Should official factions have more power?

[tazuras]

Well, that was a lot of reading. After all that here is what I think:

Official factions should have more powers, but in return should face a greater degree of independent regulation. I propose the establishment of a faction regulatory council, (henceforth referred to as the FRC) :

1. Members will consist of both players in factions and Indie players
   
2. When a decision is being made about a faction that a council member is in he or she must abstain and may only participate in the discussion by answering questions about facts, not any questions about opinion.
   
3. They will be recommended by the community and confirmed by the admins
   
4. They will have a term of service, the positions will not be permanent, I suggest the following:
   
   1. there will be 8 active members and four inactive at any one time.
      
   2. Every member will have a 4 month term.
      
   3. Every two months one group of four will rotate out and another group of four will rotate in.
      
   4. Term limits may be imposed, meaning a member may be restricted from remaining on the FRC in an active or inactive position for more than... 8 months maybe? After which they may return after X months.
      
5. Inactive members can and should read all discussion but cannot participate.
   
6. Decisions will be made by vote, if there is a tie inactive members will meet and discuss the issue separately and then vote, if there is still a tie the decision will go to the admins.
   
7. Decisions must be made by a quorum of no less than 5. If 5 active members cannot vote in a timely manner, inactive members will be pulled in.
   
8. all council decisions can be overruled by admins
   
9. The council can recommend the suspension of a faction leader to the admins for serious violations of policy.
   
10. The council will operate based on a strict set of guidelines. They should be interpreting and applying the guidelines, not themselves deciding what is right or wrong.
    

This group will also relieve the admins of some current workload. Today, since the server has been shut down, it seems the admins have gotten a great deal of much needed work done, I really think they need their load lightened.


And here are the powers I think official factions should have that the council will regulate:

1. Higher ranking members can give orders to indies:
   
   1. They can only give certain orders, which will be listed.
      
   2. Faction Leaders can order in RP punishments to those who refuse to obey orders. These punishments can be removed by the FRC.
      
2. Faction leaders can affect the development of NPC faction RP in co-ordination with the development team.
   
3. Official factions can conduct NPC faction Diplomacy as long as proper time and effort are put into it and it is in the spirit of Disco canon. The FRC will be responsible for ensuring this. Major diplomacy should take community opinion into account.
   

Additionally official factions should be granted some powers that make indies want to play with them even if they dont want to join. Perhaps a system scan command that will list the grid co-ordinates of everyone in an area they control, this would be realistically do-able by satellite scanners in most house systems and in some independent space. Perhaps an OORP docking prevention command. I dunno.


Here are the powers I think they should not have:

1. They cannot represent a house government. House governments can only be represented by community nominated, FRC approved players. A house government must take community opinions into account in matters that are not clear cut. All decisions made by a house government will be subject to regulation by the FRC.
   
2. They cannot request sanctions for anything that is not a violation of server rules.
   
3. They cannot restrict ship or equipment access to those with the proper tags and ID.
   

And here are a few miscellaneous things that I think are separate issues:

There needs to be control of OORP docking. I dont think it should be by the faction alone. I would preffer some kind of FL hook command that doesnt have a ton of power but that will prevent OORP docking, especially by smugglers. Perhaps a seize cargo command that if used will remove any unlawful cargo if a smuggler lands on a lawful base within one minute of it being used.

More than one Faction per NPC faction needs to be allowed, simply to allow variety and creativity in RP. Another solution to this would to be to allow sub-factions that must go through the faction approval process and can have somewhat different RP than the main faction but still fall under their jurisdiction.

Official factions that dont represent NPC factions can exist, but they will not have as much power. This will maintain canon RP because it is really the primary factions that will maintain the most power unless igiss or the dev team changes them. Any other faction would be like a small business when compared to a corporation.

And that's all I got for now, hope you enjoyed.

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