bhg core feedback (just kidding this is the old core| feedback lol!)

[Mímir]

Bit confused about the BHG / ex-criminal controversy here.

It's not 'a few infocards' that mention it Mimir, it's a major characteristic of the NPC faction. It's brought up time and time again in news articles, the faction's infocard summary, their ID text and on base rumours.

Regardless of the work they've done since, a sizeable proportion/majority of the Guild's pilots are reformed convicts and criminals with a resultant stigma that follows the organisation around.

Fair enough, although full of words I didn't add a lot of contrast in my post.

You are indeed right that it is a trait for the guild to employ former criminals, and it is widely used. If you look at the infocards, that point is really driven home - obviously if you make a count, there's a higher number of hunters-as-convicts entries, but it can easily be argued that that is a deliberate choice to stress this unique trait. I've selected and trimmed a few from Scumbag's links.

Your past does not matter when you become a Bounty Hunter. Once you join the Guild, all is forgotten. For many it is the only chance they have to turn their lives around.

Since a lot of us are Rogues who did time in Sugarland or Huntsville, we know where the Jump Holes and bases are. Guild rules are that you tell no one or you may have a little "accident" out there.

My first trip to the Newgate I spent some time wearing a number. I decided then to go straight. After I finished serving my time I knew I'd never come back -- not as a prisoner at least.

When I got out off the Wall I didn't have many choices ahead of me, at least no appealing choices. I knew I didn't want to go back to making clothes on the Huntsville. I also knew I didn't like most of the scum I did time with.

They say the best way to catch a criminal is to hire one, and that is exactly what the Bounty Hunters Guild is doing in the following months. Guild masters will be coming in from New York to recruit new Bounty Hunters into the organization.

There's a lot of mention of ex-cons, but if you look it over, most/all speak of reformed convicts - people that would never return. They all enjoy the fruits of lawful life, even if they are still killers at heart. If you look at the last rumor, it can even be seen as if it is an event - something out of the ordinary - when the guild goes out to deliberately recruit criminals.

Other inforcards offer different stories, like the one about hero Emma Harris:

Never one to sit still, Harris began a crusade against what she called "the social bigotry of our society."

And other bios:

My father was a Bounty Hunter and so was his father before him. Dad started taking me hunting with him when I turned fourteen. I've been doing this ever since, and I've bagged over four hundred criminals in that time.

My father was an executive for Republican Shipping while my mother worked in the offices that Universal Shipping has on Hamburg. They were killed in 807 A.S. by a Liberty Rogue ambush on the Texas side of the jump gate when their transport was destroyed. I considered joining the Rheinland Military, but they're too strict and they can't operate in Liberty, so I joined the Bounty Hunters Guild. I mainly target the Liberty Rogues and look for information on Rogue hideouts, and eventually I'll find out which ones killed my parents and they'll get their comeuppance.

These seem like very ordinary bounty hunters, with an orphan story to boot. To me, the way I read the combined body of infocards (even with a strong numerical "advantage" to the ex-con side), it is a unique and important trait for the BHG to house a lot of former convicts, but it is in no way or shape a defining trait. Hence, Core - or any other faction - should not treat it as such in their formal documents.

About the BHG reputation, yes that was a bit of a stretch on my part. But that too depends on how you view it. I was highlighting their formal reputation, as a law-abiding and extremely dedicated organization - a reputation so strong that they are the most trusted lawful hunters in all of the houses. They even operate stations inside Bretonia, Rheinland and Kusari and have a strong presence in Liberty, even planetside. But of course, when you make a living out of killing other people, you'll be scorned and attached a lot of stigma on a personal level (which realistically would be the exact same case for Core pilots, mind you) - that's only human. Let's look at rumors from employers:

The Bounty Hunters in this system have been paid a lot of money to kill Gaians, and I love it. Bounty Hunters are not kind, and it makes me feel safe to know that my corporation has hired them to exterminate the Gaian threat. We are a noble company at heart, but sometimes you must deal with the repugnant to destroy the repulsive.

We encounter a good deal of Bounty Hunters hired by BMM to kill the criminals we can't lay a beam to, but they are as shady as the criminals at times, plus I think they enjoy their job too much.

Some Bounty Hunters are alright, I suppose. Others are rotten and will kill anybody if the money is right. Basically, they are assassins that companies hire to kill the criminals we haven't had the chance to apprehend yet.

The Bounty Hunters Guild, though perceived as not entirely trustworthy by some, is very helpful to us. They handle all of the nasty work that goes into insuring the progress of Sirius and Liberty.

The Bounty Hunters are filth-ridden foreigners, but I must admit they are very good pilots. They kill many of the worst pirates in this system, and for that I am thankful.

As you see, people enjoy the guild and the job it does, but loathe the hunters. Even pre-republic Kusari people are 'thankful'! This is where some of the Digital Anvil (and older stuff) is better than what we add: It's not black and white, it's full of nuances and diversity. That spurs creativity and make things interesting for the player. It gives current and future BHG players a wide range of choices, and that leads to more fun for them. IMO the Core is highly encouraged to have their views on the guild and use that as a focal point for the split (more on that later), but it should be expressed exactly as that: Core views, and not something set in stone. That might even lead to an interesting story when clarifying and arguing for the views leading to a decisive split - we would know a hell of a lot more about who the Core pilot is and what he wants than we do now. And to add to that, the beauty of it is that it will only entail Core, as it is a story about their views. Perfect!

