Rules Change Discussion 1.1, 2.1, 2.2, 2.4

[The_Godslayer]

But, I'm sitting here, scratching my head, as to why we need to enable every single faction that can "engage combat ships" within their ZoI, the ability to freely blow up more generalized ID'd transports such as Zoners and Freelancers, provided they can come up with some kind of vaguely/barely acceptable RP reason to do so.

Likely because people tend to abuse ID rules (like Zoners) for silent powertrading. Generally, when I log LSF, what I find is silent Zoner Whale powertraders. These people probably would be silently powertrading on Freelancer ID or a certain Corsair ID, except for the fact that Zoners are neutral to everyone, and so they never fall under the "hostile transports" part of those IDs. Watching enemy base suppliers go off scot free in hostile territory because they switched IDs at the border is annoying as shit, and also is a complete disregard of roleplay. Making pirates care about RP when the vast majority of powertraders don't care about RP is comically bad planning. While I think the best way to solve this is to just start making Zoners hostile to everyone, that would have what we in the business call "a poor reception".

In some cases like a less-recent Auxo double-sanction, these people supply bases with no or borderline no RP that serve these people's personal friend groups, and have nothing to do with RP. They use Zoner neutrality to force everyone to pirate them and never just engage them for oorp base supplying, and they'll even use specific faction's IDs to bypass factions that are in control of the area like literal cancers.

Being among the decent powertraders who don't do slimy things like this should be rewarded. However, the vast majority of powertraders are of the other disposition, with zero roleplay, zero care for the game, universe, and community, and serving only oorp benefits to their group of discord friends.

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I'll do something about my superiority complex when I cease to be superior.

"Whatever happened to catchin' a good old-fashioned passionate ass-whoopin and gettin' your shoes, coat, and your hat tooken?"

[Leo]

Dealing with silent power traders isn't only a pirate or law enforcement frustration either, @The_Godslayer. Believe me.

I stepped away from Discovery for a span of about four to five months while I got my IRL shit in order. Moving across the entire span of the planet (from the Midwest US back home to Guam) tends to leave very little room for any fun hobbies or games. When I came back, I decided to run a little Freelance trading empire called Horizons (some of you might have seen the posts regarding it). I kept it mostly in house and just for myself to have fun ferrying goods around, RPing with people that I came across, and even fomenting enjoyable roleplay sessions with The Brotherhood and DTR who came across my Serenity regularly shuffling goods around to various POBs. I always did my best to interact with everyone I came across, and with exception to a few random players and the TBH and DTR pilots I ran into in the Omicrons and Sigmas, I was met with complete silence when I said anything. Usually my response when I hear nothing back is "Good talk" as a slight jab but rarely, if ever, do I get even a response from that. Honestly, it pisses me off seeing these silent power traders using these ID's to stake by with minimal RP when I'm putting in the efforts to counter act that...it gives those players who actually try to roleplay with these ID's in these scenarios a bad name. (I've been busy with work to answer comms. regarding Horizons, I promise I will get to it soon.)

When I did LGN (another one of my errant attempts at making a faction, I have a problem, leave me alone, I just wanna have fun), I would pirate people and get no response. I'd blow them up and get verbally abused by the player in PM's, sometimes not even in English. I would try to discuss it with them and help them to understand why they got killed but much of the time they'd just log out or keep spewing nonsense at me. As a direct result of that abuse, I gave up on LGN before anyone could even join or before the faction could even get off the ground. It just wasn't worth the effort.

Most of the concerns people have listed with the rule changes around Transports I agree with, but silent power traders need to be dealt with before we start making these kinds of changes. Perhaps a rule instituted to make AFK trading something sanctionable? It would be exceedingly difficult to prove, but at least it would fix one small part of the issue that might lead to more in the future.

EDIT: ...and I even mentioned silent power traders at nearly the very beginning of this post.

On another note, I'd like to see some kind of rule changes in the future targeting silent power traders. I realize it would be difficult to enforce and would be a slippery slope but the amount of these silent power traders on the server nowadays is quite disheartening when trying to find someone to roleplay with while flying around. Many of these silent power traders are AFK trading, maybe something can be done about that?

