As mentioned before, I'd like to propose the following.
The change makes sense in regards to systems that are quite infrequently patrolled by military patrols (Tau-37, Sigma-19, Bering, Hudson... You know, those systems that are not really important for house economy. It works (in lore) as well for systems vital to some operations, but too underdeveloped to get frequent house patrols going (Omega-11, Sigma-17...). As those are the majority of the borderworlds, it can be left as a general line.
Systems that have reasonable house presence and/or infrastructure (Omega-7's right half, Omega-3's left half, Tau-29's right half (including Shinkaku?), etc), however, should be exceptions from the rule, perhaps even dividing the systems or limiting the respective factions to a 10k bubble around bases plus tradelanes on 'their' side for example. Please don't quote this as a nonplusultra-solution, the details of the exceptions could be fleshed out further as well.
Posts: 6,280
Threads: 329
Joined: Aug 2007
Staff roles: Story Dev Economy Dev
(05-10-2015, 10:54 PM)Jack_Henderson Wrote: FP1 makes perfect sense in an independent border world system in which Bretonia - a war-weakened, injured giant - tumbled in, searching for a place to put their people. They would not care for Freeport 1 mess. They are losing a war, they are fighting for survival, they are pressed by Gallics and Sairs... and they somehow try to save the people.
In such a context, FP 1 small law infractions are a non-issue.
Unlikely to be even noticed.
There are more pressing issues.
If you look at O3 like that, it makes sense.
If you look at O3 as a system firmly under House control, with House laws applied and enforced... FP1 makes no sense. Then it would have been burnt long ago, but Bretonia - in the vision I have at least - has neither resources, nor manpower, nor appetite for any unnecessary conflict. They cannot purge the Freeport, root out Hessian problems, keep DHC at bay and tame an unruly IMG, while fight off Sairs and SCRA and Mollys and Gallia. This has nothing to do with "no rp repercussion", but with a realistic approach of what one can do and what one can't do in a dire situation.
The facts are:
> FP1 is still there.
> The systems are still labelled as "independent border worlds".
> There is still a rulewise clear distinction between "house space" and "non-house space".
=> For me it is pretty clear which version of O3 (as depicted above) is the one that is closer to what it should be irply.
I'm not arguing that Omega 3 is suddenly a law-bound paradise. I'm saying that Bretonian patrols are active in the region and attempting to enforce the law in order to protect their interests. Same as Rheinland has stationed a battleship in Omega 7 to protect their interests. Which both have now artificially been prevented from doing by a sudden and arbitrary ID rewrite. If you read my posts that quote the actual in-game material, you'll see I've proved this point prolifically.
Currently, all of your qualms about "why does FP1 still exist" and "House spaces shouldn't be encroaching on the independent worlds" are addressed in game through copious amounts of rumours. Omega 3 is currently an extremely tense, interesting and awkward place for a lot of the involved groups, because you have a desperate Bretonia fleeing from war into the system, throwing under-trained civilian militias at problems they're severely under-equipped to deal with and inadvertently setting up a new corporate Leeds on Sprague that'll cause problems for years to come.
At the end of the day, stations like Freeport 1 will always cause trouble because of the clear contrast between its lore utility and its in-game presence. So far as realistic use goes, Corsair raiding parties don't stage from it. They're discrete and turn up periodically to fence and buy goods to and from the Houses. There would be a tiny Corsair footfall to avoid drawing attention to themselves. You don't get Corsair gunboats and Legates sat outside or launching from it to hit traders - that's a player problem and not a story one.
It could even be a point of contact with the Corsairs for House ambassadors who are trying to negotiate the release of ships or kidnapped crews, etc. In any case, the scale of Corsair use of the station would not warrant Dunkirks wading in and blowing the place up. Extra scrutiny yes, but what do you know? That's what the in-game material says the current situation is. Scrutiny, suspicion, Bowex coveting the place, but no actual action.
We seem to broadly agree on what the situation actually is, but have come to vastly different opinions on how that should be reflected in-game. Simply yanking law enforcement out of the systems is an extremely janky and short-sighted way of doing it.
(05-10-2015, 10:54 PM)Jack_Henderson Wrote: It is much too fast.
And your "180° turn" came in when it became clear that some (not all) Houses do not understand how not to play it. Look at the near-total control that many Houses claim over every little bit of their territory. The PoB taxation rules came in for a reason.
