Please Frontier, don't forget the anarchies

[AhnSuYeong]

Hi everyone! o7

Here CMDR Ahn Suyeong from Explorers Of The Anarchy, one of the anarchists player minor factions in game.

I'm so excited with the news about the new content comming to Elite Dangerous this year, particularly PowerPlay rework and the BGS interaction.

As you know, the anarchies were suffering the attacks from all the players who, in my oppinion, wrongly understood how to play Odyssey. At the same time, we're under attack of PowerPlay's players who are interested in our area, because they need to change our systems to corporation, democracy or another, because the Anarchy is not useful to PowerPlay's system control. Until today, we have a region free and away from the dirty hands of Empire, Federation, and the other puppets of the intergalactic capitalist system, but only because we're fighting for our dreams are still alive.

For all these reasons, a lot of another anarchist squadrons are not playing today or they have changed their system of government. And in our squadron, a lot of players are tired and bored doing battles again and again and again... to maintain the influence and control in our most attacked systems, everyday.

I think this new rework for PowerPlay will be the better moment to introduce an "Anarchist Power Play", maybe a "Confederation Anarchist PowerPlay" (without a visible leader) or something similar but aligned to our ideology. The most important is to protect the existence of the anarchies systrems with the new upcoming update. So, I hope you can take this in consideration. As a long time anarchist players, we're open to explain to developers, if they want, all our experience playing as anarchist in our BGS. Maybe is so different to another player squadrons, and I think If you want a great game, you should listen all your community players, anarchist bgs players too.

Thank you and beer for everyone.

"Llevamos una galaxia nueva en nuestros corazones"

 

[Rubbernuke]

If FD intend to save anarchies then they have to really become properly useful and not guilt free collection areas (like this suggestion I had one day https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threa...sible-for-player-assets-such-as-ships.597257/).

In this way players would actively want them and nurture them as they serve a role.

The other is making anarchies the scary places they were in older Elite titles, with (in ED terms) wings of hardened evil pirates that deter the law abiding. You could then have notoriety acting as a positive here where the higher your Not. rating pirates leave you alone (sort of like a pirate rep).

 

[AhnSuYeong]

If FD intend to save anarchies then they have to really become properly useful and not guilt free collection areas (like this suggestion I had one day https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threa...sible-for-player-assets-such-as-ships.597257/).

In this way players would actively want them and nurture them as they serve a role.

The other is making anarchies the scary places they were in older Elite titles, with (in ED terms) wings of hardened evil pirates that deter the law abiding. You could then have notoriety acting as a positive here where the higher your Not. rating pirates leave you alone (sort of like a pirate rep).

Sorry but we're not pirates. Pirates are Archon Delaine, and I'm not sure but I think the anarchists systems are not favourable governments to his powerplay control area. But, the most important, I can't see any benefit to our anarchist pmf to take part on this PowerPlay. Archon Delaine is "king" of the pirates. We're anarchist, we don't have any king.
In fact, we have suffered pirate attacks too in our systems.
For example, now we have a pirate attack in HIP 31332: https://inara.cz/elite/starsystem/11039/
And we have missions against this pirate attack.

The anarchists NPCs minor factions don't have any specific role in this game. Sometimes they're like a "cartel", a "gang", or "pirates", sometimes are "organization" or "society"...
We're anarchists. We're not all criminals or pirates. We have a political position against the Empire, the Federation, the police, the feudals, the dictatorships, and any political control over the people. Because there are the principles of Anarchy. Like Feudal, Communists, Confederations, Democracies, etc. they have their own political principles, and they have criminals among them too. This is the reason because the prisions existed.
We're attacked too by pirates, and we have too criminals in our systems because we can claim bounties over criminals in our systems. Sometimes these criminals are from our faction, another anarchists factions, and sometimes they are from federation, empire or independents.
Your idea is a good idea for the Archon Delaine PP and his area. But not for us. We only want to maintain our systems, fight for them, but in the same situation that other players. If not, we can't maintain our goverments and the anarchies will be dead in this game. But this is a problem for the political balance in this game. All the types of goverments should be protected because if not, they could disappear.

