(10-28-2024, 06:30 PM)R.P.Curator Wrote: What about Piracy?
How is this factored in the transport balance?
Up until now, most pirates favored bombers (solo and group). Since the age of piracy has set, the amount of pirates encountered (people who don't switch ships when they see you entering a system) has been reduced drastically.
With these new additions and the future additions to Transports, will bomber pirates still be viable? Currently, 1 bomber needs about 5-10 minutes to dispatch a good transport pilot, not mentioning frigates, and not without taking damage.
You need capital ships to pirate now. Solo bombers simply don't have the firepower necessary to even threaten a half competent transport player, even less so if they are getting buffed again. I don't actually think I've met more than a small handful of pirates since 5.0 released, and the ones that I have seen have all been in capitals
So I also want to give my 2 Cents to this Discussion. I think the License system is a nice idea for the Current Situation. But there is just one Problem and that is the Inactivity of the Houses. I for Example have currently Several License Request Running in both Liberty and Bretonia. The only problem with that is that the License waits for an answer now for over a Week in Liberty, and almost 2 weeks in Bretonia. So the Real Problem with the Licensing Process in my Eyes is the Bottleneck of the House Govs. With Wait times that are this long you Create unnecessary Frustration within the Player Base. On top of all of this, we then have Houses like Liberty that are Right now Run by Only ONE Person. This means that this One Person have Curently a Workload that is pretty High. I dont Blame this Person for the Slow Response, but I think in such a case they should be allowed to "Hire" Secretarys from the player base that help them with the Forum Work (Write Posts that they Approved and such things) For this they dont even need access to the Official Gov Account, there could be like a Gov Secretary Account be Created for these things. Because we have also House Govs that you have to Kick in the Crown Jewels or Annoy them on Discord to get an Answer at all. I mean we have House Govs that don't answer to Coms from anyone else than an OF and that totally Ignore Indie Players on the Forum when they send a message to them. This kind of Gatekeeping should not happen in my Eyes.
I think what the Devs Said in the Last Round Table on Discord should become a Rule. Namely, if you wait for Longer than 7 Days for a Response from a House Gov then your Request Gets Automatically Granted. Because in my eyes it's a privilege to be in House Gov and this should Benefit the Players of Disco. It's not some Cozy Position that Requires no Responsibility at all. I dont say all House Govs are like this and many House Gov Members do their Absolute Best to Make this Game Great for the Players and to keep it fun and engaging. But we should Clearly Implement Rules that you can Lend a Hand to your House Gov when they are struggling and have to Much Work on their Shoulders.
I want as much feedback as possible for my idea, so I will also throw it out here.
I want to enable OFs to RP out bulk licenses with symbolic fees for their respective faction, including indies. If there is no OF, an unofficial will do the trick too (Individuals for themselves still remains but you get the idea)
They would apply to: Bustards, Bulwarks + Longhorns (up to transport rework) (I also considered keeping Military GBs restricted for RP reasons but nobody uses corpo escorts anyway, so it is kinda redundant.)
Contraband/restricted cargo additions would be OF/unofficial for bulk requests. Individuals can still apply too.
JDs/Cloaks would remain faction/individual specific.
For convenience, pob produced vessels sold off to non-producer factions can be enlisted by the producer faction into a Gov database which will automatically treat the vessels as registered. It will obviously have liability clauses affecting the individual customer for screw-ups. It also grants the house the ability to differentiate between "legal" and "illicitly obtained" pob vessels then. This feels future proof well beyond transport rework, since it can easily be revived if we ever get ships deserving special treatment which are also pob made and rather open access.
This lowers the requirements to one comm + one payment (as it already is tho) and add a massive layer of convenience for both sides.
It is very complicated, but ships like the Hegemon aren't restricted despite having battlecruiser-tier weaponry. If these so-called "battletransports" are used for trading, then there's no need to restrict them. They are already more than capable of defending themselves against pirate attacks, something that transports historically can't.
It adds another layer of bureaucracy that may take weeks or months for a response to go through, something no one likes having to face. To put, there's simply no need to restrict them, unless we get proof of them being used solely for combat purposes, which factions like Bristol (and Ageira) aren't known for.
So to weigh in from the POV of Rheingov. (Separate hat from being a Dev in this case)
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.
I would ask you what reasonable government would allow anyone to operate anything like that without a license? E.g. imagine if in the current world, anyone could just legally buy a tank and drive it on a highway. I understand that we're dealing with a game world, but that to me is the point of govs. If you want to "gameify" such a dynamic, then remove all laws that ban ship classes.
