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+--- Thread: Embargoes (/showthread.php?tid=17073)
Embargoes - Xoria - 02-28-2009
What is the point of an embargo? In real life the point is to cause damage to your opponent. Since Freelancer's game mechanics are unaffected by who is transporting x cargo to y location, this is less relevant to us. The main point of an embargo in Freelancer must then be the creation of additional roleplaying opportunities. Depending on the way they are constructed, embargoes may enhance roleplaying, or it may eliminate it entirely.
Consider this scenario : Gateway trader purchases military vehicles in Rheinland with the intent to sell them in Colorado. He first must get past the Rheinland pirates, then must get past the Rheinland police and military who have banned all exports to Liberty. He then must get through Hudson or Bering without being pirated, followed by getting past any of the 3 Liberty lawful factions in Texas who for some wierd reason want to keep useful war materials in Rheinland instead of allowing them into Liberty. Then he has to get past pirates in Liberty. The return trip is the same. So any trader attempting this transaction has no less than the members of a dozen factions on both sides of the law trying to stop him.
Now consider this scenario : Gateway trader purchases military vehicles in Rheinland with the intent to sell them in Colorado. He first must get past the Rheinland pirates, then must get past the Rheinland police and military who have banned all exports to Liberty. He then must get through Hudson or Bering without being pirated, but is able to contact the LSF, LN, or LPI to assist him because he has managed to smuggle vital war materials out of Rheinland to provide to Liberty to aid in the war against Rheinland. He may even get some help from those Liberty groups in Hamburg, Bering, or Hudson. After he offloads the vital war materials in Liberty, he is sent on his merry way back to Bretonia by a thankful Liberty government.
Similarly, a Kusari trader comes into Liberty and is assisted by Rheinland forces in getting past the Liberty embargo to smuggle war materials into Rheinland, and a Rheinland trader is assisted by Kusari forces in smuggling materials from Bretonia to Kusari, and a Liberty trader is assisted by Bretonian forces in smuggling materials from Kusari to Bretonia.
The first scenario provides every possible discouragement, while the second scenario encourages the allies and friends of Liberty to assist Liberty by redirecting Rheinland's resources to the aid of Liberty against Rheinland. It also creates opportunities for Liberty and Rheinland to infiltrate each other to assist those smugglers (shouldn't be any further than Hamburg & Texas, but it's a better reason than "Lets go blast them").
When scenario 2 is applied to every House, then a series of 3-House routes are enabled and encouraged :
Liberty corporations trading from Liberty to Kusari, smuggling from Kusari to Bretonia, trading from Bretonia to Liberty.
Bretonian corporations trading from Bretonia to Rheinland, smuggling from Rheinland to Liberty, trading from Liberty to Bretonia.
Rheinland corporations trading from Rheinland to Bretonia, smuggling from Bretonia to Kusari, trading from Kusari to Rheinland.
When scenario 1 is applied routes are limited to the following:
Between Liberty and Bretonia
Between Liberty and Kusari
Between Bretonia and Rheinland
Between Rheinland and Kusari
In other words, Hudson, Bering, and Tau 31 become barren wastelands where no pirate dares go except to die from boredom, while traders confine themselves to going back and forth between only two Houses.
Additionally, specific commodities and corporations should be exempt from embargoes. Namely :
OSC carrying people or luxury items
Synth Foods carrying foodstuffs or agricultural materials
Planetform carrying commodities related to terraforming (even in Kusari, since a terraforming operation is going on in Okinawa)
Cryer carrying humanitarian supplies or research items
Ageira or DSE carrying gate lane parts to Bonn Station should be stopped by Liberty, welcomed by Rheinland, and then sent on to Kusari or Bretonia without picking up war materials.
Anyone carrying humanitarian aid anywhere should not be stopped : food, water, oxygen, pharmaceuticals, synth food. On Earth, only the truly wicked stop the Red Cross.
Any of the above should get in trouble if attempting to carry war materials to a House's enemy, but otherwise should be treated according to their specific purpose at the time of interdiction, i.e. Ageira carrying gate/lane parts to Bonn would be stopped by Liberty but welcomed by Rheinland despite being a Liberty company.
Following the above creates additional roleplaying opportunities, while blanket bans on all trade simply eliminates them by discouraging them from ever taking place to begin with.
Also, traders who are interdicted should not go onto some "watch list". Especially with the FLHook name changer, this is much less effective, and besides which it just discourages people from trying to smuggle, and that is contrary to the point : without smuggling there is no one to interdict, and if there is no one to interdict, the lawfuls haven't won, they've caused everyone to lose, because the point is creating additional roleplaying opportunities, which requires the "illegal" activities to continue, not that they be punished into nonexistance.
