NOTE this is an attempt to consolidate multiple (separate) proposals into a unified (balanced) set of changes. Please see Rule 5.7 and the Trader Exception and Rule 6.7 in particular. Or not, its fine to just make blind raeg responses too.
Change rule 5.7 to remove the exception for transports, and rewrite the rule so that all players may pass through the dead system for the purpose of getting to another system, but may not interact with any players or facilities in the dead system, and may not stay in the dead system for longer than 10 minutes. No docking, no repairs, no buying/selling, no mining, no hanging around to chat, etc. The only exception to this rule should be ships that are under noobie protection, as defined in 5.3.
Change rule 5.3 to level 35 (note that an unarmored Camara with an empty cargo hold is level 39).
Change rule 6.7 to drop the prohibition on caps attacking transports, but keep the prohibition on caps demanding credits or cargo from transports. This will prevent turtle engaging in lawful piracy against IC transports, but will still allow them to order ships out of the system, engage pirate transports, etc.
Add CMs to every ship. This is necessary since NOVA torpedos and cruiser missiles cannot be shot down with weapons fire nor deflected with CDs. Plus it needs to be at least possible to dodge a CD, even if you cant actually do it in practice.
Improve the performance of transport weapons (link) so that fighting is an option in more situations.
Increase transport afterburner speed to 150, which would make them slightly faster than cruisers, but the same speed as gunboats.
Net affect is that more ship types will be able to engage a transport, and the penalties for losing an engagement will be higher, but it will be harder to successfully engage a transport just by camping a bottlenck that is +30k from a a docking point.
![[Image: smuggler-threat-0-1.jpg]](http://i183.photobucket.com/albums/x57/UrsusMorologus/Freelancer%20Discovery/smuggler-threat-0-1.jpg)