"New faction creation process and representation" discussion thread.

[reavengitair]

The server is still down, so all this stuff is hypothetical anyway.

Don't...Remind...Me

But anyway, sometimes I don't see the difference between players in official factions and those who are independants at the moment.

[Athenian]

Don't...Remind...Me

But anyway, sometimes I don't see the difference between players in official factions and those who are independants at the moment.

It's an artifical distinction, but one exaggerated by people who have had a few bad experiences at the hands of one or two of either group.

Bear in mind that many players are both. You see more of factions because they have greater visibility because of centralised reporting systems, identifiable tags, a larger and more cohesive player base, and things like large and regular events. Plus they congregate in skype chats to discuss their fascist plans, but also to establish if there are fellows around. It's much easier to develop relationships within the game through these facilities, hence the apparent collective shared purpose of these mobs. In reality, individual members of factions can have relationships ranging from "let's hold hands" to "I hate you scumbag". But nothing bonds people together more than a shared victory. Or defeat. Continued experiences like that are less frequent when I fly in one of my "indies".

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Former member of "the most paranoid group of people in the community"
Discovery Community Forum Rules

[bluntpencil2001]

Plus they congregate in skype chats to discuss their fascist plans

That's supposed to be a secret!

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[Quorg]

- In order to differentiate Factions from Groups, what kind of rights should [Official] Factions have over Groups or Independent players?

- Should the 500m fee stay or go?
First, that Player Factions should have ANY sort of control whatsoever over Indys other than enforcing basic NPC RP without the explicit consent of each individual independent NPC faction player is quite troubling. Since when were a single group of players allowed to dictate the RP of independents?

- Should we limit the amount of official factions for each NPC group depending on the group? And what about Corporations whose headquarters are under the flag of a house?
If you give the councils power, there cannot be limits as to the number of factions, so long as they are qualified. I don't want to see a small inner circle of factions suck up all the negotiating power indefinitely. Corporations should work with, not under, the house military factions.

- Should Independent players have a representative on the council?
I am not sure whether this Council idea is worth supporting at all if it forces indys to subject themselves to it. However, if it is to come about, having a rotating indy seat is a lesser evil than not having any representation at all.

- Should Factions be able to lose those rights if they go the wrong way?
Yes, but only as determined by OORP behavior by faction members and leaders.

- Should Groups have to abide by the policies set by the Council too?
No.

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ATTENTION SMUGGLERS
The Midnight Express: A Slaver <strike>who doesn't completely realize what he's doing.</strike> (video)

Quorg, you're officially a moron.

...mongs like Quorg being like a malignant little cancer...

Way to be useless, Quorg.

[HAF-Angel]

Actuall Situation:

I have my own point of view in how we can play with NPC factions diplomacy in players's hands.

The way of Discovery

First of all, we have in Discovery a lot of players and a lot of factions, which is one of the strong points of the server, but in fact, ist hard to handle, the posibilities to rule this kind of issues depends on the 2 possible ways:

- Clans
- Factions

If we had clans they can have his own fixed reputation to help the diplomacy to make sense.

But we have Factions, which are indeed a faction inside an NPC faction (or house), at this point the things get hard to manage I'm sure this is the reason for this thread .

The target

Therefore, we must find a way to fix this things:

- Logical diplomacy and politics between the Factions and between the houses, for better role-play.
- More playable and friendly way to follow faction politics, for better understanding and less complicated play (the final target is to have fun all together, isn't it?).
- Prevent abuse from power groups over other players, in order to help the server to be a nice place to be.


Drawbacks

The problems are:

- Its hard to see more than a dozen chars from an NPC Faction being online at the same time, if a council rules over the other players... half the players will rule the same numer of players online, and that makes no sense.
- If thers only a Navy from Liberty for example, who will be on cammand? an admiral? (btw, who decides who will be Admiral, Captain, etc?), but... that makes no sense again, because the president is the higher authority, therefore we must start a campaing to elect the president (will be funny, but pointless, because we will need a Congress then ... etc ... etc...)
- If someone is the highest authority of a military faction, will be online 24h a day? we cannot follow a leader if he is online only sometimes, or he is online at different hours.
- I saw many diplomacy based in players friendship than in NPC faction interests, its a high risk to give some players the key to rule an entire faction (and belive me, a whole council can be ruled easily by one single intriguer).
- Some players target in diplomatic issues is to rule over other players, not to follow the faction deep interests, and that is the sheed of the civil wars, that makes not much sense for me, exceppt for some rol-play events.
- If the facction diplomatics are really deep, we should be able to destroy/conquer bases or systems... this way is more realistic, but, its the server ready to manage this?
- The reality is enought complicated to use here the same level of complications, this reduces the playability of the game.

At the end, if the politics goes too deep, we will be more time in forum that flying in the server, maybe we can eventually close the server and play here a full diplomacy game... I think you can see the problems like me.

Some light into the shadows:

To solve all this problems, I agree that we need rol-play rules, and not just server rules, but we need backup too. For this reason we must build a clever and friendlier interface, a kind of plug and play diplomacy and rol guide.

The diplomacy could be only a fixed one or a dynamic one if its fixed, we need to just follow it, but if its dynamic, we need a great effort to find a manageable rules, so

To implement this, we ned some "tools", like:

- A forum board (sticky) with the actuall diplomacy of the NPC faction, to help players to get deeply into his faction "feelings". Player factions must do the same for obbious reasons. Could be in a specific thread.
- A tool (via updates) to fix the rep of the players who have that ID mounted, if something changes, your reputations must be actualliced and maybe they must be static after the changes untill the next step in the faction diplomacy.

- Different military player-factions inside a military NPC-faction could be different fleets from the same navy, to prevent a single player to be in control of the whole house fleet.
- An official faction (I think) must have an specific ID (and NPC faction IFF), and pay for it... about 500 millions maybe?, this fix the money issue, you pay, but for something you can be proud to have.

- The only thing we need to close the circle is, how to change the diplomacy of the faction?

- There are 3 ways:

- Via Admins (2 ways):
- Admins change it according to the things that are happenning during the game
- Admins change it according to the player-factions requests (if it makes sense)

- Via Player-factions diplomacy (2 ways): -After a diplomacy change proposal (no matter from who)-
- The council of factions submit a vote to make a choice
- The players who are in that faction submit a vote
*The only thing about this is that, if a player or a faction its not really online much of the
time, have they rights to vote?

- Via players+admins+factions:

- A player could make a diplomacy change propossal, then the admins can think if it makes sense and submit it for vote or denie it, and, eventually, player-factions can vote if they agree or not, this way all the key positions will have his chance for the better diplomacy of an NPC-faction.

---I think this last idea or forget it and just fix the diplomacy for ever are the most clever ways.---

+Greetings to the discovery gaming community+

P.D: Thanks to give us the chance to post our oppinions in how to make Discovery better and more playable

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