SirWillyLongShank

I'm ok with the current mechanic of being able to remove unwanted players. It's too easy for them to plant a spy on a ship and use that to target you. I truly believe its crippled their mission running gameplay. BUT all that being said, I believe the true solution would be proper AvA on Constructs, and maybe even anti personal "turrets" of some kind. Something to provide a risk for onboarding players. I really hope NQ hasn't given up on this......
 

I'm ok with the current mechanic of being able to remove unwanted players. It's too easy for them to plant a spy on a ship and use that to target you. I truly believe its crippled their mission running gameplay. BUT all that being said, I believe the true solution would be proper AvA on Constructs, and maybe even anti personal "turrets" of some kind. Something to provide a risk for onboarding players. I really hope NQ hasn't given up on this......
 

I'm ok with the current mechanic of being able to remove unwanted players. It's too easy for them to plant a spy on a ship and use that to target you. I truly believe its crippled their mission running gameplay. BUT all that being said, I believe the true solution would be proper AvA on Constructs, and maybe even anti personal "turrets" of some kind. Something to provide a risk for onboarding players. I really hope NQ hasn't given up on this......
 

I'm not a fan whatsoever of removing nonconsensual boarding altogether, and I hope that is taken into consideration later if/when avatar combat becomes a thing.
 
Not only because Boarding a ship to take it over was something featured in the Devblog way back in 2015:  
 
 
But because boarding ships to take them over has been a thing since, well, ever. 
 
Now a whole avenue of gameplay has been removed to address something that wasn't really a problem before. What we should have gotten instead is a way to see who is on our construct, and remove them if they are logged out. 
 

Dear Community Members,
 
As some of the Novaquark recent moderation and sanction actions haven’t been clearly understood by some, here are some explanations and clarifications. We are aware that members from “Dark Star Imperium” (DSI) and “New Genesis” think that the decisions taken by Novaquark have been unfair and/or feel like a punishment. It’s not a punishment and we limited the inconvenience to the minimum possible by just resetting the member list of the Organization. This has been done to remove all ghost accounts and make the involved Organizations restart on a healthier basis.
 
We also made sure that at least one person in each of the involved Organizations can re-invite real members in the Organization:
- CN_Firestorm for “Dark Star Imperium”
- Chipfromearth/SpaceKitty for “New Genesis” (until the end of TMA’s ban)
 
You are more than welcome to contact them to join theses Orgs again if you wish to do so.
Keeping in mind that besides the cleaning of ghost accounts, nothing else has been removed. All community work/content related to these Organizations have been left untouched. We are also going to send an email to all ex-members to inform about the member list reset and offer them to join their former organization again.
 
Regarding the ban of the leaders of these Organizations:

We understand that seeing your leader banned might be frustrating. However, we want to make it clear that being at the head of a big Org does not give a free pass on toxic behavior and/or bad practices that could damage the Community as a whole. Being passionate, being young, creating quality content is no free pass for such things either. That’s why all the permanent bans decided recently are final. We are not giving such heavy sanctions with a light heart or on a whim. In more than four years, the number of community members who have been banned permanently from the community can still be counted on the fingers of one hand. We think it speaks volume... Some recent rumors say that the bans may be reversed or canceled. There is no ground to such rumor. It’s just disinformation. The fact that a banned member will “not tolerate that” has no weight either. It’s the Novaquark team’s call and the Novaquark team alone.
 
Now, we want to give a fair warning to anyone wanting to challenge Novaquark’s decisions openly, directly or indirectly. If a community member has been permanently banned from the Community, he’s excluded from the game, which means he shouldn’t be in any Organization anymore. Reinviting or keeping a community member banned permanently could have serious consequences (such as Organization disbanding but not limited to that, as this could trigger other sanctions for those actively supporting banned members).

Now to address some specific questions/rumors:

We exceptionally give some details to the Community to show that we are not banning randomly or without a serious reason. We do it only because some banned members try to take advantage of the confidentiality policy to enforce their own narrative and play the victim, and attempt to misinform other players. Don’t expect the Novaquark team to give anymore information on this case or the possible future ones.
 
“Banning Sakej99 was a mistake. He’s a different person from FullSend/Lime”.
The Novaquark team is aware that Sakej99 and FullSend/Lime are different persons. However, that doesn’t change the fact that the permanent ban affects FullSend/Lime will also affect accounts he may have access to (by account sharing, which is forbidden in our EULA). This is one of the main reasons why we are so serious about forbidding account sharing. If someone sanctioned got access to your account, the sanction can be extended to the said account even if you haven’t done anything wrong.
 
“FullSend/Lime has been unfairly banned, with no prior warning.”
First, for the infraction this community member has committed, there will never be a warning as it was obviously utterly wrong: if a false report is sent to the Customer Support in an attempt to make another community member banned, the one getting the ban is the one who sent the false report. And in this case, indeed, there is no prior warning.

Second, FullSend/Lime is probably the person in the community who would deserve multiple permanent bans (if it was possible), due to previous infractions in addition to the most recent one. Playing the card “no prior warning” is just complete dishonesty and denial of assuming the consequences of his actions during the past couple of years. Here is a short list of the infractions he has done in the past:
- Asking members of one of his former organization to give login and password of their accounts to him.
- Using accounts of other players.
- Creating ghost accounts.
- Using a loophole in the organization management system on the Community Portal in an attempt to sabotage/destroy an organization by using the account of another player.
- Participating in a doxxing attempt.
- Always denying the facts or trying to minimize them, to the point of reaching self-absolving, to avoid dealing with the consequences (a practice reiterated with his last infraction).
Due to the history of this community member, there was no reason for “prior warning” with his last infraction. He has been warned too many times already. Mistakes are not erased just because it happened “long ago”.
 
