Government Roleplay And Transport Rework Feedback

[Antonio]

I'm writing this as a concerned community member rather than a developer.

With the launch of update 5.2, several new POB-buildable ships were introduced, including two transports: the Bulwark and the Longhorn. These ships follow the recent balance theme, as part of a transport rework that began a year ago with the Amaterasu and Frigate changes in update 5.0 and continued with the Bustard, Dunlin, Hegemon, and others. The purpose of this rework is to make transports more comparable to combat ships of similar size (e.g., a battletransport is roughly the size of a battlecruiser and thus has comparable stats), while ensuring they don’t outperform actual combat ships. Why? Because throughout Discovery’s history, particularly in the age of new balance, transports would auto-lose to any competent combat ship with a viable loadout. The goal, then, is to make transports viable in PvP. However, this rework has led to these transports gaining significant firepower, prompting governments to begin banning or restricting them due to their new classification as capital ships. This, unfortunately, penalizes players who want to fly these transports and overlooks long-term solutions.

The first obvious issue is that, given the balance team’s stance on the transport rework, all other transports will eventually receive similar adjustments. 5k transports might receive battlecruiser weapons, battletransports might receive BC or cruiser weapons, and so on. This means governments would either need to ban or restrict all transports - a daunting task to say the least - or review and adjust the inRP sanctions placed on these ships before the situation escalates. The Bulwark and Longhorn were merely the first two. It is unprecedented for transports to have such high firepower, which is why I understand the initial reaction can be more volatile. This is exactly why I'd like to have a community discussion on this matter.

The second issue is that these restrictions negatively impact player roleplay, resulting in an overall net loss for the community. Consider the example of Bristol’s Bulwark, the new 4300 cargo heavy explorer. Bristol builds a new shipyard on their PoB, hauls materials, and begins constructing the ships. As word spreads, governments notice the Bulwark’s battlecruiser-level firepower and impose restrictions on it (in Kusari, Liberty, and Rheinland, for instance). Suddenly, Bristol, a minor lawful corporate faction, is no longer allowed to use the ship in the primary territories where it operates unless it’s willing to risk fines, getting shot, or eventually being rephacked hostile. This could also mean its PoBs might face sieges from these houses, further discouraging Bristol from using or building the Bulwark.

Bristol player base gets discouraged, presented with two options: either only fly the Bulwark in border and independent worlds, relying on jump drives, or go against their faction’s lore and eventually become hostile with the houses as they get caught more often. The first option is difficult, given Bristol’s primary operations being in Bering and Galileo, while the second is unappealing, given all the prior invested roleplay and having to do a 180. Neither option is attractive, which explains Bristol’s recent inRP post. This post was essentially a cry for help, expressing the lack of motivation to build or roleplay around the Bulwark. And I get them.

Now, sure, Bristol could wait for governments to respond to their license requests. Worst case they wait about a month, and pay the required fees to use the ship. That in itself sucks, because governments coupled with staff supervision tend to take very long to reply to requests, but long term it's not that big of an issue. However, this still doesn’t address the future of transports as a whole. Will every faction or ship need to register each transport they own in every house? This would not only create an overwhelming amount of paperwork for the requesting players but also be unfeasible for the governments themselves. My proposal, then, is to recognize that while these new transports indeed have impressive firepower, they are still transports and have deliberate disadvantages due to their cargo size. Therefore, they shouldn’t need restrictions for the general, neutral, law-abiding population. While you can make the restrictions make sense inRP, they ultimately lead to unnecessary frustration and administrative nightmare for the player base overall. This can also be staff-enforced, but honestly it's healthier if it's government (player)-enforced, because having to supervise governments even more isn't going to help the already-overburdened mods and admins.

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[Emperor Tekagi]

Clearly the whole idea of licenses will not hold up permanently with a transport rework giving them actual fangs. For the time being, in essence, I consider licenses for either RP heavy or credit heavy quasi-warship firepower vessels to be adequate. Licenses to me are there as RP barrier people may or rather shall poke at. Challenge them by comms, flexibility in RP is something I value since it makes a player run Gov so different from a potential Staff run one. On the day where there is more than factually three vessels (and maybe Hegemon + Fab's new ship if you wish to count them) being reworked, licenses like these will be made obsolete and removed.

