Antares 1.0 and the Future

As I am sure you're all aware, Chucklefish aims to release the 1.0 update sometime within this month of January.
If you've played the unstable build, you may have experienced the wonderful changes awaiting us. Some of these aren't very roleplay friendly, however, particularly the quest-based progression system. Some of you are likely wondering how Antares intends to move forward in response to these changes. So far, we've said nothing on it.
Today, that changes.

We have been working on several projects and have been entertaining more than a handful of ideas. However, I feel the time has come to reach out to the community and ask for it's input on some of these matters. I'll break down what I want to bring up to you today, and hopefully we'll have some constructive and useful responses below. The community will help shape the future of Antares.

The following are my personal thoughts on these matters and do not reflect Staff as a whole.
These ideas are proposals only and nothing is set in stone.

Lore
Chucklefish has continued to disappoint me with their lore. It's fine for a singleplayer game, but it brings up many stereotypes and other problematic canon that would be difficult to balance in roleplay. As well, there's just simply not enough of it. There's too much left up to interpretation. I propose that Antares create it's own lore, based on CF's lore, but selectively discarding the harmful parts and filling in the gaps ourselves. Any new lore released by CF would be invalidated unless we choose to incorporate it. The Community could help us to create this new lore and allow Antares to have a better foundation for roleplay. I'm looking for agree/disagreement on this idea, not necessarily proposed lore. That discussion would come later.

Setting
Antares is intended to be a frontier society. This means that it's essentially the Sci-Fi equivalent of the Wild West. However, I want to make sure that this is a setting that the community even wants. It's interesting because it gives a reason for new characters to show up. It's a promising land of opportunity, so to speak, rich with adventure and resources. However, I've noticed that from time to time, players tend to give themselves technology that wouldn't be appropriate for a frontier society. I personally feel that technology should be gradually introduced to the frontier, perhaps through events. I'm looking for community input on these topics.

Law
Antares has been completely lawless, aside from the occasional player faction trying to instill law - which as far as I know, hasn't worked too well - so that's why I'd like to introduce the idea of a Staff-backed Law faction, something to provide characters with a safe haven protected by terrorists and bandits (such characters would have to request with Staff for permission to attack, and such events would be supervised). Players shouldn't have to put their characters in danger just because they've chosen to play on their server. Outside of this protected Space, Antares would still remain the Lawless and Dangerous place that a frontier should be. Now, the Staff-backed Faction would only play a guardian role, protecting a small haven (star system) and serve as a plot device for various events. There shouldn't be any concerns of power abuse or interference with roleplay. Thoughts?

Cloning
I'd like to introduce an idea for cloning. I think that it's very unfair that a player's character can be permanently killed whether they like it or not. This is why people hide behind our consent rules, even though they're not supposed to. It's evident that the consent system is flawed, but that's because permadeath is flawed. Permanent Death should only be performed at a player's wishes, as a Staff requirement, or to serve an event or other plot purpose. Cloning is a canon technology, and while we can ignore it, I feel we're only hurting ourselves. I think cloning should be brought back with heavily penalizations, and that outlaws and violent characters should lose their right to clone. This can be ICly justified by the Law faction I mentioned earlier, if we give them the purpose of providing cloning services for Antares residents. I'm looking for feedback on this ideas, and suggestions for penalizations if we were to implement it.

Progression & Economy
It's very unfortunate that CF has decided to take the quest-based route for progression. While I can understand why they've done this, it doesn't suit roleplay very well as it defines various things about a player's characters as they progress. So I move to void the quests all-together, and find alternative means of progression. My primary question here is, should be restrict the use of mods that allow items to be spawned in at a player's discretion? It would allow easy quest-based progression, but it would allow the abuse that it already rampant and common throughout Antares. I'm not advocating an absolutely strict economy, but I do think that things should have more value beyond the sentimental value we place upon it through roleplay. I'm looking for advice and suggestions.

Whitelisting
We currently employ an account-based whitelisting system that allows players to create characters at their whim. It also allows more sneaky players to create characters entirely different from the one they submitted during their whitelist process, in an attempt to bypass our restrictions or out of genuine innocence and ignorance. I could enable character-based whitelisting, which would require players to apply for every character they wish to play. This would allow us, as Staff, to have much more quality control. We'd also need a rather large team of Reviewers to handle the heavy load, however. I'm looking for feedback and opinions on this idea.

