Not much, at least not in future I can foresee. Duchess Industries will only own a portion of DSE. While DI will have enough control and ownership to more or less "be" DSE, not everyone in DSE will be part of DI.
I can't think of many restrictions a DSE player faction can impose on independents. Perhaps a registry for Mastodons, but I don't know how useful that would be.
' Wrote:It sounds as if this is about ready. I'll sort out all the paperwork and funds I need to buy DSE tomorrow, then I can apply for officialness.
Ah, a well slept night clears the mind. I have a few more nitpciks and requests for clarification!
First and foremost, be more punctual. Don't get me wrong, the draft has given at least superficial thought on anything. It's just hard to read and essential information needs to formatted (either using formatting tools or rewriting paragraphs) to be more easily viewable.
I know you heavily depend on your co-players' skills on play-pretend, and wish this to be a more "mature" faction, basically just watching wherever it will go from your created starting point. However, someone is going to ask these questions, so you should prepare to be able to answer them.
Quote:"Duchess Industries is a Liberty conglomerate owning a large percentage of Deep Space Engineering and with operations in engineering, freight, information technology, mining, scientific research, and security."
This sounds cool on paper. However, I looked through the whole draft and it doesn't make some play issues clear to me:
how do you make money? where do you operate?
Ill get more specific with my Question Barrager Mk V (yes, some of these can already be found from your draft, I'm simply spilling out everything I could think of):
What is your ZOI? Which systems, which bases? Do you have a ZOI? If yes, does it consist only of your main offices or also liaisons?
Does having an office on a base make it your ZOI? If so, do your relations conflict with Liberty relations? If so, do you hi-jack the base and hostiles can't land? Can the unfriendlies? If not, are your bases no-fire zones or can you engage?
Where do you engineer? Where do you transfer freight? From whom and to whom do you transfer it? What are the types of freight you transfer?
Where do you mine? Do you have your own fields? Are you allowed to intentionally mine at other corporations' fields? If yes, are you evasive or hostile? Will you attempt hostile takeovers of enemy corporations' fields? If not, where are you going to apply for fields of your own?
Some factions (e.g.) Junkers don't "own" fields. Will you mine those fields? Will you leave when asked to do so? If not, will you evade hostilities? If not, why aren't e.g. Junkers unfriendly to begin with?
How do you handle diplomacy? Will you attempt peaceful resolve or defend your corporate interests? Is your faction a power hungry or a peaceful one? What exactly are DI corporate interests, which in your COC override your normally evasive behaviour?
What constitutes research? Where does it happen? What cargo do the scientists carry? How big is your scientist wing supposed to be? How is it financed?
What do you mean by security? Do you sell security services? Do you sell mercenary services? If not, do you escort allied factions? Do you police your ZOI or only secure your traders? How big is your security wing? Do all traders have escorts? If not, at what point should they have one should enough players be logged on?
How do you gain financing? Do traders release their proceeds to you? Do you pay them salary? Does DI sponsor a starting DI player? How?
Why did you not include having public stock to the draft? Is it not important? Are you going to sell public stock? If so, how big as a financing method is this to you? Do you release dividends to your stock holders? If yes, how much and how often?
Remember, the shorter and more punctual you can be, the more you have given it thought :) The admins don't let just any faction be realized no matter how great an idea it's based on, so you better be prepared for these kinds of questions.
' Wrote:Ah, a well slept night clears the mind. I have a few more nitpciks and requests for clarification!
First and foremost, be more punctual. Don't get me wrong, the draft has given at least superficial thought on anything. It's just hard to read and essential information needs to formatted (either using formatting tools or rewriting paragraphs) to be more easily viewable.
I blame the forum software, mostly. I originally had this in several very nicely formatted OpenOffice.org documents but was forced to mash them together and use BBCode for posting here. My DI minions and I are currently working on converting the most crucial of this information into Google Docs (such as the diplomacy charts, which I linked to).
' Wrote:how do you make money?
Primary trading and mining.
' Wrote:where do you operate?
Primarily anywhere DSE operates.
' Wrote:What is your ZOI? Which systems, which bases? Do you have a ZOI? If yes, does it consist only of your main offices or also liaisons?
