Re: Changing Reputation via Server Command

[Trogdor]

Firstly, my main point, which is to ask:
Will a method to change Reputation to match certain Factions via Server Command ever be implemented?

Secondly, three reasons why I ask the question:
1.) Under the premise that this is an RP server and its supposed to be fun, the fact that people have to grind to get a new character's reputation correctly set up is, at best, a distraction and at worst, an impediment. If you want to play Liberty Police or Navy, fine, otherwise it can take up to 48 total game hours just to get to point where you can actually play the character. More, if the method for that particular faction's reputation is convoluted and hasn't been discussed on the forums.

I also believe that expecting everyone to set up their own rep is bad. The OP describes it as a distraction or an impediment, but I'd go as far as saying it's absolutely unnecessary and a deterrent to RP, which is what we're all supposed to be here for.

Free-flowing reputations is fine for freelancers and mercs, but it's bad for anyone else.

But it's bad for one particular reason only: It determines your IFF. Free-flowing rep would make much more sense if it didn't impact IFF at all, and all it did was reflect on the actions that particular pilot has taken.

Imagine if the IFF was determined by the ID that was installed on the ship. Now, every player is automatically IFF'd by their ID correctly by default, and repgrinding becomes purely a means to achieve the ID. The player is free to have whatever rep with other factions that he likes, because other players are going to see him as the ID he has mounted.

This would also relate naturally to RP. If you've got a kusari police officer being attacked by a kusari corporation, he'd still IFF as a kusari police officer. Someone passing by would then be in a position to wonder, "Why is that police officer being attacked by Samura? He must be a shady cop or something." and engage in RP accordingly.

Rather than the following scenario we have now, "Wow, that guy is ID'd and ship'd as a police officer, but he's coming up GMG and being attacked by Samura, the nearby base and all the tradelanes. His rep must be all messed up, I'll ignore him and move on."

Under the system I am suggesting, reputation becomes a much more in-rp thing, as it would reflect directly on choices the player has made, rather than being this oorp stumbling block that causes us to ignore discrepancies in the story.

Ideally you'd want to overhaul the rep system such that a player who is red to a particular faction will come up as red to a player belonging to that faction, regardless of what the first player's ID/IFF is.

I.e. 'That guy's a Zoner, and I'm an Outcast. He's supposed to be neutral to me, but he's been blowing up a bunch of Outcast NPCs lately, so we don't like him very much.' Therefore even though his ID and IFF are Zoner, he'd still come up as red. But I don't know if this is possible.

Honestly, it does not matter to me which way this is done, but something should be done.

It is absolutely ridiculous to get a Zoner Guard IFF. There are no Zoner missions, and the only method of doing so involves shooting Zoner allies, probability based bribing, balancing a pie on your head, aborting missions, running from place to place, screwing up your entire reputation sheet and basing the entire thing on sheer luck.

(Yes, there are people who have the Zoner Guard IFF, for instance Yoda. However, he has over 3000 flight hours and some of us just prefer flying.)

I spent three whole days getting my battleship his zoner guard IFF/ID. Three days of wandering around into all sorts of places he shouldn't be, in a clumsy ship that isn't made to do a lot of traveling, raising the ire of players all over the map with my presence. During that time I engaged in very little RP, avoided other players like the plague, and attacked all sorts of oorp npcs just to fix that one important reputation, let alone get all my other factions where they're really supposed to be.

I approve of
CODE
/hostile faction_code

I do not approve of
CODE
/friendly faction_code

nor do I approve of
CODE
/setstandardrep faction_code

The reason is because the latter would be abused to no end. The only way it would be workable is if the server kept track of this and only allowed it, say, twice? Once? Admin tool only?

I fail to see how this could be 'abused'. What do you fear, that someone is going to wander around through space adjusting their rep willy-nilly, so they can dock on whatever base? So the npcs will leave them alone? ....okay, and so what? Most of the npcs aren't strong enough to kill you anyway, especially if you're running away. A player who decides to abuse these commands stands to gain little.

And there's obvious ways around this, such as making it cost money, or making it only usable once in a certain amount of time, or only allowing it while docked on a base, or whatever.

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