' Wrote:Sorry mate, but as long as it affects other players, it concerns other players and not only you or your fellows.
From what i know, the JC roleplay was very good mostly, but this JNS/JSF thingy is moving right into a pvp faction and metagaming politics. None of your posts have convinced me about the contrary.
I really hope the future proves me wrong, but if not, don't expect anyone else than Junker are playing with you.
AoM
I have a small bone to pick with this statement. There was a time about six months ago when the Congress was beseiged by a few veteran players who had filed a "mercenary contract" on the JC, and went after them in nothing but Taiidans and Catamaran bombers loaded with codenames and Cids. The whole incident is now water under the bridge, but the actions and motives behind it have bothered me ever since.
During this time, there were multiple gripes by the players behind these mercenaries that Junkers should not be flying RTs and Taiidans, as this was not Junker RP and was metagaming. They should not be smuggling long distances, they said. They should only be in scrap fields or picking up after other pirates blowing up NPC trains. I've gotten the impression from a few individuals that Junkers aren't just not meant to be a premier combat faction, but that players in the faction should stick to picking at people's scrap and dying under the guns of people that want to hunt them.
Granted, back then it was Tink's Congress and run the way he wanted it. We had a lot of caps, we had a much less limited ZOI. It's now Hawk's and my Congress, and we've made a lot of changes to better accomodate the opinions of the community in how a Junker faction should be run. We've gotten rid of the caps, and if you ever see a Congress member in Alaska, shoot him please. Despite these changes, when Junkers come out of a fight with a combat-oriented faction the winner, it seems to make some people upset. Is the NPC faction supposed to be everyone's punching bag? Are we messing with the natural order of things?
Junkers might be political and commerce-oriented rather than combative at the core, but they shouldn't be viewed as the strawman bad guy to be given ships and ship selections with deliberately rigged or inattentively placed stats so as to make them easy prey for their enemies.
We know we're not supposed to wage direct war on enemies, but when the fight is thrust upon us, we as players like a fighting chance.
Now, AoM, you're probably aware of all this and my rant here might be seen as an attempt to paint you otherwise. That's not the intention here -- this wall of text isn't even aimed at you personally. Tink's faction is his solution to the fact that Junkers are often targeted by renegade cap pilots and overkilling pvp junkies. It's also a bit of a statement of the frustration one feels when trying to fight Eagles with Collectors, Black Dragons with Bull Dogs, and Mamorus with Recyclers. Ship to ship, the concept of high regens and slow turnrates behind Junker hardware often simply fails to measure up to tried-and-true methods acceptable to other factions.
Also, there are times when the Junkers just need a big freakin' hammer with a bit of deniability attached to it. I've got my own idea for such a subfaction, but Tink's got his too -- and he's acting on it and drawn a lot of interest as a result.
A lot of things are accepted RP at this point that were originally perceived as metagaming. Be critical, but don't be dismissive; if it works, it works. If it doesn't, we'll all be able to say we gave it a fair shot.
(EDIT: Sorry for all the edits, perfectionism rears its ugly head here)
I dont see any problem at all with militarizing a portion of the junkers in Sirius. We have a lot more enemies now than we used to - a lot of the outcast allied factions are trying to pull the cardamine smuggling trade away from us, blowing up junker trade ships left and right for no real reason other than "if you want to smuggle our goods, you have to pay us".
On top of that, xenos have become increasingly populated and aggressive, and it even looks like they're getting their own full ship line soon (not that im complaining about this, those ships look awesome).
Finally, lawful factions all across Sirius are using the "lol u help frenchies" excuse to blast junkers out of the sky - we've got a whole new set of enemies with gallia open (brigands, maquis, Union Corse, and even the council at times). Just today as I was shipping neon to gallia with my junker, I was attacked by two Brigands - a bomber and light fighter; and later when I was leaving gallia with return cargo I had a brigand gunboat come after me. I blasted the first two out of the sky and got away from the third, but that's besides the point.
Let's see, what else have we got... oh yes - the wild and keepers/nomads are all over junkers in the borderworlds, including bornholme, kreuzberg, and yanagi. Indy pirates, and even some factioned pirates, are becoming more aggressive towards junker smugglers - we used to be able to get out of piracy with a little smooth talking or favors for the pirate factions, but now they simply "dai" if we dont "5 mil!".
