Fetching the Ethos: Questions on Terminology

[AndrewCrisp]

Hello all,

In perusing the various guides and threads in this new forum, I've come across a couple of terms that don't seem to have explanations for them.

The first one are "fetch missions". I can only think of two kinds of missions I've seen that the term might apply to: missions where you are asked to "source and return" a commodity in X quantity, or missions where you are asked to "liberate" something or someone from somebody else (which sounds a lot like piracy). So which of these two mission types are "fetch" missions?

The second term, which is referenced but rarely, is "ethos". In the few places I've seen it applied are as a kind of modifier on a faction's form of government (e.g. authoritarian-ethos corporation). Now I've been out in the void for the past four months, and it's been a long time since I looked at a starport services screen, but I do not recall any such modifiers on faction descriptions, and I can't find them on third party sites like INARA. So, my question: is "ethos" a thing that actually exists in the game, or is it something people apply to it - part of their headcanon, as it were. If it's part of the game, how do you find a factions' ethos? While governments cannot be changed, can a faction's ethos be changed?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Sentenza]

You are missing the third type, the "retrieve" missions. Recover something lost somewhere in space (which might be illegal, but usually not immoral).

There is in fact an ethos. If you pay attention, really criminal missions like kill civilians are only issued by criminal (anarchy) factions.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

The first one are "fetch missions". I can only think of two kinds of missions I've seen that the term might apply to: missions where you are asked to "source and return" a commodity in X quantity, or missions where you are asked to "liberate" something or someone from somebody else (which sounds a lot like piracy). So which of these two mission types are "fetch" missions?

I use it for "source and return". "Liberate" I'd probably call "legal piracy".

The second term, which is referenced but rarely, is "ethos". In the few places I've seen it applied are as a kind of modifier on a faction's form of government (e.g. authoritarian-ethos corporation). Now I've been out in the void for the past four months, and it's been a long time since I looked at a starport services screen, but I do not recall any such modifiers on faction descriptions, and I can't find them on third party sites like INARA. So, my question: is "ethos" a thing that actually exists in the game, or is it something people apply to it - part of their headcanon, as it were. If it's part of the game, how do you find a factions' ethos? While governments cannot be changed, can a faction's ethos be changed?

Ethos is a hidden variable which primarily determines what other factions (if any) a faction will have elections with. There is no known way to change it for existing factions.

There are four ethos types: Social, Corporate, Authoritarian and Criminal. Criminal fights War/Civil War with everyone including itself ... every other ethos fights Elections with itself and wars with others.

How do you find it...

For most factions it's easy, because there's usually a strict mapping between government type and ethos, which I *think* is:
Social: Democracy, Confederacy, Cooperative, Communist, Theocracy?
Corporate: Corporate only
Authoritarian: Dictatorship, Feudal, Patronage, Prison Colony, Theocracy?
Criminal: Anarchy only

...but...

In the Colonia region, the PMFs were allowed to choose their ethos and not obliged to stick to that pattern. Then, when Frontier introduced some NPC factions later, they copied the government+ethos patterns from the PMFs rather than from the standard, so some of them are not what you'd expect either. This means you occasionally get apparent oddities like a Dictatorship and a Cooperative having an election, or two Cooperatives going to War.

So, to determine those you have to be a bit more cautious:
- Criminal ethos factions generate much more illegal missions and much more types of illegal missions, so they're easy to spot.
- For PMFs you can of course ask the faction what they put, if you know a diplomat and they can remember
- ...and for the rest you have to wait for them to either get into an Election with something you do already know, or get into Wars with every other type.

...which is why there's still nine in Colonia I have no confirmation what ethos they are. (Seven of them I know are either Corporate or Authoritarian, because they don't generate Criminal missions and they fight Wars with Social ... but they aren't close enough to any of the known Corporate/Authoritarian factions to be sure which ... of the other two one has never been in a conflict and the other has only ever been in invasion conflicts which are always Wars regardless of ethos)

 

[Walter2]

Each faction has two modifiers: it has its government type (ethos) - dictatorship, monarchy, democracy, etc - and its affiliation (or not) with a superpower - Alliance, Empire, Federation or Indpendent.

