Elrood

I still hope they will do something like albion tiered approach with safe zones with basic materials (would be tier 1 and 2 for us) and everything outside progressively less "safe" with highest tier resources in completely free for all zone. 
But my hopes are diminishing with every new information

There are no bad talents.
 
Merely suboptimal or unnecessary ones for a given situation or goal.

NQ-Whatever isn't an in game player.
 
GMs etc having weird GM only things isn't new. You can go back to Everquest days, GMs had their own zone that basically was a hangout spot. Anarchy Online also had GM zones. I dunno about other games but I assume so - nevermind GM gear that essentially made them invulnerable. I did volunteered as an Anarchy 'Guide' back in the day and my Guide char had godlike gear that no player could ever get. Was that a problem? No...because only my GUIDE char had it.
 
NQ-Whatever doing funky stuff is fine. 
 
Now if an NQ employee made a char and gave that char 37 districts and didn't have an NQ tag - yeah ok I'd grab my trusty -------E
 
Cause that's abuse of power and is the same shit that happened in EVE with dev favoritism....
 
 
If you want to be upset about stuff NQ does - go be upset about NQ teleporting ships back to players after they were lost in PvP. An NQ tagged char having 37 zones isn't an issue or misuse of power.

Was covered here:
 
 
the 45min area to the 55 min area.  
 
Essentially safe zones will remain completely unchanged until territory control is implemented.   After which point "at best" all of Alioth remains safe "at worst" only district areas remain safe, the devs being unsure what the final mechanics will be.   Though they're excited about the prospect of safezone boarder PvP.   (EDIT:  Estimated 6 months)
 
Really seems kind of disappointing, the only real hook the game has is letting players see the scale the game actually operates at with the first flight and landing on another planet.  Telling new and returning players to hang out on this blighted space called sanctuary until you find a "sponsor" to be able to play elsewhere seems pretty anti-pattern to me.

I'm reading this thread and scratching my head. 

All is fine and dandy, all arguments are good- but - and that is crucial but, to go into pvp area i have to know that i can influence result of pvp engagement. At very least i have to believe i can influce that result. Until meta change, there is no way in hell i will take any cargo hauler outside safe zone. I'm not a gambler. 

As a hermit - if i go outside i either meat ganker and die, or i don't meat pvp (so anyone). That is pure chance. Dice roll. My skills, my ship design won't matter because pvp ship will practically always be faster and if pilot knows what he is doing it will kill me with ease. I can't fight because there is no way to make proper XS killbox that is able to haul cargo worth of time investment. I can make anything bigger than XS because it will be dead every single time. So I'm not going to participate in pvp in any other role than yet another ganker - if at all - because this is the only single way I have any influence on result. 

But lets say i'm not a hermit - i'm part of organization. So now i have to take on escort. How many escort ship do i need? How long escorting players will have to stick around when i'm mining? How many I actually need to be safe? 
From what I understand, you need more borg minicubes than your opponent have. Gankers has 3? Bring 6. Or 12. No group of ganker will attack freighter defended by enough boxes. But no way enough players will sacrifice their time to escort hauler which is quarantined not to be attacked. Who would sign up for few hours of total boredom and doing nothing? Not me. And for sure not enough players will go with me for me to have enough escorts to be safe. 
And again - with current meta it comes back to gambling. Either i will have enough escort to discourage gankers or i'm (and now with escort ships too) dead. Again there is no skill involved on my part or even on escort part. 

So my conclusion is - current meta kills pvp in any other form than ganking. Kills shipping outside safe zone. And kills everything which is not borg minicube killbox, at least outside safe zone. Until this is change, and we know what will come after, any changes to safe zones can wipe huge percent of player base. Only gamblers and gankers would stay - and gamblers tend to bankrupt themselves so they would probably be wiped out of the game too, by pure natural selection. Than gankers would follow because they would have literally nothing to hunt for. 

Convince me i'm wrong.

I don't want XS Borg Cubes to be the meta. Here are my Problem/Solution suggestions.
 
Disclaimer: I don't fully understand the current state of PvP/RADAR. The problems listed here are primarily what I have heard from others and some points may not be accurate. I will edit the post to reflect any corrections or suggestions from commenters.
 
Radars are isotropic (the range is the same in all directions)
In reality a radar cannot be isotropic and an array is going to need to physically spin (even if it's a phased array). Radars staying isotropic wouldn't be a huge problem, but it'd be better if the range was longest in the forward direction so placement matters and having multiple is a strong benefit. Maybe have full range in 30 degrees, then half power beamwidth at 60 degrees, then -10 dB at 120 degrees and greater. Having discrete radar beam steps will combat desync problems with tracking someone at range. They are not obstructed by voxels surrounding them
Radars should have to be either unobstructed or require a weak material as a radome to cover it. Each material could have a reflectivity factor that attenuates at a fixed loss/voxel thickness. This would have to be simplified as to make the calculations simple, but it shouldn't be anything much more complex than how wings are obstructed by voxels. Performance is not degraded as damage is taken
An XS ship with a Large radar, unobstructed, is much more likely to have the radar take damage than the same ship with a small radar. If they degrade as they take damage, and since redundancy in radar systems is almost impossible with such a small ship, it wouldn't be risky to put such a large radar on an XS ship. Have redundant L radars on an M or L core battleship should be a necessity. Performance is not affected by the acceleration of the construct they're on
Rocket boosted borg cubes should have their accuracy greatly affected by how quickly they are change velocity (doppler affect affecting signal strength). A railgun XS borg should need to maintain a constant velocity vector to be accurate at long ranges. Only core size affects detection range, not the radar cross section
A cube of steel is going to have a massive normal surface that is highly reflective, and such would be identifiable from much farther ranges and be much easier to hit with radar targeting. Cross section calculations like for drag should be used here. More accurately, have the normality of the surface to the radar beam multiplied by some material reflectivity scalar define the radar cross section and thus targetable radar range of any vessel. Core size shouldn't matter in this regard. http://www.rfcafe.com/references/electrical/dielectric-constants-strengths.htm and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radar_cross-section
Computing the real RCS is not feasible, but even just a cross sectional area calculation for now would be a good nerf to full volume cubes.
Also, having a larger radar should increase the radar cross section, as an antenna will reflect very large amounts of energy. There is no passive radar detector
An ultra cheap radar detector for passive ships would be great. Something similar to the Gyro you slap on your ship, and an alarm sounds and warning pops up when someone is shining a radar at you. Ideally it would have more range than a radar, so you could be warned that there is someone with a radar nearby. This would simply alert you to the existence of radar, and would only be useful on ships without any radar (otherwise it would always be on because of your own radar) Radar doesn't work in the safe zone
I should be able to detect ships outside the safe zone from inside the safe zone, and vice versa. Having a magical boundary where it instantly stops working doesn't make sense. Same thing with atmosphere, performance should be attenuated by atmosphere not instantly lost.  UI changes
Disable advanced HUD while radar targeting and implement something else. The UI is ugly and breaks immersion, but you pretty much need it on to know where the ship you're targeting is. Maybe have a wireframe box so you know where to look, but less available info. Change the box color from red for enemy to blue or green for friends and allies.

I'm a little late to this party, but this is a known issue. Rest assured, only YOU see the email address on that screen. Once you're in game it will display your character name Sorry for any panic attacks this causes.