In the spirit of me doing secretarial bits to push things forward, I'm sharing a draft text for a revised official faction system that the mods and admins have been considering. The intent here is to gather community feedback before anything moves forward.

The core purpose of this proposal is to try and push for quality improvements in the server's official factions. This means rewarding factions that provide an engaging and entertaining presence in the game itself, and potentially clearing away the ones who don't.

This evidently means the current system of monitoring activity alone isn't going to cut it, and a more qualitative approach is needed. Zombie factions that clock in their hours and then go into hibernation really aren't good exemplars of anything worth promoting.

This fundamentally cuts to the core of what official factions are actually for. It means you're a sub-community within Discovery that staff feels happy promoting and recommending new players join.

They should be exemplars of their NPC faction or chosen role, providing a friendly, welcoming environment for new players. That should also include a willingness to teach and improve, while also driving interest / catalysing activity in the regions they inhabit.

We want you to be groups where people can see a tag logging into the server and automatically know they can look forward to a fun interaction. Currently, I couldn't in good faith say that this is a common reaction to many official factions.

This proposal also looks to tackle other low effort behaviour from both players and factions, such "ninjaing" - people being anonymously drafted into factions for the sole purpose of using shared ships for combat, with minimal interest in the group's roleplay or playing an actual character.

So, without further ado, here we go:

Official faction system proposal

1 - ACTIVITY TRACKER REQUIREMENTS

1.1 - Any faction with a unified faction tag, ID, and IFF may pay 5,000,000 credits to be listed on the Faction Activity Tracker.
1.2 - Any faction that fails to maintain (1) one day of activity within a two-month review period will be stripped from the tracker.

2 - OFFICIALDOM APPLICATION REQUIREMENTS

2.1 - In order to apply for officialdom, an unofficial faction must:

2.1.a - Have three or more active members, including one designated leader and at least one designated second-in-command.
2.1.b - Have been listed on the Faction Activity Tracker for at least one month.
2.1.c - Have the following information posted publicly about their faction:

i - Faction Description, Diplomacy, ID, and IFF
ii - Public Roster (members may be anonymous, but they must be revealed to staff during the officialdom process).
iii - Public Recruitment
iv - Feedback Thread

2.2 - Officialdom Applications will be judged on the same standards as all existing official factions, during the next full Official Faction review period. If a faction application is denied, they are welcomed to submit an application during the next review period addressing the staff and community’s concerns.

3. OFFICIAL FACTION REQUIREMENTS

3.1 - Official Factions are groups that the Discovery Community and Staff are comfortable advertising as high quality sub-communities to enjoy the game, mod, and server in. As such, the Discovery Staff will routinely review the activity and behavior of all Official Factions every two months.

3.1.a - As part of this review process, each official faction will submit a report detailing a broad overview of their current in-roleplay and out-of-roleplay goals, ongoing events, and challenges. Links to ongoing story threads and in-game footage of events are encouraged.
3.1.b - Factions who have their officialdom suspended will not lose any of their official faction rights, but are expected to make improvements on issues noted by the staff in their previous review period. Failure to do so will result in a loss of official status.

3.2 - All Official Factions are expected to:

3.2.a - Have three or more active members, including one designated leader and at least one designated second-in-command.
3.2.b Have the following information publicly accessible and up-to-date:

i - Faction Description, Diplomacy, Tag, ID, and IFF
ii - Public Roster (members not in a leadership role may be publicly anonymous, but their identities must be revealed to the staff team).
iii - Public Recruitment Thread/Channel
iv - Feedback Thread

3.4.c - Maintain Community Standards. Factions are expected to promote good behavior both in-game and out. Repeated sanctions, general toxicity, and unwillingness to address feedback are grounds for loss of official status.
3.4.d - Promote Faction Activity. Factions are expected to maintain a level of in-game and forum presence, and should strive to promote events and activities with other groups to foster activity across the game.
3.4.e - Exemplify Faction Quality. Factions are expected to remain consistent with vanilla and Discovery lore, where possible. Factions representing an NPC faction should generally act in a manner befitting that faction’s lore relationships and objectives.

