of course, ALL my suggestions relating to MERCS imply a CONTRACT...otherwise they wouldn't be MERCS in the first place...
@ Az
That's exactly how I feel too.
@ Gunny
So then I am to understand that you liked my suggestion about police granting some smugglers the privilege of dealing in BMG under the obligation of fulfilling some conditions and the payment of a %(i.e. 30% as VAT^^) of the goods (which would be determined by the cops)...I am saying this because otherwize we'd just be mixing the smuggler rp with the others again (like it is now with every RP there is out there). Also, for the time being mercs (because they are in high numbers) can help the police by the aforementioned actions or more (I'm just saying: give the mercs more options so that your needs are satisfied but be careful to not give to much authority because you -Pirate and Police- are the main "users of force"). So here are 2 solutions to your 2 problems.
@Abras
Neutrality of mercs and smugglers should be an option not an obligation. Nobody would be in the position to "forbid" merc clans to have alliances but for instance if a merc clan has an understanding with a pirate clan, it would never gain an alliance with a police one (as the natural order of things).
Quotemerc is allied with cop >> cop gets attacked >> merc attacks the attacker from the cop (therefor does his job) >> attacker does NOT have any reasons to complain about anything.
normally, the attacker should have the right to either attack the merc or not. This could lead to reputation loss in there was 24/7 RP. Which would be very good because as things are now and we've seen it in countless examples, there's alot of mixing RP with RL. 24/7 RP would take the RL out of it entirely, as Az suggested. I think that it would be a great thing for the server but it would still need some tweaks so that RL abuse would not be disguised in RP.
Again, I am not talking here about rules or stuff like that, only general guidelines, informal behavior, etc.