Should official factions have more power?

[MacAulay]

Voted No on this one but that was mostly because there was no middle ground. I'll explain;

I think certain factions seem to believe they have omnipotent power as it is and those factions should probably be curbed to some degree. I would also argue that with some of these factions their power is often usued for all the wrong reasons.

In some areas of space I would like to see a few factions granted a little moe power, or should I say certain powers? There are areas that are becoming more or less lawless due to the influx of new indie pilots who feel they should not be bound by any rules but those they choose to agree with. In these cases I think a little more power to enforce laws etc would be welcome.

Also I think the granting of more powers should be a reward, not a right. If a faction is seen to be doings its job (policing their systems correctly, intercepting pirates and hostiles instead of just chatting to them or ignoring them), then they could maybe be granted more powers for increase their effectiveness in those roles if needed. Conversly, if they are seen to be not playing their role, using power for powers sake, or just abusing the privilages of their position as an official faction then you remove power from them until they prove they are responsible enough to use it wisely (much like taking a toy from a child untill he learns to play with it properly).

So like I said, voted NO but only for lack of a middle ground option

---

--------------------------------------------------------

This really isn't something that needs to be taken super seriously because it's a game and most of us are just here to have fun. You should try smiling, you'll feel better about things (honest).

[Shepherd]

Ok, as new player I figure my two cents isn't worth much but here I go.

I pretty much just get on and trade as my only character, though I am looking to join a faction soon, but I don't find a lot of opportunity to Rp ingame. Why? Cause the official factions tend to float around like NPCs, at least to INDie traders, so I have typed very little ingame. I know how to Rp but I have yet to find a purpose to do so. There is little reason cause the RM doesn't tax traders coming from the Liberty Jumpgates, but these two are in a state of Cold War, right?

I think official faction said be able to tax on merits of the Rp environment. Like a tax between the Liberty/Rhineland gates and Bretonia/Kusari.

I think that official factions should have their own special equipment that only they could buy, but that could be sold by them. And that a there should be faction Capital ships but also, how to say it? regular capital ships for indies and other factions to buy.

But right now if you fly into a system you don't even notice the RM and there power cause what can they tell you to do? Leave? Now it should be for Rp reasons not for OOC reasons, but why worry about someone abusing power if that means harming role play? Cause as it seems there is little Rp with all this worry over abuse of power.

Not sure if that made sense, and not sure if it is worth anything from someone only that has been playing for a month and a half, but I hope it gives some incite.

Now, time for bed.

[Birdtalon]

I think that official factions should have more power, because after all they are a part of the community.

As for unoffical, they havnt payed their 500M so why should they have any power?
Think of it as starting a new bussiness, you cant make Microsoft in one day.
It takes work and money to get power, and most of all respect (and good rp)#

@Korrd - PENGUINS RULE!!

---

[MacAulay]

I think that official factions should have more power, because after all they are a part of the community.

As for unoffical, they havnt payed their 500M so why should they have any power?
Think of it as starting a new bussiness, you cant make Microsoft in one day.
It takes work and money to get power, and most of all respect (and good rp)#

@Korrd - PENGUINS RULE!!

A bit contradictory! Official factions have more power as they are part of the community? So is every indie pilot and unofficial faction unless I am mistaken? Take out the latter and the official factions would have bugger all to do with the power you give them. Also, it is the indie/unofficial that are directly effected by the powers granted to officials, they are not only PART of the community but in many ways an essential PART of it.

As to your second point I believe we are not debating more power for unofficial factions anyway! Cos even I wouldnt be stupid enough to grant it to the majority of them:)

---

--------------------------------------------------------

This really isn't something that needs to be taken super seriously because it's a game and most of us are just here to have fun. You should try smiling, you'll feel better about things (honest).

[bluntpencil2001]

Yes and no.

For 'yes', I will say that I find that the uniformity of ranks and similar in militaries and the like are easily broken by large numbers of independents without quality control. The large number of cheating Rheinland battleships in recent times is one such problem.

For 'no', I've a number of reasons (although this doesn't mean I prefer 'no' to 'yes'...).

Firstly, there are factions like the IMG and Zoners, as well as the hordes of pirates, which are supposed to be very loosely organised, if they even bother organising at all. Pirates shouldn't be told what to do by people, right? Yar-har fiddle dee dee, do what you want because a pirate is free. Ahem.

