"New faction creation process and representation" discussion thread.

[sovereign]

Whatever does happen, things need to be spelled out clearly, and the entire admin team needs to in agreement on what they are doing, even if parts of them dislike it. For example- with the council of official factions idea, can or can't they set player diplomacy? If, theoretically, Blood Dragon ships were frequently being disrespectful toward Bundschuh operations in Sigma-13 could the Volksfront and/or Bundschuh "council" declare that Blood Dragon ships were to be shot on sight? So long as neither group is breaking server rules (stuff like KNF lollygagging in Rheinland over and over again would reasonably constitute a sanction) but are simply developing different feelings toward each other, can they make adjustments to their diplomacy to take this into account? If any of these were deemed unreasonable they could quite easily be contested, but are they allowed in the first place? While I can agree that it's a far cry to have, say, the LN and the Order declare a full alliance (something best left to Igiss), could their factions/faction councils agree to not raid each other's home systems or something of the sort? If so, how would they be able to enforce it? Could they shoot at indies who disregarded their notices, or deny them equipment?

These are the things that need to be spelled out clearly, and stuck to. One admin cannot, for example, say that official factions have the right to restrict access to battleships and then another admin reprimand or sanction someone for doing so without a large announcement that the system has, in fact, changed. That, I think, is the biggest issue with the current system- for the most part it works, but people bitch and whine because they don't agree on what powers they have.





As for indies on faction councils, I don't think that they should be entitled to a position. Take, for instance, the Bundschuh. We have one official faction, the Volksfront, and at any given time we have no more than one independent RPing as a Bundschuh. Should official factions get only one representative and the indy population get one representative, it really doesn't matter how they are chosen here- one person, regardless of depth of story (could be a paragraph or a book) has as much say as an entire faction that waited for over a year to get official. Unjust concentration of power is what we're fighting here, right?

I suggest that faction councils be originally made up of one delegate from each faction, who is appointed by that faction and can be replaced by them should he/she do something the faction at large is not happy with. However, I would allow the faction councils to, from that point forward, be allowed to decide to reorganize themselves to allow more delegates from a given faction/factions, independent representatives, etc., with further decisions being based on the newly organized group. Basically, start with a very simple "faction republic" (there's a distinct difference between a republic and a democracy, what has been suggested by Korrd is a federal republic) and allow them to build their own system of coming up with decisions. This should both allow factions to support the commitment of particularly dedicated indies as well as allow them to retain their rightful place as more important than an individual.

From each faction council/monarchy/whatever they decide it to be, they can make certain decisions (such as diplomacy, ship usage, system regulations) as agreed upon by admins/this thread/a magic 8 ball. These need to be treated as RP law, or the whole point of making a faction official is meaningless. If the Rheinland (Police) council is allowed to decide system regulations, and they decide that no non-Rheinland trader is lawfully allowed inside of New Berlin without paying a tariff on pain of death, then they need to be allowed to shoot said traders who don't pay the fine. If they get sanctioned for it, then the system has failed completely. If a rule seems unreasonable, then admin action on the question needs to be brought up before the "offense" is committed, otherwise it's unreasonable to sanction the "offenders" who were more than likely doing what they thought they were supposed to do. The last time this came up, Xoria mentioned how the "I was just following orders" defense is silly, but... it is very real, and essential to the operation of, say, a military. I could refute the logic of prosecuting people following "illegal" orders but that's another subject entirely.




At any rate this post is rambling, there's just too much to cover at once.

Korrd, I would like to ask you to split this question into several threads, each dealing with a very specific issue that can be debated cleanly without getting muddled by sheer post volume. Currently we are debating:

• How one becomes an official faction
  
• The distinctions between an official faction and an unofficial faction
  
• How one becomes an unofficial faction, if anything is necessary at all
  
• What an official faction is allowed to do, must do, and cannot do
  
• How much control official factions have over the independents that reflect upon them (that independents do reflect upon factions is no longer a question, thank god)
  
• What policies and/or diplomacies official factions are allowed to adjust, by how much, and how they can deal with people who don't play along (sanction, RP consequence without fear of sanction, or nothing at all)
  
• How having multiple factions with the same NPC affiliation plays into all of these questions
  
• How to incorporate indies into these questions while both respecting the vastly larger amount of work factions do as well as the rights of all players
  

...to name a few. And a lot of those points are compound issues. Trying to discuss all of that is destined to be full of rambling posts, vast seas of text to read, large and non-cohesive rebuttals, and general confusion. The results are likely to be unexpected by all and liked by none.

Please, please split a least some of these issues into separate threads and deal with them there.

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