Government Roleplay And Transport Rework Feedback

[Prysin]

To me, the cut-off is pretty simple. If a ship can challenge a reasonable cruiser player in the course of an INRP contraband scan stop, it must be restricted. And I don't mean run away (which for example a freighter can easily do). I mean take on the cruiser in combat and force it to retreat.

Are you going to continue restricting every transport that gets reworked, even after majority of them get the same treatment? Just because a ship on paper has high firepower, it doesn't mean the ship is actually good. You didn't restrict the Hegemon or the Barge, why? Likely because those are smaller threats than a single gunboat, which are also legal. Despite the Hegemon having massive guns and hull, it still is a non threat. The same goes for the reworked transports. They all have purposefully-designed drawbacks so that they are not going to be a bigger threat than a competent gunboat player. Not only is it not sustainable as more transports get reworked, it doesn't have proper PvP backing either.

Rheingov has a pretty simple decision making process for requests: how much RP was invested in making the request? And, is the request reasonable within a house which is essentially a police state? Note the order of the decision making - if barely any rp was invested, the app is not considered further. If rp was invested, the app is considered within the general context of current house policy.
So if you are salty about your license app getting denied, first ask yourself: did you contact RFP, RM, or MND with your request? Did you attempt to have them make the app on your behalf because it would be beneficial for those factions, or to the military benefit of Rheinland? Alternatively, did you contact DHC or Kruger to ensure that you're not competing with their operations? Did you provide them with a reason why your request would be beneficial to those factions, or to the economic benefit of Rheinland?
If you answer no to any of the above, please tell me why your app should be accepted? Why should a House government give you what you're asking when you've made no inroads into becoming a known entity within the House? Why should you get the benefit of your request while providing no benefits (or even active competition or security concerns) to existing House factions?

Laws are there for a reason. Exemptions should never be granted "because i would like one". It doesnt work that way iRL, it doesnt work that way logically, and it shouldnt work that way in disco.

We are ROLEPLAYING, meaning here, we shall act as if we were doing this as a iRL job. Otherwise whats the point. Just toss the roleplay out and do what you want. Engage silently. Shoot whomever. Just play how you want. But i know you yourself would bemoan such a situation more then anyone, because you know what a mess it would turn into.

As for the transports themselves, perhaps some further transparency and patch notes in the intention of transports going forward would make people less inclined to restrict them right away. But god forbid transparency.

You're both missing the point that has been brought up a few times already - this isn't real life. We make gameplay concessions that "break" real life/roleplay immersion on a daily basis, literally everywhere.

To name a few:

• We pretend characters are not dead upon ship destruction, and can show up in the same place with the same ship an hour later even if it's a battleship, despite being "immersion breaking" and devoid of real life logic.
  
• 20 Jormungandrs shooting New Berlin's docking ring doesn't mean that Rheinland is doomed, or that Hessians are stronger than Rheinland inRP. Player assets are irrelevant in lore, because open use makes them non-canon.
  
• Scale of bases, solars, ships fit depending on our need. We pretend Ouray is hidden inRP despite being 10k from lanes. Or Kagoshima not even trying to hide itself inside the dust field in Kyushu. Why doesn't Kusari just come and blow it up? Are they stupid? Planet and sun sizes are laughable. The O-41 neutron star might just be the only properly-scaled solar in the whole game. It wouldn't make sense in real life, yet we accept the gameplay concessions.
  
• You can't blow up any ship at will, and you have to type two lines of RP before shooting. Why? Why can't a pirate just silently blow up a hostile transport? In real life nothing would stop them from doing so. And they have to type lines on top of that? Doesn't make sense in real life.
  

