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+--- Thread: Official Faction rework and rules update (/showthread.php?tid=210533)
RE: Official Faction rework and rules update - John'DTR'Grey - 01-09-2026
Hello there. I have some doubts regarding the changes.
1- How the "least an hour a month on their own personal faction ships" will be taken account? using the IP of connection? OF faction roster? Is to clarify it since some factions work only, or mostly, with shared ships, or some players mainly use shared ships of that faction to play (for example, many POB related guys who use shared barges).
2- Regarding the quarter report, I believe it adds a layer of bureaucracy that is not welcomed since in general active OF factions can be seen doing stuff, without a need of a dedicated task every 3 months. For people that work on IT / data / corporative possitions it adds a layer of "more tasks that I already do in my day a day and I mostly hate to do". I believe this shouldn't be forcefull, but mods / devs should check by RP activity as we've been doing it anyway.
Rest of changes are quite nice, and its a more than welcome rework, however that two questions above raise me some concerns.
Thank you.
RE: Official Faction rework and rules update - Weapon - 01-09-2026
(01-08-2026, 09:03 PM)jammi Wrote:
Dead men tell no tales:
Quote:2.3 - Dead men tell no tales - when you are destroyed during a hostile player encounter, your character loses all memory of that encounter, other than that their ship was destroyed.
This is a very common rule that is applied in many other roleplaying game communities. Here are some examples of how this might work in practice:
1. A Freelancer attacks an Official Faction corporate transport in Sigma-13 to claim a bounty. If the transport is destroyed, the player “forgets” the entire encounter leading up to the destruction and knows only that their ship was destroyed by a hostile force. They cannot then report the freelancer to local authorities, apply FR5, set a bounty on them, or otherwise roleplay based on knowledge of their assailant’s identity.
2. The transport sends out a system-wide message identifying their assailant before their death. The transport loses knowledge of their assailant upon being destroyed, however a 3rd party witness could contact them to provide copies of the message. The transport player can now roleplay based on provided 3rd party evidence (although the assailant will probably argue that this is circumstantial at best, unless the witness caught them red-handed).
3. A Freelancer attacks a freighter to claim a bounty. The freighter successfully flees, and docks on a station. The freighter is a combat ship, so docking means it is "dead" for PvP rules. Despite this, the freighter was not actually destroyed during the encounter, meaning it remembers its assailant.
Are you all mad? Has the staff lost their collective minds with this one?
What fruitful outcome can you possibly hope to achieve by forcing collective amnesia on the entire player base? Do you have any idea how many stories, how many rich in-rp rivalries, how much character growth has come, from the near death experiences players have faced with their characters? You want this to be a roleplay server and you're going to force people to omit perhaps the singular most formative event a person can experience from their writing?
I might as well delete every single character I have and pretend the ones I no longer do never existed.
RE: Official Faction rework and rules update - Leo - 01-09-2026
I don't mean to poo-poo on the hard work the team is doing in regards to this rework, but the amnesia portion of this really needs more time in the oven or omitted altogether. That's just not a good way of doing things in game as a result of PvP conflict.
The ability to effect player/faction agency as an OF is a good step in the right direction where story is concerned--I applaud this portion. However, the rest just seems like extra work to maintain Officialdom which already seems like a bit of wasted effort for what you get in return. I do like to see progress so regardless of the pain points on this post, it's good to see some kind of movement on a rework, but there needs to be more of a carrot to running an official faction to make up for the amount of effort required.
RE: Official Faction rework and rules update - Emperor Tekagi - 01-09-2026
I gave the Dead men rule some thoughts since yesterday and I'm not a fan either. It jeopardizes a lot of RP avenues. Why not just declare that stuff like FR5 isn't applicable if the one you want to FR5 successfully took you out in combat? This feels like the main idea behind it, to avoid the winner to still face the harshest RP consequences despite winning. Just make FR5 inapplicable then. Bounty hunting largely relied on attempted or even successful strikes against one another, so it would scale down to just smuggling and blanket bounty hunting now.. and it's already a dying gameplay niche as it is.
RE: Official Faction rework and rules update - sindroms - 01-09-2026
The administration team will have an interesting time tracking down such ''third party messages'' and trying to prove whether or not the players acting as 3rd parties were present in the system or, worse, in the local scanner range of the dead player.
I would advise against implementing this rule simply because of the sanction report processing issues this will cause.
RE: Official Faction rework and rules update - Locksmith - 01-09-2026
Perhaps rephrasing the memory rule to "solid evidence of the attacker's guilt is gone if the victim is destroyed and there are no witnesses" would be a better alternative. It retains the essence of the idea, but doesn't hinder the RP and the characters' personal actions stemming from the incident.
RE: Official Faction rework and rules update - Soban - 01-09-2026
I won’t add much about 2.3, other than that it will give the team a massive headache. For example, what happens if the player is killed in front of an NPC base that shares their IFF? Does the base have amnesia too?
Now, here’s a point that raises some questions.