23 years is too soon? In SP the BAF were running patrols through Omega 3, had treaties with Rheinland about Omega defence that the RM were reneging on, and were begging for the chance to get involved in Omega 7 as well.
In Discovery, with the tides of war, the situation has been reversed with Rheinland's military newly funded and eyeing Omega 3 jealously. They're also in Omega 7 due to piracy and the indiscretions of the IMG. Sadly for some, status quo's shift over time. Independent space doesn't always stay independent. See Omega 3. Sometimes sovereign space is lost. Look at most of Dredsen.
Even the colonisation of Sprague is a RP arc that has been orchestrated by players and mod storylines for around four years. This is seriously too soon?
I do agree with the taxation rules though. That's a nice distinction.
(05-10-2015, 11:22 PM)Hawk Wrote: The Admins are actively discussing a few tweaks to this based on the feedback we have received. It would be most helpful if we could get constructive feedback rather than people sniping at each other. This will be locked for a brief time to let people cool off and put some thought into this. When it is opened back up, we would like to see CONSTRUCTIVE feedback on how this situation can be improved. Anyone who chooses to make negative comments to another member after this warning will not be happy.
Honestly, what concerns me is how the team managed to discuss this for weeks and still be totally blindsided by the absolute barrage of negative criticism that's emanated from the majority of the community. The the implementation of this idea is so problematic that the reasons should have been glaringly obvious without this thread being necessary to point it out.
In any case, looking at the intended cause and the actual effect, they don't match up. As I said previously, the problem has never been lawful pilots in-game crashing corporate piracy while it happens. That very specific and unlikely scenario is literally all this amendment stops. You're patching a non-issue. Instead, the real problem that prevents corporate warfare is revenge reports on the forum.
Unless you have a gentleman's agreement with the factions involved (Bowex has a policy of never reporting Gateway pirates, just killing them over and over for example), you'll end up with screens and chatlogs smeared all across the forums and fines and FR5s out the wazoo when they get to the local police faction.
Look at the write up in the OP and consider how this addresses the above. So long as House laws are applied to those systems, this problem won't go away. As things stand at the moment, all that's happened is the big stomping boots have come out and flattened years of actual RP from military factions and Houses. Similarly, any admin attempt to change those laws there is going to result in years of RP (treaties, in-game activities, etc) being squashed. Like I said, the cause and effect are just fundamentally in conflict here.
I'm genuinely curious not only about who's idea it was, but who else agreed to it, what pros were listed in favor of this idea, and what listed cons did those outweight that in the end the idea seemed to be good overall. You know, I have some weird fetishes, like preference of transparency over sucking things up without being told why things are this way from now on.
Speaking from the view of an unlawful faction, saying that this change is welcome would be an understatement. I personally always wanted the borderwolds to be a sort of a ''wild west'' territory, where the patrols and naval/police presence is stretched thin and would allow unlawfuls to chill without being rolled over by seventeen LNS caps.
I can only look at this change from the eyes of a Liberty unlawful though, so I am sure that other places in Sirius would need to be tweaked around a little. One thing that I can see this will change, however, is the importance of inner-house routes, if you are too afraid to set foot in a less guarded system.
Though in all practical purposes, all you need to do is ask one of your friends to make a trader IDed freighter and then ''escort'' it with a fleet. So I do not think this will bring too many changes, tbh. Not for us anyway. I doubt most players will even notice the changes do to how they are described on the ID and we will have both LN and LPI IDed players come after us in any system regardless of where it is, really.
As it stands right now, all this changes will do is bring forward a lot of sanction reports. Though from a POB standpoint, it can be interesting. Want your POB to be in house space, deal with the lawfuls. Want it away from all of that, deal with the criminals.
(05-11-2015, 09:30 AM)jammi Wrote: In any case, looking at the intended cause and the actual effect, they don't match up. As I said previously, the problem has never been lawful pilots in-game crashing corporate piracy while it happens. That very specific and unlikely scenario is literally all this amendment stops. You're patching a non-issue. Instead, the real problem that prevents corporate warfare is revenge reports on the forum.
Unless you have a gentleman's agreement with the factions involved (Bowex has a policy of never reporting Gateway pirates, just killing them over and over for example), you'll end up with screens and chatlogs smeared all across the forums and fines and FR5s out the wazoo when they get to the local police faction.
