' Wrote:Right, so it does come down to us having different ideas about how to understand factions in the world of discovery.
You see them as being different armed forces, while I see them as an elite within an authority. I also think that elite would have control over the distribution of armnaments of their manufacture... especially within groups that are aligned with them. The black market is another issue and if you want to introduce that, then you might as well be done with ship restrictions altogether.
It intuitively makes more sense for me to treat factions this way. Otherwise you have, say, a squadron within a Corsair group and a bunch of other independent Corsairs. This also doesn't seem to be in line with how factions portray themselves (i.e. as the voice of the group).
If only we had a way to reconcile our world-views. Who knows, it might even have an application outside of Freelancer.
The problem I have with your view is twofold.
First, it doesn't reflect reality. Now, I'm not a big fan of bringing reality to computer games in most areas, but as far as arms procurement in the US armed forces I have some experience with that, having ordered arms.
I can safely say there is no single elite person controlling who gets what. Even if you view the faction as the core of the arms forces, it's the bean counters filling the reqs. No four star general and not the president are controlling whether a particular division in some small base gets what they requested or not. It's simply too complex a process. Likewise if you say the faction leader is president and his faction members are four star generals, they still are not enough people to account for a nations complexity. In fact there is a very real division in leadership in the US Navy between those that graduated the academy and those that came in from another college. There is no reason that kind of division can't be represented by faction/non faction within one ID.
Secondly, tying in with that, is the issue of real life authority over independent players. What you are endorsing is forcing independents to be de facto faction members, and that isn't fair to them. If the admins decide this is a faction only server and you are forced to join, that's one thing, but that hasn't happened, and if I want to RP an outcast for instance I shouldn't have to endorse Eppy and his ninja jesus to do so.
This server is big enough for factions and independents to each play their way.