Alaska Opinion Poll

[Laowai]

I voted to change nothing.

1) I've always seen it as the Liberty players responsibility to police the Alaska jumpgate, if they dont want to, cant, or are busy elsewhere then - unfortunately your security has a hole. Don't complain when people exploit it. It's not their job to self police, it's your's to police them.

2) In the other thread, it was conceded that the Order has the codes to this gate. That effectively ends the argument as to how non LN, LSF etc characters can get their hands on them in my opinion. Order - gives them to Corsairs - who sell them to whoever wants to pay = anyone who an afford it has them.

3) Zone 21 is not a secret, not while there is access from the Omicron Minor side and you have Corsairs and Order a mere one system away. Corsairs particularly make their living by knowing secret ways in and out, finding back doors into secure areas.

4) The poles options are incomplete and possibly display a bias. In the "what factions should be allowed into Alaska" section you did not include "Traders" or "Smugglers", rather your choices were heavily stacked towards liberty only options, Order and bounty hunters. Since the biggest complaints about this issue seems to be coming from liberty players who dislike the presence of non Liberty players, traders and smugglers in the area, to not include other options in the poll guarantees you are going to get incomplete or false data.



As a side... I would also add that smugglers carrying Artifacts into this area should'nt be stopped by the order, rather they should be protected by them. The Order's alliance with the corsairs is based on mutual cooperation against the Nomads, in other words, the Order believes they need the Corsairs. They are not going to risk alienating their biggest ally by interfering in said allies biggest trading income i would think.

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[Tenacity]

most smugglers through alaska are headed to omicron alpha for cardamine, they dont usually deal in artifacts.

Still, I agree, if the players wont defend it, the undesirables get through.

Dont forget - lane hackers have the technology to open that gate, or get it's codes from the lane network, they'd be more apt to sell these codes than corsairs i would think.

The problem I was having - and the reason for my post - was that I wasnt able to patrol/guard zone 21 or alaska against the undesirables (when I was using a liberty gunboat and LSF tag/ID) because the 'player faction' LSF and navy (SA) didnt want me there.

I think it's rather sketchy of them to stop someone that's trying to help them, and then complain about smugglers in the same day.

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[sovereign]

As a side... I would also add that smugglers carrying Artifacts into this area should'nt be stopped by the order, rather they should be protected by them. The Order's alliance with the corsairs is based on mutual cooperation against the Nomads, in other words, the Order believes they need the Corsairs. They are not going to risk alienating their biggest ally by interfering in said allies biggest trading income i would think.

The point isn't so much that, as it is how everyone, their uncle, their dog, and the girl of questionable taste from a few nights back has the codes to go back through. And often does.

Also, the main problem isn't so much the abuse of Artifacts (most indie Corsairs whore diamonds, then buy capships, and most factions know better) as it is the abuse of Cardamine. There is a hellishly fast route that goes Ibiza -> Omicron-90 -> Omicron Major* -> Omicron 100** -> Omicron Minor -> Alaska -> NY.

On occasion, this is done with very good RP. The rest of the time, people will start yelling in OOC system when the Navy is like "WHOA, cardamine smuggler coming out of Alaska- KILL HIM!!!" which is totally reasonable for them to say. THAT is why Alaska needs to be made a system for RP. If even one halfway profitable trade route goes through it, it will get whored by omg lol noobz.




* The Dyson sphere inside. How the hell anyone could get out of that deathtrap these days escapes me. Remember, Trent cheated.

** The Order guard system. If the Order doesn't police the route to Alaska, they WILL police this.

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[Laowai]

The point isn't so much that, as it is how everyone, their uncle, their dog, and the girl of questionable taste from a few nights back has the codes to go back through. And often does.

Also, the main problem isn't so much the abuse of Artifacts (most indie Corsairs whore diamonds, then buy capships, and most factions know better) as it is the abuse of Cardamine. There is a hellishly fast route that goes Ibiza -> Omicron-90 -> Omicron Major* -> Omicron 100** -> Omicron Minor -> Alaska -> NY.