To put it in simpler terms, imports brought to your House by neutral or friendly traders from your enemy House should be welcomed, while exports from your House to your enemy House should be interdicted (unless the cargo is people or humanitarian supplies). Blanket bans on trade discourage the creation of roleplaying opportunities, and are ultimately destructive to server gameplay.
Embargoes - Jihadjoe - 02-28-2009
' Wrote:Consider this scenario : Gateway trader purchases military vehicles in Rheinland with the intent to sell them in Colorado. He first must get past the Rheinland pirates, then must get past the Rheinland police and military who have banned all exports to Liberty. He then must get through Hudson or Bering without being pirated, followed by getting past any of the 3 Liberty lawful factions in Texas who for some wierd reason want to keep useful war materials in Rheinland instead of allowing them into Liberty. Then he has to get past pirates in Liberty. The return trip is the same. So any trader attempting this transaction has no less than the members of a dozen factions on both sides of the law trying to stop him.
Main reasons for Liberty not wanting rhienland weapons and war materials...
1. They may well be deliberately faulty.
2. They may be a cover for espionage operations.
3. It puts money in the pocket of the rheinland government, which is extremely bad given the above.
Just a few roleplay reasons in answer to a few question that have been asked about why we block these goods.
Embargoes - Derkylos - 02-28-2009
What you say is quite true, and I support said activities on my lawful characters. The problem is that most traders have a trader ID, and are thus not affiliated with anyone. As such, they are treated as untrustworthy until they prove their usefulness.
If a BPA (for example) encounters a tagless, trader IDed transport hauling war materials, he will naturally be suspicious: there is a war in progress with Kusari, and any military supplies leaving Bretonia will have a negative impact on the BAF's ability to conduct warfare. However, as soon as that trader becomes Bowex or Gateway, the policeman can now be relatively certain that they are hauling those goods in the best interests of Bretonia, and he will probably not give them so much as a second glance, unless they are under fire from pirates/KNF/etc, in which case he will come to their aid.
Independent traders are all well and good, but, until you prove to a faction that you are supporting them, they will remain suspicious of you.
As for putting people on a "watch list", well, if someone is observed to be supplying a belligerent state, they will be treated as an enemy. When you mount a neutral or generic ID, your actions are all that observers have to go on.
Embargoes - Jinx - 02-28-2009
embargos - both in RP and at the same time... killing RP. - yes
reminds me of the kusari legal codex. - when it was introduced, i mentioned that it might cause kusari to become a wasteland without much common roleplay. - common roleplay starts with regular traders.
since many profitable goods were point blank considered contraband and or required allowance from the KNF - the prediction was that people would simply ... trade elsewhere.
now - there are many opinions - some say kusari is dead and empty of "normal player frequency" others claim that its full of vibrant life.
for ME though it caused that i have pretty much avoided kusari. - while one might say that its no work to just read a few RP laws and then keep them in mind... it adds up. - rheinland has goods that are contraband ( but not listed as such in the item ID ) - liberty has some, bretonia has some, kusari has some. even pirates have some.
the result is - uncertainty. - the logical consequence is to avoid any confrontation if you wanne keep it simple.
embargos, not allowed goods that must not go to a certain direction make perfect sense in RP. - but can overcomplicate things very much. - the trader is here to relax - like every other person.
right now - to play disco properly with only like 5 different chars... you d need:
- a list of all outstanding bounties + their restrictions
- a list of every house and their forbidden goods
- a list of ZoIs
- a list of your own allowed and forbidden gear
- a list with the disco rules
- a much larger list with unwritten disco rules
- a list with RP laws that won t get you sanctioned, but still destroyed
- fraps video recording running
- chat timer turned on
thats quite a list of things you need - so ... things are a bit complicated.. and embargos add to it. does it kill roleplay? - hard to say...
for some, its even more intense the more exel sheets they need to consider - for others its too much. - so for some, the enviroment is richer. for others... its dead.
Embargoes - Athenian - 02-28-2009
There's a lot of potential in the interdicting of cargo, whether it's part of a wartime blockade or embargo.
The wide powers of the military i.d's. are probably a little too far-reaching. And that is why police factions find it so hard to generate interest or maintain activity. Why play a policeman when the military i.d. allows me all of the police i.d. and more?
The BPA interdicts smugglers, believe it or not this actually involves stopping and re-directing people to other stations, dishing out fines that aren't in the millions, and so forth.
