The issue in question is the role of factions in Discovery. More specifically, whether factions, which I will call guilds for simplicity, can exercise authority in the use of ships by players with associated tags.
You think they don't, because you have an idea of id confering full membership to a faction, and a guild just being a group of friends in that faction. Is that right?
Your opponents, me included, think that guilds are something special within a faction and should get authority over indies. This is why creating a faction is a bit rigorous. I think this position is more in-RP. I thought I explained this already with my example of mercenaries working for a nation, but I'll try to tie it into Freelancer a little more.
I enter a system and see three ships. All three have the same id and the right tag, but two have a name that indicates they belong to a faction.
In scenario 1, the non-faction ship has one that is out of out-of canon for their faction, while the other two ships are in canon. Intuitively, this seems odd. I need to make up a more complex in-game story to understand this. This guy must have strange connections, be on the fringe, or something of that sort. If the non-canon ship is superior to what the faction is flying, it becomes worse.
In scenario 2, the non-faction ship is in-canon, while the two faction ships are out-of-canon. I think I can easily make sense of this in-game because I see factions as an elite group. They do have extra-special connections, they might have access to better equipment. It is a much easier story to tell than the former.
I think that good RP involves telling a good story, and the position of guilds within a faction as the elite, as the authority of that faction makes better sense than a military organization having groups of friends who run around acting in their own fashion. I think the backstories provided on this forum support that view.
So, assuming I got your view right on the position of guilds within factions right, why do you think your view of factions tells a better story?
