You know, before the nerf, I was planning on doing this to my IND once 4.85 came out.
1. Slave liner for getting up the lawful's noses while never ever getting caught with anything. This would also be used for dangerous smuggling runs (an example of this now would be slaves to Casablanca through Bretonia).
2. Liberty Stransport (5000 cargo) for lawful trading and safe smuggling routes (an example of this now would be Cardimine to Munich. Who ever patrols Munich? I've never seen any law enforcement there...).
Same guy, two different ships.
Now, I guess Im going to have to go with a whale or a similar transport with 4700-4500 cargo, and make a universal IDed guy for the Lib Stransport. I do love that transport.
With a rule like "no transports above 4k cargo except the whale", you'd be getting into ridiculously specific territory. Such a specific rule is often silly. I can't imagine if we had all the rules in the current IDs printed in the server rules thread.
If you read earlier Thexare I said I would turn this into "does having great RP give you the right to have a significant advantage" and to me an advantage in being able to make money faster than any other ID is a significant one as it restricts what characters I can play (becuase big ships and more smaller ships that are properly equipped cost a lot of money) is a significant one. Now that I am once again aware of the junker and zoner guard ID's it does not appear to be that way (although the zoner one will be a pain to get).
I cannot think of anything super witty and awesome to say, so unfortunatly my arguement will be quite boring and rather run-of-the-mill.
I read a majority of people's posts on this matter, and it seems like this is just snowballing. What was once an issue by a very few people has now turned into a thread where people are wailing on IND for whatever reason.
IND has excellent RP and rather high standards. By all means, an ID is an out of roleplay tool to determine one's primary roleplay abilities. When your character looks at the ID in-game, he/she does not "see" what can and cannot be done by that ID. And since only 1 IND has ever been caught by law-enforcement smuggling(and i am not even sure who or when this was), how does your character know that the IND are smugglers? This happens all the time now, with our current smuggler ID. I've seen lawfuls in every house harass Smuggler ID'd players, who were carrying perfectly legal cargo, just because they had a smuggler ID. If you think about it in roleplay terms, it would be quite out of roleplay to suspect Interspace of ever doing something illegal. Not to mention edging on slanderous, and the IND has plenty of lawyers to sue you into a bloody pulp.
And really, if you all have such a big problem with it, go out, start your own faction, and push to get an ID in the next version. There is nothing stopping you from this, with the exception that there are not very many factions that are able to do what Interspace does. Interspace has influence in every major house, and with some minor or more questionable contacts in an under-the-table manner.
If we were to make the smuggler, trader, and IND ID all exactly the same, then what is the point of having a specialized ID for each one? The IND have shown that they have maturity and are not just a super-powertrading faction thats only goal is to get filthy rich. They have excellent and high RP standards, and frankly deserve the benefits that having this long-standing record entitle.
And as for the comments about the IND having its own defense fleet, modern day companies do, in fact, hire proffessional security companies, who may or may not be as well equiped as national militaries. While the similarities between FL and RL are many, they cannot be translated -directly- as in this case. If we did, then house militaries could not have tradeships, as modern day militaries dont trade for money in ships.
EDIT: @ Tazuras' post before mine.
Yes, it should. The IND faces -alot- of scrutiny from people who are sub-conciously metagaming by assuming they are smuggling, when in-character, they would have no reason to.
AND not to mention, that if you do write a good, and commonly accepted RP, you can have special advantages, such as a better ship, or mixed weapons, or an ID that allowes you to attack anyone. Go take a look at the Special RP forum.
@McNeo - I am very sorry this has happened to you (I really am, this is not just BS). This is why my suggestion was to only limit the cargo size for unlawful runs (although your cardamine one violates that). In their wisdom though the admins choose another path. Also this discussion was started on a statistical advantage the ID gave IND, which it still does but I have some faith that the remaining unbalance will be balanced out in other ways, including the zoner guard ID. I dont know what I can do at this point and once again I apologize, I hope I haven't ruined too much RP that I can tell you care about.
@David Hastings - I think I will look at that special character forum thoroughly (glanced at it before) and see how many people were granted larger cargo vessels than their faction was allowed. And yeah, the meta-gaming is an issue, but I would think there would be enough rumors about the IND floating around Sirius for most people to be suspicious of them. And if there aren't I have a character that could start some...
' Wrote:If you read earlier Thexare I said I would turn this into "does having great RP give you the right to have a significant advantage" and to me an advantage in being able to make money faster than any other ID is a significant one as it restricts what characters I can play (becuase big ships and more smaller ships that are properly equipped cost a lot of money) is a significant one.
1. And I'm saying I don't give a damn. They can have their advantage. They've earned it, and in my opinion they've earned it more than some other factions with notable advantages.
2. I've funded Destroyers alone in a Border Worlds Transport (3600 cargo). I've also funded five or six other transports (including two for friends), about 15-20 fighters, two bombers, and one gunship with that ship. You were saying?
(Edit: Whoops, forgot that someone else paid for the Apparition)
Thexare, I'm not saying it is impossible, I am saying one person on the server should be able to do it as fast as any other (once they earn enough money to get a transport in the first place). And it seemed like that was not the case before. If you think they've earned it, that's fine and I respect that.
The IND are the quinticential powertraders, a faction of them. The best thing to do is think about this when you RP with them. In every post there is something about making money on everything so you just consider it as you interact with them. "ohh look you are a member of the IND corp... lets see, ahh yes todays toll is 6 million. Thankyou have a nice day." "ohh look you are part of the IND Corporation, seems we have multiple counts of smuggling and illigit business being preformed by your Corp. Please turn your ship around and take your business elsewhere before I call for backup. Have a nice day."
With this ID they are just makig more clear who they are. It is a risk I personally would not want with my trader so I say let them have it. They already have enough cash to do whatever they wish, making this ID isn't really going to matter between 4 characters with 1.999999 bill or ten.
I say let them have it and have fun in the process.
-edit- Just a quick note, who really smuggles with their regular trading character anyway? I keep them completely seperate. It is not hard to make seperate characters. This really isn't an advantage.
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.
Actually I take a bunch of the stuff I said previously back as I just saw that zoner guards cant smuggle (assuming delivering goods to an unlawful base counts as an unlawful action) and junker guards cant fly anything bigger than a generic smuggler (except slave transport maybe, but that certainly cant go anyplace lawful). So the IND still has a sizable advantage in my opinion but I dont think it's gonna change anymore, although I would love to hear if people still dont think they have a sizable advantage. If you think they deserve it, that's fine, I just hope others will be granted the right to deserve it in the future.
BTW I love playing my smuggler, he has one of the more developed RP's of any of my characters (perhaps because I have to spend so much time smuggling I dont have time to work on the RP of the other characters). I have yet to flesh it all out on the forums but I am working on it, It's just hard because it's so friggin depressing. I already play him tons, possibly more than all my other characters put together, just to make enough money to continue to work on my current characters. of which I have about 7 others. I just dont want to have to play him even more than I have to now to work on my current characters or switch to another character that isnt as deep so I can powertrade (which is so boring it drives me insane) to do the same thing while the IND can continue to fly around and have all the fun and make more credits than me. I don't want anyone else to be slighted in that way either.
I find it funny that it allows them to land on lawful bases but pirate trains cant land on lawful bases leave it to the admin to find an un fair advantage. enough said.
http://signavatar.com/15890_s.gif First: You've got a picture in there that's 800x286 pixels. The maximum signature size is 700x250.
Second: Your other picture in the rotation fills the full 700x250 boundaries by itself.
With an image that big, you can't fit any text below it. Please fix this.
-Zuke
A sane man must become insane to look sane
In an insane world.