Given that shooting a Pod has a very high probability of killing the pilot and it will be a mostly intended deed (maybe not on some egde cases where it collides wich a rocket or something similar, but you can't cover that exception via ingame mechanics i think), it should be considered as murder. Therefore, you should be punished by the authorities. If the Pod escapes from a ship that you destroyed, the target more or less surrendered to you, which puts him in the state of a civilian, so you can't just blast his ass into space for fun (else the society of Star Citizen wouldn't work by any logical means (would be like anarchy). However, i'm quite unsure if there should be a difference between being the attacker and being attacked. While the attacker may not have intended to kill you, he could have shot you directly in the cockpit (assuming small ships) and instantly killing you in the process of attacking you. In that way, he poses a direct threat to your life by his action (again: assuming small ships), so in my opinion you should be allowed to kill him then. One thing to note is that i allways disliked the ways the real life laws go here (i'm from germany). I practiced Karate for several years and my sensei told me that when i ever get attacked and i hurt the attacker pretty badly (like breaking some arms here and there), i'll be in serious trouble. It doesn't matter that i may panick seing some drunk basterd coming my way (or even several) and it doesn't matter that practicing Karate a few years doesn't enable you to magically fuck everyone up you find, the judge will be like "Sooooo you knew Karate, was it really necesarry to break the arms of person 1 and even kill person 2 just because they drunkenly attacked you at night?" (assuming i didn't get killed that night). What allways bugged me is that the law practically works against you there and somewhat shields the attackers in the first place (i know, you can turn this around in the court but why should i have to defend myself before a judge for defending myself from an attack?). Thinking of this, i would say that an attacker should be free to be killed by you.