On occasion, this is done with very good RP. The rest of the time, people will start yelling in OOC system when the Navy is like "WHOA, cardamine smuggler coming out of Alaska- KILL HIM!!!" which is totally reasonable for them to say. THAT is why Alaska needs to be made a system for RP. If even one halfway profitable trade route goes through it, it will get whored by omg lol noobz.
* The Dyson sphere inside. How the hell anyone could get out of that deathtrap these days escapes me. Remember, Trent cheated.

** The Order guard system. If the Order doesn't police the route to Alaska, they WILL police this.

Well - Give an example, a Corsair sells the codes to a Junker....

Suddenly everyone has it - the semantics of this are not the point, the point is that it is very easy to justify a good and plausible RP reason why someone might have those codes. Which means that the onus then falls back on the Liberty Factions to police the gate.


I cant speak to the cardamine route, whenever i have used alaska its been hauling artifacts only.

@Tenacity - your point is a good one and i think it is at the heart of another issue. Which is the issue of player factions dictating what independents can and cant fly.
I personally strongly disagree with this if the Indy RP's well. I'm like you - except i dont want to do it in a fighter (for my own reasons) - give me a gunboat or up and i will happily sit outside that minefield... But i dont want to join a player faction. I'm happy to work with them, go by the rules, but they dont want that, it doesn't suit their Role play, so they restrict yours.
I know those players will object to what im saying here, but this is only my opinion.
Indys have a use... but these factions cut them out, then complain when they are unable to police their systems.. a case in point:

Corsairs have not as yet restricted these Indy caps in Omicron Gamma - now, there is a vigorous debate among the Corsairs players right now as to ways to control, integrate or work with these Indys... this debate is still ongoing, and to various levels of success these indys that stick around to get integrated (my character is an example of that)
But - one practical upshot of having those indys in caps around Crete? You try getting something in there, or getting by unchallenged.... Not so easy sometimes.

This is a side issue to the pole, but believe that in your case, they relate.

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[n00bl3t]

The point isn't so much that, as it is how everyone, their uncle, their dog, and the girl of questionable taste from a few nights back has the codes to go back through. And often does.

Also, the main problem isn't so much the abuse of Artifacts (most indie Corsairs whore diamonds, then buy capships, and most factions know better) as it is the abuse of Cardamine. There is a hellishly fast route that goes Ibiza -> Omicron-90 -> Omicron Major* -> Omicron 100** -> Omicron Minor -> Alaska -> NY.

On occasion, this is done with very good RP. The rest of the time, people will start yelling in OOC system when the Navy is like "WHOA, cardamine smuggler coming out of Alaska- KILL HIM!!!" which is totally reasonable for them to say. THAT is why Alaska needs to be made a system for RP. If even one halfway profitable trade route goes through it, it will get whored by omg lol noobz.
* The Dyson sphere inside. How the hell anyone could get out of that deathtrap these days escapes me. Remember, Trent cheated.

** The Order guard system. If the Order doesn't police the route to Alaska, they WILL police this.

Under 23 minutes.:nyam:

How did Trent cheat?

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Anything I say is not intended as offensive, and to try and deliberately misinterpret it as such would be an attempt at trolling via misrepresentation.

It's not a conspiracy, it's localised bias. They're not intelligent enough to form a conspiracy.

[sovereign]

He used the most advanced Daam K'Vosh artifact in Sirius to short out their power supply, suck them into a wormhole, then mysteriously beam all the way to Manhattan. If that isn't haxx I don't know what is.




As far as the codes being freeware, that's bull dung. LSF would change the codes as soon as someone got through. If the keycode to Fort Knox gets stolen, how long do you think it will stay the keycode? More likely it will be wired to release poison gas.

However, someone mentioned that the Lane Hackers can probably get the codes. True, and one such individual showed the hack of such in th Liberty Forces message dump. When its RPd, its fine. No problems with that.


