the mining, the ai id and other stuff...

[mio_cid]

Well at this point of the game evolution, i don´t understand what admin team try to do (note that i said admin team and not cannon)
i´m just worried about it, i love this game i was playing if for a medium log time, and i don´t use to write a lot, but read a lot.
well facts, server is decreasing his amount of players. to less than 30. so, something is going on with players.
in my opinion, and this is only my point of view, admins are acting in some vertical manner so i think.

1) they are seeing more than the most of us, that is the most probably thing

2) or they are just drunk in power, do what they want. delete post, etc etc. acting like some kind 3rd world the facto president.

so please, can anyone share some ideas with me.

WHAT I WANT? MORE PLAYERS AT ALL TIME!!! LIKE BEFORE. not id´s, not mining. just more players, is really sad to play with 25 persons....

sorry if i was rude or something, remember my natural language is spanish and i learn most of my english here. so sometimes is hard for me to get the right idea and express it in a different language.

[Petitioner]

This is the wrong section for this stuff, mate.

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Recruitment | Task Force Prometheus | ICN FIRESTORM

[Cannon]

Moved this into an better section.

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Proud member of "the most paranoid group of people in the community"

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[Cannon]

I can answer some aspects of your question. I'm writing this as my own opinion rather than those reflecting the opinion of the whole admin team. As individuals in a team, we have quite different views and work to achieve a consensus. As such, the following isn't an official statement but may give you an insight into how I think.

I personally have a vision and other admins have their own although we haven't discussed this as a group for a while. I'm sure all admins want to support our community and the role play here.

My vision for the mod:
- I want to reduce restrictions on players whilst supporting and improving the RP environment by removing ID and technology restrictions. Making various ships and IDs freely available is part of this. In short I want to get closer to what we allowed in 4.84.
- I want to hand more power to players with power based on activity and behaviour rather than admin decree by ID and rule.
- I do not like the idea of admin created official factions that require unique ID and rights to survive. I guess I tend to support indie rights than faction rights although I completely support players self organising themselves into groups.

Regarding player counts, I think that part of the reason is that we haven't had a new release of the mod for a very long time. We could have made updates but sadly didn't due to a development vote that could have gone either way and I, in hindsight, voted the wrong way. The mod has gotten a little boring.

I think another significant part that impacts player counts is that I've annoyed a lot of people by reducing the amount of money they can make mining. People are very annoyed that the comparatively quick way of making money isn't as quick anymore. I agree that mining is not dropping enough in many systems and this needs to be addressed. Haven't had time to do it yet.

Regarding specific factions like the VE and AI ID changes. The issue here is that the VE want to lead their RP. I understand that but the mod is based on the contention that players follow the story line. A conflict arises with factions like the VE that need special rights, essentially their own ID that conforms to their RP. They picked the AI ID because it was the one that most allowed them to do what they wanted. They did not pick it because they wanted to continue the AI storyline set down by the harvies. Personally, I'd be happy ignoring the mod storyline and allowing all official factions to branch out in what ever path they choose.

I am concerned about the impact of the AI ID change on the VE. Unfortunately all I see recommended by players is:
- restrict the ID to the VE thus annoying those who already have the ID and are not VE
- reverse the change thus allowing a significant number of people to use the AI ID has a kind of terrorist ID
I'm not sure about the best solution there but we'll figure something out.

I have raised the possibility of granting new IDs to official factions when they become official and letting the faction control the content of the ID. I think I support this idea although I worry that factions will abuse this and there are game mechanics issues with NPCs. We've partially tried to support this style of play through FR2 and FR5. Last time we really let factions control their destiny, the Corsairs, Order and BHG started killing Zoners, the BHG and Corsairs allied and a whole bunch of players complained that the admins should 'do something'. Possibly we should have let events continue. Some players would have left (some did anyway) but at least factions would actually be able to control the RP and create new dynamic activity in the mod.

My vision for rules:
brief version: "space is dangerous"
longer version:
- no swearing
- no cheating
- something to stop re-engagment on death
- you have to say something in role play before attacking somebody
- space is dangerous

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Proud member of "the most paranoid group of people in the community"

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[mio_cid]

OK is quite clear now.
i early requested you to delete this post, but now i think that others must see it. i mean the answer since i believe many like me need it.

Thanks for it, and i hope you can get to that point that you want soon.

[jakub963]

They picked the AI ID because it was the one that most allowed them to do what they wanted. They did not pick it because they wanted to continue the AI storyline set down by the harvies.

I really had to misunderstand what you have said because after reading this i almost made a back flip.
We (VE) picked the AI ID because its as close to our RP as anything can get(apart from own ID).
We picked it because half of the enclave (RP and Story wise) are AIs or Robots while the other half are humans which are cyberneticaly enhanced.
Our deity is an alien probe from outside sirius (more in some of many our story threads). By enhancing ourself we "bring us closer to the god".

Yes, we decided to not continue the Harvester RP, we have our own. But even then, there are similarities.
Harvesters killed and pirated for scrap metal and components. We do the same, but instead of killing we trade and make deals with groups like OSI. We do the same in slightly more human way. But that is only because Sirius sector is full of humans which (large part of them at least) would kill anything at least a bit alien-ish.

Edit:

May I know in what way this impacts the VE RP. I don't mean this in a negative way, I'm just seeking information about the specific things it impacts. Once I understand these, maybe we can figure out a way to fix it.

