Question about Liberty Navy rights

[JohnRambo]

If my understanding of the rules were not correct, the [LN] would have been sanctioned long ago. But if you are convinced that they're breaking the rules, you don't need to discuss it with me. You can just file a report, and if the admins agree with your interpretation, the faction will receive a sanction or warning and the [LN] player involved may also receive a sanction.

I dont want anyone to get sanctioned, I want everyone to be on the same page when it comes to understanding what is allowed and what isnt, and when it comes to understanding what is considered extremely poor behavior.

And, practically speaking, your last part is correct. The issuing of those orders is not a problem - their enforcement is. If they are not enforced, because the person issuing them cannot enforce them by server rules, then the order itself is powerless.

The issuing of those orders is not a problem. You say official navy guys ordering other navies to kill civilians, to side with pirates, to let pirates pirate freely is not a problem.

Awesome.

Of course, any official faction can't stop you performing a canon role, such as killing pirates, but they can make your life more difficult if you try to do it.

Oh but they can. If I dont know the server rules exactly (or if I just dont think the navy leaders will isten to me more than to him), they can mislead me into believing that I have to obey or horrible things will happen to me. Or they can mislead other indy navy players into believing that, who will then stop me from doing my canon RP.

And you know what?

Thats not theoretical. They were doing that pretty much every single time I see them.

Then again...

Intent of Rule 4.7:

The intent of this right is to allow official faction leadership to also provide leadership, with discretion, to independent players, to improve server gameplay, fairplay, and roleplay.

This right is NOT intended to provide the official faction leadership the right to exercise power for its own sake.

An example of "good" exercise of these rights is to require an independent player to not utilize a heavy captial ship against a smaller lone fighter or bomber, or to not enter an existing fight where entering the fight would unbalance it greatly, or to require the independent player to take action or not take action in support of good RP. (ie, ordering the escort of a diplomat, or something equally creative)

An example of "bad" exercise of this right would be to require the player to patrol an empty system, for no particular reason. Requiring the independent to investigate a particular suspicious ship, though, would be legitimate.

An offical faction consistently abusing this right, could lose it at the Admins' discretion.

Notice that the example of a "good" exercise of the faction right to issue orders to indies is an example of the leader of the faction preventing the indie from doing what their ID allows them to do. Lets make an example that I dealt with many times in the past.

2 [LN] Guardians vs 2 Pirate Sabres
LN indie battleship comes along, wrote "hostiles on scanner, preparing weapons and engaging" and starts shooting.

At this point, according to the wording of 4.7, he's absolutely doing what he should be doing. He's a Navy guy, Pirates are enemies, he should kill the pirate.

But, in this example - and it's only an example because the exertion of this right is discretionary as well as Cannon stating that his is an example only - the official faction is allowed, even encouraged, to enforce fairness using 4.7 over the canon of that faction.

Confusing, don't you think? That this rule has quite the contradiction means that the lines of what is acceptable and what isn't are blurred. This gives admins the leeway required to sanction actions that they believe to be abusive while allowing those they deem to be acceptable. The other consequence of leaving the lines blurred is that people don't know how far they can push the rules before they get sanctioned, which is very handy for sanctioning certain individuals who like to push boundaries.

[/quote]

It's only confusing for a while. If you seen it enough it becomes crystal clear:

1 noob indy VHF, 1 noob indy cruiser or GB, and 1 [LN] guy sit at manhattan.

1 l33t unlawful sabre comes along.

Noob cruiser: Pirate! Stand down! You are pirate! I protect people! Engage!

[LN]: THATS NOT FAIR!!! STAND DOWN! OR I BUST YOU UP WITH MY PRIMARY FLEETENESS; ALSO THAT PIRATE DIDNT DO NO CRIMES AND IS MY FRIEND AND ALSO EX ADMIRAL OF THE PRIMARY NAVY!

Noob Cruiser: Ok.

Noob VHF: What is primary navy?

[LN]: Your Fuhrers.

Noob VHF: Oooooh ok.

l33t Sabre: Hello noob navy VHF. You are noob and I am girl and I kill you! Pew Pew!

Noob cruiser: I defend! Engaging!

[LN]: THATS NOT FAIR! CRUISER AND VHF AGAINST ONE PIRATE VHF IS NOT FAIR! I AM GUARDIAN OF FAIRNESS OF THE UNIVERSE AND I COMMAND THEE! STAND DOWN AND DONT BE SO UNF....

Noob VHF was pwned by l33t sabregirl

l33t SAbre: lol

[LN]: rofl. Next time I get to be the pirate.

[McNeo]

I dont want anyone to get sanctioned, I want everyone to be on the same page when it comes to understanding what is allowed and what isnt, and when it comes to understanding what is considered extremely poor behavior.

This isn't going to happen, people always have vastly different opinions depending on their positions. The only opinions that matter are those that enforce the rules. If you avoid sanctioning people, you aren't actually advancing your cause in any meaningful way since these opinions are more often than not very deeply entrenched. Plus, I've seen many instances of "I don't want to sanction people", being a cover for "I didn't record any evidence/don't think admins will agree with me", so I am suitably jaded by skepticism.

The issuing of those orders is not a problem. You say official navy guys ordering other navies to kill civilians, to side with pirates, to let pirates pirate freely is not a problem.

Awesome.

If you summarise some of my actions in the past in only a few words without understanding the surrounding circumstances, I've done all of those things. Although, to avoid ordering others to shoot civilians, I did it myself with the help of those bound to obey (basically other [LN]). If they disobey the Laws of Liberty, its absolutely allowed - laws which are written with just enough ambiguity to RPly allow force in almost every situation. Coincidentally, the server rules are written this way too - if you piss off the admins enough but you haven't broken any specific rules, they will just sanction you for 1.2.

It's only confusing for a while. If you seen it enough it becomes crystal clear:

1 noob indy VHF, 1 noob indy cruiser or GB, and 1 [LN] guy sit at manhattan.

