About faction activity

[Zukeenee]

So we all know how official factions earn and keep their official status. Apply, become official, keep your faction's head above the minimum activity line for the rest of your time on Disco. Fail to spend enough hours in-game, and you'll lose your official status entirely. That's how it goes.

I've seen a number of people mention that there needs to be a change here. They bring up points about some factions being harder to play than others, or talk about how in-game activity tends to wax and wane naturally. Is this system of revocation fair? Should we really give official factions the boot if they can't log in for a set number of hours each month? Well, maybe. But even some factions that can't maintain enough server activity have important roles to play in Disco.

I'm going to be using the KSP as an example here, seeing as it's what got me thinking about all this. Back when the KSP was official, it had a Criminal Database in which it would record all instances of criminal activity observed by KSP players. It would then seek out and communicate with the people listed in the database to work out a suitable punishment for them. If the criminals did not or could not respond, they were set as hostile to the KSP NPCs. That was pretty much the extent of the consequences the KSP could administer to law-breakers. People don't generally play along with in-game arrests, and seeking out and blowing up people wasn't a very good solution either. The FR5 was the KSP's last-resort weapon. Then they became unofficial because they couldn't stay in-game long enough. They lost their biggest power. People became disinterested and stopped playing their KSP characters.

Now, in all houses, the police play rather important roles in keeping things together. Granted, the house navies can do just about everything that the police can, but they're usually busy playing their primary roles as soldiers in whatever war they're a part of. The server needs police characters, police characters need the power to affect law-breakers that they catch, and they can only get that power through use of the official faction rights. If a police faction loses its status because it's not active enough, it severely cripples a major part of role-play within the houses.

Whether or not you agree with that part of my argument, I still think my proposal should have some weight here: Keep the minimum requirements for in-game activity, but once a faction drops below their minimum hours, that faction can be replaced if another one steps up to take its position. Otherwise, the official faction keeps its official status.

Here's another example: If, for whatever reason, the Liberty Navy weren't able to log its ships in for 30 hours a month, then another group of players with their own proposal for a Liberty Navy ID'd faction could send in their request to become official and take the old LN's place. If they're approved, then out with the old inactive Navy and in with the new. If no one applies to take the old navy's place, or if none of the proposals get approved, the original LN holds onto their status. This system would work by IDs, of course, assuming we continue to use the "one official faction per ID" thing (which is its own issue, and I'm not going to touch it right now).

Falling back on my KSP example one last time, my biggest issue with our loss of official status was that no one else wanted to take the KSP's place. No one has made any serious efforts to create their own KSP faction to fill the hole in Kusari's law enforcement. If there's no one else who thinks they can do better, then why strip such an influential faction of their status? Why open up the position if no one else is interested? Implement this idea, and we won't have that problem.

tl;dr - Look for the bolded text.

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