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You fear oblivion. Yet you forget. The universe remembers every atom of your being. Even dust hums your name in the dark.
Starlight Research Consortium | The Banished Legion | Astral

[Lord Helmchen]

I got a few points for your new ship list.

• Amaterasu is already listed as a Capital Ship in its infocard.
  
• Why are actual Frigates not reclassified as Frigates then too? They're all capable enough tbh.
  
• What about Hegemons and Archons?
  

Frigates remain as frigates and the whole class will just be outside transport protection
Amaterasu will just be stripped of transport status, I guess we can keep it as a pseudo cap without making it a full big C Capital ship
Hegemons and Archons are.... iffy - they're not exactly offensively capable on their own in the same way the grouse (and co) is, could use more discussion

Ahm what about its Liner Status? Its after all called the "Samura Liner". And we at OS&C did jump trough many Hoops to get one for our Liner Fleet.

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Orbital Spa and Cruise

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<> Information <> Recruitment <> Bounty Board <>

[Shoebill]

The year is 2015 and your Transport ship has one turret slot. You have a choice do you put a mining array on your Transport or do you put one turret to shot at the really annoying NPCs?

Typical day to day of a Transport Captain

Man this cargo is worth alot of money. Sure seems like there is a lot of players out there, oh man It's looking pretty risky.

I better hire a Freelancer, oh look there is one right now. I knew I would find one it don't take to long.

Hey man are you for hire ?

Yes

Cool, go half's on the payment?

Sure sounds good, how many other runs you doing?

We could do a few maybe ?

Yeah let's do it

The year is 2025 and transports have 7 guns and Infact the dev team are gonna add more and more.

Man I can't really find any freelancers and if I do they ain't getting half the pay like back in the day because I got so many guns now that I don't really need Freelancers because this is Transport Tycoon in space.

Some focus on what the game is about please.

Edit : For the record I am against your rule changes.

Transports Defense Should be

1. Your Wallet
2. Your Escort Pilot
3. Your Mouth (Roleplay)

(That used to be made up of alot of Freelancers, today it seems very faction based if you have a escort)

You get more player interaction this way Trader, Defender, Attacker (Pirate maybe two Pirates now the one Pirate sees a Escort)

I laughed the first time I fired all the turrets on my return to the game on my 5K transport it just seemed ridiculous. Sure one turret was rubbish but it sure made me and many others looking for escort pilots.

Do you know why some of us have the escort pilot go ahead of the transport? Because some of us don't check the chat menu and also don't have players joining and departing showing for immersion. (What's left of it)

If you make these rule changes your not gonna need to worry about these Silent traders. Because your never gonna see them again they will either leave the game or have the chat menu on 24/7 and constantly checking whos joined and whos leaving.

Honestly I think I've been enjoying the roleplay on the forums more lately than the game it's self.

Again I find myself training people. This person can Not PvP at all and has real trouble playing the game due to some handicaps and is practicing in a 2500 Bretonian Transport. That's the type of people your looking to target ? Come on, people have different skill sets some people enjoy the roleplay environment light game play.

Conns for fighting Right?? It feels like your trying to make more of a conn environment into the roleplay environment. You need the roleplay and to encourage more of the old ways.

It's good to try new things and new ideas but sometimes you might want to look back at the past and go why was it setup that way and how did that work and why did it work?

Anyway no to these changes it's gonna do more damage then good. Btw this is a Roleplay Server not a PvP Server. Your literally on the forums right now. PvP enhances Roleplay not the other way round this is why the game is in trouble.

[LuckyOne]

^ Honestly the playerbase is waaay too spread out to have regular escorts, this is not 2015 with 200/200 full server anymore.

Now, I'm all for making escorting more viable, but how would you do it?

I think one way, if possible, could be to make NPCs in independent space target 5kers again but run away from other classes. That way you'd be incentivised to form convoys even without pirates online, to have a less annoying run.

Of course profits should also be bumped up slightly for these routes.

And it seems the team is doing a good job making frigates able to fend off pirates. What we lack is a good way to keep a pirate's firepower suppresed as a 5ker. So bring back EMP flaks, that do good energy damage, but make them require some skill with timing to hit the attacker.

That way one could go for a purely defensive loadout that would keep the fight a stalemate until either an escort arrives or more pirates show up.