1 l33t unlawful sabre comes along.

Noob cruiser: Pirate! Stand down! You are pirate! I protect people! Engage!

[LN]: THATS NOT FAIR!!! STAND DOWN! OR I BUST YOU UP WITH MY PRIMARY FLEETENESS; ALSO THAT PIRATE DIDNT DO NO CRIMES AND IS MY FRIEND AND ALSO EX ADMIRAL OF THE PRIMARY NAVY!

Noob Cruiser: Ok.

l33t Sabre: Hello noob navy VHF. You are noob and I am girl and I kill you! Pew Pew!

Noob cruiser: I defend! Engaging!

[LN]: THATS NOT FAIR! CRUISER AND VHF AGAINST ONE PIRATE VHF IS NOT FAIR! I AM GUARDIAN OF FAIRNESS OF THE UNIVERSE AND I COMMAND THEE! STAND DOWN AND DONT BE SO UNF....

Noob VHF was pwned by l33t sabregirl

l33t SAbre: lol

[LN]: rofl. Next time I get to be the pirate.

Funnily enough, I read that example you give and don't see a problem with it. If the pirate has spent time honing his skills to the point where he is better than 99% of the server, he should be rewarded for this by increased success rate in battles, not shot at by everybody in their capital ship because they can't beat him in their fighters.

Furthermore in your example, if the enemy pilot really is uberleet, then everyone's fight is ruined. The cruiser wont kill anything unless it magics itself into a gunboat and the enemy doesn't run, the fighter that was fighting him doesn't get to hit anything and the uberleet pilot can't kill anything despite the time he's invested into making himself more skilled.

It's definitely a point of view as to whether a noob VHF vs a pro VHF is more or less balanced than a noob VHF + gunboat/cruiser vs a pro VHF. If you want to make that call, work your way up to official faction lead. If you get there, I'm sure your opinion will change significantly if you spend the significant amount of time and effort it would take to reach that position.

As for your other bits, you separated my point about how official factions cant stop you from doing canon things in a bit of a silly way, since I highlighted an instance where they can. An instance provided for by the rules that state it cannot be done. This implies that there are more instances of this, but also that the judgment of their legitmacy is determined by the admins, should any instances of it come to their attention.

[Govedo13]

It's definitely a point of view as to whether a noob VHF vs a pro VHF is more or less balanced than a noob VHF + gunboat/cruiser vs a pro VHF.

Indeed this is the real deal and the problem of this topic in one sentence- people have different views on the situation. The good thing is that the rules allow both so everyone could be happy. Also the whole bunch of you forgets that in this situation even if the official player in question was the faction leader himself he have no right to request FR5 for Rambo since he was acting in RP and in canon. Even if they try to request one the admins would deny it.

If you want to make that call, work your way up to official faction lead. If you get there, I'm sure your opinion will change significantly if you spend the significant amount of time and effort it would take to reach that position.

It depends really, I can assure you that the half of the faction leaders does not care about fair fights. When I was faction leader I didn't liked better players slaughtering new players that are around since 1 month or so- small or new factions cannot afford to be selective or restrictive with their players, not everyone have such huge playerbase like Liberty Navy.
I side with Rambo here- for me the fair fight is one where the sides are even not numerically but in skills.
Shortly summarized it is matter of Point of View, the two sides have no chance to agree with each other at anything since both PoVs are totally different.

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Official faction players that are often accused of elitism, never deploy them and have those weird, immersion killing "fair fight/dueling" suicidal hobbies. (yes, i've seen enough of those lolduels, where house military with overwhelming force on the field willingly loses a pilot in a duel. ffs.)

[McNeo]

It's definitely a point of view as to whether a noob VHF vs a pro VHF is more or less balanced than a noob VHF + gunboat/cruiser vs a pro VHF.

Indeed this is the real deal and the problem of this topic in one sentence- people have different views on the situation. The good thing is that the rules allow both so everyone could be happy. Also the whole bunch of you forgets that in this situation even if the official player in question was the faction leader himself he have no right to request FR5 for Rambo since he was acting in RP and in canon. Even if they try to request one the admins would deny it.

I agree, in this case, if a reputation change request were made, it would be denied. I wouldn't expect the current HC to make such a request anyway, it's quite clear that it would not be enforceable. If anything, inRP the [LN] is wrong and a complaint made by Rambo inRP to LN HC should result in a slap at least. Not a demotion I don't think, but definitely a warning. That might have a delay effect on future promotions.

It would require screenshots and stuff, and considering this thread is already here, I think it would be perceived as an attempt to get back at him by leveraging RP consequences. Nevertheless, not enough people complain inRP about RP events, and then wonder why their complaints were never acted upon. Of course, this opens up a whole new area of ambiguity - how much can the HC of a faction be trusted inRP? Are there other RP factors that affect their decision? There's plenty of reasons why people don't get the desired outcome when they do make a complaint, and most of those are assumed to be OORP factors rather than inRP ones.

If you want to make that call, work your way up to official faction lead. If you get there, I'm sure your opinion will change significantly if you spend the significant amount of time and effort it would take to reach that position.

It depends really, I can assure you that the half of the faction leaders does not care about fair fights. When I was faction leader I didn't liked better players slaughtering new players that are around since 1 month or so- small or new factions cannot afford to be selective or restrictive with their players, not everyone have such huge playerbase like Liberty Navy.
I side with Rambo here- for me the fair fight is one where the sides are even not numerically but in skills.
Shortly summarized it is matter of Point of View, the two sides have no chance to agree with each other at anything since both PoVs are totally different.

The way PvP is structured in discovery means that a fighter, however skilled, has virtually no chance against anything bigger than a bomber. It would be better if perhaps 3 or 4 poorly skilled fighters turned up to shoot a uberleet pirate, since if he's skilled, chances are he has a reputation (whether as a player or a character) and [LN] should take those factors into account when deciding what orders to issue. It is rare that you have the right resources to balance a fight in terms of skill, however.