Our Zone of Influence is primarily only Liberty, at least directly. Our Zone of Interest is most of Sirius. (Factions around here don't all use it the same way. In my opinion, Area of Operations is more useful.)
It is not particularly simple defining a clear Area of Operations for DSE. DSE is responsible for all Gate/Lane construction outside Gallia. This leads to DSE being present in any system with lanes or gates.
DSE is also a space exploration and mining corporation(at least where the two coincide). However, mining operations are limited to Liberty where no other significant faction has conflicting interests. As far as I know, Coronado is the first exception to this.
' Wrote:Does having an office on a base make it your ZOI? If so, do your relations conflict with Liberty relations? If so, do you hi-jack the base and hostiles can't land? Can the unfriendlies? If not, are your bases no-fire zones or can you engage?
DI is as patriotic as any Libertonian corporation. We run the Kusari blockade to Bretonia given the chance, for example, and we tend to use our freedom of movement to the greater benefit of Liberty.
If we have an office on a base, the owning faction will have allowed to use to have it there. In most cases, the office will be very limited with very few DI employees. I will be diplomatizing for all those offices as soon as I am able. So far I have only had a chance to arrange for the Gateway office, and you can expect most arrangements to be similar. There won't be any hijacking of bases from liaison offices any more than countries hijack other countries through their embassies.
Our bases do not have no-fire zones. We engage hostiles if given reason to.
' Wrote:Where do you engineer? Where do you transfer freight? From whom and to whom do you transfer it? What are the types of freight you transfer?
We engineer on construction sites. We maintain gates and trade lanes. We build ships. We build equipment.
We transfer freight primarily between our bases, allied bases, and construction sites. We also do plenty of trade between any bases that allow us to, if it is profitable for us and in accordance with our interests.
We primarily move cargo needed by or produced by our bases. Robotic Components, Gate/Lane Parts, materials, and so on. We engage in other trade as well, occasionally, but our ships aren't designed for all types of cargo. Passengers wouldn't be particularly comfortable in most of our ships, for example.
' Wrote:Where do you mine? Do you have your own fields? Are you allowed to intentionally mine at other corporations' fields? If yes, are you evasive or hostile? Will you attempt hostile takeovers of enemy corporations' fields? If not, where are you going to apply for fields of your own?
In Liberty, DSE is the only significant mining corporation. We mine Silver and Copper in Liberty, for example, and no one will challenge us for it.
It would be very difficult for us to expand mining operations to other houses, considering politics and the presence of native corporations with conflicting interests. Expansion is, of course, often in the interest of corporations, so if we see an opportunity, we will take it.
' Wrote:Some factions (e.g.) Junkers don't "own" fields. Will you mine those fields? Will you leave when asked to do so? If not, will you evade hostilities? If not, why aren't e.g. Junkers unfriendly to begin with?
Junkers are unfriendly toward all Liberty corporations, but Junkers have not yet given DI any reason to extend anything but neutrality towards them. We have no interest in scrap and waste fields, but if we did, I'm sure we would be plenty at odds with the Junkers.
' Wrote:How do you handle diplomacy? Will you attempt peaceful resolve or defend your corporate interests? Is your faction a power hungry or a peaceful one? What exactly are DI corporate interests, which in your COC override your normally evasive behaviour?
Only vague principals can hold for diplomacy in general. I coudn't tell you how we would deal any particular type of diplomacy until we begin dealing with it. The same more or less holds true for interests. If something benefits DI in some way, it is in the DI interest. If it benefits Liberty in some way, it is also in DI interest.
Beyond that, it is a matter of balance between good diplomatic relations and corporate/house well-being. In many cases it will be a matter of chance and risk that governs what actions DI takes, while in other cases it will be much more straight-forward.
Give me specific questions and I may be more able to answer.
' Wrote:What constitutes research? Where does it happen? What cargo do the scientists carry? How big is your scientist wing supposed to be? How is it financed?
I find this question quite strange. Research is research and is done wherever possible. Scientists carry whatever they need to do the research. Our scientists are of course paid by the corporation, and their research financed by corporate income, just like any other part of the corporation.
