I'm thinking from the perspective of a newcomer and casual Discovery player.
Do we have too many rules and house laws?
Can we simplify them or use less words?
Can we make it easier for newcomers to learn the basic rules required to play?
I certainly think so. I wonder what you think. Any suggestions?
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I made a poll just to see what people think. Should House Laws contain:
- RP laws (no nudity or impersonating an officer etc) which will contain more laws and depth but are immersive.
- OORP (game mechanics: do not use X gun or Y ship in House space) which will contain less laws, are easier to learn and more newcomer friendly
Yes, no, that's an ongoing process, see previous point.
Yes I've seen your rewrites. I mostly like them. Originally I had in mind just the sheer number of rules for the sake of roleplay.
For example these two snips of your (Karlotta), already condensed rewrite of Liberty laws:
Quote:1.1 Judgment, Punishment, and Compliance
Individuals conducting criminal activities, or being part of criminal groups, will be subject to on-site punishment by officers of the Liberty forces, ranging from a verbal warning to immediate use of lethal force. Credit fines levied on the spot in space may be up to ten million credits.
Further legal action may follow if applicable. Fines levied via the neural net can be of any value, but can only be issued by the Primary Fleets of the Liberty Forces.
Judgment of officers on duty are to be abided by, but they can be challenged by contacting their superiors. The aggrieved individual has the right to inform officers of their intention to challenge their judgement, but threatening officers in any way is unacceptable.
All officers are subject to judicial review of their actions, and will be answerable to a criminal court of law if their punishments are found to be unjustly harsh or lenient.
Attempts to mislead civilians or Liberty Forces about the meaning or content of the law fall under subsection 2.5 Obstructing the Course of Justice.
1.2 Reporting Criminal Activities
Law abiding civilians within Liberty can report crimes un-witnessed by officers of the law so they can protect them against criminal entities, via intercom or neural net. For the latter option, follow the instructions given in the Liberty Criminal Registry to file a report.
Those who report crimes must be able to provide meaningful evidence.
Quote:2.4 Non-violent Crimes
Impersonating an Officer: Falsely claiming to be part of any branch of the Liberty Forces.
Public Indecency: Includes, but is not limited to, being nude or semi-nude, participating or instigating acts of sexual nature, and displaying explicit material in the public domain.
Flying Under the Influence of Intoxicants: Piloting whilst affected by the use of substances that impair the ability to fly in a safe manner.
Causing a Public Disturbance: Encouraging or being part of a public disturbance, which includes, but is not limited to, verbal or physical altercations, pollution, or destruction of property.
They're very forgettable, obvious, just text for the sake of text rules. No one is going to remember or take the time to read them.
Ideally, there needs to be a standardized template. One thing for certain though: all the 'laws' posts by unlawfuls and factions that can't even enforce laws per their IDs should be in their own faction sections, not cluttering up the laws of Sirius thread.
Some of it is for extra immersion, some of it probably because experiences people made with "you got nothing on me nothing I did was against the law" types.
I think a good start would be to give House Governments a maximum number of words to use in their laws, and then they can decide what is important enough to keep.
We do currently have a FLHook command that allows for up to 4,000 characters of text to be placed in a dialogue box with a scroll bar for ease of readability. This limit includes XML coding. For anyone who wants to look at the current usage, type in /helpmenu.
I would like it if each House could provide a digest of their laws for display in-game, which would effectively be a condensed bullet point guide to the laws most likely to impact day-to-day gameplay. Restrictions on ship types, contraband rules, that sort of thing.
Think of it as a "Pilot's Legal Primer" instead of the full extent of the law for that territory.
(04-19-2020, 08:18 PM)jammi Wrote: [ -> ]Think of it as a "Pilot's Legal Primer" instead of the full extent of the law for that territory.
Having 2 sets of laws, or 2 sets of rules, is likely to cause more confusion than cutting down on the useless fluff in the longer versions.
Let's make bigger version as Tutorial which can become outdated