Although what you say at the end is correct - it's a point of view, and currently irreconcilable. The only way to make your opinions a reality is to get into that position of power and responsibility, and enact them yourself. You did once, and if Rambo sticks with it, maybe he will too.

[JohnRambo]

This isn't going to happen, people always have vastly different opinions depending on their positions. The only opinions that matter are those that enforce the rules. If you avoid sanctioning people, you aren't actually advancing your cause in any meaningful way since these opinions are more often than not very deeply entrenched. Plus, I've seen many instances of "I don't want to sanction people", being a cover for "I didn't record any evidence/don't think admins will agree with me", so I am suitably jaded by skepticism.

And this "if you think something was wrong go file a sanction report" line is kinda getting old too dont you think? Also a widespread way to avoid a discussion.

The issuing of those orders is not a problem. You say official navy guys ordering other navies to kill civilians, to side with pirates, to let pirates pirate freely is not a problem.

Awesome.

If you summarise some of my actions in the past in only a few words without understanding the surrounding circumstances, I've done all of those things. Although, to avoid ordering others to shoot civilians, I did it myself with the help of those bound to obey (basically other [LN]). If they disobey the Laws of Liberty, its absolutely allowed - laws which are written with just enough ambiguity to RPly allow force in almost every situation. Coincidentally, the server rules are written this way too - if you piss off the admins enough but you haven't broken any specific rules, they will just sanction you for 1.2.

You know, if you're just going to answer "everything is ok because admins dont sancion us" there's very little point in trying to talk to you at all. Then there's very little point in writing down rules at all.

But let me try to make this something like a conversation anyway.

Reminder: We were talking about [LN] members ordering these things when they are NOT coverd by the "can not order to go against canon RP" clause. You were saying yes they can order it, as long as they dont administer punishment. Now when I repeat what you said you now say "oh but its ok if the people they are ordering to shoot disobey the laws of liberty". We were talking about orders against people who did NOT break the laws of liberty. Such as me, while I was telling the Hacker to surrender, before he attacked me.

Funnily enough, I read that example you give and don't see a problem with it. If the pirate has spent time honing his skills to the point where he is better than 99% of the server, he should be rewarded for this by increased success rate in battles, not shot at by everybody in their capital ship because they can't beat him in their fighters.

Interesting that you dont see a problem. Let me tell you where I see it:

The [LN] guy is using his faction status to give orders that dont make sinse IRP to help a pirate score an easy kill against his own faction. The RP justification is horrible, he is claiming to be fair when acutally he is helping his friend score a win against a guy who has no chance, and he is using a faction status which was given to him to serve as an example to do it.

The guy in the cruiser has spent time grinding credits just like the fighter spent time training. The guy in the sabre is the one going towards the fight, fully knowing what should await him there, and is rellying on OORP motivated crummy RP to get a blue message, without running the risk of being killed since his friend will take care of that.

Furthermore in your example, if the enemy pilot really is uberleet, then everyone's fight is ruined. The cruiser wont kill anything unless it magics itself into a gunboat and the enemy doesn't run, the fighter that was fighting him doesn't get to hit anything and the uberleet pilot can't kill anything despite the time he's invested into making himself more skilled.

Then the uberleet pilot could look for other fights. FOr example against his [LN] budy, and not in front of Manhattan.

Instead they choose to get an easy kill against a noob through abuse of faction status.

It's definitely a point of view as to whether a noob VHF vs a pro VHF is more or less balanced than a noob VHF + gunboat/cruiser vs a pro VHF. If you want to make that call, work your way up to official faction lead. If you get there, I'm sure your opinion will change significantly if you spend the significant amount of time and effort it would take to reach that position.

The guy could have taken his sabre to Manhattan, lured them into the debris field, and then his [LN] friend could have closed the trap with what ever pirate ship he wanted. That would have been legit. What they do is lame.

Not sure what call you want me to make in the other part of what you said there, but it looks like you're just trying to say that I'm not a faction leader so my opinion is irrelevant and I cant decide anything anyway.

As for your other bits, you separated my point about how official factions cant stop you from doing canon things in a bit of a silly way, since I highlighted an instance where they can. An instance provided for by the rules that state it cannot be done. This implies that there are more instances of this, but also that the judgment of their legitmacy is determined by the admins, should any instances of it come to their attention.

Not sure what you mean there, and what other bits.

I'm guessing what you'Re trying to say here is that you didnt at all get my point that even if people dont really have to fear consequences from the official faction if they ignore their orders, they can still be fooled into thinking they will, and be manipulated into following more poor RP orders than they would otherwise?

If you tell them IRP that they will suffer severe consequences although they wouldnt if the LN leaders act according to their limitations, you are still stopping those who are gullible enough from doing their canon RP. Its like trying to fool people into thinking they will get sanctioned. If you fool them to OORPly think something (like making the players think that they will get sanctioned, or set red to navy, for doing something that was perfectly within navy RP), it doesnt matter if you did it IRP or OORP. The consequence, and the intent, are the same.

[JohnRambo]

I agree, in this case, if a reputation change request were made, it would be denied. I wouldn't expect the current HC to make such a request anyway, it's quite clear that it would not be enforceable. If anything, inRP the [LN] is wrong and a complaint made by Rambo inRP to LN HC should result in a slap at least. Not a demotion I don't think, but definitely a warning. That might have a delay effect on future promotions.

It would require screenshots and stuff, and considering this thread is already here, I think it would be perceived as an attempt to get back at him by leveraging RP consequences. Nevertheless, not enough people complain inRP about RP events, and then wonder why their complaints were never acted upon. Of course, this opens up a whole new area of ambiguity - how much can the HC of a faction be trusted inRP? Are there other RP factors that affect their decision? There's plenty of reasons why people don't get the desired outcome when they do make a complaint, and most of those are assumed to be OORP factors rather than inRP ones.

