Oversight In House Intelligence IDs And Rules?

[Lythrilux]

So I was mulling over how Houses can process roleplay consequences. As we all know, due to a change in the rules several years ago, gone are the days when a Republican Shipping ship would send a comm to the Rheinland Gov, reporting a Junker for pirating them in Tau-37 and getting said Junker fined or FR5'd from the House. Whilst it prevents silliness like that, it does otherwise put a hard wall on logical roleplay encounters (and progression thereafter) - but the gameplay and roleplay benefits were worthwhile.

Looking through this again I pondered how Intelligence IDs could be used for spy RP so that Houses could apply logical roleplay consequences in circumstances that, although outside their borders, could still be critical to their interests. I then thought to myself "doh, obviously this is already the case" - because it'd be stupid if the rules didn't give Intel IDs this kind of freedom compared to the other House Lawful IDs. Little did I know...

Outer Regional Space
- House Military, Police, and Intelligence factions may enforce roleplay consequences upon any players and factions found breaking House Laws within Outer Regional Space, only if they are personally there to witness to the legal infraction while uncloaked and equipped with a House Military, Police, or Intelligence faction ID.
- House Military, Police, and Intelligence factions may not enforce roleplay consequences upon non-hostile POBs, breaking House Laws or not, within Outer Regional Space.

[...]

All Systems
- All Factions remain bound by their respective ID restrictions and allowances. In case of a conflict, the ID overrides server rules.
- The allowances of your ID are only valid within the listed ZoI unless specifically stated otherwise.
- House Miltary, Police and Intelligence factions may enforce roleplay consequences only for actions occurring within their ZOI.

Basically, with the way House Intel IDs work they absolutely are supposed to be doing things Sirius-wide on a daily basis. However, according to the rules, they're are outright prevented from interacting with what they encounter (and see) outside of House space in a meaningful way. Surely this can't be intentional? A cornerstone of spy and intelligence RP is being able to act on the intel you obtain. Otherwise, isn't spying a bit moot? I even feel like House Intel factions having a defined ZoI at all doesn't really even make a lot of sense, but that's another topic.

More or less, surely Intelligence IDs should be exempt from the ruling that locks House factions to only enforcing RP consequences within their ZoI? WIth this exception, this would make House Intel IDs a bit more unique and different from their, often favoured, Police and Military counterparts.

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[Querious]

Good catch, Lyth! I completely failed to notice this, likely due to not playing intelligence IDs a lot. Here's what I would suggest on the issue:

- Intel IDs are exempt from the rule on some instances, like fights and recon against enemy factions, but can't start profiling someone because they were caught smuggling cardamine through another house, or something like that.

[Tenacity]

House Intel factions shouldn't be really concerned with things like piracy anyways. The way I always viewed it, when you have a house at war with someone else (particularly another house), military and navy factions would be fighting at the borders or front lines and not be able to move beyond that unless they made decisive in-rp victories, while Intel factions could go deep into enemy territory to perform either recon or precision/assassination strikes and subversion.

So, for example, if kusari and rheinland are at war, the kusari navy and rheinland military arent allowed to go past each other's border systems, while the kpt or mnd could go deeper into enemy space, pirate enemy corporations, attack military assets, assassinate political leaders, or create propaganda to turn the civilian populace against the government

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[JonasHudson]

I suppose you could change it. ID rules, for BIS as example, prevent us from going higher than a cruiser, and can only fire in self defense while outside our ZOI. So say we find an unlawful base, or a GMS base in (ex) Orkney or Tau-23...we could RP around it, but can't fire on it anyways with anything big enough to threaten it as an intel ship. So all we could do as intel is report the base's existence, if BAF had zoi we'd call in the heavies. If not we could try contacting other factions capable, or simply resort to harassment of supply ships etc with smaller craft at worst. So even being able to enforce laws inrp way out there, we'd still be limited to what we can do on our own. And frankly, as it is, we still can show up way up there and harass any Gallic ships supplying any bases. Either way, we'd still call in appropriate factions with real firepower.

As to reporting Junkers who pirate outside of house space...well if you do see it while flying an intel ID, and it was legit rule wise, you could still pass an individual bounty on them intead. Intel ID's should always have that option.

The Bretonia Intelligence Service is the Bretonian covert operations service, who specialise in spying and sabotage outside of Bretonian space

As to piracy, the only real form of sabotage available to us is piracy, or NEMP attacks. Sabotage here means attacking shipping behind the lines at the very least.

Otherwise, tracking criminals outside of house space can still be done, but individually by the agent. You can't police them there, but can call the bounty in. Start a profile, you can RP around that, just cant take it as far as having them branded as criminals inside house space. A Sirius wide bounty can sometime be worse. Far as I always believed, any ship you encounter uncloaked you could bounty from any ID, so for intel to want to help out like that should be fine. In our case, if we saw said Junker pirating a Bretonian Lawful in Tau-23, we could move in to assist ourselves. If its pirating a FL and it rubs you the wrong way, bounty. If it was Kishiro or Samura...is it our business? We aren't cops, we have other concerns and can't always risk our own mission for strangers. If you want to police outside house space, in that place, fly as IMG (or BHG) you can attack any pirate just for the unlawful act still, can't you? It also lets you confiscate contraband. For that sort of role, you'd see me with an FL IFF and IMG ID, and I'd rp as an IMG mercenary out to provide anti criminal support. (or straight up Freelancer, and register on a BB in advance).

I'd also like to mention the use of cloaks. I think intel and Spec Op ID's should be able to do just about anything cloaked. I've gathered data while cloaked, acknowledged events and discussion, but not passed any bounties, criminal accusations, or pushed for FR5's due to info gained while cloaked. But for intel factions, we should be able to use stuff we see cloaked to pass bounties and criminal accusations at least. Why? Because if you are cloaked and inside house space especially and you do see something or hear something, why should you ignore it because you were cloaked, and why would you hold back because you were cloaked? Like if a pirate is attacking miners, and you fly in cloaked, perhaps you can't or prefer not to engage for whatever reason, or you just show up to see the trader blow up, why would you reveal yourself to be able to use the scans and pics to report him back to the police or military, or bounty him yourself?

Safest thing would be allow at least intel ID's to rp anything cloaked up to the point of envoking faction rights. If you can prove you were there, invisible or not, info gathered should be valid to rp. Giving intel ID's that ability is a start, because then tough to acquire intel can be gatherd by the right ID's. As to FR5 worthy offenses, its like a strike system. Seen once cloaked, strike one, we can tell our police/military about the pirate threat, then its up to them to catch them in the act out in the open to get the FR5. Sound reasonable?

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