Random thought that could be fun, take a liner, make it a cruiser/transport hybrid (like how frigates are gunboat/transport) make it a dedicated prison ship for police ID's. Now they have a pseudo cruiser option that is flavorful.
The main problem with saying no caps at all is that pirates very much do have capship access, there are very few that dont have at least cruiser, if not even bigger. So this could be an option to have police still be viable to a degree without full cap access.
Also before people say Bustard, that's it's own separate thing, more of a weird liner/battleship/cruiser mix
The thread does raise some interesting points though, police is generally considered 'navy light', OFs get nodock sure but they're rare far between, /net is useful enough but it comes at a pretty decent price of not being able to field heavier assets, which are sometimes needed if you can't field numbers to compensate. (Not counting the random ace pilot here and there that could solo half of the server). If anything it's an amazing support ability, being able to coordinate assets to intercept and block intrusions/smugglers, but that too requires numbers to do with any real efficiency. Lets say you're at Manhattan and you see a smuggler coming in from Texas to Norfolk via /net. You'll still need to guess if they're going to west point or fort bush, guess wrong and they get away with 0 interaction. Should you be 100% guaranteed to intercept them just because you have /net? Of course not. But it does go to show that numbers help considerably.
Giving all police nodock does feel like it'll result in trolling, but with a 3 minute cooldown it might be manageable. Odds are though staff will get more sanction reports of 'nodocks' that were considered unprovoked. Also if memory serves nodock technically doesn't care about where you are, staff will have to correct me on this, but if so someone could in theory go far outside their territory to troll with the command, at which case I can definitely see why it's limited to OFs.
Navy not enforcing laws honestly probably wouldn't influence things as much as people might fear. ID lines of 'able to engage enemy combat vessels' etc etc already cover 90% of their activities. Navies dont mass log to catch a smuggler, they mass log when a pirate group strolls into their turf, the combat lines already cover this, so house laws matter very little. There might be a few awkward situations though, like a junker transport casually strolling through with a cargohold full of artifacts or cardi.
I'll refrain from commenting on Intel ID's, mostly because I'm still thinking about the points raised and my own views on them, but I don't think looking at them is a bad idea, especially in the context of balancing the 'three lawful factors' of each house.
@Prometheus that is wrong, very wrong, and completely missing the mechanic lawfuls should represent.
You described the lawful playstyle of dead factions that only reactionary log to shoot hostiles - but the lawful job is to patrol, catch smugglers AND hostiles, be the first loggers the pvpers have a chance to log against. They are meant to drive activity, the patrolling percentage is between 20-50 pct of why navies are in the game, those successful ones anyways (depending on house mechanics of course - liberty close to 50% as you just log and play and there's stuff to do, rheinland maybe 25 and Gallia around 10 as even artifacts hauling are legal there and there's little random law breaking to catch outside of hostiles)
(06-02-2023, 08:25 AM)Czechmate Wrote: @Prometheus that is wrong, very wrong, and completely missing the mechanic lawfuls should represent.
You described the lawful playstyle of dead factions that only reactionary log to shoot hostiles - but the lawful job is to patrol, catch smugglers AND hostiles, be the first loggers the pvpers have a chance to log against. They are meant to drive activity, the patrolling percentage is between 20-50 pct of why navies are in the game, those successful ones anyways (depending on house mechanics of course - liberty close to 50% as you just log and play and there's stuff to do, rheinland maybe 25 and Gallia around 10 as even artifacts hauling are legal there and there's little random law breaking to catch outside of hostiles)
I assume you meant to tag me, poor fella gets tagged quite frequently because I deviate by a single letter. I have not seen the proactivity you describe, but that might be due to timezones I guess. I do suggest you specify which parts specifically you think are wrong though, unless you disagree with my entire post I suppose. If that's the case though I'm genuinely curious about what times you fly, it sounds like a very different experience.
Cut cruisers from police, they don't need them, instead give them unique and even overpowered stuff like ships, equipment only they can mount, long cd nodock to Indies and short to OFs, long CD siren etc.
Or do stuff like Gallia and just delete police, have dual ID under one faction IFF (but for the love of god let the OF that came up with it use it!)
(06-02-2023, 08:25 AM)Czechmate Wrote: @Prometheus that is wrong, very wrong, and completely missing the mechanic lawfuls should represent.
You described the lawful playstyle of dead factions that only reactionary log to shoot hostiles - but the lawful job is to patrol, catch smugglers AND hostiles, be the first loggers the pvpers have a chance to log against. They are meant to drive activity, the patrolling percentage is between 20-50 pct of why navies are in the game, those successful ones anyways (depending on house mechanics of course - liberty close to 50% as you just log and play and there's stuff to do, rheinland maybe 25 and Gallia around 10 as even artifacts hauling are legal there and there's little random law breaking to catch outside of hostiles)
I assume you meant to tag me, poor fella gets tagged quite frequently because I deviate by a single letter. I have not seen the proactivity you describe, but that might be due to timezones I guess. I do suggest you specify which parts specifically you think are wrong though, unless you disagree with my entire post I suppose. If that's the case though I'm genuinely curious about what times you fly, it sounds like a very different experience.
