This will likely get me shot by the Economy team but, perhaps it might be prudent to consider larger transports? I say this partly because money but mainly because, if the freelancer ID can only use transports with 3600 units (except pirate train) and if we're thinking the Civilian ID should hold more then maybe we should increase the largest transport sizes (from 5K to 6K as an example).
I'm not prepared to defend this point, it's only a vague suggestion.
I wouldn't mind seeing 'Civilan' or 'House Civilian' ID's, specifically with something indicating a character is a citizen of a House or state, like Liberty Civilian ID, Kusari Civilian, etc etc. House/ 'mini state' ID's would be nice for that, and characters could have a house affiliated 'civilian' ship to prove citizenship, and go to 'civilian' mode at certain times. Then Civilians can be light alternatives to freelancers, whereas they are aligned to a house, and wouldn't merc, but perhaps buy and sell legal goods, or smuggle. I'd expect such an ID to be limited though in cargo capacity so as not to compete too much with the larger corporate ID's, and maybe even less than the FL ID (2800 - 3000). The rules could be basically what's stated in the OP. It wouldn't be good for a combat ID, I'm thinking probably an ID mostly for RP purposes and/or a beginner ID. It would also seem to mean you wouldn't find Civilian vessels (private owned) flying fighers, bombers or gunboats either. Leave the Freelancer and BHG ID's something! Or that could be enforced with inrp laws too. Civilians flying military ships could be illegal, the same as Freelancers flying illegal ships.
Then you could use IFF's to create a variety of characters. You could fly a small transport with a Freelancer IFF but Liberty Civilian ID, and operate just the same as a Freelancer trader, but without the ability to bounty hunt or escort. And perhaps it would make sense to have inrp laws that Civilans/ regular Citizen vessels should be unarmed, and fly without turrets, only CM! Civilian ships that smuggle may arm anyways to deal with pirates or law enforcment. Just because you're only a civilian doesn't mean you won't wind up a wanted criminal! But at the same time, a Liberty civilian ship would get some rights and protection from its House if a lawful trader.
It's actively deterring players from making the attempt to create new, official factions, new companies, competitors, when one could expect far more from such roleplayers in-server and on the forum than silent, powertrading megacorp IFFs. You can call me biased, but as a new/restarting player who didn't take advantage of the "veteran package," I ran into it within a few days of play.
I don't expect anything to change at all, but it's yet another insight into inconsistent applications of principles that punish good behavior while doing next to nothing to discourage bad behavior. If the fear was "overpowered Freelancer powertraders docking at all ports with 5kers" then the ship sailed: Now you have "overpowered IC powertraders docking at all the ports that matter with 5kers." And even when they aren't IC and co, instead this just pushes players out into the border and edgeworlds as Zoners, removing more players from the core systems that you'd expect to have the most player activity.
All that these rules succeeded in doing was changing the IFFs of some silent players, and not even that worked. I noticed two different 5k Freelancer IDs, in the middle of house space, in the past week alone, and in a server with such a small population that's very telling. Not only do new players find the requirement ridiculous enough to ignore, but it looks like nobody's bothering to enforce it anyway. And why would they? Who benefits from punishing them? Far from "griefing" the non-existent economy, at least those people are actually on the server, in what should be regularly traveled tradelanes, and giving pirates something to halt and shoot at, and police something to serve and protect. This place exchanged "10mil or die" pirates every five rings for eerie silence, and I'm not sure which is worse anymore.
I'll keep flying my meta-restricted 3k train because it's the only option that's been left to me as a civilian-run, non-megacorp business in house space. Pirate trains are out of character and mostly banned from legitimate civilian space. Getting one licensed in Liberty costs more than a 5ker and the other houses won't respect it anyway. Going directly for a 3.6k ship instead of a thematically appropriate one just looks desperate and contrived, like everyone flocking to 5kers in the first place. All the while I'm flying a ship that's clearly a modular train but I'm not allowed to slap two more cars in the back. Actually, I can't even carry passengers onboard because nobody invented passenger cars in this universe, but that's another matter. It's stupid, which makes me feel awfully stupid for trying. When others ask why I'm not in a 5k, IC tagged, or think I'm some noob because I haven't done so, or are amazed when I'm not rolling in credits when I turn down their billion-credit offers, what else should I feel?
Warhawk, you should look into OSC shipline and generic transports that already exists namely:
OSC shuttle
OSC freighter
Armored Transport (Pelican)
Geisha and Democritus
Taerau (propably butchered it) - Gallic "assault" transport
Oasis (previously prison liner)
Bretonian liner - still fits under 3600
Additionally Bretonian law permits Pirate-line of transports to be used by every Junker and otherwise individuals with friendly standing with Bretonia. I did it myself long time in the past on FL ID.
From what I've seen, Unioners consider themselves civillians engaged in economic resistance. Unioners would be unlikely to shoot civillian IFF'd ships and would immediately try to rephack them neutral.
The idea is good, but I wouldn't make all unlawfuls hostile.
just make a new rep group (Y'know, like ones in the rep sheet ingame) called "Civilian". Add a command called "/civilian", which will set your IFF to said group instead of having a freelancer one, and in progress set you hostile to whatever pirate groups. Boom, you are the average Joe civvie that can also take bounties and such.
That's precisely what a Freelancer ID is for. A freelancer can be among other things just a civilian. I agree with Karlotta, there's no need for more IDs.
The restarts and the reputation sheets generated by them, on the other hand, could use a bit of a rework, though. We should have several kinds of freelancer restarts with different reputations. A bit akin to the current Freelancers, but a bit more detailed. So that a new character can be made with a reputational standing mirroring associated roleplay.
Thus, I would be able to make a character that's let's say a Libertonian freelancer that's neutral to the Rogues because he's a smuggler that works for them or make a character that's a Libertonian freelancer that's hostile to them because he's just a civilian trader, and so on and so forth.