HS> Feedback: Malta Hyperspace Starfleet

[Petitioner]

First off, I'd like to say that it warms my heart to see an active Outcast faction that's willing and able to not only be active ingame, but also to maintain a respectable forum presence and engage in constructive roleplay with other factions and characters, both foreign and domestic (indies). For the majority of my Discovery career, I've been involved with Malta in some way or another, and have held several cumulative years' worth of time in leadership positions of Outcast factions, most of which I directly helped write the lore for, not to mention my involvement with the Taus and Omicrons when I was part of the storywriting dev team many years ago. I really do genuinely love the Outcasts as a faction, and find their lore to be some of the most beautiful, complex, and unfortunately, misunderstood, of any group in Freelancer's setting, which is why I've put so much time and effort into trying to raise the bar for Maltese roleplay and encouraging any interested parties to enrich it with their own personal contributions.

I've always strongly disliked the notion that there's only one single "correct" way to interpret any part of a universe so vast and imaginative as the Sirius Sector, in particular when the facets under consideration aren't clearly defined; the ability to find creative ways to say "yes, and" rather than "no, but" in storytelling is what makes roleplay such a powerful and even transformative mode of expression, and is what's kept me coming back to Discovery time and time again ever since I first stumbled onto the server way back in 2007.

However, the other side of this coin is that when aspects of the universe which are clearly defined are straightforwardly misunderstood or even ignored by players, it cheapens the stories and work of those whose passion led to things standing as they do. When it's born out of ignorance, it's very understandable; after all, even vanilla FL is an enormous universe filled with subtleties and intrigue, and expecting a casual player who solely flies a 5ker and RM caps to have a solid grasp of the industrial landscape of Honshu or the diplomatic stances of the Mollys is of course silly. But I don't think it's silly to hope that players who take the time to apply to, join, and invest over a billion credits in a ship for an official faction (which should have a higher standard of roleplay than John Malta the random indy) to have a reasonable understanding of the basic traits of their faction. These are the things that define the group, the things that make them unique, the things constituting their raison d'être. So what's my point here? What is the unique, defining feature of the Outcasts that's so core to their identity it's responsible for their own name that they intentionally chose for themselves?

Cardamine.

The single most important thing to the Outcasts and their roleplay is cardamine, and their critical relationship to it. For the Outcasts, cardamine is not a drug. Cardamine is a necessity of life, without which they typically perish in less than a week. In real life, an otherwise fit and healthy human being can survive for nearly an entire month without any food intake; cardamine is more biologically essential to those born of Malta than food. It's in Malta's water, it's in Malta's soil, it's in Malta's crops, it's in Malta's everything. Outcasts do not "take cardamine" or "dose cardamine". They passively absorb cardamine from everything they interact with, and are utterly dependent on it similar to how humans are dependent on oxygen. This is why they wear breathers or masks when away from Malta or their stations where gaseous cardamine can be mixed into the air supply; they don't get high off it, they die without it.

So you can imagine why I was more than a little disappointed when earlier today I saw one of your members repeatedly *sniff*ing in local chat.

This is something I've seen from your faction multiple times, and while it very well might seem like I'm writing a novel-length post over effectively nothing, roleplaywise this constant trend of OC players *sniff*ing every other word makes about as much sense as Corsairs flying ships named "Taco Campana" (though to be fair, the whole treating cardamine like cocaine thing is significantly less racist than the lame Corsair mexican food jokes). When Outcast characters have a tray filled with lines of cardamine on their ship's dash and rail one every five minutes like some kind of space-pirate stock broker, it isn't immersive or fun; it's ignorant of the single most foundational aspect of what an Outcast is, and it's not the quality of roleplay I hope to see from official factions, who are otherwise genuinely doing good things for server activity and the advancement of Discovery's lore.

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Several years ago, I started work on a thread I entitled something along the lines of "a beginner's guide to the Outcasts". I never finished this project, and it's currently out of date as it was written with an eye to the political situation (both inRP and ooRP) that the Outcasts were in at that time, which has changed significantly since then. However, given that one of my current two main characters is an Outcast, I'm considering updating it and bumping it when it's in a state where it's once again useful. If the Hyperspace Starfleet's leadership is interested, I'd be happy to work on this thread with you, and focus on promoting your faction as the current major player in Maltese political and military affairs (as the only active or official OC faction at present), as well as collaborate on the presentation of Outcast lore.

Despite how long-winded this post is, and how petty it might come off at first read, I genuinely just want to see the coolest and most engaging group in Discovery's universe played in a way that actually reflects who and what they are, because it's only when factions and individual characters are distinct from each other and have meaningful goals and direction that they can really have good, compelling writing and story development that people actually want to read.

Speaking of reading, if you actually read all seven-plus paragraphs preceding this line, thank you sincerely for taking the time and giving this consideration.

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