[Lemon]

Dealing with silent power traders isn't only a pirate or law enforcement frustration either, @The_Godslayer. Believe me.

I stepped away from Discovery for a span of about four to five months while I got my IRL shit in order. Moving across the entire span of the planet (from the Midwest US back home to Guam) tends to leave very little room for any fun hobbies or games. When I came back, I decided to run a little Freelance trading empire called Horizons (some of you might have seen the posts regarding it). I kept it mostly in house and just for myself to have fun ferrying goods around, RPing with people that I came across, and even fomenting enjoyable roleplay sessions with The Brotherhood and DTR who came across my Serenity regularly shuffling goods around to various POBs. I always did my best to interact with everyone I came across, and with exception to a few random players and the TBH and DTR pilots I ran into in the Omicrons and Sigmas, I was met with complete silence when I said anything. Usually my response when I hear nothing back is "Good talk" as a slight jab but rarely, if ever, do I get even a response from that. Honestly, it pisses me off seeing these silent power traders using these ID's to stake by with minimal RP when I'm putting in the efforts to counter act that...it gives those players who actually try to roleplay with these ID's in these scenarios a bad name. (I've been busy with work to answer comms. regarding Horizons, I promise I will get to it soon.)

When I did LGN (another one of my errant attempts at making a faction, I have a problem, leave me alone, I just wanna have fun), I would pirate people and get no response. I'd blow them up and get verbally abused by the player in PM's, sometimes not even in English. I would try to discuss it with them and help them to understand why they got killed but much of the time they'd just log out or keep spewing nonsense at me. As a direct result of that abuse, I gave up on LGN before anyone could even join or before the faction could even get off the ground. It just wasn't worth the effort.

Most of the concerns people have listed with the rule changes around Transports I agree with, but silent power traders need to be dealt with before we start making these kinds of changes. Perhaps a rule instituted to make AFK trading something sanctionable? It would be exceedingly difficult to prove, but at least it would fix one small part of the issue that might lead to more in the future.

EDIT: ...and I even mentioned silent power traders at nearly the very beginning of this post.

On another note, I'd like to see some kind of rule changes in the future targeting silent power traders. I realize it would be difficult to enforce and would be a slippery slope but the amount of these silent power traders on the server nowadays is quite disheartening when trying to find someone to roleplay with while flying around. Many of these silent power traders are AFK trading, maybe something can be done about that?

Depends what you want. This is not just the "RP" server, this is really the only active server - for example, I didn't join this server for roleplay, at all - I just finished the campaign and was like "hey, maybe someone made it better, maybe I free fly in a mod or something, game's been out for a while if there's people, nice bonus" and ended campaign and jumped to disco directly as it seemed the only one people are playing.

A very large % of log time happens from people who don't care about active written roleplay much, or at all - the question is if you want every encounter to be a quality roleplay one, or if you want the server actually populated consistently

[Leo]

Dealing with silent power traders isn't only a pirate or law enforcement frustration either, @The_Godslayer. Believe me.

I stepped away from Discovery for a span of about four to five months while I got my IRL shit in order. Moving across the entire span of the planet (from the Midwest US back home to Guam) tends to leave very little room for any fun hobbies or games. When I came back, I decided to run a little Freelance trading empire called Horizons (some of you might have seen the posts regarding it). I kept it mostly in house and just for myself to have fun ferrying goods around, RPing with people that I came across, and even fomenting enjoyable roleplay sessions with The Brotherhood and DTR who came across my Serenity regularly shuffling goods around to various POBs. I always did my best to interact with everyone I came across, and with exception to a few random players and the TBH and DTR pilots I ran into in the Omicrons and Sigmas, I was met with complete silence when I said anything. Usually my response when I hear nothing back is "Good talk" as a slight jab but rarely, if ever, do I get even a response from that. Honestly, it pisses me off seeing these silent power traders using these ID's to stake by with minimal RP when I'm putting in the efforts to counter act that...it gives those players who actually try to roleplay with these ID's in these scenarios a bad name. (I've been busy with work to answer comms. regarding Horizons, I promise I will get to it soon.)