Arguably, such a move would indeed increase activity, as it would force lawfuls to log more people to challenge an unwelcome corporation. For example, if a DSE convoy is allowed to fly Cruisers (disregard ID lines for a sec) to support its Light Arms hauling, RFP/RM/MND would probably need to log upwards of five people to be able to enforce its laws. But is this a reasonable INRP situation? I currently don't think so. After all, we could just do away with all ID restrictions as that would probably increase player numbers too, but you gotta draw the line somewhere.
Now for the second part, about licenses. Let's move past the length of review for these, because that's a separate problem.
[rant]
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?
[/rant]
Take Bristol for example. If they do the bare minimum of describing how Bering is still being developed, and they can export their industrial output in Bulwarks because they're always in danger of Unioner raids, etc., they will be granted the license. After all, they are already a known entity - note their exemption for hauling Milsal. Take a look at the recent approval of the OS&C Amaterasu. Can you generate this type of RP (edit: just the comm, not the event) before submitting your application? If not, why do you deserve the license?
Finally, as long as I am in gov, I will always argue against monetary licenses for anything besides POBs. That's not to say that you can't pay say DHC to build you x ship, and get a license for it that way. But I hope that we will never charge people credits for approving their license. Only RP.
(10-28-2024, 07:51 PM)Emperor Tekagi Wrote: They would apply to: Bustards, Bulwarks + Longhorns (up to transport rework) (I also considered keeping Military GBs restricted for RP reasons but nobody uses corpo escorts anyway, so it is kinda redundant.)
Contraband/restricted cargo additions would be OF/unofficial for bulk requests. Individuals can still apply too.
JDs/Cloaks would remain faction/individual specific.
For convenience, pob produced vessels sold off to non-producer factions can be enlisted by the producer faction into a Gov database which will automatically treat the vessels as registered. It will obviously have liability clauses affecting the individual customer for screw-ups. It also grants the house the ability to differentiate between "legal" and "illicitly obtained" pob vessels then. This feels future proof well beyond transport rework, since it can easily be revived if we ever get ships deserving special treatment which are also pob made and rather open access.
Personally I'd take this with the addition of having some kind of a safety net that would auto-grant a request in case of a House Gov's inactivity. Maybe even just staff approving it on their behalf.
Personally I'd take this with the addition of having some kind of a safety net that would auto-grant a request in case of a House Gov's inactivity. Maybe even just staff approving it on their behalf.
Since we actually had this reveal on the Bristol Discord, I think an easier solution is to make public who sits in what Gov. It's to 99.99% the OFs 1ics but making this bit public so people can do step 1 of reaching out on Discord would already do wonders since you yourself had no clue who to reach out to. And perhaps the Gov running lads do the same vice versa when really busy (rip me here for our instance, I know) A safety net feels appropriate post 14 days but if that's the case frequently, should they actually run the Gov then?
(10-28-2024, 07:57 PM)Barrier Wrote: 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.
Can you please provide complete testing data where a Bulwark and a Longhorn bested a reasonable cruiser player? The only combat experience I can provide for my Bulwark is how he was utterly ass blasted by 3 npc snubs the other day.
earlier jammie tried to stop a bustard trading wildcat gold, do I even have to tell how that ended?
police factions should be able to stop a ship and enforce the laws, you can't do that because we don't have the firepower or we don't have the nodock, the only way to even threat a "transport" ship is with fr3 in a violation report after a forum message they'd ignore
pirates, unless you have a capital ship and a ship with cd, you can forgot about that
corporation warfare? the only way, unless governments get involved with fr3
(10-28-2024, 07:57 PM)Barrier Wrote: 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.
Can you please provide complete testing data where a Bulwark and a Longhorn bested a reasonable cruiser player? The only combat experience I can provide for my Bulwark is how he was utterly ass blasted by 3 npc snubs the other day.
Note that the Longhorn is not in consideration for me, only the Bulwark. I'm simply comparing its stats to a Rheinland Cruiser.
Bulwark: 1231650 hull, 750 bats, 4500000 power, 32500 recharge, 12.18 angular speed,
Donau: 920000 hull, 1180 bats, 706000 power, 45375 recharge, 18.53 angular speed.
On paper, the Donau is outclassed, except for speed, which seems less relevant due to the Bulwark being the defender (as it wants to proceed to the next lane or even cruise away).
And yes, I would be interested in seeing a Donau vs Bulwark duel. But until the Bulwark is the consistent loser, I'll follow the stats and restrict it.
