How to make Discovery better?

[barrenwzste]

To All,

We were asked, as a community, to come up with ways to help curb the ooc violations and to
reward the official factions for thier efforts in developing the growth of the players and
the story itself.

*Official Faction Rewards....

First off, lets skip the credit making schemes. It is much to easy to make credits, for all
players, as it stands. A new player can make a million credits in Pennsylvania with the
work of about an hour to an hour and a half. An established character is making ten to
twenty million credits a run, often substantially more. If we make generating credits any
easier we might as well just have everybody start off by picking what ship they want thier
character to have at creation.

That really only leaves three or four things that I can see;

1) More toys. There are two ways to go about this. Either, develope new weapons and shields
that can only be used by official faction members, or, limit a few already developed weapons
and shields to official faction members.

2) More ships. This can be accomplished in the same two ways as the above.

3) More systems/stations. The only realistic way I can see to do this is to limit
independants. Not only is our Sirius Sector large enough, but designing systems and
stations for this matter seems like an exhorbant amount of work.

4) More power. This, of course, can only be achieved by limiting the Independants.

Regardless of what option we go with, the Independants are going to be limited in the fact
that they cannot have access to some things. If the admins and the community really intend
to reward the official factions they are just going to have to put up with the Independants
cries of distress. Keep in mind, if players aren't saying, "Dang, I'd join a faction for
that." It's not really a reward.


*Player based ways of dealing with ooc violations....

The problem I am having here is I cannot see any role-play way to deal with the real problem
players. The new players who err in ignorance are, generally speaking, easy enough to
correct and guide. It's the established players who don't care about the consequences
and/or deny wrongdoing that are the problem. If you cannot reason with them, you cannot
correct them with straight role play, you need to impose some kind of consequence. For
those, I postulate the following.

1) A council board where ooc violations that have been documented can be posted for a
council to sit in judgement on. Four members of the council should be players who were, at
one time, officers or leaders in an official faction, but are no longer. Three of the
members should be independants of known and proven abillity. The council would then sit in
judgement on each case, but only with a majority vote hand out punishment. The council
should be an uneven number, so as to aviod deadlocks. The object is to make descions and
take action, not continue the debates. The council should have more players who were
official faction members than independant members because they have done more to prove thier
abiliity and regard for the role play community. The council of seven should be picked by
the admins, as elections to often turn into popularity contests rather than devices for
electing the person best suited to the position of authority. The players on the council
should use characters as thier persona as thier decisions will be rendered in game and acted
upon in game. Those decisions can include the following:
*First offense: Player is ordered to make restitution to the council. A fine of 10
million is adequate, I believe. If the violator does not have ten million, then he/she
should be required to raise the credits before he/she is allowed to do anything else.
*Second Offense: Player is ordered to sell thier ship and play for a period of time in the
basic fighter or freighter for thier faction. This is to aproximate being reduced in
rank to that of a peon. After the period of time has passed, the violator could once
again purchase thier preferred ship. If at all possible some kind of timer should be
used to ensure the violating player spends that time ingame.
*Third offense: An open bounty of one million is placed on the Character. Any player
that encounters the character may engage on the grounds of council sanction, the player
still has to role play the encounter, and kill the character. Then all they have to do
present proof of the kill to receive thier million. This million is to be taken from the
funds generated by first offenders. The bounty is to last for a period of no less than
five days.
*Fourth offense: The player's record of violations is sent to the Administration for them
to deal with. A post explaining the situation and telling the community to ignore or
shun the offending character should be made at the same time.

2) Expand the official facions own system of checks and balances to cover independants. For
those in such factions as the mercenaries, the official player faction most closely related
to them should have authority. The official factions authority should only extend beyond
thier current authority in matters of ooc violation. For example: the Junker flying the
restricted ship is ordered sell it and purchase one that isn't restricted if he cannot
furnish proof of special role play accepted by the Admins. See above punishments for
suggested actions to take if the character refuses to sell the ship.

3) Each time an Administrator has to reprimand a player for ooc violations, restrict one
class of ships to that players characters, starting with battleships and working down. That
player can only gain these back by proven role play and a record free of violations over a
period of time.

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"Two things I know; Gravity sucks and Ion Storms blow. And that proves the universe is trying to kill us all" - Barren Waste, Captain of the Wasteland Wanderer

An approximation of my reaction when I see my next victim...er, these forums.