I'm taking a leak...

[Zelot]

I was seriously hoping for a wipe and several other fixes with that too like:
- Caps removed from certain factions that should not have them
- Caps restricted to official factions (and their numbers restricted to lore amounts
- 5kers restricted to officials
- Bases restricted to officials / SRP

Totally had my hopes up too, I mean it would stop a lot of the current abuse going on the server.

So basically, you want only a handful of the handful of people we have playing this game, to be able to play with any of the good stuff.

BRILLIANT.

I dont consider caps, 5kers or bases 'good stuff'. Regardless it doesn't really restrict anyone from getting them. It just means that they have to join an official faction to get em and that if something goes wrong the admins have clear sight over who did something wrong and can punish effectively. It would reduce the amount of rule breakings significantly as abuse is punished hard, increases the level of RP and stops indies from rampaging around the server unpunished.

This wouldnt stop the "indies" from "rampaging" around the server "unpunished." Notice the sanction section, who do you see the majority of the sanctions against? Indies or official faction players? Clearly indies. Do you think that is because non-offical faction players have violations more? Well, there are a few ways to look at that. First, the types of infractions are different, you get the newbie rule violations, not out of malice, but merely a lack of understanding of the rules. These folks are duly smacked and referred for a read of the rules. They make up about 50% of the "indy" violators. Another possibly 25% of the violations from non-official factions come from members who belong to official factions, but maintain their "indy" ships to troll and grief other players without the faction being held responsible, and to maintain the appearance of good play. The other 25% percent is made up of members, usually former official faction members, who just don't care about the rules.

Now, these people obviously get punished when sanctioned. Most of the time, a harsher punishment than a faction ship would get for the same offense.

As for the rampaging, I see just as much rampaging from official factions, if not more. Official factions do just as much greifing and trolling of other players as anyone else, if not more. They just have a couple of things on their side. Punishments are usually less severe on faction players, because the admins expect the factions themselves to punish the player as well. Sometimes this happens, usually not. Factions also usually have at least one, often many internet lawyers on hand, to argue down to the most miniscule detail, every loophole they think might be relevant to getting their man off. They know better how to get around the rules, they know better how to troll within the letter of the rules, if most assuredly not the spirit of the rules. With the numbers a faction can bring to bear, they can just stop a person from playing the game in an area all together, and often they then switch to other characters to continue the harassment. When these things get out of hand, it is usually handled with a private "oy, cut it out," rather than a sanction. Why? Easier than dealing with the internet lawyers.

Fact of the matter is that it is not the indies or the factions that are running rampaging through Discovery, it's both. It's just that the factions tend to come out of it looking cleaner..looking cleaner, not cleaner. Nature of the game I guess, but giving more power and more rights to factions isnt going to help this. And giving these toys to the factions leaders to decide what to do with has failed miserably in the past. I trust the average faction leader on disco to play fair about as much as I trust politicians to follow through on campaign promises.

For those of you who might not know ( I have been keeping quiet for a while) I am a former faction founder, faction leader, developer, moderator and Admin. I know of what I speak.

---