Liberty and Rheinland both attack junkers the moment we set foot in their respective doorways, believing we're always smuggling/trading cargo across the 'blockade', even when we arent.
Junker life isnt as easy as it once was, we've lost nearly all of our decent lawful trade routes, most of the unlawful routes (smuggling routes) have been overtaken by other groups and are aggressively defended, we've got more enemies and fewer allies than we used to... and on top of it all, there's players - with plenty of examples in this thread - who believe junkers should simply pay up or keel over and die whenever these enemies want us to.
So, I say bring it, anyone wants to pick a bone with the idea of militarized junkers, they can have some supernovas shoved up their respective backsides.
Man I don't know what Sirius you are in but I get up to mad junker business with zero fuss. We have plenty of very profitable lawful routes, to the extent that I barely feel the need to touch contraband anymore, especially the 'high end' stuff. And the odd times I do smuggle I never run in to any problems (Granted I don't wheel up in to Alpha or Gamma and act like it's my god-given right to pick up a load of Cardamine or Artifacts straight from the source. I don't think we're all about that, really).
I never run in to anyone in Gallia but I'll admit I don hear stories. But I think that's more down to the fact players are joining factions they don't understand, plus just the sheer boredom of Gallia, leading to junker piracy, rather than anything else.
Only pirates I ever run in to are Rogues, and if you're getting pirated by a rogue, the problem's probably on your end.
I meet lawfuls in Liberty and Rheinland all the time and never have any problems. Even had a nice chat with an LSF yesterday, and if there's one faction that should be eyeing us, it's them. Although I should accede that I did see that carrier shooting the salvager for no reason at all.
Maybe it's just an indie thing? The dichotomy in respect between the .:j:. and indie junkers is staggering I will admit. 9 times out of 10 when someone talks to me in space, I get "greetings congressman," not "greetings junker." I think that says a lot. But then again, indie junkers have a strong rep for powertrading cardi/slaves and smugly claiming righteous neutraliy that in my experience isn't exactly wholly misplaced.
I'll give you that it seems like junkers have less friends than they did a while ago. I don't approve of it but I think it's just the other side of the 'junkers powersmuggling artifacts' coin - if we act like we can bypass every potential inconvenience to dowhat we want to do, the notion of rolling over us the same way must grow in people's minds. But that's the fun part. That's what being a junker is. We have a ridiculous money/influence set up, with the caveat that we could be crushed if we stop being useful, or annoy enough people. Now I guess this is especially important for an indie junker, but this stuff is on you there. You have to be the guy the pirates want to have around, not the slave liner full of cardamine claiming that you're friends.
Oh god have I digressed. Regardless of what i just said, I am potentially in favour of this thing. Kind of kept quiet about it so far, but that's because I'm really ambivalent about it. It has the potential to be good, and the potential to be bad - I know I'm not the only guy who winces when he sees a junker cruiser. What I don't want to see is this turning into the gunboat for any junker gunboat diplomacy. That is anathema to the way the faction has existed and thrived so far, and I fear could undo a whole lot of stuff very quickly indeed. Then again sometimes when I'm hanging around Rochester I think a Salvager sitting around there really wouldn't hurt sometimes. But I don't think that's how Tinkerbell is going to roll with this, so that's why I didn't want to say anything before I could see where it was really heading.
Meh, I've seen more pvp/conflict on my junker character in the past month than I have in the year+ since I started. I used to be able to go everywhere, do anything I wanted, and get away with it 90% of the time - I'm a pretty smooth talker when it comes to getting my junker out of a jam, and it's worked well in the past. Now it seems like everyone's out for my cargo or just to blow me up for ****s and giggles. In the past week I've had to fight off... roughly 11 or 12 players. Most of them were xenos, some were gallic unlawfuls, and a couple were indy pirates - one was an LSF that was giving me a hard time =P
In gallia, junkers are sided with the "king" - i.e. the lawfuls. The unlawfuls in gallia (brigands, unione corse, maquis, and to a lesser degree the council) hate our guts and want us dead.
Ideally, I'd like to see this junker naval service put constant patrols around every junker base, offer escorts to junker traders (at their own determined cost if need be), and I'd definitely like to see them have a heavy presence in gallia and orkney to take care of the gallic unlawful presence there.
The only infocards I've ever read about gallic unlawfuls are the BeB Space Port infocard which explicitly says that the Council, Brigands and UC do not engage in hostilities with Junkers, and the one about how the UC spend half their time working with the Junkers and half their time working against them.
