Inventory of Accidental Crimestat situations (most common to more rare): Shooting guards in bunkers (accumulated CS2, assaulting security personnel, cannot be paid off). Happens extremely frequently when doing bunkers, even when attempting careful aim due to security personnel sometimes desynching and appearing in your crosshair during janky movements. Lawful bodyguard exploit (CS2-CS4, assault to grievous bodily harm and even homicide, cannot be paid off, usually puts you on the bounty list). This is one of the most BS ways to get a CS. Your are a lawful bounty hunter after a criminal or you get attacked by a group. The red player has lawful allies. If you hit them, they charge crimestat. Highly exploitable. Ghost armistice violation (CS2, cannot be paid off). Happens randomly when the game thinks that the ghost collision box of another player ship is on a pad or in your flight path even though its not. The game then charges you with an armistice violation (ramming) for no reason. Unavoidable and unpredictable. Speeding Ticket (CS1, can be paid off). Not usually a big deal, sometimes unavoidable if your in a situation where the security ship cannot get to you to scan, so they just charge you. Can also be unavoidable if the security ship collides with geometry and explodes before getting to you. Trespassing (CS1, can be paid off). Sometimes trespassing fail safes do not activate on certain missions (e.g. eliminate drug stash) and you get a CS1 being in the vicinity. Annoying but can be paid off. Shooting security ships (CS2, cannot be paid off). More rare than shooting guards. Can happen if enemies proximity spawn near you, can be generally avoided with trigger discipline but sometimes occurs due to desynch. Accidental missile operator mode (CS2, cannot be paid off). Sometimes security forces 3rd wheel a fight, if you accidentally target them with MOM mode operational you get a CS2+. Sometimes unavoidable due to proximity spawns but 90% avoidable with situational awareness. Accidental EMP (CS2, cannot be paid off). Sometimes security forces proximity spawn or 3rd wheel a fight, if you EMP and they are in range you get a CS. Only happens to certain ships, is generally avoidable with situational awareness and proximity spawns are rare. Flying a mantis (CS1, can be paid off). There is a mechanic (I tested this thoroughly) where criminals can still charge mantis pilots with CS1s when in the QED snare. Sometimes other allied pilots in the area chasing the same target will charge you. Just accept that you will be going red if your in a Mantis. Gunner gives CS to pilot (CS2+). There is a mechanic where gunners hitting targets get the captain of the ship charged with CS. If you bring new players and they don't have good aim in fights with security forces or allies, they are liabilities. Malicious exploit CS (CS3+). There are multiple ways players can give another player CS. Clipping into people's ships, dropping themselves on someone's parked ship to get collision damage against it and charging homicide, there is a large list of exploits. Thankfully, players doing this is pretty rare but it does happen. Conclusion: There are many ways to get an illegitimate CS, the worst of which are criminals and marauders shielding themselves with lawful players while they attack others. Most of these CS are CS2s, meaning you can't just pay them off and need to deal with Kareah. Dispelling the notion that there are a large amount of criminal players: I sampled over 10 servers over several gameplay sessions. The servers ranged from 79-100 players. Each time I entered a server I cataloged how many players on that server were on the bounty list (CS3+). My general assumption is that players with a CS3+ are intentional criminals as it takes some effort to get that high. If your CS3+, outside of accidental homocides (which are more rare outside of the lawful bodyguard situation), your likely PvPing or doing illegal missions intentionally. I wanted to get an idea of how many criminal players (not accidental criminals, but people that generally want to do crime) vs. lawful players there are. There are some assumptions to consider: Assumption 1: The way we charge criminals with adverse actions is atrocious in that there is barely enough time to actually charge someone once the notification pops up, and many times its buried in other pop up messages. I assume that more crime is being done than is being reported because the reporting system is ineffective. Assumption 2: The accuracy of how many live bounties are on a server vs. how many people may have high CS is questionable but the only metric we have so we are going to use it. On decently ticking servers it should be fairly accurate as long as you are properly certified as a bounty hunter (which I am). Discoveries: Server 1: 2 players with CS of 78 Server 2: 3 players with CS of 99 Server 3: No players with CS of 100 (it was counting 101 but this count is off so I will assume 100) Server 4: 1 player with CS of 98, comm array down mission was up Server 5: No players with CS of 98 Server 6: 8 players with CS of 77, there was an active and known PvP group on this server Server 7: 3 players with CS of 74 Server 8: 2 players with CS of 76 Server 9: 1 player with CS out of 43 (server was probably deadlocked) Server 10: 2 players with CS out of 78 Many of the servers I was on had counts of 70. However the trends are pretty obvious. Less than 5% of players are actually running red and living the criminal life. There are no metrics that I could gather on people with CS1 and CS2s, but I assume the majority of these are accidental. Impact on Group Play and New Players: Group play is a liability unless you are PvPing. Other players when doing missions like bunkers, especially if they are inexperienced, can accumulate accidental crimestat and ruin the session. Gunners can get the captain CS'ed if they mess up and don't check targets. CS is highly disruptive to lawful PvE group play. AOE such as EMP, Snares, and Missile Operator Mode, can accumulate accidental CS by yourself and wingmen if security forces or someone CS charge happy joins a fight and you aren't paying attention. Group play is highly advantageous if you are a criminal and your allies do not have CS due to the lawful bodyguard exploit, which is one of the worst mechanics right next to the bounty hunter "god marker." Accidental CS is very easy to accumulate, becomes even more punishing when in a group, and the entire CS system is highly exploitable by criminals and PvPers. New players that don't know any better will experience jail and lockout of major game loops fairly quickly without a guide and may have bad impressions. Conclusion: Proposed changes in ISC will only exacerbate these issues unless immediate and thorough reviews are done on how CS is applied, especially to curb exploitability. The number of players who are actually legit criminals is almost non-existent (less than 5% per server). The most impacted communities are going to be PvE players trying to play with friends that will suffer significant disruptions to their play sessions as a result of the proposed changes. New players who don't understand what causes CS will be the most adversely affected. Post change, I wager most will just go to jail vs deal with Kareah and this means division from their group -which most of the time will cause the person to just logging off as it will take 30 mins for them to get through the prison loop and rejoin their team (not disruptive at all, right?). The lawful body guard issue will be epically exploited in the next patch. In short This will be an absolute dumper fire UPDATE I added a 5 server sample from today 8/20 9:57 to show that I am actually doing the research and not just BS'ing. I am swapping between NA and EU to get different servers, the above screenshots were from full 100 person servers. Updating with my personal agenda: I'm impartial to pvp and don't care one way or the other. I am adamant about SC being a game that promotes us to crew up and play together more. The current CS system is highly destructive to that goal. I personally feel that the proposed SPK will make an already bad problem with grouping worse. Currently CS is annoying but your group can divert as a team and easily clear at multiple sites to keep your session going. Post change everyone in your group will need to go to SPK and fight through a PVP grinder for even a minor accidental crimestat. The only other option will be for the CSed team member to just log and take the jail, effectively dividing the group. I am of the opinion that this is bad for the social experience of the game as SPK will be held by some of the most hardened pvp vets around the clock, leading to a lot of baby seal clubbing vs good pvp because the majority of people needing to go there don't even want to in the first place. They just want to rectify an accidental crime issue so they can keep playing with their group. Hamfisted is an appropriate term here.