(04-27-2016, 03:51 PM)Laura C. Wrote: By the way, we all know that Rheinland won majority of battles simply because Liberty is starting house, so majority of their players are not skilled enough, while Rheinland had group of dedicated skilled and coordinated players.
As if getting dedicated and skilled people is an issue if you're popular. Back when I first joined [RM] the Liberty Navy had [LN]-Gold which usually wrecked the Rheinland pilots in Texas until we eventually started catching up to their skill by sheer dedication and practice.
Being a starting house is not a cons, as it only means you get extra meat for the meat grinder along with your dedicated players. For each newbie that logged and went to Texas to defend FREEDOM™ no [LN] ace had to log off.
"plot armor" is something I've been avoiding as much as possible when I led the dev team and I'm quite sure Teerin is in the same train of thought.
The reality isn't that we don't want things to go forward, quite the opposite, there's just an immense backlog with some things almost a year late. 4.88 is a troubled release that's not a real mod version but more of an attempt to catch up to years of dev mismanagement, and that's something we've started doing in May 2014. We've spent nearly two years fixing massive storyline issues, completely reworking the dev workflow, fixing bugs left and right, solving gameplay problems, system nuking, flhook upgrade and years late features implementation, and all that when being almost constantly short-staffed.
Things will move once we're finally done with that, the last step being the Omicron Update and Kusari Update. The best we can do for the time being is provide some large events similar to Royal Flush Part 2 to keep you busy until we're done.
(04-27-2016, 04:50 PM)Alley Wrote: "plot armor" is something I've been avoiding as much as possible when I led the dev team and I'm quite sure Teerin is in the same train of thought.
The reality isn't that we don't want things to go forward, quite the opposite, there's just an immense backlog with some things almost a year late. 4.88 is a troubled release that's not a real mod version but more of an attempt to catch up to years of dev mismanagement, and that's something we've started doing in May 2014. We've spent nearly two years fixing massive storyline issues, completely reworking the dev workflow, fixing bugs left and right, solving gameplay problems, system nuking, flhook upgrade and years late features implementation, and all that when being almost constantly short-staffed.
Things will move once we're finally done with that, the last step being the Omicron Update and Kusari Update. The best we can do for the time being is provide some large events similar to Royal Flush Part 2 to keep you busy until we're done.
This is accurate.
More on that ... no faction has "plot armor" in the plans. Some have higher success rates at times and lower at other times, which we try to balance out. Storyline stagnation has also been something that we've worked to tackle, as a great many factions have had nothing notably new for years. There are 70 factions, mind you, so there's a lot to cover. Some changes may not be apparent simply because we still haven't gotten around to it yet. And all of this has been what 4.88 has been intended to cover. These various 4.88.# updates have been packages that we've compartmentalized into broad regions to make the process easier to manage, and as of right now, 4.88.6 is the last one planned for it. 4.88.5 is on its way.
4.89 will be much different; primarily base changes (to continue to advance the storyline) with fewer system rearrangements (guard systems already being 90% normalized, merged, repurposed, or removed). We will also be more free to pursue other angles of system development (spoilers!) to make gameplay more fluent and immersive. Plus, instead of 4.88.#s all the way up to 6, I'm planning on simply halving the collected changes for 4.89, for a basic "Initial" and "Final" before moving onto 4.90.
As for the lore planning itself, a timeline would've been too cluttered and jumbled, so (back while I worked under Echo 7-7) I created a storyboard spreadsheet (which has now evolved into several pages) to better show the flow and interlinking of events between factions, as the version numbers progress. This has helped the story group to better visualize and plan for future events, making the balance (and variety) between winners, losers, and intermediates much easier to do. For some examples, groups like the GRN, Hessians, LN, etc. will not remain on the top indefinitely, nor will Kusari forever be the sickly house that people can kick around for laughs. That's a slight exaggeration, but you get the point.
Time does take its toll, however, which is why we're even still working on increasing the rate at which we produce updates. While the plans do aim to improve things for the majority of factions (some sadly already in poor shape due to previous years of neglect), there will of course be a few which unfortunately may suffer (inRP or ooRP), but with this strategy, the goal is to keep that in a constant rotation and vary up the factions on top or on the bottom.[/contextunintended]
[/teerinramble]
In regards to the original post, both Kusari and Bretonia are quite weak at this point. The former was working on rebuilding but now the civil war has ramped up to full speed, while the latter House does receive aid from Liberty (both in terms of materials and manpower). Materials flowing through the Omegas from Rheinland are plausible, as 3 and 7 aren't (comparatively) too dangerous. Plus, with the Liberty/Rheinland war gone, and subsequently the embargo as well, there's that major route to think about as well.
Okay, I'm done typing for a bit. If I missed anything important, just let me know.
![[Image: 396AUfe.png]](https://i.imgur.com/396AUfe.png)
