Government Roleplay And Transport Rework Feedback

[Petitioner]

I would ask you what reasonable government would allow anyone to operate anything like that without a license? E.g. imagine if in the current world, anyone could just legally buy a tank and drive it on a highway.

I'm glad you asked! Most tanks aren't street legal in the US, but this is because of concerns about the damage they might do to the roads rather than (surprisingly for America) the fact that they're prohibitive of the police needing to kill you (because civilized law systems have this thing called "presumption of innocence"). Our nearest analogy to road damage in Discovery would be "can this thing fit in a trade lane?", to which the answer is obviously yes. As a side note, self-propelled guns (which aren't tanks per-se, but fit into a layman's conception of what a "tank" is) and other things of that nature are mostly all perfectly street legal.

In fact, there are even instances of civilian government agents utilizing APCs and similar vehicles on the road. APCs and similar vehicles, for the record, are mostly street-legal in the US; I'd know because my ex-wife and I were only narrowly outbid for one on an auction site several years ago (we had full intent to drive it on the road -- in California no less!).

Anyway, within the context of Discovery, the question more becomes "what reasonable government wouldn't allow anyone to operate anything like that without a license?". The answer to this is "one with a public e-chat that traders can ping, wherein there's a reasonable expectation of response within sufficient time to avoid paying a pirate". Traders are largely unable to defend themselves against present-day pirates (who mostly use cruisers), meanwhile house police and military factions aren't exactly active enough to provide even so much as the vague sense of ambient background safety. If you want to restrict traders from protecting themselves, log in and do it for them. (And all this comes from one of the biggest pro-piracy advocates in the community.)

Otherwise, frankly, you're making problems for players for the sake of making problems for their characters. Yes, this is a roleplay server, but it is also a game. You have a moral obligation to ensure that you are not arbitrarily locking others out of the game in a way which is unfun for them and unfun for you -- unless, of course, you take pleasure in ensuring nobody even bothers coming to Rheinland at all in the first place, but in that instance I'd question whether you're fit to be in any position of power at all, whether inside or outside the game.

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