Thank you for your comment CMDR o7

 

[Rubbernuke]

In ED terms anarchies act as lawless inhabited space where nearly everything is possible. The problem they have is that in the BGS ecosystem they are (or have been) the 'bad guy' and are punishment free areas for material gathering. In short they are the odd one out.

Like I suggested, if you want anarchies to survive and thrive they need some form of active defence and be useful as a counter to mat gathering. Having roving gangs is not contra to anarchy, but having a high intimidation factor (via notoriety) would act as a proxy rep to ward them off (just as in films like Mad Max with roving gangs). Being outside established forms of governance they would also not care regards Pilots Fed / criminal laws and act like unregulated tax / ship stashes.

 

[AhnSuYeong]

Like I suggested, if you want anarchies to survive and thrive they need some form of active defence and be useful as a counter to mat gathering. Having roving gangs is not contra to anarchy, but having a high intimidation factor (via notoriety) would act as a proxy rep to ward them off (just as in films like Mad Max with roving gangs). Being outside established forms of governance they would also not care regards Pilots Fed / criminal laws and act like unregulated tax / ship stashes.

Of course we need some defense, but I'm talking about Power Play and the new update. I don't know if you play BGS and PP in this game, and if you're playing BGS for a Anarchist minor faction defending against a PP faction, but all are connected, not only the actions from random players who wants collect data in our bases killing all our scientists and civilians. This includes too the actions from PowerPlay players and other Player minor factions players who are doing his normal missions in our systems for their factions and PP, and how they are protected when they obtain control over a "mini PP bubble", only because they are inside in a PP faction and we don't have this protection.

For this reason I'm suggesting an anacrhist PP faction to us. If developers are working on this new update, now is the best momento to do it. If not, anarchies are condemned to dissapear in summer, because our situation since Odyssey is still critical. So, if a new update encourage players to expand the PP factions through the bubble... we can't do anything against this situation. And, of course, we, as players, are condemmed too with any update for us. We could not have new content only because we don't have any PP alligned to our governments.

 

[Rainbro]

I dunno if PP will solve anything, but anarchists deserve so much more than the placeholder of "unable to place bounties on their enemies".

 

[Frankymole]

There seem to be more anarchies than ever, except in Colonia. I filtered the Gal Map and had a look underneath the Bubble and it's choc-full of myriads of populated anarchy systems. What's the problem? Plenty of criminals to loot for everyone!

 

[Shurimal]

Plenty of criminals to loot for everyone!

That's the problem with Elite, most of the "anarchist" factions in game should be called "crime syndicates". Systems under criminal control should be labelled "Lawless" and unpopulated systems should be labelled "Ungoverned" with "Anarchy" being a distinct form of governance.

Anarchy does not mean criminal or lawless, but no hierarchical power structures. Anarchy factions in game should be distinct from criminal orgs, which generally do have strict power structures and hierarchies. Both anarchy factions and criminal orgs should put bounties on your head if you harm them. Anarchists because they're not lawless; criminals because organized crime bosses really don't like some fool meddling in their affairs.

Difference would be that if mafia or a group of pirates puts a price on your head it's an unlawful bounty that doesn't cause any legal troubles for you (eg ship and modules becoming "hot"). You can freely shoot members of the criminal org and not get bounties or notoriety, you'll be shoot on sight for them as a result but they would get bounties for shooting you and you're free to shoot them and collect the bounties on their head in turn.

Anarchist factions on the other hand should all be independent (ie not aligned with any of the superpowers) and bounties/notoriety they put on your head should be treated as all independent faction bounties are now.

 

[Disemboweled Ego]

That's the problem with Elite, most of the "anarchist" factions in game should be called "crime syndicates". Systems under criminal control should be labelled "Lawless" and unpopulated systems should be labelled "Ungoverned" with "Anarchy" being a distinct form of governance.

It's kind of a strange implementation if you consider that the security level is separate from anarchy, you could just as well have any other form of government unable or unwilling to enforce system wide laws.

From a sci-fi perspective it's also limiting because you can have weird societies like lawless democracies or anarchies with laws if you stretch your imagination a bit and the faction system really doesn't, only using vanilla government types when crazier stuff has existed and will exist in the future.

 

[Carlitros]

Anarchy is misrepresented in the game. It is not a zone where there is no police and you are not fined for your illegal actions.
It is a working class idelogy, based on horizontality, the absence of a leader to obey, direct democracy and the non-exploitation of man by man.

