Discovery Gaming Community

After almost a year in the making, the Independent Miners Guild History document is finally completed. The aim of this project was to provide a single point of reference for those players wanting to know more about the factions history and progression up until the current Freelancer Discovery date (817AS).

This file does not go into vast detail about every planet or station the Guild has been on. However, it does give a general reason for a stations construction or other Guild action. These limited disclosures have been made purposely, so that players can still uncover new information on these bases ingame. The mod is called Discovery, after all.

In the beginning of joining the IMG faction, I was amazed at how little people knew of the Guilds history, the origins of bases, and even what was meant to be our correct RP. Half the players I went to for help (some of them rather highly respected in the discovery community) believed facts contrary to what I had uncovered myself previously. After significant cross checking I found that a number of players had false assumptions of the IMGs origins, possibly contributing to the community distaste of the guilds size, zone of influence, and assumed power in respect to their shipline.

This file uses information gleaned from almost half a dozen sources, including those infocards present in vanilla Freelancer and the Discovery Mod. The reasons that ties the progression from one station or event to another however are based upon the highest probability (and most logical) scenario, created by me with the advice of directors (current and previous) of the official IMG faction and figureheads of the Colonial Remnant faction. Special thanks is also is also given to Dusty Lens, who enlightened me about the wonders of the fldev program for searching infocards, and gave a few thoughts that ultimately affected the way how the IMGs history is outlined.

Unfortunately, due to the age of this game and how long this file has taken to complete, some of the websites used now no longer exist. Some information, such as the origin of Freistadt base and its approximate date of construction, I fear might now only available in this document. This also makes it harder for to prove that the facts in here are legitimate, so I hope enough trust can be given when I say that the dates and other miscellaneous facts on vanilla bases, to the best of my knowledge, are not made up.

Well, thats not entirely the case I lied. Sorry. The date of the IMGs occupation of Freeport 4 was fabricated to fit the logical RP and development progression of the Guild. This is because no information on this date could be found. Also, the date of the first IMG base ever constructed, Cardiff Mining Facility, was altered backwards 100 years as the addition of South Shields Refinery was not properly cross referenced. Why not change the construction date of South Shields instead? Well, for one, you would then have to change the construction dates on all the other stations in the Newcastle system, and cross check that youre not breaking the histories of those factions too. In short, while it is not ideal, the alteration of one vanilla infocard (and one character in that infocard at that) is a lot easier than changing all the infocards for an added system less work for the developers.

If accepted by the Discovery community (I dont see a reason not to..) There are a number of hopes for how this will affect the IMG:

• It will give a single resource where players can look and decide where their characters RP will fit best. Previously you had to either ask someone or search through half of the internet and fldev to find out. Now you can just read this.
  
• It will help remove some of the problems the IMG as a whole are experiencing. Arguably, the IMG is one of the factions that have the largest number of splinter groups in the server. Dont get me wrong, having many splinter groups isnt necessarily a bad thing, and for a highly decentralised group such as the IMG it is explainable inRP. However, having a large number of separate groups for one faction can also create problems for that faction as a whole. I believe that one of the contributing factors on why the IMG has so many unofficial factions is that the Guild has such ambiguous history and RP. This is an attempt to reduce that ambiguousness and as such help make RP development for current groups easier and less conflicting with each other.
  
• It will help identify the most logical response for events that occur in future mod releases. Having the IMGs whole story progression gives a solid base to see what factors influenced their previous actions. This may help with determining or understanding probable courses of action in future events.
  
• It is a valuable addition for those players that like reading about certain entities, stations, etc. And helps increase the immersion of those that interact with the IMG ingame and on forums. One of the aims of the Discovery Mod is to replace the content that was removed or left out in vanilla Freelancer. This document will help contribute to this goal.
  

Enough rambling.. Without further ado here is the Proposed IMG Faction history. Unfortunately it is nowhere near as flashy as say, the Nomad Lore, but that might change in future iterations (amendments would be needed after the next mod version). Please give relevant/constructive criticism, comments and enquiries in the following thread <here>. Thanks.

http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0Bxn_4_...uthkey=COTJ6fQN

Quote:With Aland shipyards recently coming into operation, new interest has been observed from Corsair
raiders. Although the Guild has used the tradelanes between Rheinland and Bretonia for many years,
the Corsairs inability to process raw ores on their stations and planets has given the IMG an unexpected
immunity to piracy. However,

I'm not sure where this came from. Or what source you pulled it from. The Corsairs will beat you silly at every possible turn. They will extort you. They will blow you up and sell your ore to a Junker. They will blow you up just to blow you up. The Corsairs have less than no use for the IMG in the Omegas.

You people feed the Hessians and fly wingtip to wingtip with them. Do you think that has somehow gone unnoticed?

As far as I'm concerned you guys are commercial entity public enemy number 1, right in front of Bret corps.

I agree with Dusty, IMG has 4 Bases within poking distance of the Corsairs. Cardiff and its field clearly state Corsairs are a big issue, and Cardiff being the most vulnerable and main commercial interest and aside from the planet means it is a prime target for corsairs. Freistatd and Aland are amazingly big targets for Corsairs, the ice field which now holds Aland (shipyard in asteroids?) was the prime piracy location for Corsairs, also the spot where they bumped into Hessians, Freistatd for its major help to Hessians. The hood frequently sees corsairs attacks on the IMG moving gold to New London and again, a crippled batteship is an easier target than a heavily fortified base surrounded by mines (despite the fact that the Hood ended up with fully operational bs guns for some reason). Don't play dumb, just because you're enemies with Outcasts doesn't mean you should be neutral/allied to corsairs like CR, the IMG is -not- CR.

Which brings me to the next issue, your claims to being a Tau republic mini house thingy, self sufficient and all, is quite amazing, and a leap from Vanila. First of all abandoning your long time partner from Vanilla Gateway is fairly negligent of Vanilla RP, IMG and Gateway are meant to be as one corporate alliance; like BMM and Bowex. And secondly, the fact you have major corporate interests in Bretonia, Omega and Magellan/Coronado means you cannot focus yourselves in tau, you're a corporation and nothing more, acting like one might go a long way.

The story you wrote, which is mostly in accordance with Vanilla ignoring the Newcastle bit works to show the Bretonian Private corporation bit, but as soon as you get to non vanilla it all goes to hell, I'd take a good look at your faction. If you want to play like that, you're going to need to do something radical to show the changes, give Java, Falkland and Holman to CR and let someone who actually will play IMG like the Bretonia friendly corporation it is use their non-tau bases and relations with Gateway (not quite a serious suggestion).

I can understand the storyline being bothersome, but a lot of this is self engineered and quite out of control. Maybe you should treat Tau as an area that has been neutered and under the boot of GRN, and focus your activities in Omega, Bretonia and Coronado instead? I'm getting the feeling that you're mimicing CR and not actualy playing IMG anymore.

wiki Wrote:Seeking to follow their profession freely, the Independent Miners Guild was founded by Rheinlandish laborers who felt systematically exploited by Kruger and Daumann. Being a small and poor group of workers, not capable of defending its mining rounds in the new, and for most parts unexplored, solar systems of the Omegas, the IMG got threatened and expelled by the security wings of Rhineland’s corporations. Forced to leave home, they settled in Bretonian space.

What's with this part? The wiki says the IMG originates from Rheinland.