Look at the write up in the OP and consider how this addresses the above. So long as House laws are applied to those systems, this problem won't go away. As things stand at the moment, all that's happened is the big stomping boots have come out and flattened years of actual RP from military factions and Houses. Similarly, any admin attempt to change those laws there is going to result in years of RP (treaties, in-game activities, etc) being squashed. Like I said, the cause and effect are just fundamentally in conflict here.
And jammi (once again) hits the nail. If there will be reports, there will be consequencies. Even if you enforce that house laws will not be valid in border worlds like O-7/O-3 and you get rid of legal consequencies of your actions, there still will be political consequencies. Or is someone expecting that Rheinland miners will be massacred in Omega-7 by their rivals (doesn´t matter if it will be IMG or BMM) and Rheinland government will be sitting in New Berlin saying to their corporations (which are vital for its collapsing economy) "we don´t care about what´s going on there, we´re not going to help you in any way, it´s your problem, hire better security, mkay?" That would be really reasonable RP...
Even on the wild west (as this comparison is used so often) bad guys like murderers and bandits had to face the consequencies when their crimes were reported and they were caught. I guess you all know that famous "wanted" posters with faces. They really couldn´t go into town and say to sheriff "hey, it didn´t happen here in town, but outside in the wilderness where laws doesn´t apply. You can´t punish me for that!"
Also, I wonder who is interested into changing all those systems into free-for-all shooting arena. Because as far as I know, for example Rheinland official mining factions are not. But once again nobody asked official factions about their opinion. Thus this again raises question what is the official faction status good for because nobody bothers to discuss with you major change which affects your faction´s gameplay.
I'm not quite sure why people think the "wild west" is what is going to come of the various house militaries not being able to patrol in the border worlds anymore. The only reason the wild west was so wild is because of the presence of lawful government agencies trying to combat the outlaws, not outlaws running around with no opposition, which is what seems to be the ideal people want.
If they want house militaries to be more balanced in the border worlds, then restrict the types of ships they can use. I'd suggest letting them attack organisations in border worlds within their ZoI, but limiting them to no ships larger than cruisers, which makes a lot of sense from an inRP point of view, they're meant to be patrol craft to keep large unlawful groups in check.
(05-11-2015, 11:32 AM)Max Morse Wrote: If they want house militaries to be more balanced in the border worlds, then restrict the types of ships they can use. I'd suggest letting them attack organisations in border worlds within their ZoI, but limiting them to no ships larger than cruisers, which makes a lot of sense from an inRP point of view, they're meant to be patrol craft to keep large unlawful groups in check.
Still seems lopsided considering that various unlawfuls with bs access won't hesitate to use their heavies on a navy that is by rules disallowed to respond in kind. Encourages capspamming the navy if they ever get an upper hand considering the current state of grand cap balance, and I remember what it used to be like to fend off corsair bs hordes in nothing else but a few hessian cruisers and bombers, eventually you simply got steamrolled because you can't kill them fast enough. Doesn't really give you satisfaction, trust me.
Personally I'm leaning toward the idea of letting lawfuls shoot red on sight (read: after RP and with RP reasons) in their ZoI, but make screenshots outside of house space inadmissible as reports of breaking the law. It's annoying that admins would need to regulate that detail, but I agree when people say that cloaked liner spying is something that needs to go. I guess best case scenario is that we return the IDs to allow enforcing laws in house space + 1 system connection, and simply institute a rule that houses cannot enforce laws based on screenshots taken outside of house space (or take it even further and say houses cannot enforce laws outside of house space unless house police/navy IDed character witnesses the law being broken). This removes the strange situation of police catching smuggler in border world and wishing him good journey as he heads toward lawful space, but also means cloaked liner screenshotters go away and corps can do their corporate warfare as long as police isn't literally right next to them watching it.
DISCLAIMER: Just in case people jump to conclusions from me posting here, this post is my own opinion not that of the admin team.
Feedback on the changes would be easier to give if we know the actual reasoning behind said changes, what they are meant to accomplish etc. Right now it's basically open season on every issue relating to the borderworlds.
![[Image: OFPpYpb.png]](https://i.imgur.com/OFPpYpb.png)
![[Image: N1Zf8K4.png]](https://i.imgur.com/N1Zf8K4.png)
![[Image: LnLbhul.png]](https://i.imgur.com/LnLbhul.png)
![[Image: eHPLi2z.gif]](http://i.imgur.com/eHPLi2z.gif)