' Wrote:What do you mean by security? Do you sell security services? Do you sell mercenary services? If not, do you escort allied factions? Do you police your ZOI or only secure your traders? How big is your security wing? Do all traders have escorts? If not, at what point should they have one should enough players be logged on?
The primary responsibility of the Security Department is the security of DI assets. They do whatever necessary and in their legal right to ensure the safety of DI employees, the integrity of DI cargo, and so on.
We do not sell security services.
We do provide security for allies when they require it.
How big is it? If we have 50 faction members interested in being part of the Security Department, I suppose it would be pretty huge. If we have 2, not so huge?
No, not all traders have escorts, that seems like it would be practically impossible. They will use escorts if they are available and they feel they need or want one and the escort agrees.
' Wrote:How do you gain financing? Do traders release their proceeds to you? Do you pay them salary? Does DI sponsor a starting DI player? How?
We are exploring the practical possibilities as far as your first two questions are concerned, I won't know until we've been around for a bit what will work and what won't. It is simply dependent on too many factors to put much of anything down in writing at this stage.
As you can see from the ship list, DI does finance certain ships. We also provide petty credits as needed, as well as loans.
' Wrote:Why did you not include having public stock to the draft? Is it not important? Are you going to sell public stock? If so, how big as a financing method is this to you? Do you release dividends to your stock holders? If yes, how much and how often?
Stock is handled by the Sirius Stock Market Exchange, not by us. Ask them.
' Wrote:Remember, the shorter and more punctual you can be, the more you have given it thought:)The admins don't let just any faction be realized no matter how great an idea it's based on, so you better be prepared for these kinds of questions.
If I didn't know that, I wouldn't have posted this or any of my previous threads. Does it really sound like I'm just boasting about the fabulosity of the idea?
I disagree about being shorter and punctual, however. Longer and extensive is more likely to accurately represent a concept such as this. The more I write, the more I need to think, the more I think, the more I need to write. That feels much more natural and comfortable to me than being as concise as possible, at least this early in the process.
' Wrote:How do you handle diplomacy? Will you attempt peaceful resolve or defend your corporate interests? Is your faction a power hungry or a peaceful one? What exactly are DI corporate interests, which in your COC override your normally evasive behaviour?
Only vague principals can hold for diplomacy in general. I coudn't tell you how we would deal any particular type of diplomacy until we begin dealing with it. The same more or less holds true for interests. If something benefits DI in some way, it is in the DI interest. If it benefits Liberty in some way, it is also in DI interest.
Beyond that, it is a matter of balance between good diplomatic relations and corporate/house well-being. In many cases it will be a matter of chance and risk that governs what actions DI takes, while in other cases it will be much more straight-forward.
Give me specific questions and I may be more able to answer.
' Wrote:What constitutes research? Where does it happen? What cargo do the scientists carry? How big is your scientist wing supposed to be? How is it financed?
I find this question quite strange. Research is research and is done wherever possible. Scientists carry whatever they need to do the research. Our scientists are of course paid by the corporation, and their research financed by corporate income, just like any other part of the corporation.
Maybe you should be more specific here too?
' Wrote:What do you mean by security? Do you sell security services? Do you sell mercenary services? If not, do you escort allied factions? Do you police your ZOI or only secure your traders? How big is your security wing? Do all traders have escorts? If not, at what point should they have one should enough players be logged on?
The primary responsibility of the Security Department is the security of DI assets. They do whatever necessary and in their legal right to ensure the safety of DI employees, the integrity of DI cargo, and so on.
We do not sell security services.
We do provide security for allies when they require it.
How big is it? If we have 50 faction members interested in being part of the Security Department, I suppose it would be pretty huge. If we have 2, not so huge?
No, not all traders have escorts, that seems like it would be practically impossible. They will use escorts if they are available and they feel they need or want one and the escort agrees.
' Wrote:How do you gain financing? Do traders release their proceeds to you? Do you pay them salary? Does DI sponsor a starting DI player? How?
We are exploring the practical possibilities as far as your first two questions are concerned, I won't know until we've been around for a bit what will work and what won't. It is simply dependent on too many factors to put much of anything down in writing at this stage.