By default, Organisations where FullSend was the founder have their ownership transmitted to the oldest member with the ability to create an organization, which gave the following results:
- CN_Firestorm becomes the new owner of “Dual Insider”.
- Gravetender becomes the new owner of “Project Azimuth”.
If you are a member of one of these organisations and you want to discuss these changes, please contact the new owner of the Organization.
 
(About DSI) “There has been a total wipe of the parties to kill the conflict”     
Wrong. If that was the case, we would have dismantled “DSI” directly and ban both DSI leaders, which would have included CN_Firestorm. You can assume that if it’s not the case, this is precisely because there is a difference between CN_Firestorm and Primarch. This sanction wasn’t against DSI. The sanction was against Primarch.
 
Some of the banned members may say “They will be back”.
It’s up to them. However, if we catch them, they will be banned without further notice.
 
Best regards,
The Novaquark team.
 

I've seen several threads on criminal activities, usually involving weapons or drugs... While I find the smuggling aspect of a game extremely enticing (if you haven't ever wanted to be Han Solo are you even real!?), how can a developer set up a system that is balanced and not overwhelming for newcomers and underwhelming for established players? How do they create real reasons for a community ban on something, while simultaneously creating a hidden desire for said thing? Looking at the drugs & weapons arguments here I just see too many issues with creating balanced yet enticing game mechanics.
 
For my answer, I pose something that threatens us IRL. And before you jump to conclusions and start battering me, please have enough respect to read out this entire post. I don't want this to be weighted heavily towards the criminals, I wan't this mechanic to create a multi-faceted game mechanic,  that has a push and pull on both sides of the isle.
 
Identity theft! (Well kind of...)
 
What if there was a module that you could sneak into someones base, and secretly link it to their stored inventories, bypassing permissions and allowing you to steal a small amount of materials from them. It would of course be balanced and the module would "burn up" only after a few units of resources. Plus the process should take a while to complete. Ship/Cockpit modules could be available too. Maybe there could be a couple different module types. One that would stay in place allowing you to leach a very small amount of currency over time instead of resources, forcing the victim to find and destroy the module. Another to read and copy LUA codes so you could use and sell them as your own, this one might "burn up" just after a few lines of code, forcing the attacker to use many modules to get a whole code set.
 
The modules would no doubt become highly illegal in certain sectors. Also the production of these modules would be expensive and require multiple process'. This would allow true manufacturing and smuggling of "illegal" components used in these modules. There could be an entire "underground" manufacturing network, being constantly raided by cops and other "criminal" enterprises. Also on the flip side, there could be an entire market of Anti-theft devices and coding being manufactured and sold.
 
Think about infiltrating a group, pretending to be friends all the while slowly leaching resources and money. Think about the counter-intelligence operations that would be set up. It would create internal political and social security systems. It would also allow subterfuge between groups of players.
 
I would not want this to be a get rich quick scheme for the "criminals", but could still be a lucrative enough to be worth the risk. At the same time this would create high risk situations during the manufacturing, shipping, selling, and installing of modules. Let me know what you guys think.

I've seen several threads on criminal activities, usually involving weapons or drugs... While I find the smuggling aspect of a game extremely enticing (if you haven't ever wanted to be Han Solo are you even real!?), how can a developer set up a system that is balanced and not overwhelming for newcomers and underwhelming for established players? How do they create real reasons for a community ban on something, while simultaneously creating a hidden desire for said thing? Looking at the drugs & weapons arguments here I just see too many issues with creating balanced yet enticing game mechanics.
 
For my answer, I pose something that threatens us IRL. And before you jump to conclusions and start battering me, please have enough respect to read out this entire post. I don't want this to be weighted heavily towards the criminals, I wan't this mechanic to create a multi-faceted game mechanic,  that has a push and pull on both sides of the isle.
 
Identity theft! (Well kind of...)
 
What if there was a module that you could sneak into someones base, and secretly link it to their stored inventories, bypassing permissions and allowing you to steal a small amount of materials from them. It would of course be balanced and the module would "burn up" only after a few units of resources. Plus the process should take a while to complete. Ship/Cockpit modules could be available too. Maybe there could be a couple different module types. One that would stay in place allowing you to leach a very small amount of currency over time instead of resources, forcing the victim to find and destroy the module. Another to read and copy LUA codes so you could use and sell them as your own, this one might "burn up" just after a few lines of code, forcing the attacker to use many modules to get a whole code set.
 
The modules would no doubt become highly illegal in certain sectors. Also the production of these modules would be expensive and require multiple process'. This would allow true manufacturing and smuggling of "illegal" components used in these modules. There could be an entire "underground" manufacturing network, being constantly raided by cops and other "criminal" enterprises. Also on the flip side, there could be an entire market of Anti-theft devices and coding being manufactured and sold.
 
Think about infiltrating a group, pretending to be friends all the while slowly leaching resources and money. Think about the counter-intelligence operations that would be set up. It would create internal political and social security systems. It would also allow subterfuge between groups of players.
 
I would not want this to be a get rich quick scheme for the "criminals", but could still be a lucrative enough to be worth the risk. At the same time this would create high risk situations during the manufacturing, shipping, selling, and installing of modules. Let me know what you guys think.