Better player faction integration between outside and inside the game

[rootsrat]

I would imagine the support would be quite significant. And it would be great.

According to several FDEV statements in recent weeks FDEV seems to focus development in features that get "take up". Well, if that is true then the least FDEV should do is to acknowledge the (imo) tremendous take up of faction gameplay. I agree with you, my immediate player circle is also 99% driven by faction gameplay too.

That is very true. I've heard "If not for <insert faction name> I wouldn't play anymore" countless times. Player factions have common goals and give a sense of integrity and belonging to something. They create lore and content. And while I am not saying that ED doesn't have content, because it does, and A LOT of it, the game is also a massive sandbox where the community created content is very important and plays a big role in how people enjoy the game. And player groups are small communities in themselves - communities that in most cases focus their activities around the player faction they've created.

 

[DNA-Decay]

.... which just emphasises the fact that ship-naming and ID tags were not implemented to offer controlled access fleet tags.

So we have been given the means to display our Fleet Tags.
And the immediate call is to lock other people out from using those tags.

But already we have some dual claimants to the throne:
AA is that Aisling's Angels or Adle's Armada?
AI is that Achenar Immortals or Angeli Imperium?

And here's a couple of others for those leaders who are calling for the ability to lock out certain letter combinations:
1) There is a loose coalition of French language Player Groups.
Perhaps they would like to form a coalition and Rise To Power and call that Coalition:
Elite Dangerouse Francais. Ship tags - EDF
Some of them are older than Viktore's group and could argue a prior claim.

2) And of course there are those radical followers of Edward De Bono who vow to uncritically love their projects.
They go by the name "The White Hats" and of course their Ship Tag is : TWH


My point here is that instead of a couple of player groups having each other on their KOS list.
Brett C or someone now has to adjudicate a dispute between playergroups. Both of whom present a plausible claim to a tag.

"I was here first"
"But we're bigger" etc

Ain't nobody got time for that.

I love the fleet tag ability that has come with Ship ID.
I wear mine with pride.











Regarding The recent noise about PC false flagging.
Well, a lot of those GalCop member groups are right into the smoke and mirrors, and deception and truth and misdirection.
It's what they do, and what they're good at.

Even if Frontier implemented some sort of lock out - you can rely on those type of teams leveraging 'identity' to further their goals. And you can bet if you had to present a case to Brett C that you were more entitled to some tag they wanted to use - their case would be pretty compelling.

I say - wear your tags with pride.
Resolve the dual claims.
Publicize your tags.
Put them in your sigs.
KOS the false flaggers.

Use it or lose it.

 

[Robert Maynard]

So we have been given the means to display our Fleet Tags.
And the immediate call is to lock other people out from using those tags.

But already we have some dual claimants to the throne:
AA is that Aisling's Angels or Adle's Armada?
AI is that Achenar Immortals or Angeli Imperium?

And here's a couple of others for those leaders who are calling for the ability to lock out certain letter combinations:
1) There is a loose coalition of French language Player Groups.
Perhaps they would like to form a coalition and Rise To Power and call that Coalition:
Elite Dangerouse Francais. Ship tags - EDF
Some of them are older than Viktore's group and could argue a prior claim.

2) And of course there are those radical followers of Edward De Bono who vow to uncritically love their projects.
They go by the name "The White Hats" and of course their Ship Tag is : TWH

I love fleet tags.
I wear mine with pride.

Regarding The recent noise about PC false flagging.
Well, a lot of those GalCop member groups are right into the smoke and mirrors, and deception and truth and misdirection.
It's what they do, and what they're good at.

Even if Frontier implemented some sort of lock out - you can rely on those type teams leveraging 'identity' to further their goals.

I say - wear your tags with pride.
Resolve the dual claims.
Publicize your tags.
Put them in you sigs.

Dual claims could be solved by using the first two letters in the words of the names (second one lower case) Aisling's Angels could be AiAn; Achenar Immortals could be AcIm; Elite Dangereuse Francais could be ElDaFr; Earth Defence Fleet could be EaDeFl.

I'd prefer if the Faction was shown in the same way as it currently is for NPCs.

 

[DNA-Decay]

Dual claims could be solved by using the first two letters in the words of the names (second one lower case) Aisling's Angels could be AiAn; Achenar Immortals could be AcIm; Elite Dangereuse Francais could be ElDaFr; Earth Defence Fleet could be EaDeFl.

I'd prefer if the Faction was shown in the same way as it currently is for NPCs.

EaDeFl?
That's hideous!
I wouldn't wish it on Viktore.

I chose ADLESfor Adle's Armada and ANGEL for Aisling's Angels - but I suspect that both of them rightly expect: AA

 

[Robert Maynard]

That's hideous!

I chose ADLES for Adle's Armada and ANGEL for Aisling's Angels - but I suspect that both of them rightly expect: AA

It works though....