As you can see from the ship list, DI does finance certain ships. We also provide petty credits as needed, as well as loans.
' Wrote:Why did you not include having public stock to the draft? Is it not important? Are you going to sell public stock? If so, how big as a financing method is this to you? Do you release dividends to your stock holders? If yes, how much and how often?
Stock is handled by the Sirius Stock Market Exchange, not by us. Ask them.
' Wrote:Remember, the shorter and more punctual you can be, the more you have given it thought:)The admins don't let just any faction be realized no matter how great an idea it's based on, so you better be prepared for these kinds of questions.
If I didn't know that, I wouldn't have posted this or any of my previous threads. Does it really sound like I'm just boasting about the fabulosity of the idea?
I disagree about being shorter and punctual, however. Longer and extensive is more likely to accurately represent a concept such as this. The more I write, the more I need to think, the more I think, the more I need to write. That feels much more natural and comfortable to me than being as concise as possible, at least this early in the process.
Hey Eyvind, I noticed something on your NPC diplomacy sheet for this faction, You say that Xenos would be neutral to you, but based on their current situation as a terrorist group, wouldn't they be hostile to you, as they are enemies of every corp in sirus?
' Wrote:Hey Eyvind, I noticed something on your NPC diplomacy sheet for this faction, You say that Xenos would be neutral to you, but based on their current situation as a terrorist group, wouldn't they be hostile to you, as they are enemies of every corp in sirus?
Josh
They are enemies primarily of foreigners and of anyone who works with foreigners. They are not hostile to all of Liberty however, even though they are terrorists. They are on decent terms with Universal shipping, for example, but that's probably just because they keep the Xeno alive with supplies.
I will change the NPC diplomatic status to Unfriendly and have a chat with the Alliance to get some more expertise on the matter.
' Wrote:I blame the forum software, mostly. I originally had this in several very nicely formatted OpenOffice.org documents but was forced to mash them together and use BBCode for posting here. My DI minions and I are currently working on converting the most crucial of this information into Google Docs (such as the diplomacy charts, which I linked to).
It seems Google Docs and Spreads begins to be the way to go and BBcode sorely lacks spreadsheet formatting, for example (though we always have SVG). Personally though, such charts scare me :) They're often overly complex and take the fun away from computer RPGs much in the same way they did in pen-and-paper RPGs. Then again, this is not your fault, the amount of different factions in Disco just is simply mind numbing.
As you seem to have been prepared with anything I could invent throwing at you, I begin by noting that you have it all figured out and the proposal seems to be complete. I'll see if I can find any glaring bugs like Rpgdudester did :)
Quote:If we have an office on a base, the owning faction will have allowed to use to have it there. In most cases, the office will be very limited with very few DI employees. I will be diplomatizing for all those offices as soon as I am able. So far I have only had a chance to arrange for the Gateway office, and you can expect most arrangements to be similar. There won't be any hijacking of bases from liaison offices any more than countries hijack other countries through their embassies.
Our bases do not have no-fire zones. We engage hostiles if given reason to.
Well, partly they do :) Embassy grounds are sovereign territory of the said country, and has diplomatic immunity from local authorities. But this is all nitpick.
I were just wondering, say, there is a faction hostile to you, but neutral/friendly to the faction owning the base you have your offices in. Now, starting a firefight in the front yard of the said base would create an interesting RP situation indeed :) As you like using diplomatic efforts also to create those offices, I'm pretty sure these events can be agreed upon on a case by case basis.
RP-wise, I were just worried that two players might have a conflict near a base, with the hostile or DI player being completely unaware why it happened. Such a situation might warrant at least a // message making sure both parties know about the situation, because otherwise: "It's my base and I'm allowed to land! What gives? What you shooting at?!"
Quote:Junkers are unfriendly toward all Liberty corporations, but Junkers have not yet given DI any reason to extend anything but neutrality towards them. We have no interest in scrap and waste fields, but if we did, I'm sure we would be plenty at odds with the Junkers.
I detest your implications! WE HAVE THE SALVAGER!!!1one
Quote:I find this question quite strange. Research is research and is done wherever possible. Scientists carry whatever they need to do the research. Our scientists are of course paid by the corporation, and their research financed by corporate income, just like any other part of the corporation.