Ok I've tried and tried to make this as clear as I could.

I dont think Morse is the problem.

I think the fact that your faction RPs as the superiors of every indy navy is the problem.

It creates arrogance, bad RP, abuse of faction status, squabbling, hatred. Its straight down stupid to do it.

Tell your guys to talk to an eye to eye level to indy players, discourage both official and indy players to outrnak each other with faction status or larger ship, so that the retarded situations like described in the first post dont occur in hte first place.

If you hadnt told Morse that he's the superior of all indies, none of this would have happened. And 80% of other squabbles and between navy wouldnt have happened.

Ok now you started talking about PvP fighter balance.

That was not the point.

The point was that he helped someone win an unfair fight under the pretext of fairness enforced though faction status and non canon IRP orders.

Like you'Re even trying to get any of what I'm saying.

So I'll just wait till the admins (and not some other random guy giving his opinion) answer my questions.

Good night.

[McNeo]

Sanctions are the way the rules are enforced. If there are no sanctions, no rules were broken or need to be enforced. You came here questioning the [LN]'s ability to follow the rules, which is not really debatable in this instance. I'm not sure what you want me to say, since that's what the whole rule/sanction system is built for. If I were truly avoiding discussion, I wouldn't be typing so much. The point I was trying to make is that these differences in opinion cannot really be reconciled by discussion, especially since many of the people you're talking to are very jaded by their experiences. Some go one way like Govedo, others go the other way like me. The rule/sanction system is the arbiter, and until those mechanisms are used, this is a discussion that will happen many times in the future with little result.

I like how you try to discredit what I say, but reasonable human beings understand the purpose of these systems, whether they like it or not.

We were talking about orders against people who did NOT break the laws of liberty. Such as me, while I was telling the Hacker to surrender, before he attacked me.

Then we go back to my first point about how these orders can be given but not enforced. They don't have to even be reasonable, humans aren't reasonable even 50% of the time, so why do characters have to be? The flexibility in the rules allows for people to roleplay believably flawed characters while protecting others from experiencing unreasonable consequences as a result of this.

Interesting that you dont see a problem. Let me tell you where I see it:

The [LN] guy is using his faction status to give orders that dont make sinse IRP to help a pirate score an easy kill against his own faction. The RP justification is horrible, he is claiming to be fair when acutally he is helping his friend score a win against a guy who has no chance, and he is using a faction status which was given to him to serve as an example to do it.

Or he's attempting to facilitate a duel between a pirate who wont back down and an indie pilot who wont back down. I have tried many many times to stop indies in every class of ships go up against people I know are pros, because they literally just feed bots and bats. Almost every time I'm ignored, and its (back in my day) Mara, Joe, Justin, Petko or Sina completely crushing while I'm sitting there facepalming with my table. I know they can beat randomnoob that wants to fight, but if I were to jump in, I would no longer be able to attempt to control the surrounding environment of people who are fighting or not, since people seem to just turn up and the fight becomes more and more one-sided. This means that, were I to engage, it would be 5-10 minutes before 3 more guys turn up to the fight. At this point, I'd have to disengage, because they sure as hell wont listen to me either. If I don't, I get a boring chase where the only person who can hit them is me, and if I do, the remaining pilots get slaughtered.

To be honest with you, I'd rather put my feet up or go shoot a smuggler. Of course, best case scenario is that I get to fight in such a way where the enemy fights back, but that's pretty rare unless a meet is privately arranged - in which case, why not just connecticut?

The guy in the cruiser has spent time grinding credits just like the fighter spent time training. The guy in the sabre is the one going towards the fight, fully knowing what should await him there, and is rellying on OORP motivated crummy RP to get a blue message, without running the risk of being killed since his friend will take care of that.

Fair fights are not RP. Lets be honest, no actual military fights fair. They are, however, part of the remit to promote gameplay and fairness, which are in Cannon's explanation of 4.7. This is where it comes from, and the justification for such actions.

It also takes a significantly longer time to become good at this game, than it does to trade for a cap 8 battleship. I can get one of those in a week starting with just a restart ship and FLCompanion. On the other hand, I've been playing this mod for seven years and I'm not really close to the most skilled players of this game, despite no-lifing this game for at least half of that time and spending a lot of time practicing relentlessly with practice partners into the small hours.

Maybe I would have more respect for capital ships if each one took a year to grind. As it stands, my most recent memories of capital ship combat revolves around me policing a fight to make sure dreads don't shoot fighters.

Then the uberleet pilot could look for other fights. FOr example against his [LN] budy, and not in front of Manhattan.

Instead they choose to get an easy kill against a noob through abuse of faction status.

The uberleet pirate pilot is not part of the official faction's responsibility so far as his actions are concerned. He can seek whatever fights he wants and there isn't anything anyone can do about it.

As I said earlier, I've been in many situations where I'd love to fight that uberleet pilot, but I can't because there are others which practically have the red mist in their eyes. Of course they get owned, but I'm not going to be part of that when I know that any fight between me (or in fact, one of the more skilled pilots that were once under my command) would be much more entertaining for both sides than a boring chase that lasts an hour and achieves nothing. Believe it or not, you can actually learn stuff from watching two pros bash their heads together.

Of course, that leaves indies out due to their skill level, something which they cant immediately change, so its not really healthy for the NPC faction as a whole. They get resentful that we stop them (on the off-chance they do listen to us), doubly so since we're fighting and they aren't. Then they call it elitist and accuse us of favouritism and whatnot, exactly the same as we get accused of in the opposite case as well. We resolve this issue by letting them fight and, if necessary, die, then having the real fight afterwards. Nobody ever learned anything from winning.

And that's in the best case scenario. I've had some cases where a lone VHF got ganked so hard by everybody that I just fly away and everybody forfeits their chance to have fun.