I am guilty for setting what appears to be a trend now, since I was the first to implement licenses on the Amaterasu as well as on the two new Frigates for Kusari. I understand their discouragement, especially considering the way the others treat licenses or nonsense like Liberty having banned its own corps from flying their very own new heavy Frigate. I am in the middle of reworking the way the license is actually being issued, which may explain why I did not reply to their request in case of Kusari so far (plus kinda oorp notice that handling both JD+Bulwark license is more comfy for both, since I know they pursue the JD one too. Which granted, is RP burden but this is an RP environment and JDs are sensitive in lore atm so uh yeah).

It was never my intention to discourage anyone but rather see through matters organically inRP. Their news ticker was sad to read, so I actually went ahead and approached them inRP myself with what is hopefully still close enough to the houses line of thinking. I hope the other houses take inspiration from it, but I have low hopes since they are usually nothing but License issuers and nothing to actually exist in the RP environment. So actually, sorry for giving everyone an example to pursue and make your life harder than it should be. I hope my remedy is useful to Bristol people, if not I hope they reach out to me.

[R.P.Curator]

What about Piracy?
How is this factored in the transport balance?
Up until now, most pirates favored bombers (solo and group). Since the age of piracy has set, the amount of pirates encountered (people who don't switch ships when they see you entering a system) has been reduced drastically.
With these new additions and the future additions to Transports, will bomber pirates still be viable? Currently, 1 bomber needs about 5-10 minutes to dispatch a good transport pilot, not mentioning frigates, and not without taking damage.

[Sombs]

Any banning of ships that aren't inherently unlawful or very obviously military capital ships should be stopped. Cruisers, Battlecruisers, (military) Carriers and Battleships are obviously something to be limited to each house's military, and unlawfuls obviously don't care about restrictions, but banning gunboats, frigates and stuff like the Bustard, Bulwark and co. is just a perfect way for empty houses to make sure they stay empty.

We have enough Kings of Nothing.

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[Haste]

There's an ongoing moderator vote about exactly this. We've already decided to disallow governments from charging recurring fees for these ships. I personally expect this vote to pass, especially because in the (hopefully near) future it'd get absolutely absurd if Houses ended up outlawing the entire transport class for being somewhat capable PvP ships. I personally find it funny that the Longhorn requires a license in several Houses while the Hegemon does not, even though I'd argue the Hegemon is the stronger PvP ship of the two. I suppose (government) players realized outlawing the main mining ship in the game would go a bit far.

Ultimately, this is an error on the staff's behalf. We seem to all be largely in agreement that stifling new transport ships like this is undesirable, yet we're also the people who approved of these law changes in the first place.

Personally, I don't hugely mind Houses like Liberty requiring a small amount of roleplay to fly high-end transport ships around, but I find (recurring) fees like those Kusari put in place absolutely vile. House lawfuls simply aren't anywhere near active enough to be charging those kinds of sums. If I'm paying fifty million a year to Kusari just to be able to have a dozen or so Heavy Frigates in my faction, then I'm also expecting an immediate Kusari Naval Forces mass-login in response to any and all unlawfuls who might come anywhere near those ships. Now, we all know that is simply not the case. So what am I paying for, then? In reality, all we're paying for is the right not to be FR3'd. That's what's on the line. Pay up, or be unable to dock anywhere in Kusari. In a way, it all comes across an awful lot like an unreasonable piracy demand.

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[Emperor Tekagi]

Arguably the Bustard is a full fledged warship in 5.2 balance, so that won't fly anywhere realistically. Also a ban is a ban and not a license. What I do believe is a rework for how licenses work is in order and seeing as I am apparently a trend setter, I'll figure something out the rest can then go ahead and copy.

[Emperor Tekagi]

There's an ongoing moderator vote about exactly this. We've already decided to disallow governments from charging recurring fees for these ships. I personally expect this vote to pass, especially because in the (hopefully near) future it'd get absolutely absurd if Houses ended up outlawing the entire transport class for being somewhat capable PvP ships. I personally find it funny that the Longhorn requires a license in several Houses while the Hegemon does not, even though I'd argue the Hegemon is the stronger PvP ship of the two. I suppose (government) players realized outlawing the main mining ship in the game would go a bit far.

Ultimately, this is an error on the staff's behalf. We seem to all be largely in agreement that stifling new transport ships like this is undesirable, yet we're also the people who approved of these law changes in the first place.