.... and they could not both have AA as that would lead to "problems".

 

[Vicktore Beskor]

So we have been given the means to display our Fleet Tags.
And the immediate call is to lock other people out from using those tags.

But already we have some dual claimants to the throne:
AA is that Aisling's Angels or Adle's Armada?
AI is that Achenar Immortals or Angeli Imperium?

And here's a couple of others for those leaders who are calling for the ability to lock out certain letter combinations:
1) There is a loose coalition of French language Player Groups.
Perhaps they would like to form a coalition and Rise To Power and call that Coalition:
Elite Dangerouse Francais. Ship tags - EDF
Some of them are older than Viktore's group and could argue a prior claim.

2) And of course there are those radical followers of Edward De Bono who vow to uncritically love their projects.
They go by the name "The White Hats" and of course their Ship Tag is : TWH


My point here is that instead of a couple of player groups having each other on their KOS list.
Brett C or someone now has to adjudicate a dispute between playergroups. Both of whom present a plausible claim to a tag.

"I was here first"
"But we're bigger" etc

Ain't nobody got time for that.

I love the fleet tag ability that has come with Ship ID.
I wear mine with pride.











Regarding The recent noise about PC false flagging.
Well, a lot of those GalCop member groups are right into the smoke and mirrors, and deception and truth and misdirection.
It's what they do, and what they're good at.

Even if Frontier implemented some sort of lock out - you can rely on those type of teams leveraging 'identity' to further their goals. And you can bet if you had to present a case to Brett C that you were more entitled to some tag they wanted to use - their case would be pretty compelling.

I say - wear your tags with pride.
Resolve the dual claims.
Publicize your tags.
Put them in your sigs.
KOS the false flaggers.

Use it or lose it.

I would again like the mention that the Earth Defense Fleet was one of the first ten player minor factions introduce into Elite Dangerous. And we have been an active fleet since launch of Elite Dangerous.
We officially form our fleet right after the Lugh war against the Crimson State Group.

 

[Whitehair]

Nice. Why do you keep mentioning this?

Hello everyone, I'd like to state that I am in the first ten people to respond to this post. I'll be back again soon to remind you all that I am in the first 10 to have responded to the post

 

[Pro Cambarus]

In terms of potentially conflicting fleet tags I do agree to kindly request affected PMF representatives to try to resolve the matter between each other before escalating the issue to FDev. Diplomacy is always a great opportunity in a sandbox game enriching the gameplay itself and it seems to work quite well. If it is removing potential workload in bottleneck areas it is a double gain. It is not my table to come up with proposals for other players groups, so just for the sake of examples Adles Armada could go with ADA and Aisling's Angels with AIA, both of which still sound great.

 

[DNA-Decay]

It works though....

But it's awful.

.... and they could not both have AA as that would lead to "problems".

At the moment they can.
And it's not a problem that Brett C has to have a meeting with players to resolve.

My assumption is that AA on a Fed ship is Adle's
And on an imperial ship it's Aisling's.
Or maybe one team or the other will adopt the longer tag: ADLES or ANGEL



Let me bore you with a repeat of an anectode.
During the Civil War to #freeLeesti - the AEDC seniors had let Alliance group leaders know what they were trying to do.
I had been slogging away for days making very little contribution despite hours put in.
On Day two of the Civil War, the tide had shifted, and we were seeing all sorts of well known CMDRs of the Alliance.
And then one evening there was a wing of the German Alliance group who all had [AID] at the end of their CMDR names.

And it felt like "The cavalry have arrived"!
It was a huge upwelling of camaraderie and "yeeeha!"

And THAT feeling is why we should use SHIP ID as-is.

BE the cavalry arriving.
BE the wing that inspires hope or strikes fear.

Wave the flag.

Have an allegiance and show it.

 

[Robert Maynard]

My assumption is that AA on a Fed ship is Adle's

Is there a requirement for Adle's Armada to fly Federal ships?

And on an imperial ship it's Aisling's.

Similarly is there a requirement for Aisling's Angels to fly Imperial ships?

Or maybe one team or the other will adopt the longer tag: ADLES or ANGEL

.... along with anyone else who feels like setting their tag to that.

Wave the flag.

.... or false flag, as the case may be.

Have an allegiance and show it.

.... or fake it.

My point is not to be dismissive, it's to reiterate the fact that while it is possible to use ship names and ID tags to indicate allegiance there is no control over it and it will be abused.

Which is why I hope that Frontier consider the OP's proposal for what is effectively a cosmetic that is user controlled as to who is permitted to show it.

 

[goemon]

My point is not to be dismissive, it's to reiterate the fact that while it is possible to use ship names and ID tags to indicate allegiance there is no control over it and it will be abused.

