Croft, the reason why people are on about indies in such thread because there's absolutely nothing that you can do with faction itself to make it more popular than being an indie. Factions should have something that indies don't. But currently indies have everything. And even when they take what tthey shouldn't have, the cases are mostly ignored because they're indies. They also can use most of benefits that factions may try to create for themselfs in most cases. You can ofc make some sort of interesting Role Plays, events, that are open for just the faction. But you won't be able to force indies away from those if they wish to participate too much. Because as someone said, limit the freedom of indies and they will start crying. And one worst thing you can do in such situation is actually try to satisfy the cryers, instead of working out the compromise between faction play, indie play and gameplay itself.
Also, factions are forced to deal with indies without having any actual way to influence them. Faction Right 2 is a joke, as we have bunch of admirals or high ranked anyone flying as indies. And there's not even enough faction members to keep them in control either.
That's why factions can not be anything more than mini communities within community while such policy stands, imo.
I might have something that would help the case a very little bit, and that is rebranding of Angels. Something that should teach newcomers shouldn't be something that doesn't play the game. Also as it stands they can just ask their questions on forum, rather then waiting for Angel to login.
My suggestion is to make a kind of Freelancer faction that require little to no efford to join, where newcomers will be indirectly taught the ways of playing on discovery while playing the game. Maybe inspire joining such faction with some cookies, provided with the help of leader, or if that's too much for members - with the help of admins. Would be a nice change for Angels and kinda would be a group that actually plays the game, not stalks for newcomers )
