Liberty Navy [LN] Feedback Thread

[Mímir]

Heya, here's a bit of bedtime reading As I said I was mostly picking this up on a general level, so proportion doesn't really factor in. Also, and I just want to say this again, I don't really care about the individual case as such, I am just interested in what it all means in a wider context. That is, if individual roleplay is encouraged even when it borders the implausible, how do we measure the "quality" of an official faction as a whole? Is the Navy's roleplay the sum of its members individual roleplay, and if so where is the "red thread" that is usually put forth as one of the prime reasons to why official faction members should hold their privileges? Or is individual roleplay completely seperated from the faction's roleplay?

I do not question your character's motives or desires, I question if it is plausible that a person with those attributes would ever reach the rank of viceadmiral? Would that kind of "rowdy" behavior not be far better suited for a low ranking officer that is not the face of the entire Navy? There's a discrepancy that, if the roleplay is to be taken somewhat seriously and not be completely ignored, totally undermines the authority of the admiral in question and the navy she represents. To make it a bit more concrete, imagine how it would feel for the families of navy pilots who got killed by Hellfire while protecting those corporations and institutions the very viceadmiral now questions in a personal and open communique with none other than the terrorists themselves? Idk, in real life you might find people within the US military with a nuanced or maybe even lenient view on certain terrorist organisations, but they'd never be able to voice those views publicly in any democracy even - it's 100 percent incompatible with their duty.

I'm all for the fact that this is a fictional space shooter (hell, I've always advocated for fewer words and more pews), but even in Vanilla Freelancer characters follow general rules and structures, like in any other half-decent fiction. When you go too far out of bounds, the story and setting becomes "bad" or just too incredible; but we as players are in this case forced to have an opinion, since it is THE official faction viceadmiral, not just "a" viceadmiral like so many others aboard LNS- ships. Unlike those admirals, my characters are forced to take your character and roleplay seriously, even if I as a player see no difference between that and "light roleplay" adolescent catgirl admirals in battleships. What sets [LN] apart from 5th, 41st etc., if not quality and coherence? Pretty transmission bars and a fancy tag? Is the idea not that the official faction should be the pillar on which the roleplay of other players on the same ID rests?

So on a roleplay level, of course the transmission denounces Liberty institutions - you cannot deny that, even if you didn't really mean it so bad. It's written in the transmission, there's not really much to debate. You even confirmed that you discredited said institutions in your post above. Now logically that either puts your character in a odd position, or it puts your navy in an odd position - and its not up to other factions to react, but solely your own (which is never going to happen since it is super uncomfortable and oorp creates a bad vibe when you "punish" one of your own, I totally get that). I'm curious which it is going to be, or if this is just a clear indication that official faction membership and roleplay means diddly squat and by all means should be totally disregarded, as it is just about that one player's individual fun - like in the case of indies. Which is fair enough, I cannot argue against that even if I wanted to (I also like casual fun); but doesn't that open up a string of questions regarding out of roleplay legitimacy of the official faction institution and thus membership privileges?

If official faction roleplay should be weighed in the exact same fashion as any other roleplay, what justifies the perks? Just curious here.

I also never said anything about cardboard personalities. There's a vast difference between real life Oliver North and real life Petraeus, even though they both held key positions within the military. As servicemen they were similar in their form, but extremely different in content. Military, rank, structure, uniforms, decoration etc. is a lot about form , but within that form there is still a lot of personal variation. A 'mother' or a 'father' entails certain boundaries and rules, but we can all agree that a lot of mothers and fathers are extremely different from one another, even though their roles adhere to the same rules. This case is no different, hence your argument is void.

Someone can be kind and warm within a given form, or someone can be cold and callous and still keep the form, but within any military (fictional or not) there are boundaries and structures (which is how we can identify the very thing we are looking at as 'military' - structure is key to taxonomy of any kind). We need rules for fiction, if there are no rules it becomes surreal, but you can argue that even the surreal operates within its own logics, no matter how much it tries to transgress those. Often the surreal is juxtaposition of the real, and as such they are so closely related to one another that the surreal cannot truly be said to operate outside of those confines, even when that total emancipation is the ultimate desire. There could be no surreal without the rules and boundaries of the real. There has to be some stringence or coherence otherwise fiction is unbelievable and thus completely worthless, unless of course the goal is to use the unbelievable to demonstrate a point in itself, but I find it hard to believe we'll ever find a master writer of that calibre here. If we did, my god did he or she waste their talent.

I also like Bill Clinton.

tl;dr: Should we just not bestow any kind of importance to official faction roleplay/statements and totally disregard it when it goes out of bounds? I don't mind that, just looking for some clarification.

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