[WIP] Official Factions can request the deployment of a Forward Operating Base (FOB) once per month. This is a core 2 Player Owned Base, represented as a faction-appropriate battleship, Bustard, or liner. The FOB can be deployed anywhere in the faction’s ZOI +1, where justified by reasonable roleplay. The FOB is not subject to wear and tear or core crew upkeep, and does not require Hangar Provisions for restocking. FOBs are equipped with two Storage Modules, and one other module of the Official Faction’s choice. When a FOB is deployed in a system, the requesting Official Faction and any independent players of the same ID have ZOI in that system, and their death timer is reduced to 30 minutes.
their death timer is reduced to 30 minutes.
What if this is used to siege another Official Faction? Especially if the other Official Faction already has a PoB: does having a PoB also reduce the death timer?
Or, to counter this, does the Official Faction under siege have to deploy their own FOB? Because if you use this perk for RP and normal activity, you’re exposed and can be sieged easily.
Also, if it’s used to siege, the Core 2 Player Owned Base should be a valid target for an immediate counter-siege without additional RP.
RE: Official Faction rework and rules update - James Greed - 01-09-2026
2.3 is half baked, or have never even made it to the oven.
Certified I RP with guns moment.
RE: Official Faction rework and rules update - Traudel Habermeyer - 01-09-2026
Long time since posting anywhere.
While i adore seing certain changes, such as Houses being able to apply law in a bordering system (thank fuck no longer watching 5k slaves being hauled trough a tradelane to Hamburg via Hudson and being unable to do nothing about it) or OFs actually having the ability to affect the story and not being left to play in a predetermined quasi-sandbox dictated by others... i really do not feel the 2.3 rule.
Many points have been brought forward already by others, so i will limit myself to something that would have heavily applied to me if this would have been in effect during my most active time.
I'm a roleplayer, not a pvper. I was never particularly good at the latter and likely will never be. I still enjoyed my time for the most part, even when curbstomped. I could at least write an iRP report about it for my faction and get the ball rolling for more people.
Now when i get inevitably destroyed all i can write is "Yea i got shot down. Got nothing for you boss." ... that is beyond underwhelming and quite honestly feels like i am being punished by the game's rules for sucking at pvp because i died in an encounter.
Could i run? Sure, but depending on what you play it may appear dubious at best. Military constantly fleeing because they want to be able to report? It feels off and almost as if the weird iRP explanations as to why i had to watch that aforementioned transport of 5k slaves in Hudson barreling to Hamburg simply got shifted to another point. Now i got no blackbox, no FTL comms, no automated distress signals, constant whiplash from being ejected out of my craft and Nomad induced amnesia or something.
That would make me less likely to even go into encounters, which i very much doubt is the intention of this rule.
If it is to prevent abuse of FR5 or similar, why not adjust these or set a requirement of instances where something has to happen at least X times instead of a widescale amnesia/tech fault/imposed on everyone no matter what.
RE: Official Faction rework and rules update - Exploration - 01-09-2026
Rarely I post in things like this, I'd rather stick to typing words with people but I'll make an exception this time around.
I don't really like 2.3. I can see why it might be implemented but this particular iteration (as others have mentioned) seems half baked to me. I think it needs a clause within that basically outlines evidence captured during an encounter where the ship is destroyed cannot be used to impose inRP consequences on the other player who won the engagement. That way it isn't going to hamper potential character development of the player who lost. (Probs just rewording what was already suggested but I feel strongly enough about it to throw in my two cents.) Sure it'll add work to staff chasing potential violation reports through data trails to prove this, but you already set sail down that river once it was thought up.
It makes zero sense to me a character doesn't remember who blew them up, or a warship with 600 something odd crew remember nothing. The ship just spontaneously exploded by hostile forces did it? For someone like me who occasionally uses an interaction like that, say I explode in a fight and off the back of that I then go down the route of how that loss affected my character. That is an avenue that is frankly unacceptable to lose in my opinion. Sure I could write that anyway, but if I can't outline who did it or why, it leaves a gaping hole in the detail of what I am trying to write about. It doesn't hurt the other player, why would this be an issue. Tldr, put it back in the oven. That really isn't good enough.
I know it has been done to death already but for a change I wanted to throw in my view as I clearly am not the only one who feels this way.
As far as the official faction rework goes, I think it was needed. Some interesting things have been added for those in official factions which are cool. Flagship armour etc I quite like the idea of. It is yet another thing to encourage official factions existing and playing, always a plus.
Though really the core principle of it, that factions need to be active, more than one person playing it etc existed anyway. The additional paperwork to be done I suppose won't be an issue if the faction meets the minimum people requirement and if 2ICs or HCs can submit the reports as a group. (I think that was clarified above somewhere so this is fine). Faction leaders needing to be active I agree with also as there are a few things in recent memory that became problematic due to an inactive faction HC or leadership. Overall I've no real problem with the official faction rework, I think it was a long time coming. Good job on this part of things.