A friend who recently started ( rank 3. ) was attacked by a rank 24 a tottal of 6 times in 4 hours, along with hacks and raids. I am rank 203, and attacked the guy back. He then went and complained to his legion. His legion leader then complained to our legion com, and posted a number of messages on my legion com as well.

I was looking for some advice on how to handle the situation diplomatically at this point, as I don't want the lower rank members in my legion to suffer from a war.

Just tell the other legion officer that you were responding to a farming alert, after one of your low ranked members was repeatedly attacked by someone 8x his rank. See what happens from there.

However, the only way someone rank 24 would be able to see a rank 3 was from an alert, so there must be more to this than you say,

I attempted that, but he doesn't feel like listening.

As for more to it then that, there isn't. The friend is my room mate, and I was there from when he started playing to when the guy started farming him, and he didn't attack the guy, or anyone else for that matter. I want to keep him away from the battle tab until about rank 20.

Update on the situation. It seems their players have a tendency to attack others many ranks below their own.

i thought that pvp didn't even show up till like rank 10 o.O?

If a rank 24 keeps attacking your rank 3 then keep attacking the rank 24. I'm a pretty diplomatic person, but that seems fair enough to me.

Your rank 3 mate HAD to do something for the R24 to even target him as the 24 can only see players ranked 15 and up on his battle tab. There are only 2 ways you can attack someone outside your tab range. They either hit a planet and got retaliated on, or they hit another person in that legion and got alerted.

But I do agree with Ferrus... he's 8x your mates rank and is farming him. You are 8x his rank, so farm him back. Aggressive Negotiations--Diplomacy with a lightsaber.

you can't attack planets until rank 20

Ok, I talked to him. One time while I was in the bathroom, someone used an artifact on him, and he responded by using an artifact back. So they got him through that. He didn't think that that counted as an attack, hence why he didn't think to mention it.

Question still arises - how did someone see his character to launch an artifact? Was he guarding a world?