Let's imagine we took just the first point seriously for a second. As "real life" and "realistic" as possible. The entire game would be different if characters and ships could permanently die. It's logical, right? Yet because it's a game we don't do it. We don't do any of the points I mentioned, and many more I'm sure you could find. The point being, roleplay and immersion can only justify so much before stepping out of the game bubble and realizing it's not real life, it's not fully logical, nor does it have to be. This doesn't mean you have to overthink every roleplay decision and overreact by saying "what's the point of roleplay if we're not fully logical like in real life?", it ain't deeper than thinking of the other side when making decisions, the one you're roleplaying with, which would go a long way. In roleplay via forum text comms, no different than fighting them in PvP, or talking to them in-game.

i certainly did not miss the point.

In fact, as Barrier has stated, and as i pointed out. Why is it now an issue? Why is now the moment where restricting ships using capital warship grade weaponry suddenly an issue? Bustard was restricted in multiple houses for years, including houses where multiple staff members has been part of the government. Amaterasu equally so. Yet staff did not complain. Staff did not consider this an issue. But now, now it's an issue. I wonder why. It is very very peculiar indeed. I wonder if there's ever going to be a honest answer though.

As for roleplay, no we don't really make concessions in that regard. your argument is that gameplay mechanics are overlooked inRP.... however gameplay mechanics are hard coded, thus they decide roleplay, they do not really inform it. Thus in the case of "death", it would take manual intervention to delete said ship after a defeat. However even if you did go down that route, you'd still be presented with a respawn option prior to reaching the character menu, thus hard-codedly breaking immersion. The economy also isnt suited for such a roleplay. Placing a utterly unrealistic burden on anyone trying to go down that route. Thus gameplay design itself is excessively prohibitive in that regards. It is no longer a viable choice, but a necessity to keep "respawning". As you'd likely never live long enough, even by happenstance (crashing into planets/dying to NPCs, dying to players, dying to random server crashes placing you inside the sun upon relogging etc) to make it to your desired ship. This is a design choice made by the staff. Staff chose to make the economy like this. They chose to keep the server "respawn friendly", and they chose to make the consequences of "daily life" brutal. You yourself, with your system designs, being perhaps the biggest source of death messages in the entire game. You made the choice for anyone playing this game, that it's practically impossible to play, without using respawning.

As for government and applicant roleplay, it is entirely informed and negotiated between players. There are very few "hard" codes here. Exemptions do get granted, applications do get denied. It is interesting though, that the denial is the issue, not the quality of roleplay (or not) behind said denial. I should likely take this as a suggestion that staff are now looking at reducing the quality of expected roleplay. I guess that's how it goes. Probably easier to get new players that way.

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DHC Discord

[Dave Synk]

This whole matter with Bristol not being able to sell their ship is a problem that was poorly handled inRP too.

I mean let's talk from the perspective of a company who designs a ship that is well aware of its combat capability. It's not the best, it's not the worst, but its also not your run of the mill cargo runner either. That means authorities might have an issue to handle a potential illegal goods runner, because after all, nobody can guarantee people will use the shippies they got just for the best of intentions. So from the perspective of a Government who allegedly wants to secure its citizens/laws/borders whatever, they can be really concerned of seeing these beefy little battle transports going around and potentially purchased by anyone.

The licensing imo could've been handled -before- even thinking to produce such ships. Do you make your tank first and call the authorities later about it? Or you get the necessary permits to be allowed to make you "quasi-military-grade" transport ship?

From that POV, I'm not sure if Bristol even contacted any of the House governments regarding this topic. "Look fellas we're creating this cool new military-grade vessels, we need you to give us the proper documents to have it authorized/registered."

So the reaction of the Houses is somewhat justified, i don't know what you all are on about.

The licensing system should be simple and straightforward. Recurring fees is pretty dumb. The companies that are not government aligned and want to produce military-grade hardware (or borderline), should pay a proper one time fee for it. That's it. Prices for these new ships asked, were 20+ mil credits. From 2-3 ships made, a company can't pay a modicum fee?

Also the argument about "Not paying the Government because people don't log." is stupid. It's all about Roleplaying. For whoever is concerned you can have the Admins make a "RP-BANK" account and pay that. These are irrelevant details.