Starting Out & Default Equipment
I've been mulling over the idea of having all characters start out with a default set of equipment, with some variance. This would be difficult to enforce if we allowed a rampant and free non-economy, so I am unsure if this idea has any basis at all, but I still wanted to present it regardless. I don't like how some players try to bring in heavy weapons or absurd technology to the frontier. In a perfect world, everyone would start out the same and earn their reputation and equipment through playing. However, especially with the 1.0 update, this type of progression will be next to impossible to implement and enforce. It all depends on what CF allows us to do in the back-end. I'm looking for discussions on this idea, based on the assumption that we may be able to someday enforce this realistically.

Colony Construction
It seems frequent that a colony will simply appear over night, as a player spawns themselves all the resources they need to construct it. Now, with an item as powerful as the Matter Manipulator, the construction time could be ICly justified - however I still take an issue with the magical acquirement of resources. I'm wondering if we should try and implement any policies restricting colony construction so that colonies don't pop up too terribly frequently, only to end up abandoned. I'm looking for suggestions and opinions on this topic.

Faction Representation
It makes me very upset to see players creating throwaway characters to represent the "might" of their faction. Again, I stress that Antares is a frontier society and that the population would be fairly low. A faction isn't going to have a mighty army, or terrifying fleets of ships. I think factions should be a "what you see is what you get" deal and that players should be restricted to one faction, to both prevent metagaming, spying, and false representation. A player shouldn't have 5 alts, each in one faction. A player should carefully choose a faction to dedicate themselves and ONE character to. Throwaways shouldn't exist, even for the purpose of battles, as that just serves to keep the core faction members alive and "powerful". Particularly if we implement cloning, this issue is likely to not be as relevant or serious, but I still think it should be discussed. A "large" faction would be 15-18 players, due to the low population of the Antares Frontier. It's entirely unreasonable to have these invisible armies and ships backing up a faction's "power". You may be wondering that if these policies are enacted, what about previous lore established by powerful factions? I'd like to state that just because something has been permitted in the past doesn't make it okay, it just means it wasn't addressed. Previous factions, I imagine, could keep their previous lore, but would be subject to the new policies. I'm looking for discussion, suggestion, feedback, and opinions.

Vehicles & Powerful Weaponry
Since Starbound currently doesn't natively support vehicles, and abuse of the drawables system causes lag problems - and as well, I hear, may be restricted with the 1.0 patch - I am of the notion that vehicles shouldn't exist in the frontier. Ships are one thing, but vehicles are another. These planets are small enough that they can be explored on foot, and if/when CF adds vehicles, we can discuss them again then. As well, I think that weapons of planet-destroying capability are far outside anything that would be seen in the frontier. Frankly, it's absurd. As well as nuclear weaponry, or anything with more explosive capacity than a rocket launcher (which would be rare in a frontier, as-is, I'd imagine) would just be too prone to abuse and wouldn't make sense to have in the first place. I'm looking for feedback and suggestions to policy on what to do concerning these topics.

Forums
The forums have existed as they have for a long time. However, I think they could better. We could perhaps have an IC library, re-vamp the Market section to make it appeal to more than just buying/selling, and perhaps give the Security forum it's own entire section and break down the various types of reports to help bring awareness to the reporting process. I'm looking for suggestions.

Magic
I just wanted to mention this to clarify any confusion on the subject. Regardless of what CF says, Magic does not exist in Antares. It's unexplained science. If you see a "wizard", they're delusional and messing with forces they have no understanding of. Not looking for input on this one.

 

Why not propose mechanical consequences then? As well as report rule breakers.
It could be possible to enforce a 24 hour ban on a character that has been killed. Not automatically, but...
It's still possible to enforce mechanically should a player be uncooperative.

EDIT: This could be ICly justified as the "regenerative process" taking it's time.

 

I should probably mention that it's possible to ban specific characters, even without character-based whitelisting. Folks don't have to worry about getting an account-ban because one of their characters died and they decided not to honor the rules.

As for the workload, yeah, I get you. I'm willing to pitch in on this, too. We'd still need a large team of dedicated people, at least for the initial surge.

 

The Announcements section entirely is set to moderator approval. I use it to keep the threads on-topic.

EDIT: Any posts that don't directly contribute to the discussion don't get approved. Side comments, casual observations, and things like that that aren't really harmful but still non-contributive won't get approved. Intent is to keep this particular thread on-topic the whole way down.

 

I don't entirely agree with this. I was thinking that cloning is like taking a backup of a being's memory. They remember up to the point they died, with the last few moments becoming corrupted as a result of the death. This is why no-one can remember why they died.
Ignoring spirituality and souls for a few moments, they are, for all intents and purpose, the same person as defined by their memories.

 

Players can always leave a faction to join another, I'd imagine.

I didn't think clones would remember dying. I suppose someone could tell them, but they'd have to believe it.

 

How does he know it's his ashes, though? Ashes are ashes.
I could show you some ashes and say they're yours. Are you a clone?