A universal list of contraband is one thing; allowing players to deicde what is contraband is another. It might be possible for someone to create a decent rp excuse for a cargo of artifacts (which someone did once - said they were works of art for a exhibition on Cambridge). Once a lawful player is prepared to RP a bit and not use the guns as the solution, then the possibilities increase.
Embargoes - Derkylos - 02-28-2009
If you're worried about what counts as contraband, I'd think it safe to say slaves, cardi, artifacts, counterfiet software (the hard-coded ones) will be stopped no matter the destination (except for a few cases, like Bretonia sending cardi into the taus (to poison the populace of Kusari)), and the supply of any non-humanitarian (anything except food/water/Oxygen-the basics for life) commodity to an enemy (most obvious in the Taus, but supply of pirate bases would count, too) will be stopped.
Most of the time, a policeman will pull you over and ask you "Where are you taking that" (most of my pirates do this, too, but...). As long as you don't say something ridiculous (you would be surprised how many people tell my BAF they are taking deuterium "to Honshu"...), most would be content to let you continue, assuming your cargo is not the "hard" contraband.
Embargoes - Jinx - 02-28-2009
but also take into account...
traderoutes are balanced with profit / travel time in mind, as well as how complicated they are in terms of tradelanes, mines, pirates.
so - lets just say, every house has 1 very profitable that involves at least one system / planet / station of this house - and 1 profitable run. - so - in a perfect world - all houses have the same amount of good traderoutes... henceforth, every house enjoys the same amount of traders / travel, mostly depending on the RP of the traders and the pirates.
but suddenly - due to RP ... one house denies the transport of a commodity - which suddenly turns down one very profitable run for a house. - the result is that this house becomes at the very least... less frequented up to dead.
its a fragile balance. - its not like every player suddenly thinks "gosh, thats a great RP opportunity to play a blockade runner or a smuggler" - no, reality shows that the vast majority of traders don t want trouble, nither in RP terms - nor when it comes to an overcomplicated traderun. ( like flying 30k above the ecliptic ).
so - an embargo can disturb this balance of trading.
in the past, it was quite often asked to consider diamonds / niobium to be contraband. - while the reason for that was written in RP, i personally strongly suggest that the real reason was to cut the "bad, bad powertrading". ( hence, on ooc reason )
if that route vanished from kusari - ( which in its "bad" form doesn t really involve very much of kusari anyway ) - whats left? - sure there are routes left that are mildly profitable - but other houses offer better stuff.
and then we wonder why ppl gather up in ... like liberty. which also leads to an increase of pirates, which also leads to an increase of lawfuls - which causes systems with 100+ people.
embargos can work
- when they are no spontanous things born from the minds of a random faction - but taken into consideration long before in the process making traderunbalances. - when the balance of the trade already knows that there is an embargo - it works
when the embargo is installed on top of a balanced system, it can fail.
Embargoes - AJBeast - 02-28-2009
Embargoes can indeed both create or destroy RP. The only problem is that most people i meet ( or met , since i havent played in a while) are more interested in destroying than creating.
I for one , would much prefer to lose 5minutes RPing that 1 minute shooting my weapons.
Embargoes - Kambei - 02-28-2009
what embargo? where? I am smuglin cardi/slaves for moths and nobody never stoped or scaned me on both sides (Lib/Rhe) so if I can do that, what is scaryng those traders so much? There isnt reason why to stop doing their run between those houses if they like it. Whole embargo is working only on paper, not in disco life.
Embargoes - Laowai - 02-28-2009
I can see the point Xoria has made, but either scenario works for me - Role Play isn't static, i find opportunities for Role Play in the unexpected and the unfortunate as well as that which is opposite.
And i would question the effectiveness of these embargoes at any rate - They are hardly the all encompassing Role Play killers that they are being made out to be here.
I have smuggled artifacts through Brettonia and Liberty so often now without being stopped im taking it for granted that i wont be. similarly, trading from Rhienland into Liberty - i have never been stopped, not ever. Trading from Brettonia through the Tau's to Kusari i have been stopped only once.. and thats in... 5 months? I knew the embargoes were there and went anyway.
Even at peak times, 195 players online or thereabouts i am almost never stopped - and i wasn't even flying above the plane.
Had i been caught, i would have enjoyed the chance to Role Play - however, i wasn't caught and carried on my merry way.
I agree that Role Play opportunities should be encouraged wherever they are able, but even with embargoes - people just need to use their imagination a little and remember that the focus of this server is Role play first, not shooting.....