(08-29-2014, 02:27 PM)Echo 7-7 Wrote: I never said it was a good idea in the first place, nor that I had anything to do with it. However, since this is supposed to be a roleplay server, my foremost responsibility as a developer is to ensure the best continuity possible in order to have gameplay plausibly reflect lore and roleplay as much as possible. I cannot simply wind back the clock in this situation.
The gates being blown have had little to no consequences in visible RP so far. The war continues, it's just that there's an added obstacle that players (not characters - as characters seem to find themselves in the right place to raid hamburg/texas whenever the players want) need to overcome in order to do something that generates activity. I've spoken with several devs, and they've told me that it was the intention to move the front lines from Texas/Hamburg through Bering/Hudson to Bremen/New Hampshire - but it doesn't seem like that's found any real success. Reverting now will have no consequences to RP, as the war will continue to be on the same front, albeit with the removal of a needless player side activity decreasing obstacle. Besides, if the server was fine with pulling stupid stunts like westfallen and ld14 falling into LN and Kusari and back again with no real lasting consequences, fixing the gates can be done in a snap.
If you REALLY don't want it to be a retcon, and instead something contiguous, we can pull any number of RP reasons why the gates have become operational, including 'the damage wasn't all that bad and the gates were repairable even without Ageira intervention' or 'houses finally figured out how to perform some maintenance on tech that's existed in common use for almost three centuries and has been developed independently on two occasions' or even a 'Ageira got tired of getting complaints from Liberty and Rheinland corps (which still have high volume trade, by the way) and fixed the damned things' or something like that.
(08-29-2014, 02:27 PM)Echo 7-7 Wrote: However, I do realise that RM are running short on targets to shoot. The issue here is that Liberty-Rheinland war really has no reason to continue, as it's only hurting both Houses' economies. RM should be turning inward against the Hessians to retake lost ground, including critical ore fields, as well as defending Corsair incursions. Before you say anything, yes, I also know that Hessians and Corsairs aren't really to be found in Rheinland... In order to revitalise activity oprtions, it will require more than just a few tweaks to system layout.
Rheinland Liberty war has no reason to stop going, both in and out of RP. Out of RP, I've only seen people wanting to have the war continue, and I've seen it serve as an activity promoter - and I've seen how much activity dies when the war is hindered, much less stopped.
In RP, there have been no developments that would encourage stopping the war on either side - the actual cause of the war hasn't been addressed (the nomad tech angle), and the "official" side of the war hasn't been addressed either.
At this point, political inertia would mean that the war has momentum that is difficult to stop. Economies don't really factor in, unless the devs want to step in and give a reason for railroading an end to the war - such things are tools and a means to an end in storytelling, and not really accounted for in definite, discrete quantities until someone wants to justify something.
(08-29-2014, 02:27 PM)Echo 7-7 Wrote: TL;DR: I'm already aware of the problem. When are development plans going to be published? I can't say. I already have a huge modding backlog and I'm busier than I've ever been before IRL.
Reverting the gates to working order doesn't really need much to do - and would go a long way in helping the server regain some semblance of an activity generator it used to have. You don't even need to say anything or justify anything in RP, you can leave it to the official factions to fill in the gaps - like how it was supposed to work.
(08-29-2014, 02:27 PM)Echo 7-7 Wrote: PS. If there is peace between Liberty and Rheinland, Liberty won't be getting away clean either... the GRN is creeping ever closer, after all, and Kusari's political landscape is becoming increasingly unstable.
That's different from what I've heard from you previously. If this is a new development, that's good to hear - especially since up til now, it's always been Liberty stronk 8)