Official Faction vs Non-official Players

[Dusty Lens]

The rule around here is that whatever the players choose to do doesn't trump what comes with the server. Namely a Molly can't shoot you down for pirating BMM.

If some overblown whatsit in the Order tells you he'll shoot you out of the sky for heading off into Liberty in your Anubis to raise some hell he's wrong.

I can't really say anything about the other stuff you mentioned as it didn't come with any examples.

[Garrett Jax]

Just follow the directions on your ID. You should be fine.

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[Agmen of Eladesor]

In the for what it's worth department - in each of the times we in the BHG| have had an issue where official orders have been issued to an indie player, it has been within the rule requiring either the faction leader or the 2ic. Note that this is as a player, and not as a character. Thus, it doesn't matter whether I'm on the BHG|C-Guildhall and acting as Max DeVirgo, or on the BHG|Castor.Pollux and just flying as a regular hunter.

That is where we can have a problem, just to use the [LN] as an example. I'm quite sure that Joe has more than one character in the [LN], although I could be mistaken. He probably doesn't always fly Admiral Hale. So it's quite possible that the lowlife [LN] ensign COULD be Joe, just not in his David Hale persona. And thus, regardless of him being in game as a lowlife Ensign, he's still able to issue orders under the faction rights. And have them stick.

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Oh god... The end of days... Agmen agreed with me.

[AeternusDoleo]

I understand there's official faction "rights" listed here. I don't have any issues with official factions having certain rights. Non-faction members are here to enjoy the game too.

I like to play here and enjoy the RP, but some seem to think the only way you can RP is if you know every single detail about official faction rules, laws, politics with other factions, etc. I'm not spending my life in the forums to learn everything a small number of people here to agree. If some official faction has an agreement with another official faction then its an agreement between those official factions.

Independent players are not forced to honor agreements by the official faction if their ID doesn't prevent them from doing so. However, not doing so or causing a diplomatic hassle for the official faction by not complying, can cause you to fall out of favor.
Example: IMG| has a standing agreement with Rheinland, forbidding IMG capital vessels top operate in Omega 7. There is no server rule against this. Now, if an independent player goes there in a battlecruiser and ends up getting shot up by the RM, and cries to us that he got shot at - we won't lift a finger since we've got standing directives not go deploy cruisers there.
Other example: Corsairs can pirate the snot out of everyone not directly allied to them. However, the Corsair elders do not want food and supply transports bound for Crete, or Artefact oubound transports, pirated. Since those help the Corsairs a lot. So if an independent corsair tries to pirate a food trader, the response tends to be harsh.

Rule 6.10 prevents people from acting differently than their ID's reputation. Official factions cannot force a non-faction member to comply to some agreement that goes against this rule. An example might be an alliance between enemies to fight together against a common foe. Or an unlawful faction entering into an agreement with a lawful faction to protect traders. I've actually witnessed this personally in the past where an Outcast told me they would destroy my Molly for pirating a BMM vessel because of some agreement with the Bretonian Armed Forces.

Correct. Official factions cannot force a player to act outside of it's own ID, or against the freedom it's own ID offers. This agreement between the Outcasts and Bretonians you touch at is something I've experienced myself, and don't know the particulars of. I do know that Outcasts are forbidden by the official faction to pirate inside Bretonia. Those that don't follow suit are generally attacked by the BAF (along with Mollies, IMG and just about any other lawful in Bretland) while the official faction watches approvingly. Again, you don't follow their RP, you don't reap the rewards of it.

Official Faction Right #2 is too broad and is creating some rules loopholes (which ironically the responsibilities of rule 2 specifically expresses they avoid).
While the official faction rules serve a good purpose for encouraging role play, they are giving the official factions way too much power over non-faction players. An official Molly faction should not be able to tell a Molly ID'd ship (not affiliated with the faction) that they cannot pirate BMM (or any other ship for that matter). An official Outcast faction should not threaten a Molly ID'd ship with death if they continue to pirate a BMM ship in the Molly's own system (Dublin).

Heh. As someone in charge of an official faction (more or less, I'm the most active person in IMG|'s directorate) I beg to differ. Unless Outcasts have Mollies listed as direct allies, they can act towards you any way they see fit. Unlawfuls aren't one lump of happy-together-ruffians. They can be unlawful towards eachother as well. But guarding a BMM ship is a bit odd... have you tried a 6.10 violation report to see what the admins think about this in particular? I don't know if BMM has the Outcasts listed as enemies, if so, they should not ally together (unless against a mutual direct enemy, like corsairs).

