The attacker may have been lurking just outside the No Fire Zone. If your friend returned fire while still inside the zone, he'd be attacked by the station, and the attacker may have been hoping to provoke him into doing just that. So, while not actually controlling the station defences, he was using them to his advantage.
By the way, there seems to be a bit of confusion here because my friend started a separate thread about a different issue to the George Lucas stuff which due to the new forum setup, was shifted under this thread.
The event he speaks of took place at the (main) station in Hoheng (hope I spelt that right - system across from Diso) and may have been part of Code's incentive to block traders, as the ships I saw them take out were a type 7, a type 6, and a clipper (which of course can be a 'large' trader). Firstly, there was a bug here, as I went back and several other commanders told me they were also receiving mysterious fines and warnings just for being in the area of the space station. The thing that my friends and I perceived as possible hacking was a conversation between one of the two perpetrators and another CMDR about switching the stations defences on and off, but with hindsight, it may have been the perpetrator mocking the type 6 cmdr by asking him if he had his 'report crimes' turned on in the station, as this particular perpetrator has a thing it seems (from other reports) for firing missiles at people in stations and finding loopholes in the game where they exist. His latest one, which was legal, could in my opinion affect the name in a negative way.
The fight with the Clipper showed this: The perpetrator and a friend were basically attacking anyone they fancied in Vultures, in and out of the station, and obviously had enough rebuy cash to not care if they died again and again. My friend, who'd just bought his Type 7 was shot in the back (1.8 million rebuy) and blown up by one of the vultures who'd just re-spawned behind him. Once outside the station, I watched what was going on with another friend in a Cobra. The most notable was the Clipper fight, as the Clipper was beating them. The main perpetrator (who I used to respect after seeing some of his battles on Youtube) had his shields knocked down and was at 50% hull and the other vulture was killed seconds later. Wow, I thought, the Clipper might teach these guys a lesson, but then my friend in the Cobra said, hey, they both have 100% hulls and shields again!!! We both wondered what an earth was going on but with hindsight, I realised they might have been respawning out of the station in a circular manner and repeatedly hitting their opponents.
Of course this is completely legal. These two guys had enough 'fairly' earned money to act as though they were in an xbox respawn game, however, if more people start doing this in heavily populated stations, it will have a negative effect. I for instance, could hang out at one of the common starter stations heavily populated by guys in sidewinders and haulers (making their first cash, and shoot them up as they leave or outside the stations...if the station kills me, I respawn back inside and pay my fine, just to pop back out and do the same. Or I just hang out outside with a wingman, gangbanging them with enough rebuy cash to last me months.
I suggest therefore that Frontier make some rule to stop this kind of circular respawning... or not
![[VR] Mad Mike](https://forums-cdn.zaonce.net/data/avatars/m/27/27910.jpg?1553527108){kind=avatar}