[moved to suggestions]

*ping*
If a ingame list was added, there would be no problem:P

Then perhaps there could be an in-game "active players" list accessible by hitting "u' and then an alternate tab in the sector players box. But my gosh, I am sick and tired of getting a ton of PMs from a bunch of players when I don't say anything or kill someone in a certain amount of time.

Perhaps, but this doesn't solve the people of who I just don't want PMing me, period. Maybe I want to see what they say in public chat, but not private.

Frankly, I would personally prefer that this ability stay IN. :)

It's quite simple, did that griefer log off and change characters, or is he elsewhere in the universe. Find out by sending him a PM. If he's offline, the server will tell you.

I for one hate this. Can there be a way of accepting IMs or not, a la AOL IM? I really don't want to accept IMs from people, yet I have no reason to block them. Can we either remove the "*** That user is no longer online" warning or give players the option of accepting PMs?

Only if every character has its account name associated with it in an easy-to-see way ingame.

Well, some people enjoy anonymity, and that's not wrong. I just hate it when I get a ton of PMs from people I wouldn't speak a word to. I don't like people knowing when I switch characters. Couldn't it be possible to block private messages from someone without muting them? Maybe the devs could give us a peak at what the final chat system will look like! *hopefulness*

Could it be possible to eliminate people switching characters randomly? Generally in the real world, a pirate can't switch his entire identity in 20 seconds, changing sides in a war and changing his name.

But this is a game.

In the context of the game, is it realistic to send messages to a ship and force them through to the pilot? What about "on screen," or "do not open the channel."

Seeing that I'm online is only one problem. Sometimes I just don't want to talk to the person privately due to an attitude or other non-mutable offense, but don't want to block them.

Sorry, SirCamps...I won't PM you anymore...sheeeesh! : )

well SirCamps, if you could block them, why don't you want to? (sorry, I didn't know anything about the blocking feature before)
I rather like the notification that someone isn't online; I would hate to be sitting there talking to no one just because I couldn't determine if he/she were online

I agree with SirCamps... Its anoying as hell getting a message like "Ping" from some lamer that is checking to see if you are still online as a particular character.

However, stopping this won't help with staying anonymous when char switching, bcos *some* players have scripts which watch the Active Players list...

Perhaps 'ignore' should return 'this user is not online'

If it was made so you had to accept a PM, you could get messed up do to combat when you cant read a message that could be very important due to the distraction it would coase to open it.

My idea:

/PMoff

reject all PMs sent to you, unless the sender is on your list:
/PMlist add "The Colon Shrimp"
would make it so all messaged from TCScome through dispite /PMoff

/PMlist remove "The Colon Shrimp"
would take him off your list

OOooh, I like! Then you could also have a PMblock "name," so even if you had /set PM on, you could block specific people from PMing you.

<***> Error: That person has blocked your private messages.

that would still tell if you were online or not.. i prefer:
<***> Error: <name> is offline or blocked messages from you

And that appears when your logged in in or out, so no one knows unless they check the list

Which require either having a script, running in windowed mode, or quitting the game.

I like this idea.

Complete suggestion:

Add an in-game list of everyone on the server, accessible by hitting "u" and clicking on a tab in the pop-up window.

Add the follow commands:

</set PM 0> Blocks all PMs
</set PM 1> Allows all PMs
</pmblock> Prints current list of players blocked from PMing you
</pmblock "name"> Blocks PMs from "name" if set PM = 1
</pmunblock "name"> Removes "name" from your list of players blocked from PMing you.

If "name" attempts to message you while on they are on your block list or while you're offline, they are returned with the message of

<***> Error: <name> is offline or has blocked your private messages.

just has it so you have a camande to turn off radio....off off off!

then, you can turn on/off chat,pm,team, radar, sector chat....and see it.

For that, check /set multilog 1