Furthermore, letting ganks like this proceed or joining in really does encourage two things:

1. They refuse to fight unless its on their terms

This means even less even fights, which means less fun. Of course I assume that the people fighting are the people who find it fun. If you want to RP and perceive that to be at odds with PvPing, then the whole discussion ends there.

2. When they do fight, they have the gank train rolling and we dont. Shoe on the other foot, and there ain't no brakes on these trains.

I don't have fun when the full weight of the Rheinland military descends on my Guardian, and I don't expect that a Wraith pilot has much fun when he's getting shot by the whole Liberty Navy. It's okay if its part of a larger engagement or serves a purpose, but if he's just flying about looking for a small fight and the whole Navy turns up, that's just not fun.

The guy could have taken his sabre to Manhattan, lured them into the debris field, and then his [LN] friend could have closed the trap with what ever pirate ship he wanted. That would have been legit. What they do is lame.

Not sure what call you want me to make in the other part of what you said there, but it looks like you're just trying to say that I'm not a faction leader so my opinion is irrelevant and I cant decide anything anyway.

Now I've said I don't like ganks, but if somebody takes their lone Sabre to Manhattan, they do deserve to be shooed away by a very large force. Now this means I have a silent list of exceptions in my mind for when overwhelming force is ok and when it isn't, which is a complicating factor since this makes it much harder to predict what decision I'd make if in that position.

As for the second bit, pretty much. If you have no way to enforce your opinion on how people should behave, your opinion is irrelevant. Now, that's not quite how social systems work, but your level of influence is certainly affected by whether you hold a position of authority or not. It might not be fair, and it might not sound right, but that's the way the world works. Discovery is no different. Your opinion is only as relevant as your ability to make it a reality - lots of people in the world have opinions about many things, including myself, but I'm well aware that my opinions are almost completely inconsequential in the greater scheme of things. It would be healthier if more people accepted this reality instead of fight futile battles over "rights" and stuff, but that's my opinion and getting into political territory.

I'm guessing what you'Re trying to say here is that you didnt at all get my point that even if people dont really have to fear consequences from the official faction if they ignore their orders, they can still be fooled into thinking they will, and be manipulated into following more poor RP orders than they would otherwise?

If you tell them IRP that they will suffer severe consequences although they wouldnt if the LN leaders act according to their limitations, you are still stopping those who are gullible enough from doing their canon RP. Its like trying to fool people into thinking they will get sanctioned. If you fool them to OORPly think something (like making the players think that they will get sanctioned, or set red to navy, for doing something that was perfectly within navy RP), it doesnt matter if you did it IRP or OORP. The consequence, and the intent, are the same.

I understand this point but I do not acknowledge it as valid. If people are tricked by this, then they are not sufficiently familiar with the rules to play on this server. Or rather, perhaps more tacitly, their lack of knowledge of the rules are not a problem that the official faction has to deal with. Official factions are lorekeepers, not rulekeepers. You can hardly blame somebody who understands the rules for abiding by those rules.

Instead, I'd suggest you blame the rules, since the actions around it wont change.

You can call it an abusive, but the line that separates legitimacy and abuse is one dictated by the circumstances surrounding the incident. Anybody familiar with the rules, which is a pretty big ask considering how complicated they are, knows exactly what can and can't be done to them by official factions, how to avoid things like reputation adjustments or how to kickstart them if they actually want it.

Faction members also want to play the game, and at the end of the day, they are responsible for their faction and their personal understanding of the server rules and any laws they are obliged to enforce. That's a pretty big list already, so I don't think it's fair to expect them to also check that everybody they interact with has the same understanding of the rules as they do.

Ok I've tried and tried to make this as clear as I could.

I dont think Morse is the problem.

I think the fact that your faction RPs as the superiors of every indy navy is the problem.

It creates arrogance, bad RP, abuse of faction status, squabbling, hatred. Its straight down stupid to do it.

Tell your guys to talk to an eye to eye level to indy players, discourage both official and indy players to outrnak each other with faction status or larger ship, so that the retarded situations like described in the first post dont occur in hte first place.

If you hadnt told Morse that he's the superior of all indies, none of this would have happened. And 80% of other squabbles and between navy wouldnt have happened.

Ok now you started talking about PvP fighter balance.

That was not the point.

The point was that he helped someone win an unfair fight under the pretext of fairness enforced though faction status and non canon IRP orders.

Like you'Re even trying to get any of what I'm saying.

So I'll just wait till the admins (and not some other random guy giving his opinion) answer my questions.

Good night.

You're funny. By submitting themselves to an authority that they are bound to obey, additional rules and regulations that they must follow, stricter expectations of their conduct both inRP and OORP and the deprivation of their ability to create Grand Fleet Star Admiral Von Berg commanding a fleet of Dreadnoughts, faction members are superior. If they were not, then what is the attraction of an official faction? Yet more restrictions, for what? If it's for RP, why could they not do it without the official faction tag?

Besides, it's not my faction anymore. In fact, I never led it, just co-led it at one point and then was SiC the rest of the time.

They will give you the same answer I've done. And that's if they respond, which I'd give about a 10% chance of happening.

But as I said in my first post in this thread...

It seems you have been given the correct answer, yet because it is not what you wanted to hear, you cling on to the hope that you will be proven correct. It's common to see, I do it too with certain things.

[Anaximander]

Just a small observation here:

By submitting themselves to an authority that they are bound to obey, additional rules and regulations that they must follow, stricter expectations of their conduct both inRP and OORP and the deprivation of their ability to create Grand Fleet Star Admiral Von Berg commanding a fleet of Dreadnoughts, faction members are superior.

It's funny how this is brought up time and again as a valid point, but when the "stricter expectations of conduct" aren't met by the players on the other end, a lot of factions just fold.