The second tab on the right-hand Status panel reveals each faction's type, but there's more information in the System Map.

Fundamentally, there's very little difference between factions' behaviour - all are quite adept at slave trading, assassination and land grabbing. All will offer the same type of mission (although Anarchy factions seem to have certain tendencies, but that may be down to confirmation bias), fetch missions (we need this), carry missions (take this to there - white van man stuff), mining, planetary scans, skimmer destruction, etc. Sometimes the range of missions on offer is modified by the State the faction finds itself in.

Success with any faction is down to your own ethical commitment.

 

[Sapyx]

I prefer to use the word "procurement" for missions that require you to go away and (legally) buy or otherwise obtain some goods to bring back (the ones with the two-arrows icon); it avoids the confusion of the word "fetch", even if it is longer to say/type.

As Ian said, "ethos" is the term used for groups or "families" of government types which have Elections rather than Wars with each other. Thus, when a Democracy and a Confederacy come into conflict, they have an Election rather than a War to resolve the conflict, because they're of the same ethos; this is independent of any superpower affiliation the two factions might have. Communists are missing from Ian's list; I believe they're in the Social category. And I believe Theocracies are in the Authoritarian category?

One significant corollary is that, apart from Corporates (who hate everybody except other Corporates), most of the factions aligned with one of the two major Superpowers belong to the same ethos: most Federation factions are Social, most Imperial factions are Authoritarian. This does tend to reduce the number of "green on green" wars. Speaking of greens, you'll notice that Alliance factions tend to come from all four ethos families, so green-on-green wars in Alliance space are more probable.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Communists are missing from Ian's list; I believe they're in the Social category. And I believe Theocracies are in the Authoritarian category?

Thanks - yes, Communists are Social.

I've seen people put Theocracies in both categories, so I really don't know. The ones in Colonia definitely aren't social ... but that doesn't help because all the Colonia Patronages are Corporate ethos

I'll edit, anyway.

 

[Walter2]

In the latest list of government types in the Galaxy map are Workshop and Detention Centre. Are these factions, or outpost types that can't expand? It's always seemed a little odd that Prison Colony factions can expand.

Some factions (Cooperatives?) are labelled Broker in the mission boards and something else in the System maps.

 

[irongut]

If you pay attention, really criminal missions like kill civilians are only issued by criminal (anarchy) factions.

So why does my Patronage faction sometimes issue Wetwork missions (which usually have clean targets) and missions to steal cargo? I think state and economy type have a lot more to do with what kind of missions you see than government type or ethos.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

I think state and economy type have a lot more to do with what kind of missions you see than government type or ethos.

All factions will offer some criminal missions. Criminal ethos factions offer distinctively more, however.

 

[Ganjanoof]

Hello all,
The first one are "fetch missions". I can only think of two kinds of missions I've seen that the term might apply to: missions where you are asked to "source and return" a commodity in X quantity

These should be simply named trade missions for the sake of clarity. Aswell as deliveries. They share the same purposes and effects. Tho deliveries do now impact the destination faction again. So : 'fetch' or 'source' on one hand, 'deliver' on the other hand. Both are trade missions.

or missions where you are asked to "liberate" something or someone from somebody else (which sounds a lot like piracy). So which of these two mission types are "fetch" missions?

These are really not mainstream in terms of working on the bgs. I have no precise idea of how they do count and I bet I'm not the only one around here. Maybe someone having supported an anarchy could help with another insight.

You are missing the third type, the "retrieve" missions. Recover something lost somewhere in space (which might be illegal, but usually not immoral).

I would simply call these salvage missions.

Salvage and trade have been used for years as simple terms to indicate what kind of mission is involved. Now that the destination faction makes a difference again in trade, just use (trade) source and (trade) delivery ?
Keep it simple guys and gals [smile]

Trade (or smuggle)
- source
- deliver

Salvage
- black boxes / military intelligence / commercial samples (...)
- 'liberate' things, tho I'm not sure they should be qualified as salvage

Data
- whatever data to be delivered

Combat
- Spec Ops / Wetwork / Assassination
- Massacre (in a CZ, war context, uneffective)
- Massacre (not in a war, effective iirc) / Pirates in a neighbouring system, skimmers and so on

Planetary scan

Passengers

Donations

Have I missed something ? (more than one thing I'm pretty sure).