Secondly, is that when one person, or a small group of people (old boys' clubs, it has been put), decide that not only do they want to roleplay the military, police or commerce of a nation, they also wish to roleplay as the government, by virtue of simply getting there first.

This is probably just a pet hate of mine, but to become Queen of Bretonia, President of Liberty, Emperor of Kusari or Chancellor of Rheinland, one only needs to win a race and take it first (the same goes for other government positions). Truly fair elections are, of course, impossible. That makes even the democratic nations, in effect, perpetual dictatorships, since the leaders can't really be kicked out.

Carina will not stop being Queen until Igiss says so. That means that the player who laid claim to that character will remain Queen until Igiss says so. This isn't right, in my opinion, and I would suggest that people, for the most part, stick to roleplaying as captains of space-ships, instead of taking extremely powerful control over imaginary nations as characters that should really be NPCs and plot devices.

---

[Carlos_Benitez]

I don't really understand the question, and yes, I have read everyone else's posts.
As a Corsair, I don't really see how we could have more or less power in the factions.
Issues like Capital ship restriction were abandoned because they were impossible to enforce. The only power at the disposal of the factions is their weapons, but what other power is there? If someone doesn't comply with your capital-ship restriction bill, what is there to do other than shoot them?
You kill them, they respawn, and no progress is made.

I don't believe the factions CAN have more power. What power exists that they can be given? The power to wield the banhammer? -that's insane.

---

[Blodo]

I myself don't understand this question.

What can't official factions do now:
- Stop players of the same NPC faction from docking on a base for equipment
- Enforce non canon RP
- Kill indiscriminately without an RP reason (this is applied to all players)

Those are the only things official factions cannot do, so if we vote for "increasing their power", do we mean removing one (or more) of those three clauses? Because quite frankly if I saw a sanction concerning for example [LN] blowing up a LN tagged and IDed cruiser that refuses to obey orders from the admiralty, I would be offended - there is no rule stopping them from doing that, they just need to have a clear reason for doing it. It's a stuff of rumours that there is some obscure rule preventing people from blowing up indies, but really can't find that rule. For all the whining and flame wars, nothing seems to have changed in that respect, and I myself in my tenure as faction leader (for about a year now) do not remember finding myself in a situation where the rules would limit or prohibit me from declaring any order that is in line with my faction RP. I have disagreed on many other rules on many occassions, but after carefully analysing rules that apply to factions, I honestly cannot find anything that would prohibit me from even declaring a group belonging to the same NPC faction as me as hostile provided I didn't just do it "for teh lulz".

Anyways, as you remember the OPG - HAF war was only stopped by the admins, cause they tried to vehemently sanction each other in addition to blowing each other up. Not because they had a shooting war. If all it came down to was a civil war, I doubt there would be any intervention at all from the admin team.

That said I am all for removing the 500 mil fee required to submit an official faction request. I am sure the community can thoroughly scrutinise any faction request that is put forward, leaving the admins with the question of "yes" or "no" at the end.

As for the vote, I've abstained from voting for now until it becomes clearer what exactly is it that factions will gain by this.

[slashhammer]

I would support to let the official (house) factions have some more rights
then independents and unofficial factions.

But the same time the possible faction-laws must be limited, we've already
a huge ammount of server-rules, too much freedom in creating additional
faction-laws is provoking abuse.

Take a look at the addtional faction-laws of the house-factions we already
have, that is ridiculous and it's only good to annoy players.

The Laws of Sirius
http://discoverygc.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=32168

Kusari Legal Codex
http://discoverygc.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=9538

---

Cheers

John

-=- The Independent Junkers Movement -=-

[Guest]

Well, sorry, but I will have to say Yes.
Well, I am an indy..who is now given a faction to bother around, and in my opinion, server approved factions are a group of people, who'se purpose here is to set an example of their NPC faction's RP for others. if they indeed do their job right, then yes, they should have more power, but Not over Indies , who, as well have proven, that they can be tursted with their RP and their RP will not bring harm over the other rpers, be they factionalized or not.

To be honest, I voted yes, since this is my view, but after some thought, I don't see what ELSE you could give factions to control...

We got guard systems
Faction RP
We also push the RP forward.
We get some fun events...but that's really it.

[swift]

There should be only one official faction for a npc faction.

In some cases, perhaps. In many, absolutely not.
There are many occasions and examples where someone having monopoly over an NPC faction would be indeed detrimental to the state of the server.
Not all factions have a sensible leadership, and some people, frankly, are addicted to power just a bit.
Some people have a problem admitting they are wrong.
Having someone have monopoly over an NPC faction just because he was there first is totally and utterly wrong.

