the mining, the ai id and other stuff...

[Cannon]

I can answer some aspects of your question. I'm writing this as my own opinion rather than those reflecting the opinion of the whole admin team. As individuals in a team, we have quite different views and work to achieve a consensus. As such, the following isn't an official statement but may give you an insight into how I think.

I personally have a vision and other admins have their own although we haven't discussed this as a group for a while. I'm sure all admins want to support our community and the role play here.

My vision for the mod:
- I want to reduce restrictions on players whilst supporting and improving the RP environment by removing ID and technology restrictions. Making various ships and IDs freely available is part of this. In short I want to get closer to what we allowed in 4.84.
- I want to hand more power to players with power based on activity and behaviour rather than admin decree by ID and rule.
- I do not like the idea of admin created official factions that require unique ID and rights to survive. I guess I tend to support indie rights than faction rights although I completely support players self organising themselves into groups.

Regarding player counts, I think that part of the reason is that we haven't had a new release of the mod for a very long time. We could have made updates but sadly didn't due to a development vote that could have gone either way and I, in hindsight, voted the wrong way. The mod has gotten a little boring.

I think another significant part that impacts player counts is that I've annoyed a lot of people by reducing the amount of money they can make mining. People are very annoyed that the comparatively quick way of making money isn't as quick anymore. I agree that mining is not dropping enough in many systems and this needs to be addressed. Haven't had time to do it yet.

Regarding specific factions like the VE and AI ID changes. The issue here is that the VE want to lead their RP. I understand that but the mod is based on the contention that players follow the story line. A conflict arises with factions like the VE that need special rights, essentially their own ID that conforms to their RP. They picked the AI ID because it was the one that most allowed them to do what they wanted. They did not pick it because they wanted to continue the AI storyline set down by the harvies. Personally, I'd be happy ignoring the mod storyline and allowing all official factions to branch out in what ever path they choose.

I am concerned about the impact of the AI ID change on the VE. Unfortunately all I see recommended by players is:
- restrict the ID to the VE thus annoying those who already have the ID and are not VE
- reverse the change thus allowing a significant number of people to use the AI ID has a kind of terrorist ID
I'm not sure about the best solution there but we'll figure something out.

I have raised the possibility of granting new IDs to official factions when they become official and letting the faction control the content of the ID. I think I support this idea although I worry that factions will abuse this and there are game mechanics issues with NPCs. We've partially tried to support this style of play through FR2 and FR5. Last time we really let factions control their destiny, the Corsairs, Order and BHG started killing Zoners, the BHG and Corsairs allied and a whole bunch of players complained that the admins should 'do something'. Possibly we should have let events continue. Some players would have left (some did anyway) but at least factions would actually be able to control the RP and create new dynamic activity in the mod.

My vision for rules:
brief version: "space is dangerous"
longer version:
- no swearing
- no cheating
- something to stop re-engagment on death
- you have to say something in role play before attacking somebody
- space is dangerous

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Proud member of "the most paranoid group of people in the community"

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