09-24-2013, 09:52 AM
Okay, so this thread is an appeal to the dev and admin team to reverse the changes we had back in 85 concerning the Junker and Hogosha IDs. The reasons for this are pretty simple, but here's the thing: It is the beta between version changes, so this is really the last moment to consider such ID changes, so if we do not get a yay or ney now, we might be stuck until the next mod update for this.
FOR THE LOVE OF DERPS, READ THE WHOLE THING. YES, IT IS A WALL OF TEXT. READ IT.
First of all, this thread is mainly going to address the Junker ID, because that is the one that is currently most hurting and the one I personally have more experience with to make any valid points about. The hogosha ID is mentioned here, because the nerfage of the former is connected to the later.
The Junker roleplay is something of a sandbox for me. The Junkers themselves back in 84 had very little RP description and little lore, thus leaving it open for very broad interpretation by the playerbase. It was also overall a fun character to play with.
Imagine you arrive to Alpha with a load of slaves, fresh from Liberty. You stick around and chitchat to the Outcasts about the Orange Dream and praise it. 5min later you are sitting on front of Crete, chuckling with the Corsairs, calling the Oucasts a bunch of wankers. 15min later, after staying outside of scan range of any Order ship in Minor, tipping your hat as you fly by, you dump 4300 units of Artifacts on Manhattan, undock and chat to an LN about how things are in Liberty.
This was utterly awesome. Even more so, you never knew how any lawful or unlawful would react to you. If the Rogues or Outcasts in Liberty ever saw you with artifacts, things would get heated up pretty fast. Even more so, since you could pirate in house space, every time you passed a lawful, you could almost hear them go "hmmmmm" as they tried to figure out if that was your cargo, or did it belong to someone else 5 minutes ago.
That was the thing about the Junker ID. You had not only a broad choice of RP to follow, you actually had to make a name for yourself if you were to be trusted. Any lawful had all rights to smack you on the very ''assumption'' you were up to no good. So were the unlawfuls all too inclined to smack you if you got too friendly with the locals that shot them. Point is, you had to deal with not only your own choices and actions, but also the actions of the rest of the Junkers. It was fun. It made any sort of interaction unpredictable.
Even more so, I never really saw any better ID suited for the ''opportunist'' rp than the Junker one. You dropped off some goods on a lawful base, but oh look, that guy has some cargo that sells off in the next system....is is safe enough to attempt to ''convince'' the poor bloke that that the gold in his hold might look better in yours? Are there any navy around? How fast will he snitch on you?
Or when you are flying around on your Junker and you see some lawfuls shooting another junker for whatever reason. Would you give up your chance of neutrality to help one of your own? Or would you risk your reputation within the junker community and fly on without causing trouble for yourself from the lawful forces? It was all about choice.
So, obviously, after we had our mining mod implemented, more people started flying junkers and hogosha, and the later one was the reason why both IDs got their piracy rights strictly limited. See, Kusari was a trading hub of sorts, not only it was the sellpoint for Silver ore, which was a common target for Hogosha. It was also a route IMG would take to get to Rheinland with Niobium ore. Since the Hogosha were actually ''Kusari Civilains'', the lawful forces never did anything if they saw them camping a lane. Ofcourse, that caused a lot of butthurt.
However, am I wrong to assume that such a moment was interesting? The people getting pirated would make KNF characters to accuse and keep the Hogosha in check, the BDs would have both Hogs and KNF to shoot and so on.
When the Hogs got their rights removed, they were pretty much good only for artifact trading, since their Guard ID allowed the usage of 5kers. When guard IDs were removed, they lost even that.
The Junkers, on the other hand, lost their rights to pirate in house space, apart from Kusari. But now that the hogs could not pirate, the chain that had caused the activity in Kusari dropped, so a Junker had nothing to do there to begin with, not to mention there were almost no bases they could run to if things got bad.
So what happened since then? One of the reasons why the junkers specifically got hit back in 85, was because of the fact that 90% of cargo pirates were using Junker IDs and transports. Back then we could not attack transports in capital ships even if they were shooting a trader in front of us. People were upset. So that combined with the overall ZOI-Piracy combo, it was decided to nerf the ID to what it is now.
But things have changed since then. Lawfuls are able to shoot junkers on whim, and in any ship they are flying at the time...but they do not. After all, apart from the rare smuggler, and I do mean rare: it is not nearly as profitable anymore, the Junker IDs are often found on players flying Pilgrim liners and trading regular goods. The lawfuls have no reason to shoot them. Unlawfuls, however, also ignore them. The reason for this is that if you are a pirate IDed player in Liberty, changes are you are on the Rogues black list. Zoners and Junkers are someone you have to keep good ties with in order to be able to dock your characters close to the action, so to speak.