This isn't just about Mollys. Just using this as an example because of a couple experiences I've had in Dublin. Keep in mind that under the "Responsibilities Associate with Right 2" specifically states that, "Official factions have a responsibility to incorporate willing and responsible 'independent' characters belonging to their NPC faction affiliation into the ordinary operations and activities taking place in the faction's territory as much as possible." Independent's must be willing to participate. You cannot sanction someone for acting according to their ID's reputation. Nor can any official faction punish you for doing precisely what Rule 6.10 requires.

But independent players too ought to show constraint. Just because there is no server rule preventing you from taking a Ranseur and parking it in front of Manhattan, doesn't mean you should just go ahead and do it. Official factions need to take this responsibility to heart:
Official factions are guardians of the reputation of their NPC faction in general, and should always seek to act in ways that cause it to be respected.
An official faction keeping this directive in mind in all it does, will do quite well.

@Above. Yes, only faction leader and 2nd in commands may directly order indies to a certain degree. But be aware these orders can be relayed through subordinates, or have been posted on the forum as general directives (such as: Don't move capital ships to that specific system).

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Wide awake in a world that sleeps, enduring thoughts, enduring scenes. The knowledge of what is yet to come.
From a time when all seems lost, from a dead man to a world, without restraint, unafraid and free.

Mostly retired Discovery member. May still visit from time to time.

[ryoken]

Basically what others have said. Do what you ID does according to vanila Freelancer. If anyone tries to say otherwise? screen,and if they shoot you? report them. Pretty simple. To many in factions think they are better then others,and what they say goes. They are wrong,and you can call them on it if RP'n your char as it should be.

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[Echo 7-7]

I was essentially going to say the same thing as Aeternus, but he's right on the money.

Subordinates of Official Factions shouldn't be making up their own rules, but they are well within their rights to enforce the decisions of their leaders.

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There was a sig here, once.

[hypermauler]

How I see it... ( if you understand it you deserve a cookie)

Discovery is a big marketplace with several varied brand ... some are more popular, some are more unique, some are ''closed'' .. some require you to be in a certain club ''the ID'

Obviously there might be more then one seller per brand in the same marketplace ( the factions) ,The ''big , modern, and famous seller ''A Wall-Mart'' is the official faction, you also got other smaller seller ( the unofical faction) ranging from ''a grocery store to a bad hot dog stand''.

But, thats not all, this market place is also filled with random people. Most of them wear a T-shirt with their favorite brand Logo, . These people are indy, they associate themselves to a ID, and their products ( tech and ship). Their behavior can be very civil, confused, dumb or even crazy because it takes all sort of poeple to make a balanced world.

If all seller (and their employee ''members'') in a specific Brand sell a common product ''what you expect to do with said ID''( like IMG would be mining Niobium for instance) , then for the one who wear their T-shirt (indy), the seller ( faction) are not important to know deeply, or to get involved with them.

The Brand are bought, by other seller from other seller .. that would be all the interactions possible.
But, a Brand is represented not only by the seller (faction), but also from all the other only wearing a T-shirt (indy associated with the same faction)

Because the seller (faction) know that that the brand (ID) is not always accuratly represented by these ones, they tend to ''monitor the indy'' ... and if they fail or are not permitted to do so, they ingnore them or no longer fully trust them-

Too bad a famous seller reputation toward other sellers consider its brand as a whole, ... think about how many communication channel post fowarded to official factions are talking about a indy doing said ''do not do thing''

Too bad also that even the name of the game ''freelancer'' defend such attitude from those T-shirt.
WARNING ! some seller ( faction) , can also be equally bad'' I am not by any mean insulting the indy here.

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There is 2 big relation between indy and factions:

On the indy side, its often a natural state where its simply a player just... not that aware of the hiearchy in disco. They then don't really care about faction... its as simple as that... simple as innocence.

However, on the faction side because they don't like a significant amount of indy, tend to also ignore them or at least give them much less worth in their roleplay.

When you combine those 2 relation, it create a rift- a natural rift that is unfortunatly often extended because of the behavior of the community and also the nature of the game. Quite honestly, its something that can not be fixed by a human been because it involve the infamous ''common-player-mentality'' call it the ''CPM''

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<span style="color:#FF9900">The Desari's lore</span>

[Sirius Resistance]

Thank you for all your comments.

