Are we killing Discovery?

[Tenacity]

However, the bit about handing out orders seems problematic. Your character isn't a Black Squadron officer, and if he's in a gunboat he almost certainly is an officer in the Order, with a specific commission that would exclude both the section of Black Squadron and others outside his command. But that's getting off topic.

I fly a cruiser.

People usually think "OMG POWERGAMING!" when I say "hand out orders"... it may look like that, but it isnt.

See, I dont tell people to go suicide themselves against battleships or anything unreasonable like that. The -only- time I start giving orders to other Order players (BS or independent) is when there are immediate threats to order space (keepers, BH's, liberty, smugglers, whatever), or when nobody is doing anything.

In the situation that these other players are just sitting around toledo with nothing to do (much like liberty and manhattan), I either organize an RP based event (checking out a nomad system, trying to collect nomad power cells, or infiltrating a house system) or ask them to help patrol order space - directing them to particular jump holes or stations to defend. All the while, we're ALL in a group - every time I log on I automatically check order space for hostiles, and immediately afterwards invite all order members I recognize into a single group so that we can be more organized.

Now, despite the fact that myself, and a lot of these other players I work with are 'indies' - I've seen a LOT more organization and teamwork out of them than I've seen in many other large/official factions. I hate to fall back on liberty since I bash them a lot for this... but lets take a look at the [SA].

SA members, along with a large number of LNS liberty independent caps, and quite often =LSF= members, seem to sit around manhattan orbit all day long. They get annoyed when they cant stop a smuggler within the distance from the trade lane to the manhattan docking ring, but they never seem to do anything about it.

Hell, the only liberty lawful I've ever seen actively patrol z21/alaska is gafwmn, and he's not a pc faction member - he's an independent.

Now imagine if all those SA, LSF, and liberty independents formed a single group for organized communication, and spread their forces out - sending one player to each trade lane intersection and jump gate in the system or beyond. Do you realize how many more smugglers and pirates you would catch? Or how much more fun the players would be having, rather than sitting there outside of manhattan absolutely bored and spewing OOC chat until they finally decide to log out? Tons.

All it takes is respecting other players and working WITH them and not AGAINST them.

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