In other words, the Junker rp as it is now, is utterly boring. There are better IDs to use if you want to smuggle. There are better iDs to use if you want to trade. Better IDs to use if you want to PVP.
The Hogosha are even more screwed up. They can pirate in their ZOI, but only in systems bordering Kusari. None of the ones I can think from the top of my head are good ones for priacy, because of the lane and base placement.
Even the current junkers player faction, apart from cardibarge jumping, seems to focus on the lawful side of the Junkers. Which is completely within RP, but it is sad that due to the ID limitations we do not have another faction with opposite goals to compliment them.
But again, things have changed since 84 and 85. Is it not time to adjust the IDs to reflect that?
I mean, the only way to represent the duality of these IDs is to have both actions, lawful and unlawful, be made side by side, rather than be limited to borderlands. We need to have both lawful and unlawful junkers/hogosha flying around to keep that inherit dilemma of a quasi-lawful ID. Ingame consequences. That is what makes these IDs fun.
Here are my suggestion for POSSIBLE changes.
Junker ID:
*Allow it to demand CARGO in house space. Effectively it reduces the piracy they can do, since if a trader is caught heading out FROM the house space, pirating them would be just useless and would bring heat on your head for little profit.
*Set the rephack for Junkers to -0.5(Unable to dock) to ore sellpoint owning factions to reduce their usage as ore pirates.
*Allow Junker IDs to shoot other Junker IDs. This is something I want to see, because of the diversity of the Junker RP. Family feuds, fight for power between the Congress and whatever group would appear next to them. We had a good experiment with the 101st and CL and I think that proved that it is not THAT bad.
This can also be restricted to only systems that do not have a Junker base. That can be thought on.
Hogosha ID.
Allow them to pirate for MONEY in house space. They are there to promote the ''welfare for the house of Kusari'' so asking ''donations'' rather than outright demanding cargo can be a good thing. You know, trade tax and such, since Kusari is used as a transit system, rather than having actual sellpoints.
Allow them to go to other houses to pirate CARGO.
What else? Dunno, if the IDs still seem a bit OP, add lines to allow them to pirate only in cargo ships or with ships with less than X amount of cargo. Open for debate. By removing their piracy rights, you pretty much killed one half of the actual ingame usage of these IDs. Which does not make them useless, no, that is a far shot statement. Limited, yes.
My two cents.
EDIT:
Remember. You can implement these changes as a test, give it a test period and remove them if they do not work. You have the power and the right to do so. Give it a chance, at least, see what happens. Not doing this on the assumption that it might not work is lazy.
FOR THE LOVE OF DERPS, READ THE WHOLE THING. YES, IT IS A WALL OF TEXT. READ IT.
First of all, this thread is mainly going to address the Junker ID, because that is the one that is currently most hurting and the one I personally have more experience with to make any valid points about. The hogosha ID is mentioned here, because the nerfage of the former is connected to the later.
The Junker roleplay is something of a sandbox for me. The Junkers themselves back in 84 had very little RP description and little lore, thus leaving it open for very broad interpretation by the playerbase. It was also overall a fun character to play with.
Imagine you arrive to Alpha with a load of slaves, fresh from Liberty. You stick around and chitchat to the Outcasts about the Orange Dream and praise it. 5min later you are sitting on front of Crete, chuckling with the Corsairs, calling the Oucasts a bunch of wankers. 15min later, after staying outside of scan range of any Order ship in Minor, tipping your hat as you fly by, you dump 4300 units of Artifacts on Manhattan, undock and chat to an LN about how things are in Liberty.
This was utterly awesome. Even more so, you never knew how any lawful or unlawful would react to you. If the Rogues or Outcasts in Liberty ever saw you with artifacts, things would get heated up pretty fast. Even more so, since you could pirate in house space, every time you passed a lawful, you could almost hear them go "hmmmmm" as they tried to figure out if that was your cargo, or did it belong to someone else 5 minutes ago.
That was the thing about the Junker ID. You had not only a broad choice of RP to follow, you actually had to make a name for yourself if you were to be trusted. Any lawful had all rights to smack you on the very ''assumption'' you were up to no good. So were the unlawfuls all too inclined to smack you if you got too friendly with the locals that shot them. Point is, you had to deal with not only your own choices and actions, but also the actions of the rest of the Junkers. It was fun. It made any sort of interaction unpredictable.
Even more so, I never really saw any better ID suited for the ''opportunist'' rp than the Junker one. You dropped off some goods on a lawful base, but oh look, that guy has some cargo that sells off in the next system....is is safe enough to attempt to ''convince'' the poor bloke that that the gold in his hold might look better in yours? Are there any navy around? How fast will he snitch on you?