The RP and diplomacy of NPC factions who have more than one official faction should be governed by an equal council of their leaders.
There should *not* be a monopoly on NPC factions. Of course we can't have two RM's, LN's, or BAF's, but that's just exceptions to the rule.

And furthermore, the control of NPC faction diplomacy from factions that are official should be divided according to the activity and merits of said factions.

If one particular faction represents the NPCs for say a year, and then comes another one, for example..
The power to control NPC faction policy *must* be divided between the two if both show enough prowess to capably lead it.
If one fails, the other one should get more power.
Simple as that.
Personally, I believe and always SHALL believe that a democratic system is an utter pre-requirement to everything.

Rather simply said:
No monopolies. No no and just no.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Yeah. Aaaaaaaaaanyways. I got a bit strayed off the topic. Might've gotten carried away, but heck, why not.

I mostly think that factions should have more power.
What kind, I cannot say with assurance.

The factions I am currently located in( And no, I won't tell you which they are, and no, you can't know it all just from my profile) would never abuse power.
I could not be in them if such people existed there.

However, there *are* factions that would abuse their power. And I fear that happening.

That is why I will vote YES on this one. I do reserve the right to pull my vote back in an undesirable development of the discussion, for what it's worth anyways.

BUT, I will go ahead and tell you all to listen to what n00bl3t has to say. That man is a counter-balance to everything.

An appeal system. Definitely.
A mixed council of people should determine it, and by mixed, I mean not just administrators of the server.
Nothing against you boys, but honestly, you don't always see every side of the coin, I'm afraid.
I respect what you do, but I don't always agree with the actions you take, or don't take.
That is why there has to be a counter-balance to everything.
Furthermore, on that council should also be prominent independent players. I can name a few already, and say with certainty that they're the best people for the job.
The absolute best.
And no, I think you'd not like the names I'd say. Heck, even I would not like one of them for sure. But, 'tis true.

Furthermore, blanked decisions and restrictions should have to be made in discussion with the council, if there happens to be one, and the admins.

Most decisions they'd make should not be blanket ones, but individual ones, on a case by case basis.
Basically just mirroring n00bl3t's and some others' words.

And let me tell you something. Take that as you will as well.
I have one beef with some independent players. Though mind that I have the same with some faction ones, albeit the latter is much easier to solve than the first.

I really do mind the capital ship abuse from certain players. I really do. That's one of the biggest reputation detriments to independent players at large.
Some great players get prejudiced because of some other ones that abuse what's given unto them.

I'd certainly propose that some kind of system of appealing against capital ship abuse is made, in which people could get a chance to lay out their argumentation and there'd be a possibility of the owner of the ship being stripped of it. Yes, stripped of it.
However, it'd not be some sort of rash decision, by all means. And the player in question should of course be given multiple chances of fixing his transgressions. It shouldn't be done without his knowledge or without first giving him a chance or two.
However, if he's not willing to adjust his attitude if it is not found proper, I'd certainly be against him keeping his little asset.
This primarily goes for people that behave out of roleplay and abuse their ships against others.
N00bl3t, please, for heaven's sake, don't disagree with me, because you know what I mean.

It won't be hard to guess that the main focus of my beef is with some of the Outcast and Corsair players.

And before you go jumping on the bandwagon of stating I see things one-sidedly, although my primary faction is the Colonial Remnant and always will be, I am in others as well. And I have characters all over.
And I do know how some people behave and some don't, and I mostly know the flaws and merits of everyone.
However, it is mostly from independent players( And some.. for God's sakes, some! Meaning a small percentage!) that I get ganked, abused, oorped at, and what not.

Anyways, this wasn't an anti-indie argument, but mostly an argument for creating a system in which there'd be a small possibility of people losing their privileges if they abuse them.
The same goes for everyone.

I think that's all.. though I could write a book about all this. Not that I'd want to.

Anyways, this is Swift, the guy who talks too much and gets carried away, and whose argument mostly goes misunderstood, saying bye bye.

---

<span style="font-familyalatino Linotype">

<span style="color:#000000">All morons hate it when you call them a moron.

</span></span>

<span style="color:#33FFFF">The CFF</span>

<span style="color:#33FF33">CFF Communication Channel and RP Collection</span>