What IS oorp is going through a dead system populated with Nomads, a very live system populated with Nomads, the Order's guard system, and then popping through the Alaska Jumpgate and expecting people to be peachy with you doing this over and over again. THAT is what should not be possible, and since there aren't enough Order players to maintain control of their Guard System, nor enough Keepers to keep a handle on the inner Dyson Sphere, just close the Alaska jumphole in Minor. It makes ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE with regard to SP, how can the Order possibly be so dim witted as to sacrifice people because Alaska is a

Dead end system

when it actually has a straight road to their frikking home system, almost within sensor range when you undock from the docking ring. What, did no one ever turn left?

Kill it. PLEASE.

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[hakisaki]

The jump hole from NY to Alaska is there for a reason, so that LSF players can get through to Alaska. If we're going to talk about changes to the structure of the game, we've got to talk to the Admin about it first. Bickering on here won't make game changes happen.

In the meantime there is still a problem. The fact that nobody is supposed to get through doesn't matter if the gate isn't protected in some way.

I'm gonna suggest this again here since the other thread has degenerated into bickering about Mollys.

The LSF make an actuall code known only to their own members. This is an actual code, checked by a guard who has a list of all valid codes printed out or written down. LSF posts guard(S) to keep people out from NY side. If someone wants to go through, they have to know the code. If they go through without it, it's OORP unless they could concievably hack it in RP, in which case it should be Roleplayed for at least a few slow minutes.

Suggested Guidelines for how this would work:
LSF keep the code(S) and are free to give it/them out as the high command sees fit.
Anyone with an up to date code may pass through the gate, no questions asked
Anyone who doesn't gets killed no questions asked
If an LSF dies after learning the code is compromised but before alerting allies, no alert is allowed until that code is changed. (Dead men tell no tales)

Other players can get the code by
a) actually intercepting it from the LSF(Hacking into the list online or whatever, I think that is worthy enough to be considered roleplay)
b) convincing someone to give them the code in RP in game

If a player dies before passing on the code to another in game, that player is not allowed to tell anyone the code until they find it again. (Dead men tell no tales)

The reason I single out LSF and not liberty Navy is because Navy is not in charge of national security, the Security Force is. I don't think Navy ought even to be allowed into the sector. Do you think the united states navy is allowed into CIA headquarters? I dobt it. (Or british navy into MI6 if you roll that way). If the LSF isn't up to the job (Frown) then the navy or police force could take over.

I see it thus: If you expect roleplay from the criminals, then expect roleplay of yourselves. Post guards, make the code, and kill anyone you see go in without it. Lane Hackers are the only ones I know of who qualify to actually hack the gate and that should take a few minutes of print screened roleplay, and at that only when the gate is left completely unguarded, in which case nobody would notice anyways. I posted a nicer summary in the other thread, if you care.

If a solid set up is decided upon, whatever it is, I'll support it, but we need to think first of ways we can fix the problem before we talk about how to make the Admin fix it for us. As I see it they're none too fond of NY now and unlikely to do us any favors by editing Alaska. Remember, they're people too, not machines that exist to code at our bidding. Coding is hard, even "little" edits like that take time.

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Ave Imperitorem, Ex Caelio Cadit Gladium Sanctum Imperialis

[Robert.Fitzgerald]

Hasisaki has the right idea. I'm all for a code system;
-No code, boom
-Code, "greetings commander" (if you have a Navy/LSF ID).

Anyway, the mere thought of changing the jump hole from Minor to Iota is ridiculous. Iota gets enough annoying capwhoring idiots already, we don't need more of them popping through alaska to farm while the SA/Keepers aren't online.

Move it to a new system, linked to Minor. Make it not linked to Major, so OORP corsair/outcast smugglers would suffer an increase in route length. Once the profit factor drops, the OORP smugglers will just move on to another route. However, that new route will definately be more in-character than this one. I bet on that...

a) actually intercepting it from the LSF(Hacking into the list online or whatever, I think that is worthy enough to be considered roleplay)

This is a complete no-no. The private forums of factions are for meeting, greeting and organising the factions members. Hacking into one to get the code is not only ridiculously cruel, and probably illegal... It is also metagaming.

