Reputation & unknown signals

These should automatically start a "bring them back their belongings" contract so you still have a more lawful option to consider when encountering them.

It's not obvious until you start grinding what faction you will affect. Beyond that, I'm a member of FSTC, so why am I not allowed to grind stuff for my own faction? Oh! Because I was grinding on something that belongs to FCTC... Actually, that's not as bad as I thought. I like @Patrick's suggestion to have an option to return the drop pods for faction gain, though it may not need to be a contract. That being said, those simple contracts to either clean up the space junk or return the pod would be interesting. I don't want to shred my standing with a faction I have yet to encounter just because I cleaned up their supply drop.

After finding another pod that apparently was owned by nobody.... it was actually owned by nobody and I was able to grind it down. Blocks don't have a "built by" (presumably to avoid PCU issues?), so you have to open the inventory or control panel to find out who the ship belongs to if you don't want to grind first and ask questions later.

Actually, continuing a thought! Include a message in the pod saying "if found, please return to..." with GPS of an NPC station. That would also take care of locating stations. A similar thought, pods should not drop for a faction if the faction has no bases... or if the faction has no bases in the vicinity (~150km)

Need a way to regain reputation when you can't even trade with a faction when you fall in to the negative, as all trading and contracts lock up(except Pirate/ spiders. Without cheating of course via Admin menu)

In my opinion they would be better as junk because they saved my a** many times giving few advanced components that can be very important if you cant find one material. But even the return it back to gps mechanic sound interesting. I say both, grind it if you need components or return it for money and rep.

I think a reputation drop associated with unknown signals is sort of an unfair case. Grinding a small ship block with 1 steel plate will net you the same reputation drop as grinding a large block with more components in the same amount of time. These signals are especially relevant to new players starting out that have no components yet and giving them a reputation drop at that stage of the game is quite redundant and harsh. It effectively just "blocks" a gameplay element to players.

I have no idea how this could be intended.