Leave things open as they are - or at least make a faction document that will blow our minds if it absolutely has to infringe on the BHG.

EDIT:

@Lyth: I'll be honest and say that all of my complaint boils down to Mantas, that tech cell and what faction it belongs to is why I am being over-critical.

I might also not be fully informed. I know that you are tasked with making a BHG and BHG Core split, but I don't know if that entails specific demands.

What I am getting at is that I thoroughly believe that choosing APM as the focal point for this split is a terrible decision for a host of reasons. Most importantly because it creates conflict on a "technical" level between vanilla BHG and new Core (what player precisely controls the tech cell for the ships APM produces?) but also because it is a dull narrative angle (another lovely company in space, with associated forum paperwork??? That's fine for a player faction, but with the amount of in-game stuff that Core has and wants, I do believe that bar should be set a lot higher when it comes to creating the NPC faction). If you weren't forced to focus so narrowly on the assets, I don't understand why you'd take that route. I mean, would you go watch that movie in the cinema?

If Core is a group of over-zealous deep space bounty hunters who just could not stand the way they felt the bounty hunter guild operated, with all the criminal filth it employs, and thus split; shouldn't the story be about that?!

If you weren't forced to choose APM as a focal point, it just seems like an extreme powerplay move.

EDIT EDIT:

We can talk about it when I'm on skype some time; there's a bunch of things I disagree with (of course)

I will say this though:

In what you've published so far on the faction page, you state that Core is funded (pause for a minute and think about the full capital ship line, double gunboats, shipyards, stations, stationary battleships and more that belongs to Core) by these "illusive elite bounty hunting contracts" (those must have been golden days for them hunters, since the contracts were claimable in tiny snubs according to yourself...) paid by unknown benefactors with no political or ulterior motives whatsoever as well as APM doing magic. Since these contracts do not exist in the game, and current Core activity isn't about claiming cap bounties on specialized boards, but rather based on internal rewards, it seems safe to assume that production / APM is the main source of income for Core. (Mind you, I did suggest a more humble EDGE-like approach to Core-as-PMC, where the main activity would be hunting caps in caps, but it got shot down repeatedly.) It's also obvious that you can never get rich by selling items you produce to yourself, so APM must be a major supplier of things on the open market, considering Core's immense wealth. Now, you also write this:

My goal is to simply make the shipline have the same sort of genericness that the Civ and Borderworlds lines have, but however giving them faction-level control by Core/BHG via FR6.

So, for your story to come to fruition, APM must not only produce, but also sell. Do you intend APM/Core to sell items not represented in the game, eg. nomad infantry spaceguns and such, or do you plan on selling Mantas to other factions? If so, do you not see how that puts the BHG faction and our attempts to be a snub-centric faction at a really bad position, when people can just go out and use our tech freely with Core's in-rp blessing? How is that NOT completely screwing over the BHG ID, while you sit in the Omicrons in your exclusive gay caps? If this is really the case, why do you want that genericness? Is the APM / Core store really that good that this seems fair, in your own opinion?

Is it not obvious how bad a focal point APM is for so many reasons?

EDIT EDIT EDIT:

What if the story stayed APM-centric, but instead of focusing on the selling of ships, write a story about how Core / APM discovered the Iridium fields and how it's a must-have mineral in the private sector (ie. not a mineral Core could use to extort house govs and assume world domination) in all of the houses, only available from a source under Core control (and how the new-found riches also had a role to play in the Core / BHG split - ie. add a bit more nuance to Core, rather than basing the split on just "purge all the filth". Maybe that Nordveidt is a major douche that only ever cared about his personal financial interests and only used zeal as a tool of manipulation to force a split, so he could get his hands on the precious Iridium without sharing with BHG and others and so on and so forth). You can pew people that poke their noses in your field and contract it out to Bowex or whatever mining corp that seems up for the task - demand leases etc. Get devs to buff the field (so various scrubs go there to mine and you can kill them. If the field is profitable enough, it will attract Zoner revenge juggernauts like flies to dung - and we all know they are the best!) and write an info-card or two, and BAM! you don't need to touch Mantas ever. It'll even be fun for others with a bit of illegal deep space mining / ore theft where you have to watch out for nomad NPC's as well as zealous Core pilots plus the usual pirates (fun for pirates too!) on the long journey back to house space, if the reward is also handsome (maybe slow drop but high per unit sell price to encourage prolonged activity within the field itself - maybe up radiation within areas of the field with a higher drop rate in return. The possibilities are so many). Miners might even need escorts to deal with NPC's if they are sitting in the field for long at non-peak hours, and some fun could be had for other players there. Split the cells - Core gets caps, BHG gets snubs and gb - tech is freely shared between the two factions. Write some story about how it's separate teams of APM technicians at different facilities developing the caps and the snubs as an explanation to the tech cell split. Done deal, everyone is happy and the mod is better than what it was before. Core can keep on shooting Order and everything they did before, but now they won't HAVE to control the Manta to explain their impressive riches.

There's a billion other ways to write a story about the split that doesn't involve Core control of Mantas - that would warrant a lot less scrutiny as well.


Another edit: Btw I just wanna say I think Lyth is a cool dude, and so are the Core players. Personally I also really appreciate the effort to create a new Core. The only reason I am being a pain in the arse and nitpicking is because I obviously feel some of the Core stuff damages BHG. No hate!

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