Are there any plans to fix the the loophole that allows you to track the exact location of your items even if they are in places that you are not supposed to know the location of? It just annoys me that if I want to use anything not owned by me, the owner can track my exact location at all times and wherever I am, especially annoying when I get items from players I execute owned by their faction (or owned by the dead player, that later go to the market and anyone that buys them can also know my exact location at will); I'd rather throw them away than anything else so people can't track me. It's against the rules sure, but there's little to no chance of being caught really. So I was just wondering if there are any plans to fix this loophole in the future? Because I hear no one worried about it. Thanks in advance for your answer.

Move them off your person/ship/cities/planets if you are afraid of being tracked, however anything that occurs due to tracking can be reversed if the admins deem it to be against the rules.

I am aware of that, however, that was not my question. Even if they use it for nothing, I don't want anyone to be able to get my exact coords because of an OOC feature that's not supposed to do that. So, I'm interested in knowing if there are any plans to fix this loophole in the future, so I can know if I can keep the stuff I acquire without ownership and use it after it is fixed, or if I should just throw it all away.

Well, when they re-did the inventory a few a years back, they didn't do anything about it even though that loophole was in the older version too. If they didn't fix it back when they re-did the whole thing, its unlikely to be fixed any time soon.

Besides there was a Sim News post a while back that anyone using the export feature to find players would be banned for ignoring the Golden Rule. Nothing however was said about using it to find items not being held by other players to track them.

How are they going to reverse OOC knowledge of a location?

If I stole a few items and placed them on a super secret station out in the middle of nowhere, no amount of "reversal" is going to remove the location of the station.

The whole idea of being able to see where an item is located is severely flawed. I would like to see those locations only show up for faction owned items (so the factions can't bitch about not being able to keep track of their crap), and removed entirely (except for tracking devices) from personal inventories.

Besides your point, your example is flawed. Barring the person having access to an SSD or possibly a Lucrehulk (maybe others depending on the station), that station is not going to move, so there would be no need to dump an item on it. Especially if its an enemy station that you won't have access to to dump said item on board.

If I owned the station, stole a knife and stored it there, the item's owner now knows the location of my super secret hideout. My point is that the station won't move, and you can't remove the knowledge given by a poorly planned "feature".

Or you could, you know, not steal anything =P

Then what's the point of taking trophies of murder if the victim (or their friends) can trace their pilfered property straight to the perfidious perpetrator?

After Ming made this thread ah checked various items/ships of mahn to find out what would/would not show up on the map, and found that mah Chir`Daki's show up (with the flashing light) but it doesn't actually say what the flashing light contains (even if there are other ships in the same system, have to remove the Chir`Daki's from the search for the others to show up), also, ships don't show up if it is in hyper but can still track it's location by searching for an item on board (ships/items docked in a station don't show up either, but Asteroid bases do)

The only items can't track are those either on a station or ah'm just the carrier of (with someone else actually doing the carrying, and those are a pair of pistols assigned to me while the owner sees about getting the old custom image)

Before this little test the only time ah did a search on the map was to find where mah various entities were scattered so ah could go pick them up

there should´t be any difference really how you use it, if it is not allowed to gain the kind of information then it does´t matter if you use it to track people, ships or what not.

Tiali, I'm talking about the export feature, not the feature to see stuff on the galaxy map. The export feature shows you the exact location of anything in your inventory (full coords, although I'm not sure about stuff in hyper), no matter where it is. The button is at the lower left, it says "export."

And as far as the "you can't exploit this feature" rule, to me it means nothing, there are countless ways to achieve the same result and it would be close to impossible for someone to find out you exploited this to achieve a result, unless someone ratted you out, and I can think of countless ways to exploit this feature which would not be classified as "tracking a player" (like finding out the location of your secret deep space station, as Ric mentioned). For something like this which is not easily enforced, a rule should not be seen as enough to stop the exploitation of such a beneficial flaw in a feature. But if no one is concerned because this "rule" is "protecting" them (or because you don't have any items you don't own and simply don't care), then I guess that's how it is and I'll just throw anything I get from executed players away.

Using the Export feature to get pinpoint locations of items you should not be able to get should be closed as it is circumventing the previous change that removed those details from the Inventory page

Except the export feature is very handy.

I just printed it out lastnight (for NPCs) so I could sit down and workout on paper what NPCs I wanted to keep and what to fire.

Doing away with that feature, because people might abuse it is pointless.
It's useful ness far outways the abuse (as in, the abuse is easy to control. Own your stuff or wait for the feature where you can take ownership).

Solved. kthnxbai.

Not saying it should be removed, it IS useful. Recently I used it to get the ID# of 1000+ NPCs at once. But why can't the location of certain items just be removed from the information printed out? The "Show on Galactic Map" feature already doesn't show you the location of items you are not supposed to see the location of (anything inside something you don't own, you can't see its location), it shouldn't be that hard to just apply the same checks to the export feature so it doesn't show you the location of certain items in the info printed out, just print out "null" in place of the coords for those items.

Ownership of items obtained without ownership is one of those other SoonTM features that won't even come before I grow old.

The proposed "Claim" button would resolve this nicely. Zhao just needs to be convinced to implement it sooner rather than later.

Yeah, what Hal said, just so long as it comes up with an event saying "XX claimed your item YY at {location}"

“just so long as it comes up with an event saying "XX claimed your item YY at {location}" ”

Totally against that myself. I don't think that dollar I dropped on the sidewalk is going to send me a magical message saying someone else grabbed it. It should say-

"Your (insert name here) was claimed by an unknown party, and you no longer have ownership."

It should not give out the names/locations/gender/favorite food of the person that claimed it. If you had something stolen from you (and claimed) do a little IC work/deductive reasoning to find out who nabbed it. Not another unneeded mechanic to make the game less of a game.

considering that this game is a rather big game and big galaxy there needs to be some kind of restrictions or alerts on several actions to allow the "other" side to react etc.

if there are nothing and people can take or claim whatever whenever without any kind of alert, notification or warning to the owners it will certainly not be much of a game except for the few people who only are in it to steal.

Isn't that exactly what happens now, Tyr, except that currently the person who takes the item has to worry about the owner looking it up in inventory and seeing who they are?

"Claim" button huh? I'd be extremely satisfied with that, just need Zhao to implement it soon. :P

And I agree, if you want to find out who stole something from you, do a little IC work to find out who he is, you shouldn't be automatically told the identity, that's what the TT-8L Sentry droid is for (basically the security camera of SWC). Personally, if I stole anything, I really wouldn't care about the game telling the owner who I am, but it just seems like an OOC feature (if someone steals something from you while you're not there, you can't know who he is) just to make the IC work of the owner (who left his stuff where it could be easily accessed and stolen) easier.