Faction power

[fencore]

I find a faction with the ability to create their own laws, tax and charge fees, make common materials contraband, deem an individual player or group hostile, and consider even areas such as "Independent Systems" bordering considered their "territory" subject to their laws pretty much is all the power they need.

The issue here, and one that I think is important, is that none of these regulations are enforceable in the context of the server rules.

In fact, server rules don't recognize House Governments in any way, shape or form. The highest level of the hierarchy that's covered are official factions, and those are groups we're looking to both give more ability and responsibility; more freedoms but also more regulation in exchange.

The House Governments aren't a given entity - they're created and supported by the official factions. As such, those factions are the ones driving things, but their decrees in terms of laws do not count as binding by server rules. They're entirely InRP constructs which can be changed, mucked about with, or eliminated, if the official factions were so keen to.

These "abilities" which are so lauded, frankly, don't even really exist. It's more of an agreement among the factions of a certain house to say "This is how we'd like this to work." You're perfectly capable of saying "Nope, don't wanna" and doing your own thing, provided you have the firepower and the server rules don't get broken. You run the risk of a FR5, of course, should the factions you offend so desire to file one, but other than that, the only laws you're required to follow are server rules, and the FR5s are quite rarely permanent repchanges.

In short, it's the players which have empowered the factions in such a manner, not the rules. As much as I think house governments can often muck things up, I'm not inclined to step on the roleplay if the factions in a given house are willing to support it, as that's it - it's just roleplay.