House, Military, Police and Intelligence IDs

[jammi]

FP1 makes perfect sense in an independent border world system in which Bretonia - a war-weakened, injured giant - tumbled in, searching for a place to put their people. They would not care for Freeport 1 mess. They are losing a war, they are fighting for survival, they are pressed by Gallics and Sairs... and they somehow try to save the people.

In such a context, FP 1 small law infractions are a non-issue.
Unlikely to be even noticed.
There are more pressing issues.

If you look at O3 like that, it makes sense.

If you look at O3 as a system firmly under House control, with House laws applied and enforced... FP1 makes no sense. Then it would have been burnt long ago, but Bretonia - in the vision I have at least - has neither resources, nor manpower, nor appetite for any unnecessary conflict. They cannot purge the Freeport, root out Hessian problems, keep DHC at bay and tame an unruly IMG, while fight off Sairs and SCRA and Mollys and Gallia. This has nothing to do with "no rp repercussion", but with a realistic approach of what one can do and what one can't do in a dire situation.

The facts are:
> FP1 is still there.
> The systems are still labelled as "independent border worlds".
> There is still a rulewise clear distinction between "house space" and "non-house space".
=> For me it is pretty clear which version of O3 (as depicted above) is the one that is closer to what it should be irply.

I'm not arguing that Omega 3 is suddenly a law-bound paradise. I'm saying that Bretonian patrols are active in the region and attempting to enforce the law in order to protect their interests. Same as Rheinland has stationed a battleship in Omega 7 to protect their interests. Which both have now artificially been prevented from doing by a sudden and arbitrary ID rewrite. If you read my posts that quote the actual in-game material, you'll see I've proved this point prolifically.

Currently, all of your qualms about "why does FP1 still exist" and "House spaces shouldn't be encroaching on the independent worlds" are addressed in game through copious amounts of rumours. Omega 3 is currently an extremely tense, interesting and awkward place for a lot of the involved groups, because you have a desperate Bretonia fleeing from war into the system, throwing under-trained civilian militias at problems they're severely under-equipped to deal with and inadvertently setting up a new corporate Leeds on Sprague that'll cause problems for years to come.

At the end of the day, stations like Freeport 1 will always cause trouble because of the clear contrast between its lore utility and its in-game presence. So far as realistic use goes, Corsair raiding parties don't stage from it. They're discrete and turn up periodically to fence and buy goods to and from the Houses. There would be a tiny Corsair footfall to avoid drawing attention to themselves. You don't get Corsair gunboats and Legates sat outside or launching from it to hit traders - that's a player problem and not a story one.

It could even be a point of contact with the Corsairs for House ambassadors who are trying to negotiate the release of ships or kidnapped crews, etc. In any case, the scale of Corsair use of the station would not warrant Dunkirks wading in and blowing the place up. Extra scrutiny yes, but what do you know? That's what the in-game material says the current situation is. Scrutiny, suspicion, Bowex coveting the place, but no actual action.

We seem to broadly agree on what the situation actually is, but have come to vastly different opinions on how that should be reflected in-game. Simply yanking law enforcement out of the systems is an extremely janky and short-sighted way of doing it.

It is much too fast.
And your "180° turn" came in when it became clear that some (not all) Houses do not understand how not to play it. Look at the near-total control that many Houses claim over every little bit of their territory. The PoB taxation rules came in for a reason.

23 years is too soon? In SP the BAF were running patrols through Omega 3, had treaties with Rheinland about Omega defence that the RM were reneging on, and were begging for the chance to get involved in Omega 7 as well.

In Discovery, with the tides of war, the situation has been reversed with Rheinland's military newly funded and eyeing Omega 3 jealously. They're also in Omega 7 due to piracy and the indiscretions of the IMG. Sadly for some, status quo's shift over time. Independent space doesn't always stay independent. See Omega 3. Sometimes sovereign space is lost. Look at most of Dredsen.

Even the colonisation of Sprague is a RP arc that has been orchestrated by players and mod storylines for around four years. This is seriously too soon?

I do agree with the taxation rules though. That's a nice distinction.

The Admins are actively discussing a few tweaks to this based on the feedback we have received. It would be most helpful if we could get constructive feedback rather than people sniping at each other. This will be locked for a brief time to let people cool off and put some thought into this. When it is opened back up, we would like to see CONSTRUCTIVE feedback on how this situation can be improved. Anyone who chooses to make negative comments to another member after this warning will not be happy.

Honestly, what concerns me is how the team managed to discuss this for weeks and still be totally blindsided by the absolute barrage of negative criticism that's emanated from the majority of the community. The the implementation of this idea is so problematic that the reasons should have been glaringly obvious without this thread being necessary to point it out.

In any case, looking at the intended cause and the actual effect, they don't match up. As I said previously, the problem has never been lawful pilots in-game crashing corporate piracy while it happens. That very specific and unlikely scenario is literally all this amendment stops. You're patching a non-issue. Instead, the real problem that prevents corporate warfare is revenge reports on the forum.

Unless you have a gentleman's agreement with the factions involved (Bowex has a policy of never reporting Gateway pirates, just killing them over and over for example), you'll end up with screens and chatlogs smeared all across the forums and fines and FR5s out the wazoo when they get to the local police faction.

Look at the write up in the OP and consider how this addresses the above. So long as House laws are applied to those systems, this problem won't go away. As things stand at the moment, all that's happened is the big stomping boots have come out and flattened years of actual RP from military factions and Houses. Similarly, any admin attempt to change those laws there is going to result in years of RP (treaties, in-game activities, etc) being squashed. Like I said, the cause and effect are just fundamentally in conflict here.