Mica Goldstone
	A ground party is allowed to attack anyone. The question is, should a IND GP making an attack be reflagged as a Pirate (the branding principle)? If so, should ships scanned in the same location as the GP be presumed to be dealing with Pirates? If it is reasonable to assume that the ships were dealing with the GP, should a special action be allowed by the scanning player requesting that the ships be reflagged as Pirates by association? Example Your outpost is attacked by an IND GP. Should you be able to request that the GP that made the attack, and the by-stander ships be reflagged as Pirates? Alternatively: Should we simply consider the IND GP as mercenaries and leave things the way they are. It is then up to the scanning player to notify other players in the game of the dubious nature of the positions in question - the name and shame principle in all its glory. Basically this is a poll on Branding (reflag to Pirate) or Name and Shame (onus on player to do something).
Gandolph
	bit of a dubious one, this one. anyone in the game can transfer their ships to pirate (if they own them), but an IND position may be requiring to deal with people, but has chosen to attack one affiliations assets. Once those vessels are reflagged as pirate it means that everyone in the game is now out of bounds for them, not just the one affiliation. its surely upto the affiliation in question to add those vessels to the posting lists, and offer suitable rewards etc to make sure that even their own friends would sell them down the river. If the right money is offered id sell my granny , so id have no problems in hitting a position that an affiliation deems as its enemy, Unless its proving to be a service to the affiliation i am in obviously.
MasterTrader
	Branding is too permanent, as there is no way that the pirate flag can be removed. There is always the potential for innocent bystanders to be rebranded, with their livelihoods ruined just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It also makes mercenary actions more difficult (if all mercs are pirates, then the hiring affiliation cannot have "All Pirates" on its enemy lists, and the possibilities for mishap are huge). Richard AFT
Jons
	OK well I have a slight bias here as I'm the one requesting..... IND are Independant and as such can give all IND a bad name. I deal in-game with certain IND's and have no problem, they offer a service that I want. Other IND's decide to use their neutral status as a way to conduct pirate activities and then continue on as nothing has happened. I think that if a position acts as a pirate then it should be flagged as one. One IND ship I know has attacked vessels from 3 different Aff's. It's not a covert action against an enemy, it's piracy! If that's the case then spend a few quid, set up a new e.mail account and pay 2 quid a week to have 4 ships that you can do anything with with no come back at all. I will not take the GTT stance of putting all IND on my enemy lists of my starbases but this then means that I have to post them (which takes a week) and then have posts on my enemy list. So if I do this, what would the govenors of the other starbases on Eridani think if Fortress suddenly started shooting at IND shipping? Cheers Jons - SMS
Doc_mark
	A Pirate is a Pirate when it is flagged as PIR, but an IND Merc who is attacking is not a PIR unless there are witnesses. The ability to flag a ship or GP due to an attack that has been witnessed would be a good thing, providing there are witnesses other than that which has been attack. The only other way is to make GP's follow the rules of starships. Give them officers of various ranks which show who they can attack. After all, if an IND mercenary GP is running around the place it's better to have it led by a General, or Colonel, or Tyrant or other named officer. Gives it more class Doc RIP
Clay
	<rant> Personally I hate the idea of branding. It opens the door for an enormous amount of bickering over who should be, and who should not be branded a PIR. I've witnessed in the space of a few days, an IND ship (IND A) attemtping to board an affiliation ship, but failing. The aff. called the IND-A a pirate - and under branding it would have been converted to a PIR. I then had dealings with the IND-A ship, and the captain convinced me, IC, that the boarding action was justified. Therefore, I don't consider that IND to be a PIR. Later, a DIFFERENT IND ship (IND B ) attempted to board IND-A in my sodding starport! So now who is the PIR? The IND-A for the attempted "justified" boarding on an aff ship, or IND-B for attempting to board IND-B in my starport... If it was the aff's decision then they would have chosen IND-A. If it was my decision I would have chosen IND-B And if it was (for example) the KAS's decision they would say both (it was all in Yank) And if it was (for example) the FET's decision they say neither because it's all part of inter-stellar life and they enjoyed the show Much better that it should be the players attempting to resolve certain issues like this, than a game mechanic. I imagine that a lot of INDs enjoy the challenge of being an IND, and having to earn the trust of the affiliations they wish to deal with - if you try to make a clear distinction between Good (IND) and Bad (PIR) then you'll be removing an awful lot of flavour - and I don't think a lot of the IND players would like that. Plus, you could end up with every IMP ship that went near Confed space being accused of PIR actions, and vice versa.... don't give the players the ability to be completely stupid, or I for one will stop shooting at PIRs because I don't know who is accusing them of what anymore. </rant>
Hunter
	Nicely put Hunter (Helen)
Frabby
	I'm in total agreement with Clay. (Several pages of arguments and considerations cut out again ;-) ) Pirates are not only those flagged as PIR. You could accuse almost any affiliation of piracy. If you think you have a justified cause, post and attack the offender. The PIR tag is a special aspect of the rules to give everyone something to shoot at. It is not an exclusive mark of pirates, rather the other way round: PIR positions can *always* be considered pirates, even if they never harmed you. You could say that while all PIR are pirates, not all pirates are PIR. And that's exactly how it should be.