Surely this is a very controversial topic and I can see many people being against it for various reasons. However, I would like to know your opinion on it, and perhaps we can work out a concept of a system that fits Discovery well.
First of all, what I'm talking about here is giving official faction leaders the ability to change the reputation of individual characters towards the NPC faction they represent. This can be done with an ingame command that's limited to one ship per official faction, which preferably is used only by the leader of the respective faction.
A few examples:
A Freelancer ID ship has helped the Navy in battles a few times. LPI leader recognizes this (through MDs or Discord, whatever) and offers the Freelancer a better reputation through an ingame command. Since Freelancer IDs can protect friendly or allied ships (as the ID states), the Freelancer ship can now fight along LPI, even without the need of a bounty.
The Rogues received valueable information about a newly placed PoB by a Freelancer. To show their gratitude, they offer him docking rights on all of their stations (assuming the Rogues were hostile to the Freelancer before)
Such a command in the hands of a bad person easily leads to abuse. To prevent that, three security measures need to be set into place:
Usage of the command is logged, obviously. Admins can check the logs in case of abuse or a report.
The command that's issued by the leader is only a request to change the players repsheet. The player whose repsheet would be affected received a notification, which he can either ignore or accept by using a command.
Leaders can't worsen the reputation of a player, since that's being done with FR5 requests and holds too much potential to abuse.
If this system was to be implemented, it's necessary to discuss whether repsheet changes should overwrite ID rephacks. If it overwrites, there's room for abuse again. For example players building all-friendly ships by sleeping with as many factions as possible. On the other hand, no-overwrite would mean the system makes sense only for generic IDs and some SRPs.
I think such a system makes sense in Discovery. It opens the door for unique RPs that otherwise require an SRP, but are a few rep changes worth the effort/wait/250mil for an SRP?
Many characters have their own unique twists that make them interesting and it would be cool if their rep-sheet represented that. Add another command with which you can show your rep-sheet to another player, similar to when we speak to an NPC in a bar. Part of it is already coded, see "/rep" command which shows you your entire rep-sheet.
Speaking of "part of it already coded", in case of an SRP, Game Masters surely also use a command to change a characters rep. Maybe it can be modified to make it work the way I described?
