I kinda have an idea to reduce cheating. Forgive me if someone has already mentioned something like this.

How about something that tracks the players level and inventory. So if their level increases or their inventory changes, it checks that it was done "legitimately" within the game. For instance, if money goes up, it has to be recieved legitimately e.g. Selling something, or perhaps recieving money from another player (then that player's money will HAVE to go down the same ammount). If it isn't, the infraction will be reported to the server admin.

It would also monitor player ship stats. So if it changes, it has to be the result of equiping new hardware...but if it's just 'magically' upgraded, then that would be an infraction, which would be reported. Finally, with something like this you'll probably have the option to auto-ban any player when an infraction is detected. Then the admin will choose whether to un-ban the player or delete their profile.

Fundimentally, it would be an algorythm(sp?) that monitors all changes in values, and verifys that it's the result of an in-game action. So what do you people think about that?