Should official factions have more power?

[Blodo]

I myself don't understand this question.

What can't official factions do now:
- Stop players of the same NPC faction from docking on a base for equipment
- Enforce non canon RP
- Kill indiscriminately without an RP reason (this is applied to all players)

Those are the only things official factions cannot do, so if we vote for "increasing their power", do we mean removing one (or more) of those three clauses? Because quite frankly if I saw a sanction concerning for example [LN] blowing up a LN tagged and IDed cruiser that refuses to obey orders from the admiralty, I would be offended - there is no rule stopping them from doing that, they just need to have a clear reason for doing it. It's a stuff of rumours that there is some obscure rule preventing people from blowing up indies, but really can't find that rule. For all the whining and flame wars, nothing seems to have changed in that respect, and I myself in my tenure as faction leader (for about a year now) do not remember finding myself in a situation where the rules would limit or prohibit me from declaring any order that is in line with my faction RP. I have disagreed on many other rules on many occassions, but after carefully analysing rules that apply to factions, I honestly cannot find anything that would prohibit me from even declaring a group belonging to the same NPC faction as me as hostile provided I didn't just do it "for teh lulz".

Anyways, as you remember the OPG - HAF war was only stopped by the admins, cause they tried to vehemently sanction each other in addition to blowing each other up. Not because they had a shooting war. If all it came down to was a civil war, I doubt there would be any intervention at all from the admin team.

That said I am all for removing the 500 mil fee required to submit an official faction request. I am sure the community can thoroughly scrutinise any faction request that is put forward, leaving the admins with the question of "yes" or "no" at the end.

As for the vote, I've abstained from voting for now until it becomes clearer what exactly is it that factions will gain by this.