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The bottom line: Rats do not send friend requests. Clients do. Exception: On XBox, mutual friend requests / party invites are required.
Direction of Wing requests and communications
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The bottom line: If you can see the client in Supercruise and can drop on their lowwakeLow Wake, you can do so. But as this carries inherent risks of confusion, the preferred method is being winged with the client. Use this only if the client is having trouble establishing a wing. (I.e, does not understand the instructions to do so, for instance)
Staying in
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Normalspace
Some rats swear to staying in Normalspace at the last known location of a client's beacon. This is also very much a game of chance. Although E:D will prefer to drop players into an instance already spun up and populated with players, it will make no special effort to do so without a wing. The only benefit would be that you would, in the case where the player DOES end up on the same EDServer as you are, you are ready to fire limpets the moment the client enters the game.
It IS possible to improve the chances of the client spawning into the same Normalspace instance as the rat by ensuring the rat staying in Normalspace is in the same region (EU or US) as the client. Then, the rat needs to find their CURRENT EDServer ID (a four digit code, like 1131), and the client must restart their game several times until their server ID matches before logging in to the game. Even this is not a surefire way to ensure a Normalspace instance though.
The bottom line: Staying in normalspace Normalspace is a game of chance. To ensure instancing, the game has to be given a chance to move you to the same EDServer as the client. That means dropping on their beacon while winged.
EDServers and how they work
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