Legal status?

kendrone · Post by **kendrone** » Sun Dec 21, 2008 4:47 pm

I am probably being naive here but:

1) What exactly is legal status
2) How do i change it up or down
3) Once i paid a fine, how come and to what effect?

I hope someone can help my pitiful ignorance but i just cannot find anything explaining this fully, even in the wiki!

Cmd K

Wiki pages · Post by **Thargoid** » Sun Dec 21, 2008 4:58 pm

Firstly an alien welcome to the board

To answer your question, legal status (either Clean, Offender or Fugitive) shows whether you have a criminal record or not, for doing dodgy things like piracy, attacking vessels/stations without provocation (when someone's around to witness it) or dealing in illegal substances (slaves, narcotics or firearms).

If you're clean, then the police won't bother you, and if you come under attack from an offender/fugitive they will assist you. But if you're fugitive, expect police (system) vessels to fire on you.

If you have illegal substances in your hold when you launch from a station you will also gain a record (usually offender level), although buying/selling won't affect your status (so you can fuel-scoop dodgy stuff ok and dock/sell it, just don't launch with it in your hold).

Firing on clean vessels when in the presence of police ships or stations will also earn you a criminal record (that's piracy), although if there's no-one around and you do it unwitnessed then you should be ok.

Your record decreases over time anyway (it's stored as a number, which halves at every jump - when it gets down to zero you're clean). It also resets to zero if you use an escape pod, or via certain other OXP-introduced methods. In some cases you can get fined, which brings the count down at the expense of your credit count.

To make it go up (to become criminal), launch with illegal substances in your hold or fire on system vessels or stations, or on clean ships when either are around.

Commander McLane · Post by **Commander McLane** » Mon Dec 22, 2008 5:01 am

Hi kendrone, and first of all welcome to the boards and of course to this great game!

Just a couple of additions:

You will have seen, when you targetted other ships (with the Scanner Targetting Enhancement installed), that each of them also carries a legal status. It is safe to fly next to a 'Clean' ship. However it is very likely that an 'Offender', and it is certain that a 'Fugitive' will attack you. And if you kill them, you will get a bounty.

As Thargoid said, another way of becoming 'Offender' or even 'Fugitive' is to deal with illicit goods (Slaves, Narcotics, Weapons). However, there should one addition be made to what he already wrote: The possession of these goods only affects your legal status if you launch from a main system station. Which means that buying these good somewhere else (or scooping them) and selling them at the main station is a safe behaviour. Just don't launch again before you've sold them.

As mentioned above, your legal status degrades over time. After a couple of jumps your record has been cleared and you're clean again. Actually your legal status reflects the currenty bounty on your head, which gets less and less with every jump.

This built-in behaviour can be changed by installing Anarchies.oxp. This OXP does two (main) things: First it changes the formula that governs the degradation of your legal status (the bounty on your head). It will take much longer to get clean again. Second it offers some new (and usually costly) ways to set your bounty back to 0. Read the wiki page or the readMe for full details.

wackyman465 · Post by **wackyman465** » Mon Dec 22, 2008 1:53 pm

Welcome to the boards, Kendrone!
Another way to get your legal status to go down is to kill people (counterintuitive?), what we all really love doing. Sometimes, after you shoot down a fugitive and your legal status isn't a sharp as usual, you'll get a message from galcop saying they've exchanged your bounty for a bonus to your legal record. But don't count on it. What's the formula in anarchies? I'm running it, and once I heard that I would get 2 points bounty for every ton of illegal stuff I launched with. I saw a lucrative cargo run offer and figured that (with the status/2 per jump rule) with 120 tons narcotics, I would work off the bounty before I even reached the station (wonderful things, fuel scoops) where they were to be delivered. Unfortunatly, I didn't and I'm still doing time today in an astromine.

kendrone · Post by **kendrone** » Mon Dec 22, 2008 5:50 pm

Thankyou all for this help and the warm welcome. No doubt this should help save my cobra from falling into the pits of space.

It would also explain why those ships i was mutually escorting after an attack decided to turn on me when i got in their viewpoint!

Commander McLane · Post by **Commander McLane** » Tue Dec 23, 2008 5:29 am

wackyman465 wrote:
What's the formula in anarchies? I'm running it, and once I heard that I would get 2 points bounty for every ton of illegal stuff I launched with. I saw a lucrative cargo run offer and figured that (with the status/2 per jump rule) with 120 tons narcotics, I would work off the bounty before I even reached the station (wonderful things, fuel scoops) where they were to be delivered. Unfortunatly, I didn't and I'm still doing time today in an astromine.

The formula is (roughly):

bounty - 10%, as long as you're above 50 (= 'Fugitive')

bounty / 2 (default), as long as you're below 51 (= 'Offender')

The tricky part is that there is only a small chance to ever break the barrier between 'Fugitive' and 'Offender'. The code checks whether the 10% reduction would get you below 51. If it would, you get a 93%-probability (I think out of my head) that you stay what you are: a 'Fugitive'. A reduction that would make you 'Offender' only happens with 7%-probability. In other words: It may take quite some jumps to break the barrier (that's what it says on the tin: Anarchies makes a 'Fugitive' status stick much longer).

You can shorten this time, of course, by helping out the cops. The bonus for killing other offenders is granted regardless of your current bounty, so this may get you below the treshold. Or you can invest some of your profit on a well-chosen Salvage Gang or Hacker Outpost, of course, and get insta-clean™.

Erai · Post by **Erai** » Tue Dec 23, 2008 2:32 pm

Being a fugitive certainly makes the game more fun though, even though it would be nice if the docking computer still worked... oh well, it's their stations getting scratched, not mine (I am a sloppy docker, and usually approach the station with injectors burning and galcop hot on my tail, yarrrrrr

)

Post by **another_commander** » Tue Dec 23, 2008 2:40 pm

Have you tried activating the Docking Clearance Protocol feature? If you do, you will realize immediately why crime does not pay (or, more correctly, it ends up having you pay)

Erai · Post by **Erai** » Tue Dec 23, 2008 2:59 pm

I imagine the fines would add up rather quickly

I'll probably activate it some day, but only if, besides "Ok, I'll hold", there is an option "Open the bay or I have an energy bomb and I'm not afraid to use it!"

wackyman465 · Post by **wackyman465** » Wed Dec 24, 2008 9:39 pm

What's the docking clearance protocol?

Post by **another_commander** » Wed Dec 24, 2008 9:48 pm

It's a new feature of Oolite v1.72. Check it out.

Post by **Eric Walch** » Thu Dec 25, 2008 12:05 pm

another_commander wrote:
It's a new feature of Oolite v1.72. Check it out.

I think most people don't like to change code themselves. Therefor I added a download link in your page to download a very small oxp that does the changes for the player by just adding the oxp. When you like it, you could lay a link to your page from the main oxp page.