Allow me to waste your time vomiting a pile of ideas I've come up with for what I wouldn't call additions to faction rules, but more like suggestions for making faction-to-faction conflict more fun and fair OOCly. Problem: Military factions loaded with Gruff McGruff-mains who have trouble dying, thus turning any faction-to-faction conflict into a war that by some miracle has zero to very little casualties, with the McGruffs spending the war in a hospital tops, making badassery a joke with it's overabundance. Solution: Every player who has a civilian in colony/faction is allowed to make a military-throwaway, who is reserved for faction-to-faction conflict. This character is a 2-dimensional grunt with the sole purpose of serving as the killable backbone of said colony/faction's military. He/she does not patrol the civilian territories, or leave the barracks unless war is declared. Hypothetical scenario with this idea: Order vs RA Both sides use their military-throwaways for the conflict, until one side has no military left, aside from civilians, police (in colonies where military =/= police force), and leaders, and then post-war RP commences with surrender negotiations, property-damage compensation, and potential takeovers in management. Outcome: Colonies/Factions have a military they can use that is in proportions with the player-count, leader-characters in diplomacy and foreign-politics have have walking guns they can use for creating tension, war has casualties and consequences. Compromise for Gruff McGruff who want to play their character as a warhero/survivor of a lost war: Consent rule. If a main joins the frontline and gets injured, death isn't mandatory, but for the duration of the war between the two factions, that McGruff is hospitalized and out of the frontline. Also, said McGruff takes the place of a fodder-soldier. Thoughts?
Not really digging it, honestly. While the point seems to be to give war "consequences", it still is only going to be as dimensional as the characters are. Having one side lose ten throwaway characters and the other lose 20 still doesn't mean much when they were made just to die without the consequence of losing a developed roleplay character. And on this note, just fighting until there's no one left doesn't leave a lot of room for the negotiations or anything. I don't really have a better solution to the problem you're presenting, but I don't think nameless mcgruffs dying in place of developed characters will help much. It makes for much better stories to have war heroes die a valiant death after tons of hardship than it does for one faction to lose 20 more soldiers to the other. I may just be rambling though.
I think its depends on the circumstances. Like we did with the war of Port Last. Sprouts were little grunt to have fun and die. Captains and higher of the blackfang tribe fall under the same circumstances as players with consent to death. However adding man power by population still has its flaws and meaningless grunts are boring when only they die. Somehow I agree with both of your oppinions.
Or all of this could be cleared up with some quick modifications to the consent rules. If you roll a combat character ( Soldier, bandit, knight, etc ) you accept that those who live by the sword, tend to die by the sword and should have to consent to death in every armed conflict or fight. If you roll a non-combatant ( farmer, merchant, mechanic, etc ) you should not have to consent to death in conflict that happens around you unless your char chooses to arm himself and try to get involved in said conflict. All in all, people need to just be willing to accept the fact that picking up a weapon and fighting people is serious business, with serious consequences. It'd he nice if people started treating violent situations a bit more realistically and actually took their lumps or death instead of just walking out of conflict after conflict with some small wounds and then being A-Ok a week later.
Doesn't even need to be that complicated. Just if you willingly and IC knowingly enter a combat situation you are consenting to possible character death. Or even if you are not on a major colony which IC has a security force then you are consenting to death. If you voluntarily go to some backwater planet, or get on some stranger's ship, you should accept the consequences of doing so. Plenty of people are smart and only get on stranger's ships with friends coming along. That behaviour should be rewarded, and people that are stupid enough to go alone should face the consequences.
the consent rules are there to prevent super edgy obnoxious sperglords from randomly killing innocent people for the sake of adding to their killcounts so i disagree
However, if those characters enter into conflict then they, too, must consent to death. Meaning, that killcount will likely never grow if they get into constant fights, because no one can win -every- battle. I think I like the idea of consent being given every time a character enters into combat, because then there is no hiding behind consent and the outcome is about as fair as it is going to get.
In my head, the problem comes from the fact that there will be players that go out of their way to target random, unarmed civilians in areas where there is no guard force. You could argue, "That's just another reason to stay surrounded by guards," but no one should feel like their character is in danger of being killed by a katana-wielding fedora-wearer for no reason.
Actually, that's a very good point. I'm definitely not saying security-free zones should allow for just any characters, civilian or not, to be killed right away. But anyone that enters combat knowingly should be consenting to death right then and there. No hiding behind consent that way, and if the other person powergames to kill your character, report 'em. Even if you're automatically consenting to death, you don't have to put up with powergamers.
The best way to deal with consent is the way that Franz suggested, if you ask me. And powergamers are unacceptable under any circumstances, which I feel is needless to even say.
A major problem I see is no restriction on character creation. We require no back story or justification as to why a character is with whatever group their in. Throw away characters can and have been made for the sole purpose of revenge for the loss of their last throw away character. Its just a shitty cycle of meta. I understand it would be a lot of work for the mods to vote in every character after the main one required to join the server. Maybe it should be up to the community or at least donators though. One characters back story should not prove a person is capable of making un-limited characters with no reason behind it.
Totally agree with these two. Admittedly, I put a lot more heart into my application character than my side characters. Realizing this I scrapped my side characters (I had around 5 total) and got down to one character who I hope to develop a lot more. A big problem I've personally seen is quantity over quality.
Couldn't this also serve as a learning opportunity for newer/less experienced RPers? I mean if it's a throwaway grunt who was made to die, it (hopefully) shouldn't induce as much OOC rage when they eventually pass on. Players don't get as attatched to them, and are a little more comfortable with letting Grunty Mcgrunt have his face blown off, rather than their main that they spent so much time and effort getting approved. Plus if they try anything edgy, it can be put down with little loss of sanity from both parties. Consequence without consequence, in a sense. I hope. Obviously there's going to still be the occasional OOC shitfest, but this would give battles a little more sense of realism. If newer players are able to practice their combat RP, we might even avoid less voided moments if Billy Badass remembers what happened the last time he tried to be the centre of attention. I hope. I dunno. Figured I'd toss my two cents in.
Combat RP is stupid. I long for the day factions respond to idiot edgelords with snipers, airstrikes and sarin gas. It would stop these abysmal 5 hour "i'm better than u" whinefests that represent 2 minutes of actual fighting, and better reflect what a military faction would actually do to respond to threats (just look at the USA, who dropped a 2000 pound bomb on a ISIS flag).
I guess you could say it was flagged for demolition. Haaaaaaa... Yes, Combat RP is a little ridiculous in its current state. People don't want their characters to die, and waste hours trying to one up everybody else. I feel the situation may change if they're fighting with a character they care little about.
Although it can't be power gaming if they are a military, bought the drone and trained to use it then it's legit.
While that's true, most people wouldn't consent to being bombarded from orbit, even if the attacking faction does have the necessary equipment and trained people to do so. It's considered powergaming because there are no losses on one side.