Heck it's not easy, even after 3 years

 

[AndrewCrisp]

Thanks for the replies, everyone. This clears things up immensely.

Ian and Sapyx's explanation of ethos and its effects also helps resolve a seeming paradox. When I first began interacting with factions, and learned how factions can compete for dominance, I was confused. We're told the Federation and the Empire have been around for at least a millennium, and were pretty monolithic entities at that. But if minor factions fought each other for dominance, that suggested the Federation and Empire weren't as strong and centralized as advertised. It'd be like the United States letting counties get into shooting wars for control of a given town. Now that I know that factions of the same ethos hold elections rather than go to war - and that the Federation and Empire are each dominated by a given ethos - the paradox goes away.

It also lets me breathe a little easier on considering which factions I want to support.

 

[Ganjanoof]

Thanks for the replies, everyone. This clears things up immensely.
Ian and Sapyx's explanation of ethos and its effects also helps resolve a seeming paradox.

Beware, this is the way it begins. Alot of things in this game will cause you to quit it unless you resolve some seeming paradoxes.

 

[Sapyx]

Thanks for the replies, everyone. This clears things up immensely.

Ian and Sapyx's explanation of ethos and its effects also helps resolve a seeming paradox. When I first began interacting with factions, and learned how factions can compete for dominance, I was confused. We're told the Federation and the Empire have been around for at least a millennium, and were pretty monolithic entities at that. But if minor factions fought each other for dominance, that suggested the Federation and Empire weren't as strong and centralized as advertised. It'd be like the United States letting counties get into shooting wars for control of a given town. Now that I know that factions of the same ethos hold elections rather than go to war - and that the Federation and Empire are each dominated by a given ethos - the paradox goes away.

It also lets me breathe a little easier on considering which factions I want to support.

The paradox doesn't quite go away entirely: both the Empire and Federation are littered with aligned Corporations (it seems to be the second-most-common government type in both the Federation and Empire), and Corps always go to war against anything except other Corps. So at any given time, you can probably find a couple dozen Fed v Fed or Imp v Imp wars somewhere in the galaxy, with one of those warring factions being a Corporation. There are also odd outliers, like Fed Prison Colonies and that Imp Democracy, who are always at war with their compatriots.

I have suggested in the past a new peaceful conflict state, "Arbitration", which would occur whenever two factions come into conflict and would ordinarily go to war due to opposing ethos, but are of the same superpower alignment. I really think it's silly that a monolithic superpower like the Feds or Imps would allow any "green on green" wars to occur, at all. It's especially immersion-breaking when you drop into a High CZ and see two Fed Navy Farraguts slugging it out against each other. I mean, what's the point of belonging to a Superpower if they're not going to come to your aid when you need help resolving a dispute with your neighbours? Is "here, we'll give you both some weapons, now go kill each other until one of you runs out of soldiers" really the best method for conflict resolution that the superpowers could come up with?

 

[AndrewCrisp]

Perhaps not the best that they could come up with, but perhaps special circumstances. IIRC, one of the bits about the Federation is that corruption is rampant within the political sphere, so it wouldn't surprise me too much to see some military commanders willing to "rent out" their battlecruisers to a corporation so long as they don't commit outright treason (shooting up the Martian White House, for example), and as long as they get a cut of the profits - or alternately for the Federation to send in the big guns if one of major corporations gets too big to control by other means. Ditto with the Empire and the odd Imperial Democracy - easy to imagine those as imperial punitive actions, though with some Interdictor commanders deciding to fight for the "rebel faction" as a point of honor.

But, in general, I agree that an "Arbitration" conflict state is needed, and I can see it applying best inside the Alliance. The Alliance is more decentralized than the other two powers, and the smallest one to boot. Constant internecine wars would not be a selling point for any independent system thinking of joining the Alliance, not to mention the constant wear on Alliance force strength and readiness. And there are the opportunities such wars present for either the Empire or the Federation to shatter the young upstart superpower. You'd think that the Alliance Charter (or whatever it is called) would have provisions in it to resolve issues between member factions without resorting to warfare.