Suggested Rules Wrote:1. All Official Factions maintain the right to issue challenges for control of other faction (NPC) bases within, or bordering (50km adjacent to), their listed ZOI (this includes dockable planets/moons, border stations, civilian stations, military/police bases and dockable ships). An issued challenge will initiate a siege event that may result in the challenging faction capturing the base in contest. Stations qualifying for siege may be 'self destructed' by the owning faction only after maintaining control for 6 consecutive months, at a cost of 1000 units of Scientific Data. All challenges and their subsequent engagements are subject to ID Rules of Engagement.
2. All challenges are to be made as public declarations after first being submitted to staff as an OF Challenge Request for approval. Each challenge will only be accepted and started after the scidata has been confirmed and taken as payment. All submissions must include proof (time stamped screens) of the possession of the scidata and the name of the ship holding the data, name of initiating faction, faction being challenged (player or npc) and the base/object being targeted for siege.
3. Once submitted and approved, the station in question will be given an HP bar with limited HP. The challenging faction will have 7 days from implementation and declaration to reduce the object to 0 to claim control over the location. If that is achieved, the base IFF will change to that of the challenging faction and the base will again be made immortal. If that is not achieved the base status will return to normal and keep its current IFF. 24 hours may be required for an IFF change to take effect.
4. Counter challenges may come immediately. All challenges are subject to processing time. Only one challenge per location at a time, do not submit a challenge for a base until any active challenge is totally resolved.
5. Factions are limited to one active challenge at a time. Multiple OF's may form alliances to combine their challenges to assist one another. Challenges will be treated at a 'first come first serve' basis.
Exempt Bases Wrote:Bases Exempt from Siege: Capital Planets, Faction HQ Bases, INRP Hidden Bases
This is a slimmed down version of a faction 'battle system' that I propose for an Official Faction Challenge System. Basically just 5 extra rules added to the OF rights with a graph denoting values for challengeable locations. In theory, we would need a sub team within the Admins/GMs/Devs to operate the system, but it would keep the gears grinding and perpetuate a great deal of life/activity into the game by creating regular player driven events.
Staff would be needed to facilitate the changes of making bases siegeable (if not destroyable but at least able to show numeric damage like a wreck) upon the passing of a faction challenge request. Some will need to process the requests, confirm scidata needed is there (and take it), make the changes to the base (patch?) and observe. If the entire process could be completed within 48-72 hours to begin a siege event, that would make for a reasonable experience. A faction could submit a request and see it in-game within 3 days, and have 7 days to battle. If they succeed, last change would be to change that base's IFF. Technically they could also see a counter attack within another few days, depending on how well the other faction is doing.
The first questions would be, in theory, what HP to set for bases, which can also be graphed out so it will remain consistent and players will know what they have coming when they initiate a certain challenge.
The second question is about making these objects siegeable so that they take damage. The notion of trying to get repair ships to work on them to counter the attacks comes to mind as a possible way to slow down the progress of a battle. The main idea is that if a challenge fails, if a faction is active, popular, and determined enough, they may succeed after enough work. And if their gains are only temporary, and a base fluctuates in who controls it, it still keeps things interesting and creates long term potential goals. Bottom line, the more active a faction is, the less permanent a loss would be.
Other rules could be added to make certain bases exempt from challenge, such as capital worlds, or they could simply require many more things to achieve. All of the values for Scidata costs and object HP's are tentative, pending criticism. Some may feel they should be increased, and may need to be increased over time.
The last thing to include may be inrp 'hidden' bases, in which a system could be devised to establish what may be needed to be achieved to fairly 'discover' a hidden base so that an OF could siege them, and then either take over or destroy the base. That is an option at least.
Implications:
Some factions are dead, others that aren't dead have players but no purpose driving them. This will allow some factions to slim down others to fatten themselves up. In theory, at any time people could come along to a diminished faction and build it up to officialdom to try to counter challenge and regain lost bases/territory. Less popular factions may lose places to those with more steam, for a while. At the very least, I think this would breathe a great deal of life into the Houses as well, as they would become the main go-to for defending less populated factions that don't have OF's.
This may cause some factions whose bases fall into dispute to gain OF's. Others will be slightly consumed so other factions can build up their own territory. That will only be able to go so far, and we could simply place limits. Basically a faction could stretch its ZOI a base at a time, with some bases likely being impossible to capture due to player efforts, or being made exempt (I suggest Liners and other civilian ship bases be made exempt and each faction could have a 'core' base or bases that are off limits).
Yet many OF's would get the ability to gamble a bit to try to make some gains, slowly, and keep the story rolling at the same time. Each challenged faction, even if it has no OF, would still attract some attention for those looking to join the fight for the underdog, giving indies and freelancers some much needed opportunities. (House navies/police can offer bounties to bolster their defenses, POB's weapons platforms, etc.).
Each OF can only challenge for one location at a time in this version and it only relies on the already existing scidata system. The rate by which a faction could grow is basically going to be commensurate to how fast they can generate/buy the scidata, how much opposition they face in game and how much player power they can muster themselves. All things combined we can slowly let some factions make some bold moves to try to grow or strike out at their 'enemies' while also causing players to consume and interact in order to earn that ability.
The rest would require 'playing it by ear' and treating each situation as it comes. If a base changes hands it may eventually require changing bribes and missions, ships for sale, etc. If it looks like it may remain in dispute, those things could be wiped and left until stability could be achieved. Some of the traditional approach may be ditched but it would be to make a whole new system of opportunity possible so that there would be much more purpose found within factions, hopefully resulting in attracting/retaining more players.
Jump gates - Separately, to touch on the issue of jump gates, I think we could consider locking jump gates so a ship would not allow hostile ships to use them. That would mean you'd need to get your rep neutral/friendly to a jump gate owner to use it, or be stuck using the jumpholes. This has many implications yes, both gameplay and inrp wise. However this would make things much more interesting and give more value to fighting to change a jumpgate's IFF to make it passable to your desired faction (then requiring more RP for those wanting to use your jumpgate etc).
TL;DR - An easy to read graph and rule set to govern a system for factions to challenge for control of new bases via earnable siege events. This would be the result of adding to OF rights the right to issue a challenge for certain bases if they have enough Scidata to spend on the qualifying action. This will allow for player driven moves in an organized way that also stimulates activity and consumption between major events.
![[Image: G38aJ6J.jpg]](https://i.imgur.com/G38aJ6J.jpg)