(07-10-2023, 10:07 AM)Petitioner Wrote: I like Groshyr's suggestions. Police in cruisers doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but more importantly, taking away an ability for them that is entirely unused doesn't make them any more or less enticing than they are now because nobody plays police as-is. So, how do we encourage police activity? We need to look at what drives interaction in general. As I said earlier in my post, there are a couple different styles of interaction that are predominant right now; the main ones are patrolling, dogfighting, and long drawn-out roleplaying. What changes would make all of these things more attractive for police factions?
- Restricting the ability to enforce laws to police IDs certainly gives patrollers an incentive to do this (making money via fines or snubswarming chonky transports), but it doesn't take away the reason for military IDs to do this (LN can still engage Rogues, KNF can still engage GC, etc).
- This change makes /net actually relevant. Smugglers will have actual reason to avoid the lanes with active police players, which encourages the guesswork-based cat-and-mouse chases that makes splitting up, hiring freelancers to help, etc actually effective tactics. If it turns out the smuggler has a heavy escort, and a lone LPI Liberator stumbles upon the smugglers, suddenly there's tension, reason to call for backup. Do the other officers get there in time? This tension is emotionally satisfying and makes players want to have more such experiences.
- Military factions being able to enforce laws in the border worlds only helps make the border worlds feel more dangerous for everyone rather than only dangerous for lawfuls. This encourages militaries to focus on border defense, which is what their main task ought to be outside of wartime (alongside responding to terrorist threats, eg pirate caps etc). With militaries spending more time in the border worlds, they're more likely to encounter each other. That might lead to border spats, arguments over jurisdiction etc that turn into combat (which has been a recurrent plot theme in Discovery; to my understanding that was supposed to be the entire motivation between the old Liberty/Rheinland war after all), or it might lead to combined patrols, or just spontaneous longer roleplays. All of these are emergent interactions that come about from the gameplay environment and are entirely player-driven, which helps increase player investment and sense of control, which is good for activity.
- I don't have any thoughts about intel factions because I don't play house intelligence. I only want to speak about things I'm qualified to assess.
tl;dr sounds good, try it out for awhile and see if it works. also give LH /net, maybe they'll actually log for once if they have it lol
Take away cruisers from the police and there will be even fewer incentives for the police to log. The main issue is there are simply no real incentives to police gameplay. I am talking from a perspective of a player who does fly KSP Takeda. Although I do not RP as KSP, I act alongside the ID. Here are a few observations from being police outside of Liberty.
most of the time you greet some pass-by traders with kind words like "welcome to Kusari". It's ok once or twice but gets dull in a while. I also do not really get much of RP out of that bcs there is simply no organic moot topics for the interaction
then you have smugglers who already avoid /net TL. One can predict their movement but tbh flying 80k from, say, Junyo to Kyushu JH to miss the smuggler by a margin and then roam the system is hardly enticing. Not like interactions with smugglers are better, though.
then you have PvP. This is better than the two but why doing it on KSP ID if you have KNF with everything better? As you put it, you do not need law enforcement on KNF to shoot red. Quite often the red is an OC cruiser/battlecruiser so why would you even sweat on an underwhelming in the current balance GB or in a lonely bomber (because there are not enough lawful playerbase) when you can slap a Takeda or Komainu and have a decent duel?
If we move on with this rework, nothing will change because the changes do not bring any real incentives. Incentives will come automatically with larger playerbase. For better or worse, outside of Liberty lawful playerbase does not exist in sufficient numbers for non-planned activity and no /net features or law enforcement lines will change it because those two mechanics amount to an infinitesimal share of lawful activity anyway. And KNF (or RM, or GN, or BAF) can do the main activity, which is PvP, better.
Tldr; to spur lawful activity we just need more playerbase and active leadership, like Lemon, to organise the playerbase. With many ex-lawful leaders burnt out or busy iRL, and non existent influx of new blood this is hard to achieve. Maybe, the upcoming patch will bring in some activity boost, or bury the last hopes. Lawful playerbase outside Liberty is basically in limbo waiting.