Make shooting pilots more forgiving.

[Lt. Foley]

This has happened to me three times now where I was right on a pirate ship in a resource extractor area, and a Federation security Eagle zipped past me and absorbed a single laser bolt or a few cannon rounds. I tried to escape but by the time I was out of the mass lock my canopy was already breached by all the Feds. The same thing happened again with two players who then both murdered be in cold blood for a quick 200 credits.

Perhaps this could be a bit more forgiving? If you're in combat and a friendly, neutral is in the area, you should have a good sustained 2-3 seconds of fire on them before you're marked as a criminal. Maybe your ship computer could say something along the lines of Friendly Fire or "receiving friendly fire" when you're being accidentally attacked by friendlies. Perhaps you could get two chances of accidentally zapping or shooting someone before you got a bounty?

I've lost the chance at several thousand credits in bounties because of this several times.

 

[Tiamat]

This does come up a lot but your proposal, which is the main one everybody else suggests, is very open to abuse.

Get several people together and go after a player-flown type 9 full of goodies. Every player shoots twice. As long as you don't shoot again within the cooldown period your shots are remembered for you can happily murder anyone you want without fear of punishment. As killing NPCs or players with a higher combat rep than you gives you a bigger rep boost those after the "race to Elite" prize would abuse this like crazy as well as the pirates.

FD are aware of the problem and I am sure something will be done but it has to be thought through very carefully as pretty much any way you can get away with a couple of free shots is open for abuse.