I think the game should add in-front of your name the ID you are aligned with, so you come into scanner range and they pick up what ship your flying and what wavelengths your broadcasting on etc etc.
and you know WHAT they are long before there in your face and you realize the friendly looking civilian ship with the freelancer IFF turns out to be a damn pirate ID carrying thief!
For instance: In the contact list you have there names without the faction prefix, on your scopes it adds it in, so you will only find out what they are when there within long range, then it's a matter of 5k to avoid or greet them before you can locate them.
then it's a few more k before your scanning each other and realising that your both carrying totally obscure ID's and IFF's...
I already know your IFF comes up before your name but what is really wierd is someone can be friendly with the freelancers like you are, but also a pirate...
' Wrote:I've known indy Republicans to use "RSS-" for their names, don't ask me what it is, it's just what the NPC republicans use.
Republican Shipping Ship?
It's horrible, but it fits.
On the OP; You want to encourage an out of roleplay mechanic to increase level of roleplay?
Perhaps you don't understand roleplay fully.
If you can plan everything out before it happens, why don't you just go play by yourself? Then things will happen EXACTLY as you want it.
But that's not roleplay, at least not in a multiplayer sense. (obviously)
You're supposed to PLAY the ROLE of a trader/Cop/Pirate, you're pretending you ARE that person.
Does that person have access to a galaxy spanning list of ships?
Will that person be able to go 'Oh right, there's a pirate hiding along the lane, I guess I'll prepare for it!' If he had this information, he would do everything in his power to avoid the situation.
So I guess dodging pirates is actually good roleplay. But that's only provided you've gained the information on their location WITHIN ROLEPLAY. The chat window is Out of Roleplay, and that will never change.
Note: as for using it to find friends, at least within roleplay you'd have means of doing so anyway.
Didn't read the other posts, maybe someone already said this:
Ruins the element of surprise, especially with pirates. Maybe you don't intend to metagame, but I assure you many of the so called power miners/traders would find their little piece of heaven in this.
Example of a ridiculous encounter:
Some traders (and I want you to know, I hate you for this), just F1 at the first sign of contact, hidding behind the excuse "No interaction so I didn't break a rule". They do that before even knowing who was there. Ran into some miners in O-7, and as soon as they saw me, 3 of them F1'd. I was flying a wraith with guard rep, that's why I was red.....'nuff said.