When I did LGN (another one of my errant attempts at making a faction, I have a problem, leave me alone, I just wanna have fun), I would pirate people and get no response. I'd blow them up and get verbally abused by the player in PM's, sometimes not even in English. I would try to discuss it with them and help them to understand why they got killed but much of the time they'd just log out or keep spewing nonsense at me. As a direct result of that abuse, I gave up on LGN before anyone could even join or before the faction could even get off the ground. It just wasn't worth the effort.

Most of the concerns people have listed with the rule changes around Transports I agree with, but silent power traders need to be dealt with before we start making these kinds of changes. Perhaps a rule instituted to make AFK trading something sanctionable? It would be exceedingly difficult to prove, but at least it would fix one small part of the issue that might lead to more in the future.

EDIT: ...and I even mentioned silent power traders at nearly the very beginning of this post.

On another note, I'd like to see some kind of rule changes in the future targeting silent power traders. I realize it would be difficult to enforce and would be a slippery slope but the amount of these silent power traders on the server nowadays is quite disheartening when trying to find someone to roleplay with while flying around. Many of these silent power traders are AFK trading, maybe something can be done about that?

Depends what you want. This is not just the "RP" server, this is really the only active server - for example, I didn't join this server for roleplay, at all - I just finished the campaign and was like "hey, maybe someone made it better, maybe I free fly in a mod or something, game's been out for a while if there's people, nice bonus" and ended campaign and jumped to disco directly as it seemed the only one people are playing.

A very large % of log time happens from people who don't care about active written roleplay much, or at all - the question is if you want every encounter to be a quality roleplay one, or if you want the server actually populated consistently

Honestly, if you make the assumption that quality interactions are far and few in-between, this is the way the server is already. The difference is, if the server only had 10 or 15 people on a primetime and all were quality interactions, you would have a much better time because everyone you meet would be awesome.

So, yeah, I'd rather there be less people and better interactions. But...truthfully, more people is better, we just need to help those people who aren't good better and the people who refuse can go play Space Trucker, Elite Dangerous, or any myriad of other games where you can space truck without RP. Just my opinion.

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You fear oblivion. Yet you forget. The universe remembers every atom of your being. Even dust hums your name in the dark.
Starlight Research Consortium | The Banished Legion | Astral

[Lemon]

Dealing with silent power traders isn't only a pirate or law enforcement frustration either, @The_Godslayer. Believe me.

I stepped away from Discovery for a span of about four to five months while I got my IRL shit in order. Moving across the entire span of the planet (from the Midwest US back home to Guam) tends to leave very little room for any fun hobbies or games. When I came back, I decided to run a little Freelance trading empire called Horizons (some of you might have seen the posts regarding it). I kept it mostly in house and just for myself to have fun ferrying goods around, RPing with people that I came across, and even fomenting enjoyable roleplay sessions with The Brotherhood and DTR who came across my Serenity regularly shuffling goods around to various POBs. I always did my best to interact with everyone I came across, and with exception to a few random players and the TBH and DTR pilots I ran into in the Omicrons and Sigmas, I was met with complete silence when I said anything. Usually my response when I hear nothing back is "Good talk" as a slight jab but rarely, if ever, do I get even a response from that. Honestly, it pisses me off seeing these silent power traders using these ID's to stake by with minimal RP when I'm putting in the efforts to counter act that...it gives those players who actually try to roleplay with these ID's in these scenarios a bad name. (I've been busy with work to answer comms. regarding Horizons, I promise I will get to it soon.)

When I did LGN (another one of my errant attempts at making a faction, I have a problem, leave me alone, I just wanna have fun), I would pirate people and get no response. I'd blow them up and get verbally abused by the player in PM's, sometimes not even in English. I would try to discuss it with them and help them to understand why they got killed but much of the time they'd just log out or keep spewing nonsense at me. As a direct result of that abuse, I gave up on LGN before anyone could even join or before the faction could even get off the ground. It just wasn't worth the effort.

Most of the concerns people have listed with the rule changes around Transports I agree with, but silent power traders need to be dealt with before we start making these kinds of changes. Perhaps a rule instituted to make AFK trading something sanctionable? It would be exceedingly difficult to prove, but at least it would fix one small part of the issue that might lead to more in the future.