Personally, I don't hugely mind Houses like Liberty requiring a small amount of roleplay to fly high-end transport ships around, but I find (recurring) fees like those Kusari put in place absolutely vile. House lawfuls simply aren't anywhere near active enough to be charging those kinds of sums. If I'm paying fifty million a year to Kusari just to be able to have a dozen or so Heavy Frigates in my faction, then I'm also expecting an immediate Kusari Naval Forces mass-login in response to any and all unlawfuls who might come anywhere near those ships. Now, we all know that is simply not the case. So what am I paying for, then? In reality, all we're paying for is the right not to be FR3'd. That's what's on the line. Pay up, or be unable to dock anywhere in Kusari. In a way, it all comes across an awful lot like an unreasonable piracy demand.

The time limited license was an error on my side which I remedied already days ago. As I've mentioned, I am in the middle of reworking the license progress as a whole but I am actually decently occupied sometimes. I changed it to permanent + bulk license fees being matter of negotiations 4 days ago already.

[Stoner_Steve]

Any banning of ships that aren't inherently unlawful or very obviously military capital ships should be stopped. Cruisers, Battlecruisers, (military) Carriers and Battleships are obviously something to be limited to each house's military, and unlawfuls obviously don't care about restrictions, but banning gunboats, frigates and stuff like the Bustard, Bulwark and co. is just a perfect way for empty houses to make sure they stay empty.

We have enough Kings of Nothing.

+1

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[Karst]

It's hard to make definitive statements on this transitional period, when governments are understandably confused as to how to handle these admittedly far more capable ships.
Once transports in general upgrade to similar level, obviously you can't have blanket restrictions on the class, but at least in theory, it's not crazy for now to expect people to fill out a simple form, which would then presumably be granted.

The issue is with the actual granting of licenses, something the staff supervised government chats were supposed to keep an eye on. I mean just look at something like the Rheinland Extraordinary Equipment Registry, a system in which restricted equipment is de facto banned in all but name, with an endless string of "denied" even for friendly entities like Bounty Hunters asking for the most modest of things.

Licenses are generally speaking supposed to be a little RP formality for friendlies asking for reasonable things. If government players approach them not from "they should be allowed to have this if they ask for it" but "why should they have this?" perspective, they're going to be a problem.

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[Seapanda]

The last few weeks have really sucked for factions like Bristol.

Once the bans for the Bulwark started rolling in, we immediately jumped on it to get the licenses sorted out as soon as possible, so it has the least amount of impact on Bristol players. We even started advising new buyers of this as they will need to do the same, depending on the area they play in. But then hours turned into days, and days turned into weeks and we heard nothing back. We made no progress. Slowly, one house after another would ban the Bulwark, and before we knew it, we were stranded. Risk being outlawed or assaulted while supplying a POB, or don't play a ship you paid 13 million credits for.

We were giving it time, while arguing internally on what to do with the lack of responses from every house. It reached a boiling point 3 separate times, and each time less people were happy to even own a Bulwark. Sure, some of us risked it and violated the bans just to supply the bases with the necessities they need to continue functioning, but that's not sustainable, and in the long run way too risky. We were running out of options and we had nowhere to turn for help. So the only thing left to do was to simply discontinue building and selling bulwarks as are we were unable to reliably supply its construction (also because we as the manufacturers were not allowed to fly it). We would definitely not be selling any to the Houses just like that. At best we'd sell it on the condition of removing the ban or granting a blanket license. But even then, who's going to sit on such an expensive ship and wait for, god knows who, to log on the forums and grant us a ship license? What's even a reasonable time to do this? A week? A month? More? Would anyone buy a 13-15 million credit ship and not play it for a month?

As for the piracy concerns on the Bulwark, it has a major weakness, one that was installed to help balance the ship's hull and armaments. The cargo hold is compartmentalised and can have sections destroyed. If you destroy the cargo section, the ship will lose 1,250 of its max cargo. You may not destroy it, but you would definitely cripple its profit capabilities. Since it's a BC, you can also just go for its engines and just blow it to kingdom come. Personally, if you threaten me to destroy my cargo or I give you your credit demand, well, you're definitely getting richer.

The only short-term solution we could come up for this situation is:

1) Remove the House Gov's ability to ban non-military ships, with the exclusion of the Bustard.

OR

2) Keep the House Gov's ability to ban any kind of ship they deem a risk, but require a proper inRP explanation, not just a blanket ban. Additionally, submit House Gov's to an SLA in which they are required to respond and RP with players requesting licenses. Blanket licenses to whole factions should be pretty straight forward, and personal licenses would also encourage players to build some more background RP for their character to use in favour of getting a license.

We all just want to play the game.

While it's regrettable that it came to this and a better, faster in-RP solution could not have been found instead, we're still happy that it got the attention it needed, as there's clearly a lot more work left to be done before the transport rework comes into play.