Enforcement of Roleplay Consequences(TM) and cloaks

[Backo]

The recent FR5 against the 101st got me wondering regarding the consequences of ones actions if the person witnessing and reporting the deed is cloaked. I know this used to be an issue before back when Kruger (or was it Daumann? @Jack_Henderson can say which it was for sure) used to follow IMG on cloaked liners to spot them doing roleplay that puts IMG in bad light with the Rheinland government. That eventually lead to some rules regarding lawful roleplay consequences™ and a clear set of systems in which that could happen as well as forcing only certain IDs to be able to witness in certain systems. You can read the rules regarding that here at the bottom of the post. But at the same time there is nothing like that regarding unlawfuls in the rules, even if the 2 major unlawful factions are big enough to count as a pseudo-house (Corsairs and Outcasts).

Though I think I'm starting to drift off from the original intent I had for this thread with all this storytelling - how do you guys feel about facing consequences from being spied upon by a cloaked ship without having a way to be aware of it's presence? On one side I see it as a a utility of the cloak for intelligence gathering which is nice, but on the other there's the obvious room for abuse that we have seen with the IMG/Kruger thing.

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Republic of the Sword and Sun

[Laura C.]

The abuse potential is much lesser now since cloaks emit a sound when used and they last much less than they used to in a time when incident you mentioned happened. Otherwise I don´t have a clear opinion, as you described yourself, it is coin with two sides so it is hard to judge which one is "better".

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On a ragebreak. Or ragequit. Time will tell.

[Sombs]

People shouldn't use the local chat when they are about to conspire.

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[Backo]

The abuse potential is much lesser now since cloaks emit a sound when used and they last much less than they used to in a time when incident you mentioned happened. Otherwise I don´t have a clear opinion, as you described yourself, it is coin with two sides so it is hard to judge which one is "better".

Sound in Freelancer becomes less loud with distance. I think without modifying the .wav file for the cloak sound it's hard to catch someone is lurking 10K away from your conversation. I personally have a hard time detecting cloaked ships unless the area is completely quiet otherwise, but then again I'm using the default sound for it.

People shouldn't use the local chat when they are about to conspire.

Would grouping up with the enemy be justifiable then as having more than 2 people doing the conspiring makes it nearly impossible to do so in PMs?

Also someone mentioned to me in a PM that:
"You might as well add that such evidence collection discourages people from roleplaying in public places or chats. The last thing we want is offplane roleplay or worse, skype roleplay." and I gotta agree that he has a point.



Overall I think my biggest gripe with it is the fact it's not uniform - there are rules about it for lawfuls, but none for the unlawfuls. Consider this scenario - my Outcast does some shady deal with an LSF outside of core house space (let's use Pensylvannia as example). Now if someone is spying on us with a cloak only I can get reported and face consequences from unlawful factions, but nobody can actually report the LSF unless they are "personally there to witness the legal infraction while uncloaked and equipped with a House Military, Police, or Intelligence faction ID." So I could bite the bullet even by a person different from my own faction that is cloaked, but the LSF guy is fairly immune unless obviously some other lawful from said house shows it's presence at the interaction uncloaked.

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Republic of the Sword and Sun

[Divine]

House Controlled Space
- House Military, Police, and Intelligence factions may enforce roleplay consequences upon any players, factions, and POBs found breaking House Laws within House Controlled Space, only if they are personally there to witness the legal infraction while uncloaked and equipped with a House Military, Police, or Intelligence faction ID.

Outer Regional Space
- House Military, Police, and Intelligence factions may enforce roleplay consequences upon any players and factions found breaking House Laws within Outer Regional Space, only if they are personally there to witness to the legal infraction while uncloaked and equipped with a House Military, Police, or Intelligence faction ID.
- House Military, Police, and Intelligence factions may not enforce roleplay consequences upon non-hostile POBs, breaking House Laws or not, within Outer Regional Space.

Same rules for everyone please. If it's illegal to do for specific IDs, then it should be illegal to do for all IDs when it comes down to the rules and this specific case.
Police and Military factions have to roleplay uncloaked whilst everyone else can just deny any reaction or interaction by staying cloaked.

As Bloodl1ke mentioned, one might aswell not RP ingame at all anymore, or just in group-chat, PMs or on Skype to avoid unwanted bystanders gather information without the people having the conversation being able to do something about it.

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[Sombs]

The group function is not inRP, though, and, where your PM friend is wrong, is that shady deals and conspiracys aren't things you do in public. Who does that in public, has to deal with the consequences. The systems are even on-plane big enough to have people roam around unseen. It's a dumb argument to have people desperately being visible for other players. That's usually something you expect PvP-loggers to say.



You simply have to deal with the fact that there are people out there that can stalk you. That's how intelligence works and it would be a real shame if people now start to work against that.

I have however to agree, it's a kind of unfair thing that only lawfuls have that restriction, however, lawfuls have that as part of lore-wise integrity, while unlawfuls don't have laws to hold on. I'd say the NC is the perfect example of a grey area, as they have a lawful appearance. Any other unlawful group wouldn't bother with investigation, I guess. That's another statement people will see different, I guess, as I generalize here.

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Templates: Character | Transmissions

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[Divine]

The group function is not inRP, ...

And yet people flying ships hostile to each other get sanctioned for grouping.

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[nOmnomnOm]

So what about that incident with IND?

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[Laura C.]

Also someone mentioned to me in a PM that:
"You might as well add that such evidence collection discourages people from roleplaying in public places or chats. The last thing we want is offplane roleplay or worse, skype roleplay." and I gotta agree that he has a point.

Depends. Question is - why are you doing possibly compromising roleplay in easily accesible place when you don´t want to get caught or be witnessed? You characters surely wouldn´t do that, so why are you? I mean sure, for that sake of server activity, it should be encouraged to do it ingame instead of skype, no doubt about that. But it is quite logical to make some security measures. When my RFP officer Carsten was meeting VWA high ranked member Klugmann, it was either very very short meeting in common space, or longer encounter for which we moved somewhere where was very little risk of being caught. In this type of case, you either want to be caught/have spectators (with all risks which stem from it) or don´t want (and then you should try to ensure it won´t happen).

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On a ragebreak. Or ragequit. Time will tell.

[Engel]

Consider this scenario - my Outcast does some shady deal with an LSF outside of core house space (let's use Pensylvannia as example). Now if someone is spying on us with a cloak only I can get reported and face consequences from unlawful factions, but nobody can actually report the LSF unless they are "personally there to witness the legal infraction while uncloaked and equipped with a House Military, Police, or Intelligence faction ID."

And what would LSF and Outcasts deal about? Outcasts would like to get some more or less open cardamine route and LSF would request some intel information about the Gallia instead. Aside of a technical stuff, the whole situation is complete different, because Corsairs and the Outcasts are the mortal enemies. It's not just their lore, lore of many other unlawful factions is built on it and this is one of the basic game concepts. And yes, Outcast who would deal with Corsairs would be cursed for sure. Even though I can agree that cloaking evidence is a bit unfair, let's be honest, everyone can see Oracle| ship in the system and pretty much everyone knows that they have perma cloaks.

I can understand that consequences are hard to face, but as far as I see the evindece was collected and roleplay around it was done.