Lately I had the displeasure to encounter unfair behaviour by a certain group of players. They form up in two different squads and bet on the match maker to put them into the same game. Given the still quite sparse player base, that’s not a big bet. They will ignore each other but not other players who have the misfortune to be forced into their game. I have no evidence of them relaying information via voice about players in their team that are not in their (split) squad but given the unfair behaviour they show it would not be any surprise.
Quite frankly, the game is yelling for grief play. A nicely placed nuke can blow up your entire team. Intercepters can be crushed by frigs with ease. Those are just a few I came up with by myself and there are plenty of players more cunning then I am. Teamkills are easy and have no retaliation.
As a result of the lock in of ships into battles one can’t even quit a game with such individuals without having a rather large disadvantage and will leave many players (and therefore customers) unhappy.
Having the option to tell the match maker to avoid certain players is far from perfect but would be an option that does not require constant monitoring by GMs.
There is a new one. Constantly bumping into players to drop their armor. Kudos to “Radical” to making himself look like a 13 year old by demonstrating this form of unfair behaviour. One can’t sink much lower. Because a) it wont get you anything and b ) it can be easily documented by activating fraps. In the times of the intarwebs name-and-shame has grown to a completely new level.
In contrast to teamkill this is very hard to punish without the help of GMs. Teamkill could simply result in a loss of XP. Players that end up with negative XP are banned from the game.