Following the discussions about The Order that took place lately, notably here (Wolfpack's thread): http://discoverygc.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=28935
I'm posting a new thread on this subject. What I'll say now is not the final ruling or anything, just an update on the information that we already have. Admins agreed that it should be posted separately from previous discussions.
1) Order cannot get fully neutral to Liberty.
There's no gound for such an overnight change of policies. Liberty considered Order an outlaw group, and now, with military gaining even more influence and with this new ambiguous conflict with Rheinland, relationships between Order and liberty will hardly get better.
Still I don't see a way how Order capital ships can get to NY. Through Alaska space? Passage to NY is supposed to be heavily guarded. Even if Order could break through, they would hardly waste their scarce capital ships for fights they cannot truly win. So, there's no actual RP ground for capship assaults against NY by The Order.
Order fighter raids both in Liberty and in other places of Sirius can be considered logical.
2) Player factions cannot rule over other player groups and indie players affiliated with the same NPC faction.
Selected players may have special RP for them, player faction on the whole may also have some differences in RP from what NPC faction does. But this doesn't mean that other players should follow this example.
Some unofficial diplomacy changes may get hardcoded into the mod, IF they don't contradict official story and IF they are logical and suitable for further development.
Neutrality between Order and Liberty does contradict official story, and can be approved only for specific characters or groups, but not for The Order as whole.
As for The Order leadership, I'll leave that matter for future discussions. It should be clear enough acts of The Order players should be determined by Order's diplomatic status (hardcoded into the mod) and Discovery RP rules prior to everything else.
3) Player factions cannot prevent other players affiliated with the same NPC faction from using the guard system.
Another complex issue, and also requires further discussions. This will limit the rights of a player faction in their home space. However, it seems to be unavoidable for the future 4.85 release, since many capships are getting moved into guard systems.
Our general opinion is that player factions, regardless of their participation in server events, should not dictate how other players of other groups are playing. Special RP that differs from/expands on what's present in the mod is OK. Enforcing special RP for players who don't want it, and are not even supposed to be aware of it, is no good. Also, the fact that we allow this special RP does not guarantee that it will get hardcoded into the mod for future versions.
