Because my intent is that everyone have the key (hostile or no), except for while they are using it to support an attack on station defenders. Plenty of players hostile to me are on the key. Initially I did re-key people that were revoking their own keys. I got a few complaints about this so I stopped doing that. In this case, I re-keyed Ultionis because I revoked it in the first place and I didn’t have any reason to believe he wouldn’t want to be re-keyed.

Concerning the key ids (4235/4236), (4240/4241), and (4242/4243):
-I can confirm at least one instance (on another day several weeks ago, with different participants) where a key was revoked and reapplied in a strategic manner during a station takeover.

I'd consider that offensive use of the key system.

-To my knowledge, only User Keys are currently given out to the general player base, leaving the key power and usage requiring a lot of trust in the Owner Key holder(s).

In this case is at least contradictory to the common trope of 'Pirate Havens', as the RP names here indicate.

Thoughts on keys and the system:
-Holding a key constitutes not only a right of access but also a responsibility towards it. Freedom of choice to accept this should be given to all and not forced upon someone like spam e-mail.

-A 'Change Log' of the personal key chain would make overall key usage more convenient and transparent (e.g. Mon Feb 16 25:25:25 4650: 'User Key id (xxxx/xxxx)' was changed to No 'IFF')

I have never *given* a key to a player in an attempt to gain a strategic advantage by preventing them from being able to cap the station. That’s what this thread is about. *Revoking* a key while a player is in the station sector isn’t an exploit, and should be expected when you’re trying to abuse the fact that you have a key to attack station defenders without activating the station defenses. Discussion about whether you believe the way I manage keys fits your idea of “pirate RP” is a complete digression from the topic of the thread—if you’re concerned about that you should make a post in the RP forum or say so in game.

I think there are considerable potential pitfalls in requiring players to “opt in” to a key. Relatively few players have any detailed awareness of the key system, which is a feature, not a bug—if you don’t manage the key, you don’t have to interact with the system at all, and you can still be granted access to stations and capships. Especially in the case of capship keys, requiring a new player to accept a key to dock with a capship adds an unnecessary step to a very useful tool for onboarding (pun intended).

To be honest, my preference would be to have “blacklist” keys as an option as opposed to the current “whitelist” keys, where everyone has access by default and owners can revoke access to specific players. I’m less concerned about players having the ability to permanently refuse a key, provided that requires the player to actively “opt out” of that key.

A changelog of the keychain would be useful but it wouldn’t address the issue we’re discussing.