concerning factions and their influence

[Mímir]

If people don't want to join a given official faction because of the way that faction operates, and they'd rather play independently, that's perfectly fine, and I encourage that, really I do. However cooperation between independents and official faction players should also always be encouraged, Independent players and Official Faction players do not need to be opposed to one another, and there doesn't need to be animosity between the two.

I really strongly agree, but on the other hand I don't think it is reasonable when factions choosing to operate in a certain way and struggle with activity and find it hard to recruit members because of it then ask for other players' roleplay to be hampered. Rather than forcing people to play like them, they should maybe open up to the possibility that the game can be played in other ways without wrecking neither it nor the roleplay. Factions should be free to play as they see fit (within reason) and so should indies (within reason). We should all just get along and stop complaining about everyone else and just focus on what each of us can do better.

How about giving factions a mobile jumphole generator*? That can be used for trading factions as well as combat factions, could promote team effort and add some uniqueness. Give it lore as well unlike the revolutionary tech released without solid lore. It would give official faction players the natural role of leaders on the battlefield to have such a strong card up their sleeve, and ensure official faction economic dominance. I'm all for giving factions something (preferably something that promotes/requires team effort) but opposed to removing things from others.

*It could be based on mass (like unstable wormholes in Eve Online) to balance it: A fighter with the proper equipment installed on the battlefield could open up the tunnel so X amounts of snubs could jump through as reinforcements or for a surprise ambush, but for jumping warships and trade ships with much higher mass you would need more fuel to keep the jumphole tunnel open and thus need more players. Make it so that ships get lost/destroyed inside the jumphole if the ship with the jumphole equipment runs out of fuel or is destroyed while someone is jumping, so there is a fun and potentially devastating counter/drawback.

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