House Corporations and Border Worlds 2: Electric Boogaloo

[TheSauron]

Hello, it's me again. The previous thread I made on the topic was a veritable trash fire as far as conveying the idea is concerned, so I have decided to redo it, hopefully providing a more clear and understandable explanation of the suggestions. I have also decoupled the unlawful part as, while related to the overall intentions behind this suggestion, is a wholly separate thing that probably deserves its own discussion.

The problem

The corporations in Freelancer are pretty ruthless bastards, and one of the major elements of them being such is corporate warfare. The corporations frequently hire mercenaries or terrorists to strike at their competition, sometimes even going as far as to assault them directly. Examples of that include BMM and Daumann taking potshots at one another in Omega-3, or Samura diverting government subisdies for Tsushima to raise a mercenary force to harass and disrupt Kishiro at Nago.

Needless to say, the corporate warfare aspect of the Sirius Sector has been grossly neglected for pretty much as long as I can remember. Corporate IDs are constrained by strict engagement lines and suffocatingly small ZoIs, leaving them borderline useless for anyone who's not in it for the 5k transports. Years of that have left corporate NPC factions as a shadow of what they could be, pretty much reduced to a selection of colorful stickers to put in your Mastodon's internal equipment tab. The fact that, as far as I can recall, there has been one (1) non powertrading corporate faction that had any success in the last ten years is testament to the sorry state corporates are in.

The goal

The goal of this massive text dump really boils down to two things:

• Enabling actual corporate warfare to exist. PvP between security forces, widespread piracy or combat over mining locations.
  
• Enabling corporations to enter and contest frontier systems against unlawful forces. Corporate raids, if you will.
  

Or in other words, allow corporations to finally become actual IDs.

The proposed solution

With the overly verbose introduction behind us, I'd like to propose a twofold solution to enable Corporate IDs to play their respective roles in full. The rationale behind them will follow. The two parts of the solution are:

• Extending Corporate Zones of Influence into the Border Worlds that connect to their respective House. Bretonians would receive Tau and Omega, Rheinlanders would receive Omega and Sigma, and so on.
  
• Enabling Corporate IDs to attack combat ships and pirate trade ships belonging to foreign corporations and unlawful IDs outside House space.
  

Extended Zones of Influence

This one is very straightforward. As it stands right now, all House Corporations are constrained to a ZoI of their respective House and surrounding systems, in some cases receiving individual systems on top of it to account for far flung outposts, see Cryer or Planetform. I think that this is a very restrictive approach. Corporations operate much further into the Border Worlds than police or military, and usually are at the forefront of taming new systems. Border Worlds are also where the majority of corporate warfare is taking place. However, with how small the corporate reach into the Border Worlds is, there is hardly any room for them to be criminals or frontiersmen in. The extended ZoIs would allow that.

Expanded engagement rights

This is the big one that uses expanded ZoIs as a foundation. As it stands right now, the combat aspect of Corporate IDs is... Well, lackluster, to put it very mildly. Let's have a look at the Gateway ID. I will insert my remarks in red:

This Bretonian Corporate ID is used by members of Gateway Shipping, who:

- Can attack any ship to protect allies.

- Can engage in piracy against Bowex outside of House Space. That's good, but why only piracy?

- Can engage in piracy against Corporate ships considered hostile by Bretonia. Literally nobody.

- Can engage in piracy against ships belonging to Kusari and Gallia corporations within Taus. This one is nice, but again, for some reason limited to piracy. Where are the security skirmishes? Mining sabotage?

- Cannot use Cruisers or Battleships.

Within Zone of Influence (Bretonia, systems directly bordering Bretonia):

- Can attack ships belonging to factions considered hostile by Bretonia. Why only in House space? Why can Gateway pirate Kishiro in Tau-37, but god forbid they gun down a Brigand in Tau-29?

