The already woefully primitive IFF capability we had in this game has been completely flattened to nothing by this decision before we had any alternative to replace it. Every ship but one in Hunt the Polaris right now is red and anonymous if you're not in a party. Scanning is far too slow, short-range, and clunky for the inter-ship closing speeds in this game. It's only practical for listing the cargo on a ship you killed or want to kill, and are out of immediate danger. In virtually every other MMO, names are freely shown. The "sim" elements in this aspect are irrelevant - in virtually every other sci-fi franchise, faction affiliation dictating hostility is, by default, immediately obvious based on the kind, or at least the name/prefix of the ship someone is flying. In SC, anyone in any faction or alignment can and do fly any kind of human civilian, military, or alien ships. The only equivalent here is Tarkov, where you can make yourself look like whoever you want and player names are only available after one of you die, but the only PvP nuance Tarkov has apart from shooting every other player on sight is not shooting other scavs when you're playing as a scav. Is that what the community wants? Everyone being red might be a completely separate bug, but it's always been the case that inadvertently shooting another player during these events turns you red, and this decision makes that so much easier to do. In the past, if you saw a red player engaging the marked enemy ships, or choosing to not engage you, you could at the very least remember their name as a bugged friendly. Scanning takes time away from the fight, and memorizing serial numbers is clunky and terrible. We're not robots. Even before this change, ship serial numbers were always useless junk information and only ever served as UI clutter. They offer absolutely zero meaningful or actionable information. Even if you memorize one for future reference, it'll change as soon as the owner claims a new ship. If the decision to force them to be displayed was made to cater to the 1% of players with nameable ships at the moment, that is also extremely bad design. If we're stuck without usernames, at least show shortened ship model designations. The brand and the model without the subtype - ie, "Aegis Avenger" instead of "Aegis Avenger Renegade" - would be preferable, with the full model name being available in the target status MFD. We really don't need the full "Anvil F7C-S Hornet Ghost Mk II" on our screens, "Anvil Hornet" is fine for all 37 of them. From what I can see, the only demographic that actually benefits from this change are pirates or murderhobos who are going to have a much easier time getting close to their victims, even ones who would otherwise recognize them. Even if a cargo hauler were to scan everyone they come across - which is an enormous time-wasting burden - you've already let that other ship into melee range without knowing their intentions. This is a death sentence in most situations for every non-fighter, non-capital ship in the game. Lastly, it just makes the game feel dead. Anyone can be a player or NPC. Gone are the days of chuckling at someone's funny username as you're leaving a station they're landing at. Gone is seeing a friend you didn't squad up with randomly in passing and saying hi or asking to group up. Gone is seeing a content creator you like and saying hi to them in chat. Gone is seeing someone you got in a fight with at some point somewhere else and looking for a rematch. In the future, every lawful ship should be broadcasting faction affiliation by default without any additional need for scans. Unlawful will obviously not do so in unaffiliated space. Faction transponder codes should be able to be spoofed with sufficient hacking skill, with varying degrees of difficulty based on the faction's technical expertise, with the UEE Navy and Bit Zeros for example being the hardest... but none of that is even remotely close to being in game, yet we're taking steps as if it were? Normally I can at least see the intention behind poor design decisions in the past. I'm at a total loss here. EDIT Here's my idea, for the present and the future: For the game, this being critical for both gameplay and social reasons, every time a ship is detected, the pilot's name should be automatically broadcast, and very easy for the detector to get. Perhaps it's the case that when you target a ship, the pilot's name is populated. This would be fair, much less clunky, and make more sense mechanically, as it would give the detected ship the notification they were being targeted if they couldn't see the detecting ship. It doesn't make sense that YOUR ship would broadcast YOUR name without also letting YOU know that someone else was asking for it if you weren't seeing anyone on radar. In-universe, the reason for this is that the UEE made a law requiring major ship manufacturers to require the pilot to be wearing a Mobiglas with a valid identification code to fly it, for licensing, criminality, and registered ownership reasons. The Mobiglas is then attached to the regen system as a requirement to use it (maybe this is the case already, idk). So effectively, without a significant hacking endeavor, the equivalent of jailbreaking a phone IRL - your ship broadcasting your identity to anyone who asks is effectively tied to your ability to regen where you want. That opens a huge amount of risk/reward and variety in hacking gameplay, where spoofing the transponder-Mobi link is both a significant skills challenge or money investment/rep requirement that you need to maintain, but allows you to go so far as to, say, replicate a UEE Navy transponder code, which could be the highest difficulty. Perhaps it requires a certain base module or significant rep with the Bit Zeros or another hacking group with infrastructure to accomplish. Someone takes out your base, and your fake identity starts a countdown timer until you lose it and you get flagged. That sounds incredibly fun.