We have our enemies, and according to some deals we made with various groups, we also have to strike somebody down if its hurting us. For example, we are often (relative to our in game time) assisting in keeping Dublin safe. If its safer for traders they will bring supplies to Canaria (our main base ATM) which is good for us. Nobody will do so anymore if he get robbed 3 or 4 times. We also defend convoys (mostly OSI ones since they are our primary supporters). Sure scouting is effective but not be able to do anything while a friendly transport is being slaughtered in front of you is, if something, silly at least.

Now we are, more or less, cannon folders. Who will join a faction like that?
"Join VE! Have a great time seeing your friends being shot down while you cant do a thing. But dont worry other will surely enjoy throwing it into your face and/or shoot you down too."
Sorry for the lame pun but really...

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[Warhalk]

I agree with everything Cannon said,with one addition.

Sanctions. Where are they? I have had a few friends quit in last few month's because of many many rules violator's that get reported,but never punished. I know admins are busy,but when the same person/s abuse rules daily,and get reported,and are back again next day to do it again unpunished? Well people ragequit,and a few i am sad to see start breaking rules themselves quoting if admins will not punish them? then i can do it too attitude.

Oh one more thing. Pretty much everywhere but Liberty has a 3:1 ratio of pirates over lawfuls/traders right now. This has also made a few leave quoting. "it is no fun to be attacked 5-6 times on a trade run,or ganked"

[Jansen]

I am concerned about the impact of the AI ID change on the VE. Unfortunately all I see recommended by players is:
- restrict the ID to the VE thus annoying those who already have the ID and are not VE
- reverse the change thus allowing a significant number of people to use the AI ID has a kind of terrorist ID
I'm not sure about the best solution there but we'll figure something out.

Wouldnt it be the easiest way to bring back older versions of the AI ID, while taking it of the 'open market'? It worked in the past, so why shouldnt it be able to work this way again?

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[Govedo13]

My vision for rules:
- something to stop re-engagement on death

I personally like this and dislike it at the same way.
It is not funny right now when group A have 5-6 ships and enemy B ( 1 ship) comes to attack them, B clearly knows that he has no chance to win so after a while when he looses his bots and bats,he starts to run, just to come back 10 min later to do the same restocked or with some wing-mates.
Combine this behaviour with LF or HF ship and someone who shout that group A are gankers and they don't offer him fair fight.
If A pick someone to duel B, B starts to do the routine shield running and dodge more then he shoots so the duel is at least 40-50 min long and the rest of A group just have to wait in order not to be labeled as "gankers".
I personally dont think that the 10k rule was good but now from my perspective with such PvP rules people like B in my post ruin the fun from PvP, making it like the others PvP servers(shoot, dodge, shoot win/run then shoot,dodge....)
I think that if B cannot attack group A/come back in the system for 2 hours after he goes out of the 15k scope, people will PvP with some strategy behind, or at least wouldn't restock and re-engage.

Personally about VE I think that the easiest solution is to add a line to the ID that the VE tagged pilots may attack first. In such case they have what they want, you dont give them personal ID and if the Faction disband after a while you just remove the line.

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€œ

Official faction players that are often accused of elitism, never deploy them and have those weird, immersion killing "fair fight/dueling" suicidal hobbies. (yes, i've seen enough of those lolduels, where house military with overwhelming force on the field willingly loses a pilot in a duel. ffs.)

[HuggieSunrise]

I like cannons server idea.

I think cannon needs to make a server and make it so hes the one and mighty authority like palpatine without the senate.

As for the id issues.

Admins need to have thier roles reduced to services and serving players and processing sanctions.

People a little less busy and more specialized for the balance of play or developers whom are active shouldn't be afraid to rip it all out collectively.. quite frankly to see how this business with the ai id go from fine to worse to stupid is like trying to cure an itch with a lobotomy.

Its clear that the problem here is that the hall monitors are writing the rules and this is a disservice cause its too big of a job for them.

All we can do is ask unanswered questions.. like

Was there a grand ideal or plan to make the AI id public in the first place just to cut down on some perceived SRP que?

<strike>How many brains out of the collective on the team are suffering a tumorous growth</strike>

was it to kick the id into a quagmire of overuse and abuse and thus make it favorable to get rid of ON PURPOSE?


granted as i see in general a DECLINE in AI rp (rp in general on the server maybe cause of this crap?) we sure as hell would have lasted longer had someone not by consensus or some assumed conflict or problem thats only solvable action was to have made it public. To screw with was not.... broken...

this was never....ever.... explained accounted for.. So what are we going to do here? Well Im going to keep playing and i will bitch and write posts like this when stupid unaccountable crap like this happens nauseating anyone with common sense until a few people get a bright idea that there SOMETHING WRONG HERE.


As for retaining players.. this is simple.. make it fun. No really this is it. what makes the server Un fun? ... look at the top and work your way down.. sure as heck could use some attention there.

Change the admins job to "cop" .. that wont be too hard to succeed. make a much smaller conclave of developers that can make faster decisions and more importantly BE AVAILABLE FOR FEEDBACK AND QUESTIONS. Change doesn't have to be a scary thing it CAN be productive and it can FIX issues.

There are a plethora of real tried and true administrative and development teaming systems that can fix all of this. The only price is change and the will to make this a more professional integrity.

The automation of half of the sanction-able abuses is possible.. trouble is whos programming for FL anymore?

if i can make it so that my own players cant be killed and reenter with the same character with a simple timer thats checked on connect its gotta be possible for FL.