Transcendence

i would post this on the bug tracker but i dont have an account there
you can fly throught it (and shoot through it)

I'd suggest eliminating the arena wall completely. Make a mostly empty system and gate the player there for arena matches.

This solves both the hole in the wall problem and the problem with the arena gates not allowing ships with custom graphics from passing normally.

I'd suggest having an arena wall within that system.

No. The arena wall, even apart from the gates, interacts badly with ships with original graphics.

I think that the wall is what makes it an arena. Also, the idea of a completely empty system (deep space or rouge star) doesn't sound good to me because there'd be no reason for the Ancients to set up star-gates in empty space.

Avoiding the apparently insoluble problems with arena walls trumps making sense.

And the arena walls, being commonwealth constructed structures that are immune to all damage, are even worse fridge logic then a stargate that goes nowhere. Otherwise why aren't there fortifications made of arena walls all over the place?

Still, the arena walls are intended to confine the battle into a relatively small area, and avoid it becoming a battle of attrition as small, fast ships sweep in, blast slower-moving ships, and run off to let their shields regenerate. Just have the gate inside the wall.

On another note, could you give me a screenshot with minimap? I've got a game where I'm stuck in the arena at the moment with a sapphire flying around outside.

I found the problem.

I'm not sure when it was introduced, but there was a bug in which some arena walls (randomly) did not have their bounds set properly.

Since it was random, it was hard to reproduce (different walls would have the problem at different times).

Wow. that's been a pesky one. Good job squashing that one George!