Something like this happened before, I think it was to the LSF Teamspeak. The password was going to be "sold" by a member for credits or something like that. Should be a bannable offence, this sort of behaviour.

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[Laowai]

The in game code system is a cool idea..

There is a problem with it though, if you concede that the order should have the codes somehow, and so should the Lane hackers now apparently, then in order to allow that RP to continue then they will have to be "given" the code in some way... otherwise you will have the situation where The liberty players are restricting two other factions legitimate RP.


In other words, if you want the code system to work, you have to remove the rights of all other factions outside the LSF or liberty whoever to have those codes at all. Period.

If you accept that these other factions CAN have these codes - then you have to by proxy accept that their allies (namely the Corsairs et al, and the Outcasts et al) will have them as well.


Which brings me back to the point i will constantly say, that its up to the Liberty players to police this route - there is no other way to enforce it because any half decent creative Role Player can come up with a dozen well thought out and entirely plausible reasons that they can get these codes.

The Liberty players seem to be insisting on ignoring this however, and stubbornly insisting they only they should have access to it, attempting to restrict the LEGITIMATE Role play of other players and going so far as to call for modifications of the actual game itself.
This rather than take possible actions NOW and IN GAME which will solve the issue and A)not restrict anyones Role play and B) Not require time consuming process of modifying the actual game.
They could for example, take a more active approach to guarding the gate, assign a group, for example, to whom that is their sole responsibility (sure you wont be able to always have people on there all the time, but them's the breaks with an understaffed police force)

They could also be a little more flexible with independents who Role Play well, letting them have a little more freedom in terms of place, position and ship class. Tenacity is a great example of this, he has basically said he would like to RP that role and would be happy to guard the gate - but he was told he couldn't by the existing liberty factions? So who's fault is it that the gate is unguarded and Riff Raff can come in?

I would urge a little more creativity in terms of Role play, a little more Flexibility in terms of player control, rather than actually changing the game itself.

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[Kuraine]

As you know, i'm working on proposed updates to the IDs and creating Guard IDs in the process. I voted to change all Alaska NPCs into LSF Guard. Bounty Hunters should all be removed. An LSF base should be placed within Alaska (to sell both normal and LSF guard ID, although I am aware that the normal ID is currently sold at Mitchell and/or Fairbanks) somewhere off on the left hand side of the system. Juneau shipyard should probably be made dockable (Guard base though) and a Liberty Dreadnaught stationed inside the jh (again Guard base). All Liberty Navy patrols should be removed from Omicron Minor except around the Alaska JH. More Bounty Hunter and Order warships should be seen around Omicron Minor and Omicron Delta, especially BH battleships. They are involved in a war after all.

I will also say this again, and I am aware that plenty of others say it, but it is an important point which I feel needs to be made, so I will probably keep saying it.: Single Player campaign Disco needs to be scrapped altogether. It is pretty much unplayable now anyway, but Single Player Open Disco is fine regardless of the changes we do to multiplayer Disco so it doesn't matter. If you want to play the Single Player campaign go play the vanilla Freelancer. It is the only way the Disco mod will progress in any meaningful way.

Additionally, should these proposed ID changes go through, there will not be any need to remove the Omicron Minor JH, although from what i've been told it isn't possible to remove it anyway. Lock it, maybe, but not remove it. Anyone who wants to see some of the proposed ID changes in advance of posting them up for discussion, please either PM me or get hold of me on MSN using kulthar_drax@hotmail.com.

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Kuraine (Zoner tagged Trader)
Ravenholm (Zoner tagged Zoner Destroyer)
Bill Mason[Arms.Dealer] (Zoner tagged Arms Dealer)
LR-Drax (Liberty Rogue tagged Cruiser)
LR-Dravis (Liberty Rogue tagged VHF)
[RHA]Wilhelm.Wettin (Red Hessian tagged VHF)
[GC]-Ai.Takeda (Golden Chrysanthemum tagged VHF/Bomber)