Standing and status

Your personal standing with each of the different factions decide whether they like you or not, to the point where they'll send their faction navy after you if your standing drops low enough. In addition, your overall security status also decides whether the faction police will hunt you down or not.

In short:

CONCORD forces deal with criminals.
Faction police forces deal with outlaws.
Faction navy forces deal with people who have low faction standing.

Effects of Security status

Having too low security status will have effects on your life in high and low security space.

Outlaw

Once your security status drops to -5.0 or below you become an outlaw, also commonly referred to as perma flashy.

It means anyone can attack you at any time without CONCORD interfering, even in high security space. It also means that assisting you would be a criminal offense, even for your own corporation members. That means anyone who needs to assist you would have to turn their safeties off to assist, and in the process temporarily become a criminal for fifteen minutes. In highsec this means that CONCORD will destroy you if you assist an outlaw, even though they leave the outlaw alone (it is the faction police's job to hunt outlaws).

Travel restrictions

Once your security status drops below certain thresholds, the empire faction police will start hunting you when you enter high security system. Any cloaking device fitted to your ship will also be disabled based on the same criteria, so you cannot cloak up to avoid the faction police.

Security status of -2.0 or below means you'll be attacked in █ 1.0 systems.
Security status of -2.5 or below means you'll be attacked in █ 0.9 systems.
Security status of -3.0 or below means you'll be attacked in █ 0.8 systems.
Security status of -3.5 or below means you'll be attacked in █ 0.7 systems.
Security status of -4.0 or below means you'll be attacked in █ 0.6 systems.
Security status of -4.5 or below means you'll be attacked in █ 0.5 systems.

You'll have a few seconds before they arrive and while the faction police is formidable, they are not as strong as CONCORD and can sometimes be handled and often avoided if you're flying a reasonably agile ship.

Remember that pirate factions couldn't care less about your security status, but just like all the other factions they do care about your faction standing (see faction standing below). Also remember that in CONCORD-claimed systems like most of the systems in the Sanctum constellation in Genesis, CONCORD itself is the faction police.

Changing security status

Losing security status

There are several ways to lose your security status, all concerning unprovoked actions in low and high security space.

Unprovoked attacks (small hit).
Unprovoked attacks leading to the destruction of the ship in question (moderate hit).
Unprovoked podding (big hit).

Unprovoked actions are actions not sanctioned through war, limited engagements or suspect/criminal timers. For example, engaging a non-suspect or non-criminal in low security space that you are not at war with, suicide ganking in high security space. For more information on what actions result in a security hit, see Crimewatch.

Remember that these actions always lead to you getting either a suspect or a criminal timer, depending on which action you chose to engage in and the security level of the system you're in. Not all suspect or criminal offences will result in a security status hit however. Stealing from a can will flag you as a suspect, but you won't lose any security status. Criminal acts in low security space doesn't incur the wrath of CONCORD unless you decide to jump into high security space before your criminal timer runs out. See consequences of being a criminal for more information on the effects of being a criminal in high security space.

Raising security status

Main article: Repairing security status

There are numerous activities that raise your security standing.

Running missions against pirate factions (you gain security status from the high bounty rats).
Killing high bounty belt rats, a.k.a. belt ratting, in low and null security space (the larger the rat, the higher the increase).
Running Incursions.
Turning in security tags to CONCORD in low security space.

Sentry guns

Whenever you lose security status through suspect or criminal offences in low or high security space, any sentry gun on grid will engage you. The sentry guns will continue engaging you for as long as you remain on grid.

No aggression is carried over after leaving the grid where you performed your initial act, so even though you're still a suspect or a criminal there's no further aggression from those or other sentry guns once you warp offgrid. Just remember that a new act of aggression that causes you to lose more of your security status, such as continuing to pod someone in low security space after initial aggression, would trigger another response from present sentry guns. But they too can easily be reset by bouncing to an offgrid tactical and back.

Sentry Gun

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