Replying to a few earlier posts, and building upon Saronsen's.
I don't believe Freelancer Corporations can be compared to the corporations of today.
In the real world, you don't see rogues in every street, shooting down your traffic lights to stop the cars at every turn, either.
Freelancer is a dystopia, where government's power even within their own borders gets challenged everyday, and their navies are a joke.
Please stop being so almighty. You're not supposed to be strong. You're supposed to be weak. Be weak. It makes sense this way for the DSE and other corporations to have a say in government matters.
In a world like this, the corporations that can't be contained within planets and even span so many stars WILL have their own private armies, their powerful influences that even control the Navy to an extent, and who knows what else.
I can agree wholeheartedly with the above statement, i'd love to see the corporations get more power then they currently have. From what I hear, in almost every government they are out-numbered by the military factions.
It does make sense that way, without the coorps, the Military cannot exist. It's simple as that. Yet despite this, they get all of the power and say in things.
I'd like to see this change in the near-future, I have a gut feeling that there will be many diplomatic changes, rather than waging war like everyone seems to love doing right now.
Doesn't the Colossus have more guns? If so.... Oh hang on. That wont be a problem.... Mastodons are nasty if you meet them in the trade lanes.....
Also, on topic:
Quote:It does make sense that way, without the coorps, the Military cannot exist. It's simple as that. Yet despite this, they get all of the power and say in things.
I agree with Moveit56 here. Corps move out, who is there to keep things running? Lanes and gates, supplies being shipped, engineering, even for a large part medical and the means for terraforming and expansion, including station building and maintenance, are all usually done by the little corps, who for the most part try keep out of the military problems/wars.
What would happen if all the little corps walked out?
More to the point. How long would the military survive.
I talked about this very briefly on TS yesterday with a few people, and I remain unconvinced.
Corporations have security divisions and escorts and such, yes. This doesn't mean that they should also have dedicated attack wings of gunboats and bombers dedicated to actually launching offensives on people.
Look at the Samura/Hogosha relationship. That's how corporate warfare should be done; a parent organisation funding another group to do its dirty work, rather than having Samura KuGBs and KuExs flying around Kusari blasting the hell out of Kishiro and co.
Granted, no other Disco corp really has a Hogosha equivalent, but that's how I see it, at least. Defensive stuff could easily be handled by a corp's 'private army' - or analogue thereof, but the idea of even Freelancer corporations fighting their own private wars as if the military were a comparatively strong power is somewhat laughable.
(02-21-2014, 08:00 AM)Sol Wrote: I don't believe Freelancer Corporations can be compared to the corporations of today.
In the real world, you don't see rogues in every street, shooting down your traffic lights to stop the cars at every turn, either.
Freelancer is a dystopia, where government's power even within their own borders gets challenged everyday, and their navies are a joke.
Please stop being so almighty. You're not supposed to be strong. You're supposed to be weak. Be weak. It makes sense this way for the DSE and other corporations to have a say in government matters.
In a world like this, the corporations that can't be contained within planets and even span so many stars WILL have their own private armies, their powerful influences that even control the Navy to an extent, and who knows what else.
Exactly this.
Quite a few houses and especially Navies assume that they can cover their space and can control things.
This has never been intended.
Ingamely speaking, travelling between system takes long. The distances are huge. The southern part of NY is a "no-go" zone and Omega 3 and 7 are dangerous borderworlds where only small islands are secured.
I would love Corps to find the courage to exercise their power.
The power definitely does not lie with the House Navies only.
Especially when we are talking about "far away" parts of space, where a Navy has no reason to be, where the Police does not patrol, but where Corps do their business.
There is every reason for a Corp to have their fighting wings. Also Gbs.
There is every reason for corps to clash directly, as it is visible in the mining faction IDs that can pirate their competitors outside of House space.
Disco was never meant to be like:
"Oh, you bad BMM miner pirated a DHC in O3.... this is an international incident that we have to talk about in bilateral negotiations between Rheinland and Bretonia! A diplomat and 77 lawyers have been sent to London to clarify this rogue act of attempted robbery in accordance with the Bretonian/Rheinland laws to avoid an armed conflict.".
No. It was meant like... "somewhere, far far out... something happened. Bad luck. Be prepared next time." Or as many love to say: Space is dangerous. It doesn't say: lawsuits are dangerous.
Houses take away a large part of the good and fun play for Corps.
I know it very well because IMG is totally worthless when it comes to any conflicts with corporations. It would always end in trials, police intervention, House politics, etc.
That's stupid. And unwanted. And it ruins parts of the game that are supposed to be wild, uncontrolled, free.
Let DSE and ALG clash violently. They are in a scrap field, somewhere far far away. No one would care.
Let miners clash and exercise their ID-granted rights without intervening into matters that would not even touch House interests.
Disco would be much more interesting if Corps could actually do things themselves. Play their faction.
Using proxy forces like mercs is a fail concept. It reduced the playing time of the main rivals, makes them go invisible and also offers cheap corp targets to merc ships. There is no fun to be had there.
The fun comes from a direct confrontation.
The fun is ruined by outward forces who spoil it by their assumption that they have the irp right and strength to do it.
The fun is ruined furthermore by Corps granting these powers to the Houses/Navies. A power they do not have, in my opinion, especially not outside of their House space.
