These anarchy discussions always remind me of a “Who’s On First?” routine, thanks to competing, and often mutually exclusive, definitions of “anarchy.” Or maybe “No meaning yes.“
PP 2.0 donation spam is ruining Anarchies
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These anarchy discussions always remind me of a “Who’s On First?” routine, thanks to competing, and often mutually exclusive, definitions of “anarchy.” Or maybe “No meaning yes.“
The word has developed conflicting applications over time, but at it's core, it always means "without government." Interpreting it as a form of government just doesn't work.These anarchy discussions always remind me of a “Who’s On First?” routine, thanks to competing, and often mutually exclusive, definitions of “anarchy.” Or maybe “No meaning yes.“
That's why quibbling over terminology is pointless for this discussion, since the game distinguishes between "None" and "Anarchy" in its government star map filter and other locations. In plain English, they should be the same thing, but in game terms they aren't.
Regardless of the meaning of the word, the game treats Anarchy very much as a form of government.
This is why "Anarchy" factions are a misnomer and need to be rebadged to "criminal", "unfettered" or similar., so that more meaningful decisions can be made about where these factions sit in the game and be more reflective of how they sit in the game.
But as has been said already, FD need more of an idea about exactly what the point of Anarchy and crime writ- large are for the game; is it really just for EvP only, and players committing crime should be purely punitive? Would be dumb, but would at least be a clear decision.
@Ian Doncaster huh... thought just occurred to me... i rekon it would be pretty neat if only from a flavour perspective, to distinguish War (foreign power combatant/s) from civil war (domestic combatants) that the civil war state led to a loss of system wide jurisdiction loss for any jurisdiction held by any participant. Same effect could be applied to civil unrest (but not lockdown, as "the gift overused"). OT, but interesting.
Last time I looked, undiscovered systems far from the bubble are Anarchy on the Galaxy Map.
Why did they change it? Anarchy literally means without government.
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You're possibly confusing a bunch of things, unsurprisingly since the game is so inconsistent.... however this isn't a recent change, and has always been like this (at least, since Beyond?)
Government refers to the type of Faction in control of a system, which (without being exhaustive) is Anarchy (for an Anarchy faction in control) and None, for a system with no human presence.
What you're referring to is Security Status, which is High, Medium, Low and Anarchy.
Anarchy for security status refers to any unpopulated system, or a system controlled by an Anarchy faction. "Anarchy" security status in this case refers to the fact crimes can be freely committed with no corresponding bounty or police response... not the state of government within the system (which is detailed above).
This is why it's a pointless and futile exercise to try and leverage anything off formal definitions of the word, to define what should happen in-game; the game inconsistently applies the term throughout. There is no baseline... while "anarchy" has a meaning in English, Anarchy Factions are undeniably portrayed as criminals... so either they're mislabelled, or a huge section of the game needs to be changed. Renaming would sure be a lot easier.
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Thank you both! Never noticed that gem in Inara and I've been using it for years, and the Siriuscorp page is a new one for me. Looks great. o7
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The name is clearly inherited from the original Elite's cold war-inspired government classification which was also a security level classification. It has to be read somewhat in that context rather than in any of the more normal English meanings. And the wider problems come from Elite Dangerous being the first game where government not being a strict match to security state actually matters.
That said, you have to really push the boundaries of the word to interpret a corporation, or a religion, or a prison colony as a form of government either.
"Prison Colony" is in many respects actually rather less coherent than "Anarchy" in terms of being a faction government type. Settlements (or even entire systems) could certainly be prison colonies, but that should be either an economy type or just a part of the settlement name, with the controlling government just whoever happens to be running the prison. What does it even mean if the Hodack Prison Colony faction takes over a new station? Are all the inhabitants instantly jailed? [1]
"Corporation" implies some form of recognition and incorporation under a government - if one had its own ability to set laws, and fight wars and gain territory as part of its completely independent foreign policy, then it can only meaningfully be incorporated under itself. And at that point it's basically just a standard dictatorship with maybe some vestigial corporate titles from before it declared independence.
Forms of governance, sure - as social structures for organising activity all of these are plausible ones. But then anarchy (any type!) is most certainly also a social structure for organising activity.
"Nothing about Elite Dangerous minor factions makes any sense" is true but we're not playing Elite Dangerous for its realism anyway.
[1] No, because that would be the Lockdown faction state.
If you had a do- over, you'd go with "local power" or "local authority" , where authority or power is not necessarily obtained through government, and so "control" is a more abstracted concept.
A political faction in control of a system may be the duly elected authority.... but if a corporation was took control that, political faction (or another political faction) may actually still be the duly elected official for that government, but they're only in that position thanks to that Corporation, who asserts ultimate control over relevant assets, and functionally fines/ bounties are at the discretion of the corporation who assert that authority or power over the other factions.... all of which would be abstracted away through the use of such a term.
Meanwhile, a system consisting only of corporation factions could feasibly be a Corporatocracy (i hate that term, but apparently its a thing) which with an actual nominated head of "government"... or equally they've been given charter by a some larger authority to operate as a conglomerate and mete out their own system of governance within that system.
But again... all abstracted when you step away from "Government" as the deciding factor.
There is the obvious example of the East India Company which administered a large area of India in its own right. Obviously registered offices in London.
Plenty of examples of religious organisations effectively running as governments.
Plenty of examples of religious organisations effectively running as governments.
Certainly a government can outsource functions to a corporation - and the EIC of course went a lot further than modern arrangements do - but it was still essentially an arm of the British government.
(Superpower-chartered corporations in Elite Dangerous certainly make more sense than the independent ones, but pulling on that thread just ends up in "wait, the superpowers make no sense either" as the EIC starts a war with the Duke of Devonshire for control of Chatsworth House)
Yes. My point was that there's not really a difference as a government between corporate, many theocracies, and dictatorship (and also feudal, patronage and prison colony): in all cases there's a supreme leadership which are essentially self-appointed, and who exercise hierarchical control over law and foreign policy from there.
They're distinctive governance types if run on a sub-national scale - the local church is distinct from my employer is distinct from the prison down the road - but that only matters because they're subordinate to something else which treats those three things differently in terms of rights and responsibilities. If run as a nation whether the supreme leader has the title "Archbishop", "CEO", "President" or "Warden" is essentially irrelevant.
On the security context side, "places where system authority reinforcements won't immediately show up" are a fairly common thing for people to want - on the ship side, HazRES/CNB/etc so that there's a bit more of a combat challenge versus pirates; on the foot side, disabling the alarms gets you one anywhere.
That implies the existence of a non-criminal faction.
LOL, you make a very good point. But the irony is not lost on me, that an anarchist faction is requesting assistance to control the rampant mass murders... if only there was a set of rules or morals which one could enshrine into some sort of codex to let people know certain behavior are not only frowned upon but punitive action could be taken for violating such rules...
Maybe the solution is to have different levels of anarchy? Where as the first level is the ones we have now, but the more they get beat up, the meaner and more dog eat dog world it gets. At the highest level you'd start getting hypderdicted at the annoyance level that Thargoids did and factions would fight each other randomly like the Shamash signal experiment.
I believe that is called a Co-operative Government.
Yeah, they deleted all the good eye opening stuff.
Anarchy systems, OK, makes sense. No gov no law, blaa blaa blaa. It's actually technically correct.
But what are those systems/stations promoting the most murderous regime known to man?
Unreal.
Once again this has drifted into some political discussion about the viability of anarchies in RL. This has nothing to do with the topic at hand, which is all about game mechanics and having one faction in the game at a massive disadvantage gameplay wise.