There are large areas of the bubble controlled by groups of anarchist players (such as Explorers of the Anarchy). I consider that if it is fair that they have representation in the Power Play, I understand that within the Independents (since it is an anti-state ideology).
And that they change the things that should be changed in the game so that they are on equal terms with the rest of Power Play / BGS.

I take this opportunity to tell the developers of Frontier, to evolve the policy in the game, either with this Power Play 2.0 and or modifications in the BGS, so that depending on the type of government you can see different things, missions, mechanics, events, markets and economic rules, etc... both in stations, bases, settlements, etc... that reflect the type of government. That you notice it in the gameplay. It is absurd that all governments are
exactly the same, except for the Anarchists where the only difference is that there is no police.

Congratulations Frontier for the new features in Elite, keep it up, more and better.

o7

 

[Transcan]

Right now, the game lacks a Powerplay for anarchy people. If you play as an anarchist, you don't have any perk that other factions has.
Of course I can join any powerplay and still belong to an anarchist faction, but that ruins the immersion.
Besides, the actual BGS treats very bad anarchist factions:
First, they are the "bad guys" of the game, and anarchist doesn't mean criminal. Lots of missions send people to our system to massacre our settlements.
Second, everyone goes to anarchy systems to farm without consequences (no notoriety), add the first point and you get destroyed any player minor faction efforts towards the BGS.
And third, it's unbalanced, we have always the same missions (aka wars) over and over because with very little intrusion with a single player casually farming, he can change a lot of influence in the system. To recover that influence a bunch of players needs to spend a lot of time doing missions, and most of the time, before we can fix the issue, a war is triggered.
All I hope is the new rework takes in consideration the current state of anarchist minor factions and tweak the system to make them equal to other factions. But at the same time, different enough between each other.
In other words: Make all factions have their ins and cons, very differentiated, but well balanced.
In the end, what decides one faction is better than another should be what its players do and not what the type of government they follow.

 

[SuperLópez-ESP]

Hi,
It is true that the anarchist factions are harmed by the current powerplay. The federal and imperial forces use them as a tool for their interests and the anarchist factions cannot defend themselves on equal terms.
The BGS work that anarchists need is lost with just a few Imperial or Federal commanders entering those systems. Anarchist factions have to work twice as hard to raise influence, and are constantly drawn into wars. This hurts the role of the game because you have to spend a lot of time raising influence. This causes fatigue and those who play as anarchs end up tired and quitting the game (and fewer ARX purchases for Frontier).
Please, in the new update the BGS should be studied so that the anarchist factions can defend themselves on equal terms, or include them in the Powerplay.

 

[Frankymole]

Hi,
It is true that the anarchist factions are harmed by the current powerplay. The federal and imperial forces use them as a tool for their interests and the anarchist factions cannot defend themselves on equal terms.
The BGS work that anarchists need is lost with just a few Imperial or Federal commanders entering those systems. Anarchist factions have to work twice as hard to raise influence, and are constantly drawn into wars. This hurts the role of the game because you have to spend a lot of time raising influence.

But that's realistic, in the terms of the lore - there are massive stellar empires (even if they also call themselves Federation or Alliance) and that's the direction of travel for the last thousand years or whatever - bigger polities gobble up the smaller ones. The "free" people who want no government have an uphill battle to remain out of the empires.

 

[Rebel Yell]

It is true that the anarchist factions are harmed by the current powerplay.

It's not the PP to substantially harm anarchies (I've run a big anarchy PMF for years and I'm still supporting few of them across the bubble) as it's neutral to all powers, cosider that there are other government types which don't benefit from the support of powers: excluding the minor ones like Theocracy, Colony and Prison Colony... then comes a big one, Democracy. This form isn't favourable to any power and, moreover, is unfavourable (which is even worse than being "neutral") to 3 powers (Torval, Antal and Grom).

In general, powers try to avoid the spreading of neutral/unfavourable factions in their areas of interest and/or beyond a certain level of tolerance... unfortunately the Odyssey material farming did particularly affect anarchy factions, because of the convoluted material gathering mechanic. I.e. for ships manufactured material a CMDR can go in any system and farm WANTED ships... but for legs there are not WANTED settlements to farm, so players are looking mostly for the ones belonging to anarchies to avoid bounties.