I've talked to a number of people on skype and TS about it, and I may as well put my thoughts on the whole thing here, too:
About the lore/inrp aspect: Basically, I have the same position on the old "Wal-mart doesn't have tanks" argument as several others have stated: the position of corporations and their relations towards governments and each other cannot be compared with a random 21st century earth corporation.
A more appropriate analogy would be the East India Company in the 18th century: we have trading factions that are in direct control of significant amounts of land far away from government control (see Samura - a corporation that owns not one, not two, but three entire planets).
They secure these with their own armies - every NPC corporation, even a waste disposal company, has NPC patrols with military-grade weaponry flying around their bases.
Or if you want a more modern analogy, think of a mine in a remote part of the DRC or some other worse-off country in Africa. Due to a lack of central government control, areas of interest for corporations are secured privately.
We're talking about asteroid fields in house capital systems that have infocards mentioning "police do not dare enter this area", that's like Mogadishu or something. Areas that are no-go for the government within their own capital.
Absolutely everyone has guns, and violence is simply a part of life. You don't blink an eye when you're driving down the highway and some armed men stop your vehicle.
The Texas scrap fields are supposed to be such an area with little to no government presence. Infocards speak of "sporadic patrols" in the Beaumont field, and none beyond that. It's populated by Junkers and whatever criminals and shady types frequent their bases, and ALG and DSE scrappers.
I'd expect it to be a situation of "what happens in the field, stays in the field". Somebody got shot, far far away from civilization? That might warrant a token LPi patrol if somebody reports it, but it wouldn't be an international incident.
Basically, I believe in the world of disco, DSE) deciding they don't want Rheinlanders "stealing" scrap in "their" Liberty and will enforce that with guns when nobody's looking not only makes sense, but shouldn't even cause a raised eyebrow.
It wouldn't be headline news, there might be a little box on page fourteen: "Reports of violence between ALG and DSE vessels in Texas' remote scrap fields remain unconfirmed. An LPi spokesman said they are investigating the matter."
About the ingame/inforum aspect: This is intended as a consensual conflict between ALG and DSE - basically, we want to shoot each other a bit.
It's just a little power struggle between the two of us, we have no reason to want the government to get involved, because they have no reason to support either of us in bashing the other. (correct me if I'm mistaken here, Alte)
Nor do the Junkers, who are inevitably somewhat involved because of the location, want government intervention. Obviously.
Basically, I agree with what Jack said: corporations are supposed to be rougher than they are, that's why they have those piracy lines. Corporate players enjoy pewpew too, and like him I hate this whole "oh no, a corporate ship shot another, we must make a massive deal out of this so it'll never happen again!". Corporations are not supposed to be pacifist and solve everything by shoving money in it or crying to the government - our ships have guns, too.
If part of the government is working towards Liberty-Rheinland peace, that's fine. I don't intend to stop your roleplay with mine. And likewise, I expect not to be told "you can't do this roleplay because we're doing this other roleplay".
Careful what you wish for, you may get precisely that.
I agree that RP is ruined left and right for the corps, why? Because the houses opinion is over yours. You cannot do what you like, because you 'must' follow guidelines from the house.
Independancy from this would be an interesting consept, but I can only see something like this happening if enough coorps man up, and start doing as they please.
Now i'm not saying its time to ignore the government, going that far is rather silly, although giving the coorps more of a say in things. I know that millitant government members won't be too happy with this change, as so far this 'diplomacy' for the house is..
Start war here. End war here. Get this person to fight this person.
Where I believe coorps would take things with more diplomacy.
"Begin deals here, increase RP production within this house, lower output here until better conditions are met, etc."
Granted this is a generalized view, conflicts per-coorperation is another matter which has been relayed well in Karst's post above.
So uhh, since people have thrown in the tag =LSF= and libgov in this thread here, I feel that I had to open up some things.
Just as a note to people whenever/if they have any business to do with Liberty as a whole. The =LSF= have removed themselves from decision taking in the LibGov, we only have people in the chat to observe, we do not vote or actually take an active role in "managing" Liberty any longer.
This of course also means that the LSF operates differently from any decision "Liberty" might have made. As an example, you might have a "deal" with the Liberty Government to transport slaves due to some random RP and have been given permission by the Liberty Government to haul them. Your "clearance" will not extend to the LSF just because it was given by the Liberty Government, we will act autonomous from the Government and if we find that your "clearance" reasoning was stupid and/or wrong (to us) in any way, we can and will shoot you, within that example of course.
That being said, this doesn't mean we don't cooperate with other lawful lib factions, we're always in communication with the two other Armed Forces factions and kind of work closely with the Navy at times.
TL;DR, the LSF operates autonomous from the Lib Gov, we won't care about their decisions if we find it wrong, nor would they care about ours. Just throwing that out there.
Oh and uhh, as for the ALG/DSE thing, you guys should really hire mercs to kill one another, corporate warfare isn't supposed to be out in the open like that. You're still acting against the law within Liberty by shooting at one another whilst neither side are criminals. As for what the LSF will do if we see any DSE/ALG dishing it out, we'll tell you to stop and if you don't, we'll make sure you're -all- dead. Realism pls.
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