With regards to Outcast not having any alliance with Mollys, that's not my point. Its more to the problem of an unlawful having an alliance with a lawful. The primary players in Bretonia should be Bretonians (specifically BAF, BPI, Mollys, Gaians and such). But what I tend to see in Dublin and other parts of Bretonia are SCRA, Indians, Reapers, GC, Outcast, Corsair and pretty much everyone except Mollys. And the Mollys that I do see are factionized. I'm curious how the BAF treats Outcast in Dublin knowing that Outcast and IMG are bitter enemies.

Its fine that official factions have political relations outside the vanilla. But don't go telling those of us that wanna play vanilla Mollys that we're wrong and that we cannot play in Dublin or any other part of Bretonia because we're not up to speed on all the "official" faction politics. I don't care about the intricate details of who the "official" Mollys can and cannot pirate because of their truce with the "official" BAF. I don't care if some "official" faction has declared war against another "official" faction. I'm not part of the "official" faction so the war has nothing to do with me.

The "official" factions need to be able to switch gears when they move from "official" faction politics and indies. I shouldn't be forced into your non-vanilla politics. The "official" factions are supposed to "set the example" for role play. They should not be the server bullies, telling non-faction members that they need to go back to the rock they came out from under until they've become familiar with the forum details of every official faction in existence. I don't have that kind of time.

[BaconSoda]

The Faction Rights are great in terms of continuity and stability. It lends a little hand to the official factions to make sure that something ridiculous doesn't happen and gives them a minor hand in advancing RP. That's neat and really handy. If an LN Cruiser jumps into a 2v1 with 2 Executioners against a Werewolf, I'm happy for the Faction Rights to allow the faction authority over the Cruiser so he can be told to back off. That's nice.

What isn't nice is if a faction inherits a sense of entitlement and selfishness about Roleplay. We're all here to play and have fun, regardless of whether or not someone is in a faction. When a faction uses the same right to tell a Liberty Cruiser not to engage an Outcast Battleship while it is engaged with an [LN] Dreadnought 1v1 several times, that's kind of where it gets silly (Please note, it didn't happen, and I'm not saying it would, I'm just saying it'd be silly). When this happens the 3rd or 4th time, this is where someone can get a little indignant. That Cruiser just wants to have fun, and if whenever he wants to have fun fighting, the [LN] tells him to bugger off because they are fighting (IE: having fun), that isn't fun at all for the Cruiser pilot. Instead, maybe the [LN] should, maybe, take their turn waiting in the queue to have fun while the Cruiser shoots this time. You know, in the name of fun for everyone, because this is what an official faction should be about. In fact, that's what everyone should really be about.

Also, sorry if anyone is sad at me using the [LN] as an example. They're just an excellent faction which makes for an excellent example. I'm not saying they'd ever do this, or that they're bad at doing something, but rather just using them as an example.

But you know, sometimes that gets lost on people. Sometimes they think "Those horrible smugglers, landing on MY planet, not RPing correctly! How dare they!?" and then send along their sense of entitlement onto those smugglers in the form of a FR 5 without any notification. Well, that's not exactly fun for everyone. In fact, it can be kind of infuriating when the smugglers may well be RPing to the best of their limits and then the official faction goes along without giving them the opportunity to RP back. It happens to every faction at some point, where they become indignant in people not giving them respect, just like it happens with every player at some point, and they might just need to be reminded that we're all here to have fun and it wasn't fun for you. Oh well, life goes on. You only live for 3/4 of a century, if you're lucky, so might as well spend it happy.

The same can be said about trying to play with non-vanilla RP. Just try to remember everyone is here to have fun, and if that fun is going after Order in Omicron Minor as an LSF for someone, well that's perfectly acceptable, if not against what the official factions have laid out.

And on a side note, Outcast NPCs pirate in Edinburgh and Leeds. If you want to pirate in Edinburgh, Leeds, or Newcastle as an Outcast, go for it. The same can be said about Texas and New York. If the NPCs thought it was a good enough idea, what can the 101st really say?

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[8:32:45 PM] Dusty Lens: Oh no, let me get that. Hello? Oh it's my grandma. She says to be roleplay.
[12:49:19 AM] Elgatodiablo: You know its nice that you have all that proof and all, Bacon... but I just don't believe you.

[SnakThree]

@ Baconsoda
I can give Reavers as an example that do not let the recieving side have fun. Yeah? Am I right?

@ #0
Oh man. Just ignore such idiots. They're not worth the time, which you could have spent to have fun.

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