Admin Notice: Community Rules Rewrite - Phase 3

[Jack_Henderson]

This "ID can't be seen" and "judge by IFF" is not working when it comes to bounty boards, especially with the Pirate ID.

Lawfuls want the Pirate ID bountied.
And Pirate ID uses Freelancer IFF.

=> So you cannot bounty it, because you cannot bounty FL IFF. It makes no sense because your own merc would be shot up on your own board.

And, sorry: Interaction like this is also silly:

"Oh, Mister... this is a nice Waran Bomber you have there. Can you show me your ID card please? Oh... a Freelancer, really. Wow. So... interesting."

And you have to wait for his demand and treat him as "totally not a pirate" until he does pirate you.

That's stupid. I'll claim "instinct" and shoot him.

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[Lythrilux]

The Pirate ID is the ID card.

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[Laura C.]

What do I do in my Council ship if I see a Gallic Junker IFF'd Collector with Gallic Junker ID claiming to be an undercover Council agent, and inRP "giving" me a Pilot ID to prove it? He says it's valid, I say it's fake, who's right now?

And how would you solve this situation before rule change? Engage him because "you have Gallic Junker ID mounted on your ship which I see on my scanner so you can´t be Council undecover agent because otherwise you would have Council ID"?

Some time back I went few times on my BDM IDed ship to Liberty, RPing undercover agent. And believe or not, some people played this with me. I told them that I´m Bretonian writer and my IFF transmitter is broken. Believe or not, they didn´t engage me with "I see on my scanner you are BDM agent". In some other times, they questioned me and even engaged me.

This is called roleplay. And there was nobody to say who is right. So it was there even before, why you have so much problems with it?

Do you want to believe that this gallic junker is undercover council agent because he RPed it good? You can. You don´t want because he RPed it bad or you simply don´t want to believe? You can, just RP it out too

I don´t see the problem in this, really.

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On a ragebreak. Or ragequit. Time will tell.

[Jack_Henderson]

The Pirate ID is the ID card.

???

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[Anaximander]

Hey I agree with Thyrzul. I'm afraid we need someone like Problem? coming back and showing people why this is a bad turn and totally exploitable.

Some time back I went few times on my BDM IDed ship to Liberty, RPing undercover agent. And believe or not, some people played this with me. I told them that I´m Bretonian writer and my IFF transmitter is broken. Believe or not, they didn´t engage me with "I see on my scanner you are BDM agent". In some other times, they questioned me and even engaged me.

This is called roleplay. And there was nobody to say who is right. So it was there even before, why you have so much problems with it?

You are actually kind of enforcing the opposite point than the one you are trying to make: It was totally doable before (I've done so as well, many others have too), so no need for the messy change that causes its own set of problems.

If it ain't broken, don't fix it.


EDIT: I agree with kikatsu below me, but I though we were in the process of streamlining rules and regulations, not adding new regulations meant to be ignored at best.

[kikatsu]

Let's just continue acting and reacting to people based on their IDs until someone gets sanctioned for doing it. I honestly really do not see a good reason to do otherwise.

[Ursus]

"But aerelm! What about IDs no longer being part of the RP?"

The current situation is quite simple if you ask me, and I honestly can't understand all the confusion about it. Still, I'm gonna throw a wall-o-text in here to make sure it's explained as thoroughly as possible, so let's first assume:

• Each Pilot also has an identification card. This, in roleplay, is the pilot's, and not the ships.
  
• Each Ship has an IFF transponder. This, in roleplay, shows the alignment of the pilot.
  
• Each Ship has an ID item equipped. This, which does not exist within roleplay, only defines the ingame allowances of the player based on the faction that ID item belongs to.

Now, let's talk on a Pilot's ID card. This has been part of the vanilla Freelancer, and naturally also exists within roleplay boundaries of Discovery. Even when you walk into a bar for the first time, the NPCs ask for your "card" before actually talking to you. This, however, doesn't mean the pilot slaps it against the windshield of the ship every time he goes for a fly, so cannot be seen when scanning the ship. It means characters can still ask for a stranger's "ID" before deciding which way to take the interaction, and "IDs not being part of the roleplay" simply refers to the ID item mounted on the ship which appears in the scan screen, and not the pilot's actual set of identification papers.

So to put it simple: Every pilot still has an ID, you just can't see it by scanning their ship, and would have to actually ask for it. Now if they send you a falsified identification? Well, tough luck. Who says that's not roleplay?

Then, let's apply the whole thing to bounty boards:

You do not hire people you do not completely trust, so you'd naturally want to check their ID before hiring them, and make sure they're actually part of the faction you're hiring, and are not just affiliated with the group. It'd make sense to request to see the pilot's identifications before clearing them to hunt for your board, so the registration process goes on the same as before regardless of the rules update, now it just has a bit more RP flavor.

When you put a bounty on a whole faction, means they've done you wrong, and you want them dead, so your bounty applies to everyone affiliated to that faction and carrying their transponders. If someone's close enough to the group you hate to actually have their transponder installed, then what's the difference between them and any pilot of that faction? You of course can tell your hunters to ask for the hostile pilot's identifications before actually lighting him up, but even if they did so, why would the target provide his ID to a random stranger or a good-for-nothing bunter?