As can be seen above, the combat potential of the Gateway ID, and any other Corporate ID, is pretty much limited to shooting unlawfuls in House Space. Their ability to engage in sabotage and corporate conflict is limited to just 20k or die. Want to contest a mining location? Oh, the competition paid the fine? Oh, well, I guess we'll go twiddle our thumbs elsewhere. And don't even think about meeting a pirate, unless you enjoy the good old staring contest. That's just silly all around.

The point I am trying to make is that coporations should be allowed to conduct corporate warfare in its fullest. Kurger and GMG should fight over the H-3 fields. Samura and Kishiro should fight over the Hydrocarbon fields. Bowex and Gateway should skirmish out on a remote supply contract. BMM security should be allowed to go search and destroy on Outcast raiders in Tau-37. All of these are obviously the most to-the-letter interpretations of what I am suggesting, but they illustrate many different fundamental activities that corporations would now be able to engage it. And these fundamental activities are something players could build upon and finally play the evil side of their chosen corporations, which would, at long last, hopefully result in a diversification of the type of corporate player groups we see around.

These abilities would of course come with limitations. As mentioned well above, Corporate IDs would not be able to just go pick fights with foreign law enforcement or their domestic partners. They would also be prevented from wanton piracy against every freelancer or Zoner they come across, as they are on the prowl for their competition, not robbing people to survive. Of course, there would be some flexibility here. Domestic competitors, like Samura and Kishiro, would be able to engage each other. Similarly, foreign partners, like the IMG/Gateway/ALG trinity, would not.

That's pretty much it

He writes at the end of a Tolkien trilogy's worth of text. I hope it was readable, at least. Please leave a vote in the poll above, even if it's just for Indifferent. And, of course, the discussion below. I genuinely do believe the changes I presented here would be a massive boon, not only for Corporate IDs (which I am pretty sure are the most numerous subset of IDs in the game), but for Discovery as a whole.

Some notes

A collection of thoughts that came to me while writing this out, in no particular order.

• What about Liberty? Honestly, no idea. Besides Cryer maybe getting to operate in Sigmas and/or Omicrons, Liberty corporations would only really have the surrounding Independent Worlds to play with. I genuinely don't know what they could receive to achieve parity with other Houses.
  
• The neighbouring Border Worlds are basically just a baseline. Some corporations could no doubt recieve more unusual areas of interest, like Cryer mentioned above. Planetform has great interest in Alien Organisms, too. Omicron ZoI for Planetform when?
  
• IMG, GMG and Bristol are outliers that do not fit into the House dynamics, so they'd probably have to be approached on a case-by-case basis. Mining corps going for IMG, Rheinlanders and Samura going for GMG? And vice versa, of course.

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One MD Admiral

[Demonic]

Ok, now, if you write it like this, then yes, I think this sounds like an interesting idea and could deffinitly open up corps for more active roleplay, instead of just 5k powertrade.

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[Backo]

Would consequences be appliable for those caught in such actions though?

Obviously engaging foreign corporations at the borders of a foreign power would very likely be approached as a near casus belli or at least outlawing of said aggressor corporation. And I think corporation players would not like that.

There's also the question as to what happens if 2 foreign (to each other) corporations decide to brawl it out in border world space and then the respective militaries show up as well? They can technically engage to protect allied corporations? So is that a border incident that is going to incite war?

Also wouldn't this make corporations as better pirate IDs than the actual unlawful IDs? You would both be able to powertrade lawful routes as well as pirate other traders for their goods and then complete their lawful routes (which always pay more than selling cargo at unlawful fence point). With the new economy where commodities cost actual credits this would be even more powerful.

The change definitely sounds interesting, but I wonder how it can be made balanced and coherent with the rest of the RP universe and ID rules.

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[jammi]

I've always been in favour of enhancing corporate scumbaggery. When I was running Bowex, the vibe I was always aiming for was "bureaucratic, aristocratic and cheerfully malevolent". Bowex captains acting like absolute thugs to the competition was part of the charm, but you really did have to have this absolutely perfect confluence of events to ever really get to do anything.

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[TheSauron]

Would consequences be appliable for those caught in such actions though?