Lawful logging to enforce laws - just log in to Liberty near CET peak times hah.
You basically ideally want Lawfuls to mass log and have the stuff to do and incentives to just fly around and patrol and log without needing to see reds on player list. That means it attracts RPers etc. or people who like to just chill chat, run into randoms, and have reasons t interact - mostly laws, this, in turn, attracts the PvPers who shoot this often "fodder" in their eyes who aren't just reactionary PvPers...This makes the actual pure lawful PvPers reactionary log, and you have a cycle that would be seriously damaged if you remove law enforcement from Navy and force it to pure shoot red faction. You could see this damage in Liberty where the Navy stopped patrolling for a time - every single lawful faction failed OF tracker, multiple lost officialdom, and the house activity was seriously damaged as a whole.
You literally had US OF Multiboxer trippleship openly smuggle artifacts in trade lanes in New York around the clock without a worry in his mind - this would happen if you take away law line from Navy.
Again there is serious asymmetry inside the game that should be reflected - LPI is a greedy corp in contrast to Navy / LSF, could e.g. get a special LPI only docking point to drop off some cargo for an extra price. They should also be able to ask for much higher fines than Navy/LSF. There's a reason why 1st asks for nothing or 100k to a million in the vast majority of cases from Law Breakers - the Navy cares about the principle of the law, and LPI cares about the profits.
Police already don't exist in Gallia as it's a military state. Gendarmerie in Gallia is a military force and is absorbed by Navy itself more or less this should be just a dual ID thing on same IFF as it already is - the OF re-submitted the request for this slam dunk to have it under the same main tag under Gendarmerie subtag, hopefully, the staff will understand this time around.
Rheinland/Bret/Kusari are the ones with the "traditional" police - someone can correct me if there are any major concept differences between these, I don't have experience there.
There could be unique approaches to each concept to make them stand out, rather than a blanket approach to all of them. Unique ships+ Equipment that varies between houses, "police" concepts would be one of those - you will create excitement rather than restrictions on existing stuff
The biggest threat is the conservatism of voting and fear that "If faction A has X, everyone everywhere will ask for X too" But admins and Devs shouldn't be afraid to create uniqueness - Hackers really are the only unlawfuls in the game who should have /net as a total slam dunk. It's the entire premise of the faction after all. The Gallic OFs should be able to have dual ID with /net +nodock since normal police got deleted and there's only Navy integrated military one. All houses don't have to be copy pasted, they are unique and staff shouldn't be afraid to reflect that into the game.
Lawfuls and intels took a bad beating with the rules rework - we were assured that since you can't even use RP consequences, touch neutral PoBs, or enforce laws outside of house space at least Zois would be easy to extend since Zoi no longer means at all that you control that area one bit as a lawful. Well, that was a lie - really any discussion about lawful factions should be on how to make them more appealing, not less. Benefits, not restrictions. Just look at the quantifiable data. Police and Intel are all without OFs and borderline dead. Only Liberty Navy has it easy because of the randoms in the starting house, and even their factions have struggled. HMS- tag has one day logged in the quarter. GNS- In under 2 days Kusari lawful are so dead it was impossible to even save Blood Dragon officialdom, just nothing to do for them.
Liberty will likely lose Pennsylvania as house space - and from what I hear from dev team not much development will come as they say unlawful factions have been underdeveloped and deserve the attention now. But it's not them who should drive activity - lawfuls should first log, patrol, and have reason to play as that helps unlawfuls to have reasons to log and boosts the overall game numbers.
since groshyr decided to edit my post because he didn't like it, im reposting it
i didnt have the fortitude to do more than skim the original post because it has to be the most garbage take i've ever seen in just wanting to screw lawful players harder than ever.
particularly intel IDs where you just want them to be glorified freelancer/generic pirate IDs. where did the LSF battlecruiser bad touch you?
also its a shining example that you dont know any of the house lore at all if you think a navy like Liberty's doesn't enforce the law.
lawfuls are already one of the most restricted IDs out there and you know what people dont want? more restrictions on their IDs.
youve offered no actual benefits to playing lawfuls while massively restricting what theyre already capable of
do you even fly lawfuls regularly? at all?
please do us all a favor and dont make a suggestion remotely similar to this one again
the only thing i can agree with is cutting battlecruisers from police and even then i dont like the idea of taking away things without giving something in return
I agree with the intel factions. They are supposed to go deep behind enemy lines, gather intel etc. Anything larger than a gunboat would attract too much attention in my eyes. Imagine getting caught in another House's territory with a battle cruiser. That's basically a declaration of war.