The community has been asking for an explanation on this, and I was holding back for a while to see if anyone would actually figure it out on their own and in the process come up with fresh ideas on how to utilize this new flexibility in the server roleplay. Since not only did that not happen, but it even turned into a good bit of headache for nearly everyone, here's your monthly doze of green provided by your friendly neighborhood conspirator to put your minds to rest. Crap. That totally came out wrong, but oh well.

If the intention was to simplify everything then your wall of text is proof that it didnt succeed.

I still dont understand what we are supposed to do here. Blanket bounties now only apply to IFF? We do not need proof of ID anymore? Why not just say that instead of all the double-layered stuff that nobody can figure out what you are trying to say because it doesnt say anything?

And if that's the case, what do we do about people with no IFF or freelancer IFF?

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Discovery 24/7 Negotiating Tactics:

[Thyrzul]

And how would you solve this situation before rule change? Engage him because "you have Gallic Junker ID mounted on your ship which I see on my scanner so you can´t be Council undecover agent because otherwise you would have Council ID"?

Before I'd shoot him down for having GJ IFF and gear. Of course then there would be the situation of Council ID/GJ IFF combo, but I could still roleplay the ID as the "Pilot ID", and there would be a basis to it as there is an entity in-game to back my claim/rp up.

That would have been my actual proposition by the way (afaik I posted it too in one of the debate threads). Give certain IDs the line that they can consider certain IDs inRP so IDs become semi-inRP. House lawfuls could see if somebody using house corp, house lawful, hostile lawful, generic unlawful IDs, or not. House corp couldn't see if the guy is a pirate or not, policeman could. (Additionally to give some diversity and point to chose police factions over navy, police could have the list of unlawfuls while navy the list of hostile navals.) But there would still be a way to ooRPly check the player is not powergaming. We used to have the IFF for what aerelm wants the "Pilot ID" to be, deception, but the Pilot ID doesn't have any solid form to really exist, while both ID and IFF can be clearly visible for an ooRP observer.

So it was there even before, why you have so much problems with it?

Murphy's Law: If something can be exploited, then it will be exploited.

Do you want to believe that this gallic junker is undercover council agent because he RPed it good? You can. You don´t want because he RPed it bad or you simply don´t want to believe? You can, just RP it out too.

Problem comes when he doesn't agree with me seeing his ID is fake, and calls me meta-/powergamer for using the ID as ooRP knowledge and saying his Pilot ID is fake based on that (because I really got nothing else than my RP, which can easily be used as an excuse for pew... it has been done before). Then I call him powergamer as well for wanting to pose as an agent when I didn't have a talk with him (when in fact he is free to do so with this new system), and then debate/qq ensues. That comes from lack of pre-defined boundaries of Roleplay/Powerplay.

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[aerelm]

the SRP changes look like they're nut-tuggingly awful.

The main issue with the SRP system was it worked more like a "reward" system than a "premise" system. People worked hard for 4 months, got the shiny toy they wanted, and then they were nowhere to be seen (Not that they weren't active, but even some of the most active ones had no impact on the server roleplay past their SRP approval), which is against the whole idea of the SRP system. With these latest changes we're hoping to turn it around and get it closer to the premise system it was always intended to be. Applicants now only have to do 1/4th the work to get their SRP posted, but once they've done so and once the application is approved, they'd need to go out there and take an active part in the server roleplay.

No one's expecting you to go with far-fetched goals like "Gonna take over Liberty" for your SRP application. Long as the goals you've mentioned in the request makes sense for the character, and long as you actually work toward them after the request is approved, no matter if you actually manage to achieve those goals or not everyone will be happy and all you'd have to do is to keep all the related links in a text file and c/p it to a thread in SRPs subforum after 1 and 4 months.

I still dont understand what we are supposed to do here.

I would've gone with "Use your common sense", but since according to Thyrzul no one in this community has any, it seems that one's not an option, which is why I'm gonna go with "Go play the actual game, get used to the changes, then come complaining" because I actually find it funny how every single change gets most of its rage around here during its first week, when no one has even tried those changes out ingame to actually get a hang of them. (Saw someone in conn complaining about how useless the new sair torp is, less than 12 hours after the release. That one was fun.)

Since you've apparently taken my examples as "official guidelines" instead, let me put it this way and stop confusing you with actually trying to give you an idea of how one of the many possibilities can be played out ingame: Far as server rules are concerned, the ID item equipped on the ship does not exist within the roleplay environment of the server. Anything past that point neither concerns the rules nor is enforced in any way and is entirely up to each character's individual roleplay. No one's forcing you to play along with another player's "roleplayed ID", and no one's forcing you to even look for an ID in the first place. So if you don't like following the example I provided on how the ID can actually be roleplayed, simply don't. No one's forcing you to be imaginative or creative either.

Murphy's Law: If something can be exploited, then it will be exploited.

I personally prefer Erwin Schrödinger's far more scientifically-sophisticated theory, which in short explains if you put a forumlancer in a box, at any given point of time one can safely assume the person in question is complaining about anything and everything at the same time. The only difference here in Disco is that our beloved forumlancers have reached such levels that they don't even need a box for that anymore.

[SnakThree]

11. Any freelancer or BHG individual or group may only collect on a bounty which that person or group has issued, sponsored or funded (fully or partly) so long as it is open to others to collect. All non-generic factions may sponsor internal bounties that are only open to members of the player or NPC faction.

How about changing that to and. Being part of NPC faction should make you valid for bounty claim, which was posted by official/unofficial faction of your affiliation.
This would disallow totally-internal bounties and open up the chance for indies to be part of it.

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