Obviously engaging foreign corporations at the borders of a foreign power would very likely be approached as a near casus belli or at least outlawing of said aggressor corporation. And I think corporation players would not like that.

There's also the question as to what happens if 2 foreign (to each other) corporations decide to brawl it out in border world space and then the respective militaries show up as well? They can technically engage to protect allied corporations? So is that a border incident that is going to incite war?

We already have this in the Taus, with a good few skirmishes between KNF and BAF having taken place. I understand that there is a bit of dissonance involved here, to have battles and raids happen with no wider repercussions, but I think it's one of those cases where gameplay trumps roleplay. In lore, the actual corporate battles pretty much always involve hired mercenaries fighting for one of the sides, but serving as a piggy bank to pay someone else to play the game for you is not viable gameplay. As such, while not necessarily in line with the actual canon of the game, if we want to see any corporate fighting we need to let them do it directly and, well, look past the paradox of there being little to no major consequences to the perpetrators.

Looping back to law enforcement presence, I would assume they would be able to either break up the fights or join in on the fun. I suppose there could be consequences for corporate pirates not breaking off upon military intervention, which could give law enforcement a tool to play with in the Border Worlds. Though it could also result in all corporate activity just being camped by military ships to prevent the piracy altogether.

Also wouldn't this make corporations as better pirate IDs than the actual unlawful IDs? You would both be able to powertrade lawful routes as well as pirate other traders for their goods and then complete their lawful routes (which always pay more than selling cargo at unlawful fence point). With the new economy where commodities cost actual credits this would be even more powerful.

The change definitely sounds interesting, but I wonder how it can be made balanced and coherent with the rest of the RP universe and ID rules.

The ID balancing is a good point, and I have to admit that I do not have a solution to the power imbalance this would create. If we were in a timeline where only shipping companies received 5k transports, unlawfuls would already be able to match non-shippers in 4.3k cargo capacity, so one could argue the wider engagement rights and most of the time bigger guns compensate for the lack of mining or lawful sellpoints. But this is a good point, and as I said, I am not sure how it could be addressed in the current state of affairs.

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One MD Admiral

[Darius]

but serving as a piggy bank to pay someone else to play the game for you is not viable gameplay.

Sounds like you're just paying the wrong group then.

[Felipe]

Eh, ive played both ways, and tell you, it was fun, pirating as Kruger, but also, "normal traders" all left Kruger back then, because as soon as the tag was seen, we got attacked. Trade wasnt really viable under that tag for long...

Theres multiple issues that would need to be carefully weighted, but the idea as a concept is really interesting and exciting!

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[TheSauron]

but serving as a piggy bank to pay someone else to play the game for you is not viable gameplay.

Sounds like you're just paying the wrong group then.

The point is you should not be having to pay anyone at all.

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One MD Admiral

[SnakThree]

but serving as a piggy bank to pay someone else to play the game for you is not viable gameplay.

Sounds like you're just paying the wrong group then.

Sounds like you don't want to play the game if you find outsourcing your activity to others is as good choice.

We should be promoting people to play their characters and not to powertrade on noname and noconsequence 5kers, to fund bounty board that pays others to do the same.

It's like having trade faction, who pays out others to trade their goods. Nonsense.

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[Darius]

No my point is that playing the game by also funding others is The Way to play corps. You can play without funding BHGs/mercs as lawful or unlawful, but in my opinion if you're maining corpos and aren't keeping 1-2 billions in old cash around to use on bounties you just aren't doing things right. From small bounties all the way to bribes or even gigantic "donations" to make govs work with you, corps are and always have been the means to play the game if you're rich. Where issues arise is when people confuse corporations (the factions themselves) with individual characters.

Like, yeah, sure bud, you can just fine play your char and pirate without being forced to spend millions into bounties (which is why I voted indifferent, as these changes are a net positive but at the same time nothing that will really revolutionize gameplay), but I will dare say again as above that, if you want to play corps and don't have the cash for bribes/bounties, then maybe that just isn't for you if you're looking at doing more than solo char play.