I'm not arguing how the ships were developed, balanced as I've seen others proposing even altering their configurations. Maybe that's too much, but I just pointed out some RP-wise perspectives that if done correctly and right, perhaps we didn't had this conversation in the first place

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Rudimentary creatures of blood and flesh, you touch my mind, fumbling in ignorance, incapable of understanding.
- Sovereign

[Lythrilux]

You're both missing the point that has been brought up a few times already - this isn't real life. We make gameplay concessions that "break" real life/roleplay immersion on a daily basis, literally everywhere.

Alright new proposal: if you die in the game you die in real life

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[Geno]

Alright new proposal: if you die in the game you die in real life

god i fucking wish

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[Mephistoles]

House roleplay laws are ultimately controlled by the admins. If you don't want certain ships to be illegal in certain areas, don't allow it to be made so in the laws. Does it need to be more complicated than that?

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Sigma & GMG Discord Chat: https://discord.gg/d4j3W4v

[Kauket]

Let's just all join Auxo lol

chat what did he mean by this

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[Enko]

What it sounds like you're saying now is that the whole concept of gov licenses should be sacrificed as a gameplay concession. Because yes, I plan on restricting any ship that can threaten what I consider to be a reasonable military response - 1 cruiser (notice how the Longhorn wasn't restricted, but the Bulwark was). But if you say that this is unreasonable, then where do you draw the line?

One thing with this, because gunboats very much have the ability to kill cruisers wouldn't they fall in this line and require them to also be restricted?

I am not entirely sure but I also think a gunboat has a better chance killing a cruiser than the Bulwark does too.

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[IahimD]

Whom are these restrictions made from? Casual players or PvP enthusiasts? Because even 2-3 bombers might also kill a cruiser so now bombers should also be outlawed?
What makes sense for me is that you put in house restrictions for casual level players. If Joe-1 and Joe-2 start playing Disco today and one of them flies a cruiser and the other flies a Hegemon, who would win? Who would win in a cruiser vs Bulwark, same settings? If the newbie flying Bulwark can make the newbie flying cruiser back off, then I think Houses have the right to inRP restrict Bulwark while leaving Barges, Hegemons, Longhorns be.
Or do you make the rules around aces? Then this is a never ending discussion as the ooRP balance is made around aces (afaik; if I'm wrong on that, my apologies). Should Houses be more active and actually protect traders in House space? Maybe. Do they still have a reason to inRP require licenses for ships considered dangerous? I think so, yes.
But also, if Houses are so inactive, then what difference does it make if something is outlawed or not? If they are not present on the server to defend traders, aren't they also absent to observe if people are flying caps in their space?

[Seapanda]

Why are all these arguments being made on the assumption that there will be a smuggling operation through House space in something as horrible to smuggle in as a Bulwark (it's slower, it's insanely more sluggish, it has the mass of a moon) and that only one single player from an entire Houses military will ever respond to that? If you're having difficulties getting your players to log in and play the game (outside raid logging), that's a you (read: faction) issue, not a Bulwark issue. Send 3 fighters on the Bulwark and you'll turn it into minced meat.

I can take the same argument against something like the Border Worlds Transport. It can put up a fight against one single snub. We had people kill gunboats with that ship as well. Does Rheinland want to outlaw this too now? The Longhorn is significantly more dangerous in combat than the Bulwark. I would actually want to know why the Longhorn isn't outlawed, because if I was smuggling, THAT would be my go-to ship, not something that takes 3-5 business days to turn.

When are we going to start being more reasonable about these "House Laws"? This isn't real life, it isn't supposed to mimic real life either. If you want to make everyone miserable with it, you can always try to get a job in a real life government instead.

[IahimD]

This is like asking "Who would smuggle in a Bustard?". Some people do, apparently. If it isn't supposed to mimic real life at all in the first place, then why are the govs in place in the first place? What even is roleplay?