Like this thread a valid point was raised by the OP but rather than say "yeah we, as an official faction, shouldn't have tried to pressure you, an indie player, into non-canonical RP" and deal with it, all sorts of minor attempts at discrediting the OP are pulled out of the hat.

So what are these "stricter expectations of conduct" because quite frankly, playing this mod for 4+ years, I've yet to experience that?

P.S. Don't want to start a war, I just think it would be so great for the mod and community if (some) factions started to take their responsibility a bit more seriously rather than just use it as a slogan to hide behind. We've all got a responsibility to make this mod enjoyable to play for the next man, and a common interest in attracting and maintaining players, so it is counter-productive to make it a taboo to confront these issues.

[McNeo]

Im not sure what you mean by factions members folding when the stricter expectations of members aren't met by the player on the other end. I guess you mean that faction members dont uphold the standards that they are expected to do so when confronted by other players that dont either? If that is what you mean, then I can't really say anything except that it is just about impossible to have a fulfilling interaction with another player if only one player wants it. Official faction members shouldn't fall to that level and there may be consequences if those actions brought the faction into unacceptable disrepute, but if they withdraw from participating in that interaction, I can't blame them.

Conduct could be inRP or OORP actions. A lot of it comes from the restrictions of being in the faction and their adherence to those conditions. In the [LN], the emphasis is (or maybe was, back when I was relevant) on trying to keep battles fair and prevent non-combat interactions being interrupted. These are pretty imprecise and open to interpretation, which leads back to the difference in opinion that occurs. People perceive fairness differently, which is clearly demonstrated by this thread. What is right or wrong is also subject to opinion.

You won't really get a straight answer as to what good conduct is, only anecdotal examples or ambiguous statements like "dont be a douche". And of course, those are all open to interpretation as well. The best I can do is say that, when I was in a leadership position, I expected members of those factions to follow orders where relevant, especially in a fight, uphold whatever laws of the land were applicable, and avoid any other actions that would land the faction in hot water with the administrative staff. What did you hope or expect me to say?

You say you never saw any evidence of stricter expectations of conduct being a thing, but I've played this mod since my join date and my perceptions have been quite different. I know a great deal of people share your views and a fair few share mine. Since our experiences have been quite different and also represent a split of opinion in the community, that is a divide I don't see being bridged any time soon.

A faction is heavily influenced by the morals and play style of its leader and their small command cadre. Now I know not everyone agrees with how the [LN] is run, but that is unfortunately besides the point since in order to change it, you have to be in a position of relatively large influence inside that faction. The time that generally takes means you'll never get there unless you also find that faction fun to play.

As for what you think would be the correct response to this thread, the current high command would have given it had they believed it to be correct. There's nothing that says you can't roleplay an idiot wearing a badge, but the rules are in place to make sure you can't actually do anything of real consequence with that.

I doubt any of that will change your mind, nor is it meant to. I probably wouldn't be convinced by such an ambiguous explanation either were I in your position.

[JohnRambo]

Geeze louize here we go again.

I dont have time to answer all of your post now, so I will start now and keep editing it until I'm through with it. I want to make clear that I read all your post and have seen nothing untruths, twisting what I say, you doing backward flips on what you said, stuff I have already answerd before, and the usual mix. But I'll keep answering you anyway, because I really think that this needs to be talked about.

I'll mark the parts where I got to in each edit, it would be bet if you dont reaply until I'm through with the entire post. Yeah, that may take a day or two.

Sanctions are the way the rules are enforced. If there are no sanctions, no rules were broken or need to be enforced.

This is absolutely not true. Just because there was no sanction doenst mean there was no rule broken.

If there was a rule broken and not sanction, there is a whole plethora or reasons why that could be:
-the violation was not reported
-the admins thought the person was only reporting to get revenge
-the admins thought there was not enough evidence
-the admins thought the rule violation was minor and unintentional and did not harm gameplay
-the admins were to busy and the report was not writen in a way that made it easy for them to process it, for example no screenies or hard to understand naration. They could check what happened with server logs, but decide that its not worth it.

All of these have been given as justification for not sanctioning people although they admit a rule violation may have happened.

Ask any admin if he disagrees.

I think you know this to be true, but state it anyway to hide behind the fact that no sanction happened or is happening.

You came here questioning the [LN]'s ability to follow the rules, which is not really debatable in this instance.

You postulate that its not debatable why exactly? Becasue you say so? So far your only defense rellies on
(a) Morses threaten actions against my canon RP in a RP way, and you say that he could have said anything he wanted IRP, no matter how bad a Navy RP (at the same time you justify the [LN]'s authority as being the guardians of navy RP), as long as he didnt shoot
(b) that if you first understand "player factions" one way and then later in another way, he would also have authority (without any right of using it, which wouldnt really be authority at all) if he wasnt 1st or 2nd in command
© that [LN] RPs as superiors of all indies although this is not mentioned anywhere in the laws of liberty, and you say that navies are not required to obey anyway

I'm not sure what you want me to say, since that's what the whole rule/sanction system is built for.

I want you to say something, anything, that doesnt look like an at the same time arrogant and desperate attempt to throw sand in my and other people's eyes to hide that the [LN] is nothing like an official faction should be, but instead a cespit of powergaming through oorp alliances, bad navy RP, arrogance, contempt, and willful misleading with the intent of power abuse.

I were truly avoiding discussion, I wouldn't be typing so much.

Sometimes people type so much about some things to avoid discussing other things.

The point I was trying to make is that these differences in opinion cannot really be reconciled by discussion, especially since many of the people you're talking to are very jaded by their experiences. Some go one way like Govedo, others go the other way like me. The rule/sanction system is the arbiter, and until those mechanisms are used, this is a discussion that will happen many times in the future with little result.

The rule system should be the arbiter, the sanction system should be the last resort.

This discussion will continue to happen until you finally decide to actually listen and try to understand what people are saying, instead of sending them to a sanction system that you know very well will only work 20% of the time, because of the reasons I listed above.