Maybe you should be more specific here too?
Well, mainly I wondered where those scientists would be located (i.e. do they have a home base somewhere), do they act alone or in fleets, things like that.
' Wrote:If we have 50 faction members interested in being part of the Security Department, I suppose it would be pretty huge. If we have 2, not so huge?
No, not all traders have escorts, that seems like it would be practically impossible. They will use escorts if they are available and they feel they need or want one and the escort agrees.
Yeah, I were interested in this, because the new DI would be a humongous corporate alliance, something like General Electric though you're not doing banking as of yet, at least. In this case you are of course right, the size of the security wing depends on how many people play the security.
Mainly, with a huge security wing you'd be close to a paramilitary organization, with a not so huge a financial one. There is a distinct difference on the attitudes and methods these two entities are played out starting with how many escorts a trader would have :) But I'm sure this is one of the cases of "time will show".
Quote:As you can see from the ship list, DI does finance certain ships. We also provide petty credits as needed, as well as loans.
GE Money! So you do handle banking! Perhaps DI will advance to open banking services at some point of time too. Armored gold carriages and related robberies, anyone?
Quote:Stock is handled by the Sirius Stock Market Exchange, not by us. Ask them.
Yeah, seeing my characters own DI stock I'd have to get a SSME account number anyway. I do feel, that your answer implies dangerous circumstances, because it's your stock in any case. Perhaps we both should ask SSME how it works, and DI be aware of the main principles also. Details are of course SSME handled, I must say half of his posts are complete gibberish to me, as I have no idea about stocks in real life either.
Quote:I disagree about being shorter and punctual, however. Longer and extensive is more likely to accurately represent a concept such as this. The more I write, the more I need to think, the more I think, the more I need to write. That feels much more natural and comfortable to me than being as concise as possible, at least this early in the process.
We had a small discussion on this privately and certainly you are right, a draft should include everything possible, or at least all the ideas and information should be collected somewhere lest they be forgotten and lose their usefulness. I'll explain myself here in public too, my recommendation for punctualization only referred to the actual request to make the faction official, because there we only need to see the basics and decide if it would work. None of your work has been futile and certainly shouldn't be disgarded, I never wanted to imply so.
Well, didn't find much else to nitpick on so I'll leave it at that, I think you're more than set :)
' Wrote:Well, mainly I wondered where those scientists would be located (i.e. do they have a home base somewhere), do they act alone or in fleets, things like that.
Scientists will most likely be working in teams on bases, sometimes on a ship, but I don't think there will ever really be a reason for a fleet. As far as scientific endeavors are concerned, multiple ships just aren't practical most of the time and for large operations a larger ship would likely be sufficient.
There are dedicated research bases here and there that DI might have an interest in and the possibility to utilize. For example, there is Research Station Willard run by the Liberty Navy. It is possible that the Navy employs DI scientists there, if so, however, we will be arranging that with roleplay.
' Wrote:Mainly, with a huge security wing you'd be close to a paramilitary organization, with a not so huge a financial one. There is a distinct difference on the attitudes and methods these two entities are played out starting with how many escorts a trader would have:)But I'm sure this is one of the cases of "time will show".
Our Security department has a minute budget compared to Mining and Freight.
' Wrote:GE Money! So you do handle banking! Perhaps DI will advance to open banking services at some point of time too. Armored gold carriages and related robberies, anyone?
I have begun negotiating terms with Leviathan Bankers. DI will be handling most banking related operations through them.
' Wrote:Yeah, seeing my characters own DI stock I'd have to get a SSME account number anyway. I do feel, that your answer implies dangerous circumstances, because it's your stock in any case. Perhaps we both should ask SSME how it works, and DI be aware of the main principles also. Details are of course SSME handled, I must say half of his posts are complete gibberish to me, as I have no idea about stocks in real life either.
I have talked to him (Zigeris) some in PMs, asked how it works and all, and I am satisfied with his answers. So far, I am only offering 100 million credits of stock for sale, so if something does go horrifically wrong, not much harm will be done. I have every confidence that it won't, though.