4 - OFFICIAL FACTION MEMBERS

4.1 - Membership of an Official Faction requires a character (or characters) played exclusively by one person to be listed on the public roster of the faction. This means ship names and their corresponding character should be listed, even if the name of the actual player is not recorded on the public roster.

4.1.a - Unless the character is a founding member of the faction, a recruitment post or other documented, publicly accessible roleplay should explain their entry to the faction.
4.1.b - “Ninjaing”, or flying ships belonging to an Official Faction without prior roleplayed character membership, is prohibited.

4.2 - Players may be members of as many Official Factions as they are comfortable with, however they may only hold a leadership position in one Official Faction.
4.3 - In the case that members of an Official Faction disagree with the direction of the faction, they are advised to handle the dispute privately with faction leadership. If this fails to resolve the issue, faction members may ask for a Vote of No Confidence, whereby staff will privately poll all members of the official faction as to whether or not they believe the Faction Leader and/or Second-in-Command(s) should be replaced.

In the case of a successful vote, or in other cases of gross inactivity or misconduct, the Administrative Team retains the right to remove the leader(s) of an Official Faction and replace them with other member(s) of the community, as needed.

5 - OFFICIAL FACTION RIGHTS

5.1 - Official Factions are entitled to the creation of a custom ID representing their NPC faction, or a unique faction if no NPC faction exists. In general these IDs are not more powerful than indie IDs, but may offer tweaks to better align the ID with the faction’s playstyle.
5.2 - Official Factions are entitled to the creation of a subforum in the “Official Player Factions” section for their faction’s usage.
5.3 - Official Factions are entitled to the creation of a player faction IFF to represent their faction, if desired. This is required for factions with no representative NPC faction, factions representing a Generic ID NPC Faction (Freelancers, Pirates, Zoners, etc.), or factions that wish to deviate heavily from their affiliation’s established canon. Accepting a player faction IFF relinquishes any control the player faction has over any NPC faction or its players.
5.4 - Official Factions representing a given NPC faction may:

5.4.a - Exercise a level of in-game and forum authority over players of the same IFF. They may enforce roleplay consequences on players of the same IFF, as long as the roleplay follows established canon.
5.4.b - Request that an individual player or faction be set hostile to their represented NPC faction. Players and factions set hostile in this way may treat any player of the requesting faction as a hostile target within their ZOI.
5.4.c - Temporarily restrict the ability of individual player ships to dock on their NPC faction’s bases with the /nodock command. House Police factions may additionally prevent player ships from docking on any House Police, Military, Intelligence, or Corporate faction base.
5.4.d - Act as a representative in the House Government if they represent a House Police, Military, Intelligence, or Corporate faction.
5.4.e - Enforce RP consequences upon players, factions, and bases breaking House Laws within House Space.

5.5 - All Official Factions may, at any time:

5.5.a - Create an Official Faction restart locked to members of the Official Faction, starting on a base of the faction’s choosing with a fully equipped fighter and the Player Faction ID.
5.5.b - Deploy a single Forward Deployment Ship (a Core 1 POB with two weapons platforms that may be deployed freely once every two weeks). While deployed, an FDS extends any ID with a matching IFF’s ZOI to the system it resides in. FDS deployment location must make in-roleplay sense given the Faction ZOI and ongoing RP. Staff reserves the right to refuse deployment if the desired location is found to be impossible to achieve inRP.
5.5.c - Equip “faction flair pieces including insignia, logos, color schemes, et cetera, pending their creation and approval by the Art Development Team.

5.6 - Official Factions may, on a monthly basis select one of the following:

5.6.a - Select one mineable commodity as a “priority”, conferring a 3.5x Mining Bonus on the Official Faction ID. Factions with no mining bonuses may not apply.
5.6.b - Select one non-mineable commodity as a “priority”, conferring a discount for purchase and/or profit bonus on sale while using the Official Faction ID.
5.6.c - Select one refinable commodity as a “priority”, conferring an enhanced POB manufacturing discount and / or increased refining speed.