Discovery Gaming Community

I think the Laws thread could use an overhaul. There are some clear issues with how it currently functions:

Laws enforced by Lawful IDs aren't very accessible to players, especially newbies.
Important information is not clearly presented in a concise or meaningful way.
The server calls laws 'Laws enforced by Lawful IDs' but the forum (tab) refers to them specifically as 'House Roleplay Laws', which can unintentionally mislead people as to what specific information can be found there.
Locking the Laws thread makes it difficult for factions to keep them updated, informing the community when they're updated, and accurately outlining what's been updated. Also going through the laws thread, several posts actually link to other posts that aren't locked, yet are updated by factions because they're an instrumental part of their laws anyway. Given that we have new Staff now, whom I've heard are making the changes to laws posts almost instantaneous, perhaps this isn't as big of an issue anymore. Personally, I still think locking the thread was a terrible idea.

All these problems culminate into a very messy and unclear but mandatory element of the roleplay environment that people frequently become lost in, or unknowingly break these laws and get frustrated. I also think it's silly that the thread is cluttered with posts that aren't really anything but RP fluff, as they're not actually enforceable rule/ID-wise by the factions that made them. Our current way of doing things need an overhaul. Here's my suggested plan:

1. The 'House Roleplay Laws' tab in the Navigation bar at the top of the forum is renamed to 'Lawful ID Roleplay Laws'. This will link to a forum section that I'll elaborate on in my next point.
   
2. Removal of a single 'Laws' thread. Instead, we create a dedicated forum section for laws as a sub-forum in the 'Communications' section. This main section is only for factions/governments that can enforce these laws as per their ID lines. I.e, their ID explicitly states "can demand contraband and levy fines" or "can enforce x laws". Clogging this with RP fluff, or items only enforceable by Official IDs, is better suited to individual faction sections, as they don't concern overall gameplay. Also pinning a message to the top of this forum section that informs people that laws are not rules, but RP constructs that affect gameplay and roleplay.
   
3. In this section there will be a pinned index that delivers the most important bits of information from laws: name of the laws, who are the laws are by, where are the laws enforced, and by what ID. There will also be a pinned link to this thread in the 'Communications' forum section. Think of a table like the following:
   
   

   ID	Zone of Influence	Link
   Liberty Navy, Liberty Police, Liberty Security Force, [LN], LPI-, =LSF=. 5th	Liberty, Systems directly bordering Liberty.	Laws of Liberty
   Crayter Republic	Bretonia, Taus, Coronado, Cortez, Magellan, Omicron Tau, Omicron Alpha	Laws of the Crayter Republic

   
   etc.
   
   
4. There would also be another pinned thread that includes a list of common contraband and it's legality in regards to certain laws. There was a thing like this on the Wiki that, for me as a newbie at least, was instrumental in telling me what I could take and where. It's a bit outdated now.
   
5. Otherwise, within this section House Governments and Independent Governments would make their own laws threads in this section. They will be expected to keep them updated, and to also post updates in the form of a changelog within those threads when things are edited. This creates the maximum amount of visibility and keeps people in the loop. I'm going to propose a template for Factions/Governments to use in order to keep things as general and accessible as possible.
   
6. There would be a sub-section within the Laws section called 'Station Laws'. This will be for CoF/NZ laws and Junker base laws.
   
7. There would be a sub-section within the Laws section called 'Visas'. This will be for visas that permit non-faction ships travelling in certainly, typically highly restricted, areas of space. (Off the top of my head) Coalition, Core, Corsairs etc would have visa threads posted there. I feel like these are important to make clear and easily accessible to players (especially newbies) as it make the difference between getting exploded when travelling through somewhere or not. This kind of encounter logic is much more general than some of the more specific clauses in laws, and doesn't necessarily need a specific ID line to be enforceable (you're shooting someone or demanding them to leave in your ZoI at the end of the day).
   

Thoughts?

Yes

boop

Yeah, up-to-date and clearly-worded laws are an altogether good idea.

The current House Roleplay Laws thread is a bloated mess. The entries in it need to be reformatted and standardized in a way that makes it easier to navigate and to find the needed information. Splitting them up makes sense but it would be useful to have them all in one place as well.

More importantly, it needs to be made clear that the laws thread is actually an annex of the rules and the IDs. It would be convenient to have the bare minimum of these laws present in the game as infocards or fl hook commands, but that might make it too cumbersome to manage.

(05-22-2019, 09:58 AM)teschy Wrote: [ -> ]More importantly, it needs to be made clear that the laws thread is actually an annex of the rules and the IDs. It would be convenient to have the bare minimum of these laws present in the game as infocards or fl hook commands, but that might make it too cumbersome to manage.

The Colonial News Service on stations, which has long gone without any significant updates, sounds like the ideal place for faction laws to be located in game. Problem is the rate at which it can be updated.