No you're not getting it right. I'm talking about the factions that actively do not play the faction that they are representing and instead try to push through their vision of how something should be despite there being years of history that state otherwise.
Maliciously blocking another factions attempt to do something isn't what I was referring to
Well I mean I'd go easy on that - I came to some factions as the only player and the years of player mandated soap opera history and bizzare rephacks make little sense and it's a good thing they are repaired/scrapped and the faction that made them gone to not protect those "years of history"
There's nothing easier than just log in-game, generate activity, let the other guys do whatever they do and have your vision of how the faction should be played. If you keep appearing on player list, do constant RP and interactions, you become the guy people associate with the NPC faction anyways.
-There is now =CR= and lTl (and BMS to some extent) with different views of how Crayter is played. Whoever puts in more interactions, rp, activity and grows the faction wins, simples, and how it should be.
You don't need to farm for time to cling to OF just for "having a faction that is semi-alive as a way to gatekeep"
I feel like I should elaborate what I meant, maybe gatekeeping wasn't the proper word for it.
I used to lead the Custodi, a Corsair faction with views very very far off from what Corsairs actually are (being greek and all that blabla), while the Brotherhood existed as a far older faction for the same ID, representing the Corsairs as well. At the time neither faction was really alive but I've had the luck to be able to communicate with their HC without any issues regarding how things should go down and how we are going to do things. Since I was really unexperienced when it comes to leading a faction I would have made decisions that would have ended up shifting Corsairs into a direction that they should not have be shifted to (shooting Zoners e.g) because of their backstory and place in Freelancer. Had I not had TBH's HC back then tell me how much of a bad idea it is and how it would ruin certain elements of the repsheet and alliances for the Corsairs, I would have pushed it through, altering the place that some Corsairs had in the Universe.
Because of the way that both Corsair factions were set up, the whole repsheet ended up being confusing for Indies anyway in regards to who to shoot and who to help (becacuse there's been TBH allies that C:: shot and vice versa) and I think that actually ended up confusing Indies to a point where some weren't all that interested in playing Corsairs going forward.
So TL;DR I mean that older factions, even if they are not really alive and instead only there to provide input on things and restrain fresher factions from taking a faction and giving it a completly new identity aren't necessarily a bad thing, if only to provide input and help for newer factions