The real game world of tlopo, not the real world. I never implied that. But real cheats exist, and people who think it's fun or funny to cheat are in all computer games. And again and again, why not give captains a kick button so they can mitigate that 'risk' from abusers.
And yes, everyone knows when you open you ship to the public any old body can jump on, good pirates and bad pirates. Pirates who care and pirates who are slugs, leeches and punks. And telling people they have to take the good with the bad no matter how disruptive they are is basically a cop out. But we don't have to have that situation with a kick button.
I will self officially call it a 'walk the plank' button.
Does it matter? In the game yes, or there would be no threads at all about afk. In almost most battles you do need all hands to survive.
Having afk'rs filling up spots where a active player would have been repairing or shooting works against you and matters. Why even have this discussion if it didn't matter to people, whatever their reasons. I'm not in the 'he/she is stealing my loot camp' but more in the afk'r is by their selfish actions is now influencing the outcome of my sailing session. He/she afk'r can and does sink ships due to their spot taking and no work. The afk'r isn't altering my or my crews loot and rep per se as far as I can tell directly, but if they sink me then they are effecting my loot, rep and anything else from sailing, but they are creating situations that a captain shouldn't have to put up with.
And you can not crew people near the end of the voyage because they don't get any of the crew bonuses had they started as crew. At least that's how I understand it. I thought crew bonus was only stood for rep. I could be wrong.
gl