Fair enough, the majority of the time it's toxic waste or some other unwanted item that it's not worth hauling but it seems strange that items stumbled upon as opposed to obtained via piracy be listed as stolen in your cargo hold, is there a reason for this or could a change be put in place to differentiate?
Can items found and salvaged from space not be listed as stolen?
- Thread starter BARAKZ
- Start date
It's quite simple. You didn't pay for it so it doesn't belong to you.
I think of it like the canisters are tagged to a registered owner and if you are carrying something which is not registered to you then it is classed as stolen.
Think of it like if you were driving down a road and came across an over-turned lorry which has spilled its contents on the side of the road. Is there was no driver or anyone around would the police consider it acceptable for you to take the contents of the lorry or would that be technically stealing? Well, it's the same in Elite. If you want to be legit you have to purchase your cargo, if you want to haul stolen goods for the greater profit advantages, you have to accept the risk that goes along with it.
I think of it like the canisters are tagged to a registered owner and if you are carrying something which is not registered to you then it is classed as stolen.
Think of it like if you were driving down a road and came across an over-turned lorry which has spilled its contents on the side of the road. Is there was no driver or anyone around would the police consider it acceptable for you to take the contents of the lorry or would that be technically stealing? Well, it's the same in Elite. If you want to be legit you have to purchase your cargo, if you want to haul stolen goods for the greater profit advantages, you have to accept the risk that goes along with it.
The current design theory is that anything in space that is picked up by anyone but its original owner (whether they're dead or not) is stolen, and so everything in the salvage USS is stolen. I made a thread about this as well here: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=80186
EDIT:
Take a look at my thread on this, it's sort of silly for it all to be considered stolen and irretrievable, since no one ever goes back for dropped stolen cargo in the first place; Fed ships don't scoop dropped loot from wanted vessels that drop any, etc. Besides, what's to matter if the original owner is dead?
EDIT:
Take a look at my thread on this, it's sort of silly for it all to be considered stolen and irretrievable, since no one ever goes back for dropped stolen cargo in the first place; Fed ships don't scoop dropped loot from wanted vessels that drop any, etc. Besides, what's to matter if the original owner is dead?
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I agree it needs to change.
In the real world example of a lorry ( I dont really know what that is...) could you take things from it? No. But in real life, deep ocean salvage teams lift up cargo all the time. International waters and whatnot... seems like independent systems fit the ticket just fine for that.
Items should be "stolen" when they are forcefully removed from other players / NPC's.
Items should be "salvaged" when they are sitting in space, unclaimed.
In the real world example of a lorry ( I dont really know what that is...) could you take things from it? No. But in real life, deep ocean salvage teams lift up cargo all the time. International waters and whatnot... seems like independent systems fit the ticket just fine for that.
Items should be "stolen" when they are forcefully removed from other players / NPC's.
Items should be "salvaged" when they are sitting in space, unclaimed.
If there are no laws to give rights for salvage then you are stealing by taking it. So sorry crim.
If you have no papers, bill of sale and all that, why should I buy it off you at market value when the feds can crack down on me. The way it is as stands is fine.
If you have no papers, bill of sale and all that, why should I buy it off you at market value when the feds can crack down on me. The way it is as stands is fine.
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I like to think that when that ship didn't arrive at the station with it's intended cargo for whatever reason (pirates held hostage and they dumped and ran, it fell out of bay door for some inexplicable reason, original owner explodey-died) the guy who is in charge of shipping and receiving just chalked it up as stolen and filed a report with the missing canister numbers so he could collect insurance or write off his losses. So when you pick it up and take it into the station, it is flagged in the interspace police cargo database as a stolen shipment.
Why not picking up abandoned canisters, give you the option to return them to their owner, or their owner's faction? It could compensate you for less than what you'd get from the black market plus a small bonus, but it could let you take them to a station within the system or a system within jumping range and avoid the risk of getting fined for them. Right now they are mostly wasted, because it's too much hassle to pick them up, fly around the galaxy trying to find a station with a black market that you can sneak into (so ideally a small outpost instead of a big station) all the while avoiding any federal authorities so you don't get fined. I mean if they are tagged with an owner in a way that the federal authorities can recognize they are stolen just from scanning you, I (the pilot) could presumable also learn who the owner is through the canister's tag and contact them to return the items. If I choose to do that, then I could receive a mission to return them within a time limit, in which any federal authorities will not fine me for carrying them. If I don't get the items back to the owner as I promised within a reasonable timeframe, then I would be punished with a more severe fine and possibly a bounty.
Some good comments, the manual suggests you can jettison and mark as owned or unowned, so you should be able to identify which cargo is tagged as unowned.
Also in real space clutter and junk is a safety problem, so maybe bringing it in and getting an option to hand in as lost property for some sort of good citizen reward or small fee - rather than being identified as a criminal would be a better option.
The stations seem very hostile, I'm not sure in the real world we'd be shooting down ships for carrying stolen cargo, more likely heafty fines with a payment deadline if you are scanned
Also in real space clutter and junk is a safety problem, so maybe bringing it in and getting an option to hand in as lost property for some sort of good citizen reward or small fee - rather than being identified as a criminal would be a better option.
The stations seem very hostile, I'm not sure in the real world we'd be shooting down ships for carrying stolen cargo, more likely heafty fines with a payment deadline if you are scanned
This is exactly how I think it should be.
Other things that could be implemented:
1. Buy a salvage license. For xxxx amount of credits you have a license to salvage things floating in space.
2. With said salvage license, the floating debris has to be out in space...unclaimed for xxxx amount of minutes. This gives the "owner" time to return to reclaim their property. If the timer is expired...it's up for grabs.
3. Said salvage license needs to be renewed after xxxx amount of cargo tonnage is returned. (This part may or may not be left out.)
Another route for this is a "Lost and found" department. You can return it to a space station for a "Lost & found" reward which could include a rep bonus.
Using the example of finding something on the side of the road and taking it can be applied to, if I find a hat on the ground in a grocery store & I return it to its owners or to a lost & found department doesn't mean I'm stealing it, does it?
Picking up stray debris in space & being marked as a thief needs fixed. Hopefully the developers will take this to another level. This part is too cut & dry.
To be fair, this isn't exactly the most... lenient universe. Slow driving is punishable by death.
The existence of these cargo canisters at USS are pointless at the moment. If you could buy or somehow earn a licence to salvage them, they are not worth the cost/effort of going through that process.
While it's true that in the real world you can't just take stuff that's "fallen off the back of a lorry" (there's a reason that familiar term exists in English) without legal issues if found it, it's also true that in the real world you can alert the authorities or even a rightful owner to its discovery. You might then earn a financial reward for bringing it back or some gratitude and kudos for your citizenship.
For now these canisters are neither valuable enough to risk being detected with stolen goods, nor of acquiring the salvage rights even if you could.
While it's true that in the real world you can't just take stuff that's "fallen off the back of a lorry" (there's a reason that familiar term exists in English) without legal issues if found it, it's also true that in the real world you can alert the authorities or even a rightful owner to its discovery. You might then earn a financial reward for bringing it back or some gratitude and kudos for your citizenship.
For now these canisters are neither valuable enough to risk being detected with stolen goods, nor of acquiring the salvage rights even if you could.
If you have ever driven on I-95, you would wish it was in the real world too!!
That's what I mentioned a few messages back. That would be a pretty fair way to solve this problem.
Apologies. I am guilty of not reading every message proper. You have great ideas there in your prev message.
No worries. I am guilty of the very same thing.
At least I know someone else is on the same page as me. Maybe the developers can implement our idea in some way or another.