The proof that present C&P doesn’t work stays in Eravate. There is a player’s Cutter with over 2 billion bounty on it. I don’t know how, neither why, nor when such a bounty has been acquired, but it looks out of place. This has to be a lot of Sidewinders I presume.
Since at notoriety 10 you get the difference in rebuys plus an engineering modifier added to your bounty for killing something smaller than you, and assuming it's an engineered A-rated Cutter, that's probably fewer than 40 actual Sidewinders. Way fewer, if they've also been killing people trying to take them out, or the police that show up to protect the Sidewinders, etc.
Personally I don’t care how other people are playing the game, but I do care about the game, the perception of the game. If one player can survive constantly killing newbies in starting systems, this player either is kicking out of the game the new players or pushing them to solo permanently.
The thing is, sure, they've killed maybe 40 Sidewinders. But each Sidewinder pilot has probably only died
once to them. And once to failing to dock in time. And once to a Novice NPC Adder. And once for shooting the station to "see what would happen". The game has a steep learning curve and you'll die a lot to all sorts of things when you're just starting out. Whether you learn "there are ships too large for a Freewinder to take on" versus a player or an NPC doesn't really matter. It's actually *better* in some respects to learn that one versus a high-notoriety player, since you get a big discount on your rebuy for that, whereas you pay the full cost for dying to NPCs.
I got killed in my Sidewinder not long after starting, by a player (having evaded a bunch of NPC interdictions). I didn't leave Open, I didn't quit the game ... I just paid the 300 credit rebuy (I'd upgraded the FSD to D-rated, go me!) and jumped to system B rather than system A on the next jump ... and never saw them again. All my deaths to players since have been in my PvP-fit ship in a fight I chose to have.
Players reactions to being shot by another player (or dying to any of the other "new player" deaths) will vary, of course. I'm sure lots of people do get killed by a player and ragequit. I'm sure lots of people get killed by an NPC and ragequit, because they're used to games where the learning curve stays behind the player. But the name of the game is Elite 4 (or something like that) - go download any of the previous games in the series, and you will die a lot to NPCs. (Especially FFE - the other two you can find a safe trading route near to - but not
in - the start system with a bit of trial and error, but FFE you have to learn to fight and will still die repeatedly just trying to make your first trading trip)
The question bothering me is: does this player’s action benefit the game and if not, where are the FD?
The thing is, you can't view that action solely in isolation when it comes to prevention. Does them shooting Sidewinders benefit the game? Probably not, though I doubt it's a noticeable problem either. Does the ability to commit crimes benefit the game? Yes. Does the ability to shoot at Clean players benefit the game? Yes. Would a compulsory enforcement of "no instancing with massively different ships" benefit the game? No - there's Solo or PG for people who want that, but I'd be really annoyed, since I normally fly a Cobra, not to be able to see players in bigger ships just because someone had decided that <0.1% of them potentially shooting at me was too bad to handle.