Or when you are flying around on your Junker and you see some lawfuls shooting another junker for whatever reason. Would you give up your chance of neutrality to help one of your own? Or would you risk your reputation within the junker community and fly on without causing trouble for yourself from the lawful forces? It was all about choice.
So, obviously, after we had our mining mod implemented, more people started flying junkers and hogosha, and the later one was the reason why both IDs got their piracy rights strictly limited. See, Kusari was a trading hub of sorts, not only it was the sellpoint for Silver ore, which was a common target for Hogosha. It was also a route IMG would take to get to Rheinland with Niobium ore. Since the Hogosha were actually ''Kusari Civilains'', the lawful forces never did anything if they saw them camping a lane. Ofcourse, that caused a lot of butthurt.
However, am I wrong to assume that such a moment was interesting? The people getting pirated would make KNF characters to accuse and keep the Hogosha in check, the BDs would have both Hogs and KNF to shoot and so on.
When the Hogs got their rights removed, they were pretty much good only for artifact trading, since their Guard ID allowed the usage of 5kers. When guard IDs were removed, they lost even that.
The Junkers, on the other hand, lost their rights to pirate in house space, apart from Kusari. But now that the hogs could not pirate, the chain that had caused the activity in Kusari dropped, so a Junker had nothing to do there to begin with, not to mention there were almost no bases they could run to if things got bad.
So what happened since then? One of the reasons why the junkers specifically got hit back in 85, was because of the fact that 90% of cargo pirates were using Junker IDs and transports. Back then we could not attack transports in capital ships even if they were shooting a trader in front of us. People were upset. So that combined with the overall ZOI-Piracy combo, it was decided to nerf the ID to what it is now.
But things have changed since then. Lawfuls are able to shoot junkers on whim, and in any ship they are flying at the time...but they do not. After all, apart from the rare smuggler, and I do mean rare: it is not nearly as profitable anymore, the Junker IDs are often found on players flying Pilgrim liners and trading regular goods. The lawfuls have no reason to shoot them. Unlawfuls, however, also ignore them. The reason for this is that if you are a pirate IDed player in Liberty, changes are you are on the Rogues black list. Zoners and Junkers are someone you have to keep good ties with in order to be able to dock your characters close to the action, so to speak.
In other words, the Junker rp as it is now, is utterly boring. There are better IDs to use if you want to smuggle. There are better iDs to use if you want to trade. Better IDs to use if you want to PVP.
The Hogosha are even more screwed up. They can pirate in their ZOI, but only in systems bordering Kusari. None of the ones I can think from the top of my head are good ones for priacy, because of the lane and base placement.
Even the current junkers player faction, apart from cardibarge jumping, seems to focus on the lawful side of the Junkers. Which is completely within RP, but it is sad that due to the ID limitations we do not have another faction with opposite goals to compliment them.
But again, things have changed since 84 and 85. Is it not time to adjust the IDs to reflect that?
I mean, the only way to represent the duality of these IDs is to have both actions, lawful and unlawful, be made side by side, rather than be limited to borderlands. We need to have both lawful and unlawful junkers/hogosha flying around to keep that inherit dilemma of a quasi-lawful ID. Ingame consequences. That is what makes these IDs fun.
Here are my suggestion for POSSIBLE changes.
Junker ID:
*Allow it to demand CARGO in house space. Effectively it reduces the piracy they can do, since if a trader is caught heading out FROM the house space, pirating them would be just useless and would bring heat on your head for little profit.
*Set the rephack for Junkers to -0.5(Unable to dock) to ore sellpoint owning factions to reduce their usage as ore pirates.
*Allow Junker IDs to shoot other Junker IDs. This is something I want to see, because of the diversity of the Junker RP. Family feuds, fight for power between the Congress and whatever group would appear next to them. We had a good experiment with the 101st and CL and I think that proved that it is not THAT bad.
This can also be restricted to only systems that do not have a Junker base. That can be thought on.
Hogosha ID.
Allow them to pirate for MONEY in house space. They are there to promote the ''welfare for the house of Kusari'' so asking ''donations'' rather than outright demanding cargo can be a good thing. You know, trade tax and such, since Kusari is used as a transit system, rather than having actual sellpoints.
Allow them to go to other houses to pirate CARGO.
What else? Dunno, if the IDs still seem a bit OP, add lines to allow them to pirate only in cargo ships or with ships with less than X amount of cargo. Open for debate. By removing their piracy rights, you pretty much killed one half of the actual ingame usage of these IDs. Which does not make them useless, no, that is a far shot statement. Limited, yes.
My two cents.
EDIT:
Remember. You can implement these changes as a test, give it a test period and remove them if they do not work. You have the power and the right to do so. Give it a chance, at least, see what happens. Not doing this on the assumption that it might not work is lazy.
![[Image: EZoewkS.png]](http://i.imgur.com/EZoewkS.png)