And you can not seriously pretend that the fact that 2 of the [LN] leaders were simultaneously admins, and also good friends with a number of other admins, wasnt going to affect the outcome of such rulings.

I like how you try to discredit what I say, but reasonable human beings understand the purpose of these systems, whether they like it or not.

With a little common sense reasonable humans will also understand that what you said at the very begining of your post about no rule violation if no sanction is absolutely not true, but rather an attempt to escape reasonable discussion.

Then we go back to my first point about how these orders can be given but not enforced. They don't have to even be reasonable, humans aren't reasonable even 50% of the time, so why do characters have to be? The flexibility in the rules allows for people to roleplay believably flawed characters while protecting others from experiencing unreasonable consequences as a result of this.

Rules allow you to RP flawed characters, but they dont allow your flawed characters to break the rules.
Even if your flawed characters didnt break rules, I think the number of flawed characters in the [LN] who would rather side with pirates than with other navies who are doing their job is rather unhealthy for a faction who claims to uphold the faction's RP. Because the main problem with Morse'S behavior is that its the norm for the [LN].

Or he's attempting to facilitate a duel between a pirate who wont back down and an indie pilot who wont back down. I have tried many many times to stop indies in every class of ships go up against people I know are pros, because they literally just feed bots and bats. Almost every time I'm ignored, and its (back in my day) Mara, Joe, Justin, Petko or Sina completely crushing while I'm sitting there facepalming with my table. I know they can beat randomnoob that wants to fight, but if I were to jump in, I would no longer be able to attempt to control the surrounding environment of people who are fighting or not, since people seem to just turn up and the fight becomes more and more one-sided. This means that, were I to engage, it would be 5-10 minutes before 3 more guys turn up to the fight. At this point, I'd have to disengage, because they sure as hell wont listen to me either. If I don't, I get a boring chase where the only person who can hit them is me, and if I do, the remaining pilots get slaughtered.

A duel is only a duel if both sides agree to the conditions.

Your story about your personal experiences about noobs engaging are fascinating, and I have made simiilar experiences.

How ever, we were talking about the times when the [LN] facilitates not a duel, and is not trying to keep navy indies from getting killed, but is helping l33tsabregirls score blue messages at Manhattan. The fact that other experiences exist does not change the fact that experiences as described about the l33tsabregirl who has a [LN] char and her loverboy who has an unlawful char in the same faction alos happen all the time.

You know... case of typing a lot to avoid discussing about certain other things and stuff.

To be honest with you, I'd rather put my feet up or go shoot a smuggler. Of course, best case scenario is that I get to fight in such a way where the enemy fights back, but that's pretty rare unless a meet is privately arranged - in which case, why not just connecticut?

Fascinating, and I agree.

But totally irrelavant.

Fair fights are not RP. Lets be honest, no actual military fights fair.

Agreed. However this fact does not warrant that a [LN] should begin doing stupid and illogical RP under the pretext of making things fair when he's really jsut trying to help his win in an unfair way.

They are, however, part of the remit to promote gameplay and fairness, which are in Cannon's explanation of 4.7. This is where it comes from, and the justification for such actions.

I think Cannon's explanation has created more unfairness towards people with poor pvp skills than would have existed without it. The reason is pretty obvious, if you read the example of the l33tsabregirl. It's very easy to manipulate and twist things around when you are faction leader, admin, member of an official faction, or simply someone who has a lot of experience and friends on the forum and ingame.

I also think that choosing this particular example has encouraged people to act strategically stupid and then feel like a victim, and then rewards them with the assurance that the other guys were unfair and the are the good guy, because they acted like an IRP idiot.

It also takes a significantly longer time to become good at this game, than it does to trade for a cap 8 battleship. I can get one of those in a week starting with just a restart ship and FLCompanion. On the other hand, I've been playing this mod for seven years and I'm not really close to the most skilled players of this game, despite no-lifing this game for at least half of that time and spending a lot of time practicing relentlessly with practice partners into the small hours.

Maybe I would have more respect for capital ships if each one took a year to grind. As it stands, my most recent memories of capital ship combat revolves around me policing a fight to make sure dreads don't shoot fighters.

If they are better at this game, which I am sure they are, they should not relly on their [LN] budies to make them win with oorp motivated bad RP. They should be using their experience, and nothing but their experience, to win in a way that does not require breaking RP and getting [LN] and indy navy stoked up at each other.

If you tried to police dreads into not shooting fighters, its your own fault for encouragin the fighters to stay near dreads, instead of leaving them behind with no one to fight, like they easily could have because of hteir speed and agility, or to stay out of their faces altogether.

The uberleet pirate pilot is not part of the official faction's responsibility so far as his actions are concerned. He can seek whatever fights he wants and there isn't anything anyone can do about it.

If he is not part ofhe official faction's responsibility, then why do you insist on helping him by defending [LN] pilots who tell oher navy to let him win?

As I said earlier, I've been in many situations where I'd love to fight that uberleet pilot, but I can't because there are others which practically have the red mist in their eyes. Of course they get owned, but I'm not going to be part of that when I know that any fight between me (or in fact, one of the more skilled pilots that were once under my command) would be much more entertaining for both sides than a boring chase that lasts an hour and achieves nothing. Believe it or not, you can actually learn stuff from watching two pros bash their heads together.

Of course, that leaves indies out due to their skill level, something which they cant immediately change, so its not really healthy for the NPC faction as a whole. They get resentful that we stop them (on the off-chance they do listen to us), doubly so since we're fighting and they aren't. Then they call it elitist and accuse us of favouritism and whatnot, exactly the same as we get accused of in the opposite case as well. We resolve this issue by letting them fight and, if necessary, die, then having the real fight afterwards. Nobody ever learned anything from winning.

And that's in the best case scenario. I've had some cases where a lone VHF got ganked so hard by everybody that I just fly away and everybody forfeits their chance to have fun.

