in a fight.
Of course you can prohibite that but what for if it's impossible to prove it, I just think it's pointless to talk it over.
I don't think it's ooRP but also depends on a situation. I would say that exchanging bats and bots between vessels of the same class is totally fine in my outlook. But when I'm involved in a fight where some capital class ship suddenly comes out and spread bots/bats all around really spoils the whole fun.
It has happened to me few times and bealive me it makes piece of crap from whole enjoyment.
Personally, I don't consider an in-flight x-fer oorp. limitations in the game mechanics force us to maintain a 'suspention of disbelief' & when it happens, I simply pretend I saw the beam.
That being said, I believe that it would be more realistic to refrain from doing an x-fer, & simply fly close & dump the stuff for scooping. that way, it gives the enemy the slim chance to destroy the bots/bats before they get to where the're going. (more risk=more excitement)