Matthew
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Posted - 2005.03.21 17:27:00 -
[1]
This is the sort of situation where tagging something as stolen would be a great feature. I'm thinking along the lines of the "signatures" above, but maybe a slightly wider functionality.
Say each item in the game can have an "owner" identity attached to it. The owner can be an individual, corp, or alliance, and costs a small fee to register the item as signed. If it's an individual, only that individual can change the signature data and use the item with station services etc. If it's a corp or alliance, make "signature control" a new role. Any member of the corp/alliance can use the item without penalty, but only those with the signature management role can sign/unsign items. All items must be unsigned before they can be sold on the market.
The original signee gets a new tab in their wallet listing registered signatures. They can use this to report a signature as stolen. At that point, customs starts looking for that signature and gives a range of responses, depending on how much the signee pays. For a small fee, it would be low-level....say, an evemail to the signee every time customs spots it, with details of who, where and when (maybe make this limited to a consolidated mail every hour if spammage becomes a problem). For higher fees, customs could be paid to pursue and retrieve the stolen item. But these fees should be so high that it wouldn't make sense to do for any but the most valuable items.
Obviously, we would then need skills on the dark-side...signature masking to hide stolen items from customs (or maybe link with smuggling when that gets in), some way to fence/de-sign etc, that, while possible, should be difficult, time consuming, and involve some expense.
The eventual aim I'm thinking of is for the thief to have a chance of thieving and fencing the goods, but make sure it takes long enough for the victim to have a chance of chasing down the trail and at least attempting to get the stuff back/get back at the thief. Tagging the item, rather than the thief would also stop the problem of passing the stolen goods through numerous alts. Charging for the signatures would also mean that only really valuable stuff would get signed - people would hardly sign every round of ammunition!
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