And I've been ganked so hard in my lone heavy fighter by reavers and rogues and flares and freelancers who also had chars in the [LN] that I did the same.

Fascinating, but totally irrelavant.

Furthermore, letting ganks like this proceed or joining in really does encourage two things:

1. They refuse to fight unless its on their terms

This means even less even fights, which means less fun. Of course I assume that the people fighting are the people who find it fun. If you want to RP and perceive that to be at odds with PvPing, then the whole discussion ends there.

Sorry but I dont think there's a shortage of fights in liberty. And if there ever is and people dont like it, they are free to seek their fighting fortune in otherways. For example if the LNS capfleet gets bored because there is no pirate left willing to fight them, they will start looking for alternatives, such as leaving liberty or switching to unlawful factions.

2. When they do fight, they have the gank train rolling and we dont. Shoe on the other foot, and there ain't no brakes on these trains.

I don't have fun when the full weight of the Rheinland military descends on my Guardian, and I don't expect that a Wraith pilot has much fun when he's getting shot by the whole Liberty Navy. It's okay if its part of a larger engagement or serves a purpose, but if he's just flying about looking for a small fight and the whole Navy turns up, that's just not fun.

Well thats your idea of fun then. I like to be free. I like to be free try my best, and often that has consisted of fighting against an overwhelming force of RNC, or groups of reavers/freelancrs/rogues/lanehackers. I dont need to win. I just need to know I did my best and was free to do my best. If I did that, I won, no matter who exploded and who didnt.

The one thing that ruins my fun is when a guy who should be on my side starts messing up my game with bullcrap RP which is obviously oorply motivated.

Now I've said I don't like ganks, but if somebody takes their lone Sabre to Manhattan, they do deserve to be shooed away by a very large force. Now this means I have a silent list of exceptions in my mind for when overwhelming force is ok and when it isn't, which is a complicating factor since this makes it much harder to predict what decision I'd make if in that position.

Fascinating, but why are you telling me this?

If you have no way to enforce your opinion on how people should behave, your opinion is irrelevant. Now, that's not quite how social systems work, but your level of influence is certainly affected by whether you hold a position of authority or not. It might not be fair, and it might not sound right, but that's the way the world works. Discovery is no different. Your opinion is only as relevant as your ability to make it a reality - lots of people in the world have opinions about many things, including myself, but I'm well aware that my opinions are almost completely inconsequential in the greater scheme of things. It would be healthier if more people accepted this reality instead of fight futile battles over "rights" and stuff, but that's my opinion and getting into political territory.

Yeh thats what people who want absolute power tell to people who have less power than them, so they think that they have none and go into passivity and surrender. Very sociological and political. And very transparent.

If people are tricked by this, then they are not sufficiently familiar with the rules to play on this server. Or rather, perhaps more tacitly, their lack of knowledge of the rules are not a problem that the official faction has to deal with.

Yeah that's what people who commit fraud, who rob other people, and who bully other people say about their victims. It'S their fault for letting themselves be fooled by my lies. Its their fault for not taking better care of their property. It's their fault for being weak.

Official factions are lorekeepers, not rulekeepers.

I'm going to put this quote in my sid. May I?

You can hardly blame somebody who understands the rules for abiding by those rules.

But I can blame someone who knows the rules for willfully misleading other people about the rules.

Instead, I'd suggest you blame the rules, since the actions around it wont change.

I'd blame the rules if I thought they were bad. I think they are ok. I think the way the [LN] are treating people while twisting the rules against their intent is bad.

Faction members also want to play the game, and at the end of the day, they are responsible for their faction and their personal understanding of the server rules and any laws they are obliged to enforce. That's a pretty big list already, so I don't think it's fair to expect them to also check that everybody they interact with has the same understanding of the rules as they do.

What they could do is not try to make people believe that they have to obey them when they dont have to, for starters. That would require even less work than it takes to try to make people believe that they have to obey them.

You're funny. By submitting themselves to an authority that they are bound to obey, additional rules and regulations that they must follow, stricter expectations of their conduct both inRP and OORP and the deprivation of their ability to create Grand Fleet Star Admiral Von Berg commanding a fleet of Dreadnoughts, faction members are superior.

So their reward for not making themselves "Grand Fleet Star Admiral Von Berg commanding a fleet of Dreadnoughts with no Authority" is that you make them superiors officer of anyone who has a LN ID but no [LN] tag. How subtle.

If they were not, then what is the attraction of an official faction? Yet more restrictions, for what? If it's for RP, why could they not do it without the official faction tag?

How about: For the fun of playing in an organized and co-operative way, efficiently working in a group, with well thought through RP and high standards which will be tested and rewarded with ranks, and the feeling of achieving merit by climbing up in hte organization through good behavior?

Instead, what you offer them is the ability to pretend they people's superior and boss them around and feel superior over them simply because you decided to RP that you are their superiors.

Besides, it's not my faction anymore. In fact, I never led it, just co-led it at one point and then was SiC the rest of the time.
They will give you the same answer I've done. And that's if they respond, which I'd give about a 10% chance of happening.

I am still glad you provided some insight into how you and many of oyur faction think. Thank you.

But as I said in my first post in this thread...

It seems you have been given the correct answer, yet because it is not what you wanted to hear, you cling on to the hope that you will be proven correct. It's common to see, I do it too with certain things.

I am willing to hear all answers, except maybe those who just repeat things that were already said when the question was directed at certain other individuals.

Yours have certainly been enlightening, even if there was a lot of typing that seemed to avoid the real discussion.

But I must say, mabye to your disma, that you have very much strengthened me in my belief that something in the [LN] needs to change, and that the admins should make a clear statement on this claiming of authority that you "RP". Not saying that their opinion would change the way I see things, but I still think they should make a statement to avoid confusion.

Yay! I made it through the whole post in one go!