In February 2015, I jumped from Eravate to the nearby Ngaliba anarchy system, in order to hunt NPC's for bounties in my C-ranked Viper III, which had a green paint job of which I was very proud.



(At the time, bounty hunting in anarchies was actually dreadful, but I'd only owned the game for a fortnight, so I didn't appreciate that.)



I dropped into the Nav Beacon. There was a player in a Python there. He said nothing, but positioned himself behind me, then scanned me with a Kill Warrant Scanner. I had no bounties, anywhere.



Once the (clean) scan had completed, he then destroyed my Viper in moments, still without comms.



I was annoyed. I made a note of his name in the hope of one day securing vengeance. (This it turned out would have been very difficult - because I later learned that when bested, he combat logged.)



However, most of my annoyance was directed at myself. In a mere couple of weeks I had already grown complacent and I'd lost a ship to that complacency.



Because I played my first year in this game exclusively in Open, in a mere two weeks I had already been on the receiving end of player hostility several times, but as all my other encounters had involved communication and roleplay (including two in Ngaliba), I'd stopped expecting to be attacked without warning.



Ironically, when I'd bought the game, that was precisely what I was expecting. Because, although I had no experience of online gaming, I knew that in Open, there would be other people with guns.



Reviewing the encounter, obviously I knew that I shouldn't have let him get behind me. I shouldn't have just sat there with 1-1-4 pips looking at the NPC's. I could have put 4 pips in Sys, I could have turned, jumped out, or boosted away.



Or I could have not gone to an Anarchy at all, until I was properly equipped to deal with anything that might happen there.



Taking all that on board I realised I needed an A-ranked, not C-ranked combat ship, so I stayed in Open, bought a T6, moved 100 Ly away to a system nobody else ever went to, and traded up, later starting my PvP career in an A-ranked Vulture.



My Ngaliba Nav Beacon experience was the first and last time anyone ever jumped me.



It was my fault - if you go to an Anarchy in Solo, you expect NPC's to be able to attack you with impunity ... if you go to an Anarchy in Open, you expect Cmdrs to be able to attack you with impunity. That is one of the things that Anarchies are for.



I hope that Frontier never, ever alter this game's Crime & Punishment mechanics so as to prevent, deter or hinder the type of attack that I experienced.



The same goes for Powerplay and, of course, attacking the Wanted.



Attacks on the Clean in civilised space? Yes of course that should be different and, hopefully, one day will be.



But please, let's not permit our consensus over the risible state of C&P to cloud our judgment when it comes to attacks in Anarchies. They are neither a crime, nor (unless part of a campaign of personal harassment) griefing.



Both the map and the HUD tell us before we jump to an Anarchy. We make our own choices.