Observers only drop tier 3 items.
What we use for intrusions depends on what we expect our enemy to do. Speed and longrange fittings that rely on superior mobility are likely to have Kains equipped with those guns among their ranks. Since they happen to be the fastest mechs in the game they are also the least likely to die.

Note to self: Don't enter Norhoop in a Kain, everyone will come running after you to loot your guns...

See, that is exactly the point. We didn't get caught. We told the Devs in personal convos that implementing any kind of insurance mechanic would lead to it being exploited, therefor it would be a bad idea to do so. They however were confident that their method to calculate and adjust the payouts would prevent that. Later we told them how it is being used, how much profit is being gained by doing so and that we are doing it right now. At no point did they ever state that they do not want us or anyone to use it in this way. Had they done so all of this would be a completely different story.
Perpetuum Online is Avatar Creation's game, hence it is entirely up to them to determine what the rules are. Up until now their approach to exploits, bugs and questionable game mechanics wasn't to cry to people about how they shouldn't be using them until they come around to do something about it, they just went and fixed it as quickly as possible. That is an admirable attitude and it shows that if something goes wrong, they accept responsibility for it and implement an immediate solution.
If we tell them in great detail that a certain game mechanic is being used in a way that deviates from it's seemingly intended purpose and all they have to say to it is that it's working as intended, then that's how it is.
Lots of different games have entirely different rules. While in some games, I remember that being the case with SWG years ago, you could get banned if you disturbed someone who was using a macro to afk-grind. You could also get banned for scamming. EvE however does not punish anyone for scamming as it is exactly the kind of feel they want to have in their sandbox MMO. If you use macros however you will get banned for it.

Speaking of EvE, this entire affair reminds me a lot of the ferrogel scandal. The difference however is that CCP was unaware for several years that it was happening and it was a very obvious item dupe, things appeared out of nothing. Once they did find out, players who were engaging in it got banned. CCP has taken great care to backtrack what happened and tried very hard not to punish anyone who may not have been actually involved with it, however seeing as EvE is one of those games where lots of account sharing, especially in the logistic and production department happens, this wasn't an easy task. Yet after the initial ban wave several people got unbanned which is an impressive display of lenience as account sharing is an EULA violation in itself. They have removed corp assets that have been purchased using ISK gained from this exploit and left the rest alone.
Something CCP never did was release a list of people who did any of this. The reason some corps/alliances were known to be involved in this was someone hacking their forums and publishing it.

Let's compare this to how it was handled here. The DEVs have been warned before they put the mechanic in the game, they knew it was happening once it was in the game and reassured to us that there is nothing wrong with it. Now they suddenly turn around, declare it an exploit in retrospect, wipe NIC off accounts almost at random (later admitting to having punished the wrong person and returning the NIC) and point fingers at the very same people who have been telling them about this issue the entire time AND who they confirmed to that it's ok.
The sole reason why we are upset about it is that it was handled in such an unprofessional way. It's not about the NIC and as we have proven to Norhoop yesterday, we are still very much operational.
While I realize that quite a bit of work from the DEVs went into the poor result we are confronted with here and approve of the fact that the flawed insurance system has been removed, it's just not good enough.
I hope something like this doesn't happen ever again, however if it does I would wish for it to be handled more competently.

We've been helping the DEVs where ever we somehow could, because we actually want to see this game succeed. That does not quite compare to what I did in Neocron, much less to what my guys started doing once I left.

Feel free to add EvE to that list as I happened to be in Ev0ke during the ferrogel thing. I didn't have anything to do with it, believe it or not, but I did get some insight into how it was dealt with by CCP.

Anyway, as long as the DEVs don't end up shooting themselves in the foot with issues like this, it's all gonna work out somehow. A few people got upset, we got epically trolled, moving on.

Ich sichere diesem Vorhaben meine uneingeschränkte Unterstützung zu. Alle Beiträge mit Ausnahme derer in englischer Sprache müssen umgehend aus diesem Forum entfernt werden!