Like I said, I think the gallia problems come from people not really knowing what they're supposed to be doing. And a healthy dose of powerplaying from unofficial factions.
But yeah once again: What ARE you doing to make this happen? I've got ~110 hours on my main junker trader. I've been pirated zero times, fired upon briefly once.
I play three independent junker chars. I trade mostly standard goods, artifacts sometimes, I smuggle sometimes through blockade. I am often in Gallia etc. The other chars are just tramping around and watching.
I have to say that things are not so bad, but truth is that last time the people orientation toward junkers was changed slightly. It is mostly because of Gallia. Now people are more distrustful and ready to kill us for whatever reason. It is going bad way. Some people (more often than in the past) see us like dirty smugglers, slave hunters and gallic spies.
Generally, I like this idea, but I have some doubts. Junkers status is unclear now, I expect some changes in factions' diplomacy toward Junkers. I think, the whole position of Junkers in Sirius can change in the nearest future.
I don't know whether we should now show people our guns. This could make people thinking about us even worse.
First I would like to know who we are, who I am ? Gallic spy founded by Gallic Secret Service or who? After that I could think about going to the army.
Hi all--I am almost to a three day weekend from work and can lay out details in a form that does thee concept justice.
There is a LOT of mis-assumption here about my whole intent--on all sides.
Going back to the past: please tell me a time where a fleet of Junker faction capitol ships gang-banged anyone? It hasn't happened. We had multiple cruisers and a battleship but no one was ever raided by a fleet of them. You only encountered them near Junker bases--Yanagi and that was in conjunction with very specific role play laid out publicly and very clearly. The "big battleship raid"? That was a rep fix tuned into an encounter when a faction metagamed knowledge of the ship's existence and its location and in fleeing we tried to rp it for damage control rather than screaming "Metagamer!" and filing sanction reports. In fact, do your homework and you find the admins came down in our favor on that-especially when the details were shown them. But that IS water under the bridge.
"We need Junker muscle". That is not what this idea is for either. There was a time when I first started where you never saw more than three Junker players on simultaneously and they never worked together. Two of the three were usually money-making "placeholder" characters--what you might call power traders--who financed the players "real" chars. There was no junker faction just a few non-netowrked independents. I made a faction to make Junkers interact--that was the Congress. It was never intended to be the only Junker faction--just a catalyst for them. And it worked--look around now.
What I want to rp now is the future direction of Junkers. Not the full-blown end of it--just the beginning of its beginning. Not all Junkers--just one small group of them.
Who will they "be"? ...
"Because he's the hero Gotham deserves, but not the one it needs right now...and so we'll hunt him, because he can take it. Because he's not a hero. He's a silent guardian, a watchful protector...a dark knight."
That's a good snapshot of the idea. We expect to be looked askance at. To have our motives be suspect. To create mixed feelings. That's the drama that can bind politics into RP and create politics from RP.
For selfish players wanting to maintain "their" status quo and not allow anything that doesn't fit it their perspective--too bad, can't accommodate you. Ignore us and we don't care--but those who want to play off of our play are invited to do so as well as those who want to be part of it.
When I lay out the idea fully, it will be pretty clear that other players will direct much of our role play. I don't see ANY other faction allowing that.
So for those wanting to be involved, I'll be pming you this weekend and we can go from there. If you have a REAL concern, pm me--don't flame. Happy to discuss anything with you. In the meanwhile, individual ships are being repped and kitted--let's not look to find offense please.
After some personal testing, I have decided to submit my Combat Service Freighter to the JSF. The now JSF-Sojourn. Hopefully I am welcome. Otherwise I will change it back. No rename cash needed. While the yacht could have served some interesting purpose, I feel it would be too high profile for such a 'rag-tag' fleet. The CSF could still obviously serve as some form of courier or supplier. And punch a few holes in something if need be.
![[Image: DTdrqPU.gif]](https://i.imgur.com/DTdrqPU.gif)
![[Image: Tenacity.gif]](https://sig.grumpybumpers.com/host/Tenacity.gif)
![[Image: Tink_Shadow.png]](http://junkers.worldstrider.info/images/Tink_Shadow.png)
![[Image: HRS.jpg]](http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e196/88106/HRS.jpg)
![[Image: JunkersA.gif]](http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e196/88106/JunkersA.gif)