Law & crime

Industrial play will never be risk-free, but systems will differ in security, with safer low-reward areas and riskier high-reward ones; they say the law system is not yet where they want it.

The team says combat is only a chance, which varies by system and law level and is stated in the mission, giving players a choice of risk and reward rather than combat everywhere.

The prison escape bug came from old mission logic not ported to the new mission system, and a hotfix moving the leave-prison logic onto the player's law component should make it much more reliable.

The plan for 4.0 is that ATC won't let players with a high CrimeStat use the permanent jump point, so they must clear it first, with the same check on the Pyro side.

Todd Papy admits new players following the same path can be targeted by griefers; the team will watch feedback and add blocks if needed, but rejected an isolated planet as not fitting the game.

The aim is that anyone you allow can handle and sell a bag's contents without theft charges, with the first step being shared ownership among party members; thieves may struggle to sell at reputable vendors.

The team is changing Kareah and crime handling so lower crimes can be paid off while higher CrimeStats have fewer places to clear, hopefully making Kareah a PvP hotspot, with other law changes like landing with CS1 or 2.

Friends can help, but the mission is meant to be solo and cannot be shared, so only the mission holder's CrimeStat is cleared while helpers who kill guards keep their murder charges.

Players can probably already see attachment points on a back-slung weapon, but whether attachments can be swapped is unconfirmed, and drawing weapons in safe zones awaits a law enforcement system the team is looking at long term.

Non-lethal weapons are considered necessary, and a stun gun is already concepted and just needs to go through the content pipeline, with little engineering work expected.

For 3.15 and the latest PTU patch, using the tractor beam, medical gun and med pens on other players is disabled, while self-use still works, with a more elegant solution to allow interaction planned later.

Cargo can be stolen with the tractor beam after destroying a ship and its boxes spill into space, but not directly from a ship's cargo grid until a future cargo refactor.

Armistice zones were lifted at rest stops because the team felt the policing, defenses and AI were ready to try, with the new security response needing more complexity and a bug fix in a coming patch.

Luke Pressley plans to investigate relaxing armistice zones around outposts and fix Grim HEX next, and hopes to eventually relax interior green zones, though interior policing is some way off.

They like the idea of boxing or capture missions and melee is coming, but they will build missions around it only after it has been played and tested, not based on half-finished systems.

They want hackers for hire to clear others' CrimeStats but can't yet, because meshed servers and persistence make editing offline players hard; the new hacking database lets you hack individual crimes.

Dan Trufin says players shouldn't have to use force; as the ship's authority you can revoke someone's permission so they get a warning and timer, and a gentler evacuation order that teleports them out when docked is a possibility.

A removal request would give a 60-second warning, after which ignoring players become trespassers the owner can shoot without consequence; it likely can't be used mid-flight, and the first version will probably be the simplest, a timer-based teleport.

Trading captured players or NPCs as a commodity isn't on the roadmap and probably isn't coming soon, while some form of bounty hunting is likely, with its scope still undecided.

Tony Zurovec says he is most looking forward to the breadth of features and player choice, paired with consequences such as security and reputation systems pushing back on player actions.

Whether Grim Hex is free-fire depends on feedback, but eventually armistice zones are meant to go, replaced by a consequence-and-enforcement system that punishes bad behavior without preventing it, not in 2.5 but on the horizon.

Griefing means things like repeatedly harassing new players near the Green Zone or crashing into ships on landing pads; planned countermeasures include bounties with authorised PvP, griefer-only instances via player records, and unsettled further ideas.

Smuggling with hidden compartments is intended and will let players install items such as false bottoms, but the design isn't finalized and it won't be in 2.0, since simpler gameplay comes first.

Chris Roberts says ships will be keyed to their owner with more security than now, though the first mini-PU iteration is deliberately open and ways to break in, such as via EVA, are planned.

Chris Roberts says a bounty earned through PVP cannot be escaped by lowering the PVP slider, though bounties earned against NPCs get an NPC-focused response, and it will be balanced against griefing.

Capturing criminal players has been discussed, with repeated captures perhaps making prison harder to escape and too many possibly forcing a new character, but details will be configured once the PU is more fleshed out.

Holding cells are still being worked out; the thinking is that a captured player appears in the cell via a cutscene but only for a short time-out, to avoid griefing, before a prison interstitial.