Which is why I hope that Frontier consider the OP's proposal for what is effectively a cosmetic that is user controlled as to who is permitted to show it.

but as we also know (by user controlled access to private groups), user control isn't helping against abuse. so, whatever way it is implemented, the feature will get abused. it should be implemented nevertheless. which one of the several ways isn't down to "allows abuse/does not allow abuse".

 

[DNA-Decay]

And my point is that the only "abuse" is in the eye of the beholder.

To say that some CMDRs (PG Leaders) need to be able to lock out certain text combinations because "our reputation might be sullied." is rubbish.

If group A does some activity under the flag of group B.
They end up publicizing Group B.
For a False Flag operation to be of any meaningful use, you have to get public mileage out of the false flagged misdemeanors.

Whatever you might gain in the short term, you lose and more when the truth comes out.


I should probably give up arguing. If Frontier decided that providing gatekeeping tools to some CMDRs was a good idea, I would probably get an AEDC tag to wear anyway. "I'm alright, Jack"

For almost everyone the Player Group tags will be meaningless.
There's only Several hundred players who could name more than twenty player groups from memory.
For most folks it's their own Group, the Fuel Rats and a handful of others.

 

[evaldo10]

I concur

 

[KronenBrg]

What I am finding bizarre with the Ops proposal is that at roughly the same time as the original post was being written I was contemplating posting an almost identical suggestion! So in saying that, I totally love the idea.

I'd love for it to be a mechanism that worked in a similar way to Private Groups for requesting, where-by the founder of the Faction is responsible for all admissions and booting anyone, just as a faction forum or website works.

 

[RamirezKurita]

My point is not to be dismissive, it's to reiterate the fact that while it is possible to use ship names and ID tags to indicate allegiance there is no control over it and it will be abused.

Which is why I hope that Frontier consider the OP's proposal for what is effectively a cosmetic that is user controlled as to who is permitted to show it.

And that's a problem between a player and a minor power, not an issue between players. That's what a faction tag is, a tag showing some kind of allegiance to an AI-controlled faction.

What you are asking for is a tag to show mercenary fleet allegiance, which is not to be confused with faction tags.

 

[Robert Maynard]

And that's a problem between a player and a minor power, not an issue between players. That's what a faction tag is, a tag showing some kind of allegiance to an AI-controlled faction.

What you are asking for is a tag to show mercenary fleet allegiance, which is not to be confused with faction tags.

.... except for the fact that the "mercenary fleet" is a group of players that requested that the Faction in question was injected into the game with their lore behind it - a causal link, as it were, between the two.

 

[Lucifer Hate]

What may work better for Elite is not players requesting to join a player defined faction, but players when they become allied to an in game faction having the option of adding that faction name to their display.

ie. This eliminates the need for someone to control access, if a player has worked enough missions and is allied then they can join that in game faction.

If they become allied with another faction they then have an option of swapping factions, the one they leave automatically drops to cordial (or below).

Thsi way the game itself just "polices" membership.

the existing factions aleady in game can be supported by players, and there isn't a need for some person to be online 24x7 to manage players joining or leaving.

This would work for non player created NPC factions, but not for player factions. There have been many cases in the group I am in (The Code) where people claiming to be us and are not do things to tarnish our reputation, get reported on our site by people thinking it was us and then find out it was an impostor. There are other groups that have had the same problem like people claiming to be AA then killing noobs in Eravate as well as others. There is no reliable way to hunt those that troll groups like this and they know it so keep it up. It need to be that a people are approved to take on the name of a group by those in charge. I know I as one of The Code bosses would not want someone to be able to wear our name in game unless we specifically authorized it.

while i share your sentiment, i'm strongly against your proposal as it is creating a bottleneck (and a powerfull one).

as with private groups acting as "servers" having one to accept pledges isn't working nicely, it is a tedious workaround. sometimes leading to burn out, power plays and similar things.

instead of it, i'd prefer picking up the pretty inclusive minor faction mechanic, and allow anyone to pledge, as long as he is allied (and stay it till friendly/cordial, as we do know that working the bgs sometimes require to work against your faction).

This problem could be fixed by the person in charge of the group or faction being able to designate those in a command structure to give them power to manage it

 

[Robert Maynard]

but as we also know (by user controlled access to private groups), user control isn't helping against abuse. so, whatever way it is implemented, the feature will get abused. it should be implemented nevertheless. which one of the several ways isn't down to "allows abuse/does not allow abuse".

Maybe put a triumvirate in charge of membership - where the three can accept / kick members but cannot kick each other (but a member of the triumvirate can kick themselves and the other two can promote a new third member).

 

[Lucifer Hate]

Maybe put a triumvirate in charge of membership - where the three can accept / kick members but cannot kick each other (but a member of the triumvirate can kick themselves and the other two can promote a new third member).

I would think it would be easy enough to have the leader of the faction set who can add or remove people

 

[Robert Maynard]

I would think it would be easy enough to have the leader of the faction set who can add or remove people

Easy, but still a single point failure.