Admin Notice: Faction Diplomacy Changes

[Garrett Jax]

Faction diplomacy is an ever changing dynamic in Disco. The official diplomatic stance between two factions can change from neutral to hostile in moments. One of the concerns the Admin Team has with this, is that proper notification of diplomatic changes does not always get stated in a public manner and a player who thinks they are neutral toward a given faction, may come to instant blue realization that they have become Kill On Sight by that same faction.

Up to now, many factions have a line in their IDs that states something to this effect:

Can attack ships which are in violation of <Faction's> laws or belong to a house or organisation considered hostile by <Faction> within their Zone of Influence.

The issue is that said Faction could, via RP, consider virtually anybody as hostile, post to that effect in their Faction's diplomacy page, and then fire at will when encountering the unsuspecting enemy. In theory, a faction could use this ID line to bypass the entire FR5 process and become full blown terrorists. The Admins would be unaware of said diplomacy change as well, creating the potential for a sanction scenario.

Any drastic diplomacy change* will have to be posted by the faction leadership in a central public thread:
Faction Diplomacy Change Declaration Thread or some better name we'll replace it with later

- The post should include every RP justification for the diplomacy change, preferably by factions of both sides.
- Those changes will be reviewed by the staff and approved if deemed appropriate to established faction lore & previous diplomacy developments.
- In case of diplomacy changes where both sides agree/support, they're allowed to RP it out and build it up between themselves (limited to interactions between official factions only) before posting the declaration post to officialize the diplomacy change and make it apply to their indies as well.
- Factions would be free to start playing out the posted diplomacy change before it's approved by the admin team (approval will be shown as a greenstamp added to the bottom of the declaration post), but they'll have to accept the risk that if the change is denied, the administrators reserve the right to revert the factions involved to their pre-change state.

* A "drastic diplomacy change" is defined as any change which:
- Effects docking rights (granting or removing such rights, i.e. crossing -0.55 rep)
- Effects engagement rights (going from red to white or vice versa, i.e. crossing -0.6 rep)

The goal is to make diplomacy changes between factions more transparent and to eliminate odd diplomatic scenarios that go counter to accepted faction lore.

From,
The Admin Team

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[Machelvanius]

The ability to see edit history and times of edits will help us to determine if a faction has bypassed this process and went on to make unapproved changes in faction diplomacy. I'm sure this will never happen, right?

I know this goes for me. When it comes to editing important posts like the Faction Diplomacy, people are going to want to ensure that they do one and only one edit of the post so that it doesn't have too many edits and potentially be outside the expected time frame.

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THE IMBALANCE OF POWER is a construct of THE MIND systemic to the reactions between the subjects of the system. POWER is given by those who acknowledge such power. REFUSAL to acknowledge power removes that power for THE REBEL; however, it produces anomalies in interactions throughout the system. These ANOMOLIES cause the UNPREDICTABLE nature of the system that all users CRAVE.

[Zayne Carrick]

Why not just make "declaration of war" threads mandatory, just like we have with base attacks?

[sindroms]

Don't forget to add this HERE so you yourself do not forget about it and faction creators a year or two from now do not need to complain about this rule existing somewhere within the archives of the forum.

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[Garrett Jax]

Why not just make "declaration of war" threads mandatory, just like we have with base attacks?

Because of the possibility that the Admins would not approve of the declaration.

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[Zayne Carrick]

Which would also create massive amount of otherwise unnecessary paperwork. Because after this announcement each and every colored square on faction information page should be approved by admins, even for the factions that don't have "can engage organisations considered hostile by" line.

But I'm sure you've weighted all pros and cons already, so whatever.

[Thyrzul]

Why not just make "declaration of war" threads mandatory, just like we have with base attacks?

Because of the possibility that the Admins would not approve of the declaration.

Comment every one of them with admin green "Approved" or "Denied" perhaps? You could rule the declarations are live only once there's admin green on it, and only if approved.

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[Karst]

Yet another red tape hurdle, yet another invisible request requirement.
Seems like a great way to inconvenience factions and make ingame responses slow and unrealistic.

But hey. At least my faction doesn't have that line to begin with :/

Edit: As somebody just told me, at this rate we'll have "Players are required to make an engagement notice two hours prior in specified forum thread" soon enough.

Terrible idea.

Edit 2: I think this is my favorite part:

As of the time of this posting, all diplomacy between Official/Unofficial factions will be considered as set, and any future changes will have to follow the process mentioned above.

So factions do not even have time to check if their diplomacy is totally up to date.
And oftentimes, a diplomacy change is kind of a vague process over time that doesn't necessarily have concrete forum events that lead to it.

But for me it's okay! Since my faction ID doesn't have that line, I simply won't bother updating my diplo page at all anymore.

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[Grumblesaur]

Don't you guys have enough stuff to review as-is? Do you really want more self-imposed paperwork that only makes the activity of old long since even more distant and only serves to maintain and enforce the status quo?

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A way a lone a last a loved a long the riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay,
brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.

[Garrett Jax]

Yet another red tape hurdle, yet another invisible request requirement.
Seems like a great way to inconvenience factions and make ingame responses slow and unrealistic.

But hey. At least my faction doesn't have that line to begin with :/

Edit: As somebody just told me, at this rate we'll have "Players are required to make an engagement notice two hours prior in specified forum thread" soon enough.

Terrible idea.

Edit 2: I think this is my favorite part:

As of the time of this posting, all diplomacy between Official/Unofficial factions will be considered as set, and any future changes will have to follow the process mentioned above.

So factions do not even have time to check if their diplomacy is totally up to date.
And oftentimes, a diplomacy change is kind of a vague process over time that doesn't necessarily have concrete forum events that lead to it.

But for me it's okay! Since my faction ID doesn't have that line, I simply won't bother updating my diplo page at all anymore.

Well, Karst, if faction leaders could be trusted with responsible and mature decision making, I'm sure your dreams of quick and realistic ingame responses could be had. However, as evidenced by the conduct of many faction leaders surrounding the incident of Freeport 11 and the event that followed, the Admins cannot trust them farther than they can be thrown. So far, we have received at least 10 violation reports in the last day and a half, many of which are connected with the event mentioned. That doesn't begin to touch on the unreported metagaming that is currently taking place by Official Faction Leaders. Currently, there are at least two Skype chats that we are aware of that consist of Faction leaders and their attempts to metagame specific factions.

So, you faction leaders, tell me again how this new process is going to create more work for us Admins. Because, from the way it was before, we are up to our eyeballs in work due to you.

Tell me again how inconvenienced faction leaders are going to be. Because, as it stands, it is you who have inconvenienced us.

Tell me again how terrible this idea is. It wouldn't have to exist at all, if you guys acted with even a small degree of wisdom.

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