EDIT: ...and I even mentioned silent power traders at nearly the very beginning of this post.

On another note, I'd like to see some kind of rule changes in the future targeting silent power traders. I realize it would be difficult to enforce and would be a slippery slope but the amount of these silent power traders on the server nowadays is quite disheartening when trying to find someone to roleplay with while flying around. Many of these silent power traders are AFK trading, maybe something can be done about that?

Depends what you want. This is not just the "RP" server, this is really the only active server - for example, I didn't join this server for roleplay, at all - I just finished the campaign and was like "hey, maybe someone made it better, maybe I free fly in a mod or something, game's been out for a while if there's people, nice bonus" and ended campaign and jumped to disco directly as it seemed the only one people are playing.

A very large % of log time happens from people who don't care about active written roleplay much, or at all - the question is if you want every encounter to be a quality roleplay one, or if you want the server actually populated consistently

Honestly, if you make the assumption that quality interactions are far and few in-between, this is the way the server is already. The difference is, if the server only had 10 or 15 people on a primetime and all were quality interactions, you would have a much better time because everyone you meet would be awesome.

So, yeah, I'd rather there be less people and better interactions. But...truthfully, more people is better, we just need to help those people who aren't good better and the people who refuse can go play Space Trucker, Elite Dangerous, or any myriad of other games where you can space truck without RP. Just my opinion.

Yeah, that's the question - this is the only active server really. Do you want an 85%+ log time drop and folks leaving freelancer altogether, but if you run into someone, they are bound to be up for a longer text exchange?

For me, absolutely not, it's boring to fly just with NPCs around and then RP with the same 5 guys who want to longer rp ingame.

[Sand-Viper]

<Pulls up the revised 2.2/2.4 proposal>

<Reads the following>

The following ships have been reclassified as frigates and are thus not subject to transport and liner class protection:
Pelican, Gull, Grouse, Bumblebee, Albatross, Mammoth, BWAT, Percheron, Longhorn, Bulwark.

I like this! Re-classifying certain transports as frigates, then removing frigates' pvp-protection feels like a solid compromise.
Edit: It felt weird to me that Frigates, which are bulk haulers moonlighting as gunboats, have PvP-protection, but freighters (the vanilla trader class) didn't. I still wish freighters could have PvP-protection, but then again, I'm garbage with turret-steering freighters, and they can mount double mines and missiles if they choose.

This also opens the door to possible balance passes for the newly transport-frigate hybrids.
Example: Pelican gun slots (not the turret slots) could become Class 4 Snub slots, maybee...? (Just tossing ideas, I'm not a PvP guru but the gun slots on the Pelican are weird).

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[TheKusari]

. .Hmm, I have a problem here: Code: The following ships have been reclassified as frigates and are thus not subject to transport and liner class protection: Pelican, Gull, Grouse, Bumblebee, Albatross, Mammoth, BWAT, Percheron, Longhorn, Bulwark. The following ships are clearly not transports but don’t exactly have a class definition: Amaterasu Rationale: The listed ships are capable of engaging in combat to a degree that is not consistent with larger transports. Future plans for transport rebalancing will aim to remove rules-based protection for game mechanics based capabilities in the style of the newer Longhorn and Bulwark class haulers. So you're basing this ruling on PVP and not roleplay? Why not classify ships as being used offensively or not? I don't understand this. Are we expected to understand this particular ruling in a way where under roleplay circumstances we're exempt from this rule? Fly an unarmed Longhorn with 3,600 Gold Get pirated I tell Pirate no They initiate combat They deshield me and do some damage I combat dock I'd hate to get one of my members sanctioned under Starfliers if they immediately continue a trade run after combat docking in a Longhorn. Because the 1 hour death would apply in this circumstance. Under roleplay, the ship was not used offensively, rather just evasively (as much as one can in a Longhorn) to survive until combat dock. Though the ship, even if we do ignore weapons, is likely defined as a Frigate in this proposed ruleset due to it's boosted HP over the Serenity. There should be a line stating that if you have one offensive weapon mounted, you are considered a combat ship. Unarmed = not a combat ship. A consideration there must be at least addressed. . .

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Discovery's Best Faction:  Starfliers
Second Best: Liberty Navy 46th Fleet

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