Even considering the case, with the current gameplay resources, I'd find rather hard for a power to hold up anarchies for that reason (as this would sum up on top of other micro-management issues), now things are going to change substantially (may be) with PP 2.0, but as said/repeated a ton of times also on this sub, what needs to change is the settlement farming.

EDIT: also number of native anarchies is somehow limited... I mean, whilst there could be in same system multiple factions belonging to same govt type, I can't remember about many systems having multiple NPC (I mean no "injected" PMFs) anarchy factions.

 

[Shurimal]

for ships manufactured material a CMDR can go in any system and farm WANTED ships... but for legs there are not WANTED settlements to farm, so players are looking mostly for the ones belonging to anarchies to avoid bounties

IMO, it's even worse than just that. I collect almost all my materials during settlement power-up missions which actually helps the faction it belongs to, be it anarchy or any other governance. The rest is from salvage missions. No worries about bounties, plenty of on-foot combat due to free-for-all-to-kill scavengers present in many shut down settlements and mission POI-s and plenty of materials laying around. Easy to find these missions, too.

But this way of material farming was never discussed in Odyssey guides. All the tutorials I've read and seen on Reddit and Youtube are about "Go to an anarchy settlement, murder everyone, steal everything, jump to supercruise, rinse, repeat"! Since most players tend to follow these "The Best Way To ..." guides blindly, it's no wonder the anarchy factions were all but wiped out. And then there, naturally, was a mountain of salt about "Where anarchy settlements, I need to farm the materials, and that's the only way to do it!".

 

[Schmack]

The entire anarchy concept in this game is warped. Technically all governed systems exist within an anarchy of exterior space that isn't governed, but I don't really understand how "no law" equates to having a government or how a power like the Federation, Alliance or Empire can enforce laws in a lawless system, simply because of who owns the settlement. How is this ownership established, meaning what authority has jurisdiction to establish law within an anarchy so that violations are recognized galaxy wide? I would think this would boil down to the ability to enforce, and since all factions seem to recognize the notoriety scheme, all are complicit.

 

[bangermsuk]

we tried to help by turning systems into ANARCHY system on a regulator bases.but it seems to be a losing running has soon they are turned they are back to their orginal/alt stated

 

[SteveWW57]

IMO, it's even worse than just that. I collect almost all my materials during settlement power-up missions which actually helps the faction it belongs to, be it anarchy or any other governance. The rest is from salvage missions. No worries about bounties, plenty of on-foot combat due to free-for-all-to-kill scavengers present in many shut down settlements and mission POI-s and plenty of materials laying around. Easy to find these missions, too.

But this way of material farming was never discussed in Odyssey guides. All the tutorials I've read and seen on Reddit and Youtube are about "Go to an anarchy settlement, murder everyone, steal everything, jump to supercruise, rinse, repeat"! Since most players tend to follow these "The Best Way To ..." guides blindly, it's no wonder the anarchy factions were all but wiped out. And then there, naturally, was a mountain of salt about "Where anarchy settlements, I need to farm the materials, and that's the only way to do it!".

Restore/reactivation missions may seem to be easy to find, but many CMDRs probably just want to search for an anarchy faction (as this is a bit quicker) and raid the settlements until they go off line.

Steve

 

[SteveWW57]

we tried to help by turning systems into ANARCHY system on a regulator bases.but it seems to be a losing running has soon they are turned they are back to their orginal/alt stated

I do it slightly differently, but getting the anarchy the settlements to be looted and then having their INF drop if possible to below 7%. Needs a bit of careful manipulation of ground CZs and boosting INF to generate conflicts between the other factions so that the owning faction can gain INF at the anarchy's expense. If the factions with less INF than the anarchy are engaged in conflict, the anarchy will not be drawn into any conflicts on the way down. This downward plunge may be helped by raiding their settlements!

Steve

 

[Planewalker]

Systems under criminal control should be labelled "Lawless" and unpopulated systems should be labelled "Ungoverned" with "Anarchy" being a distinct form of governance.

Completely correct.

It never sat right with me that elite in terms of gameplay equated the three.


"No slaves, no masters" doesn not mean "Looters 'r' Us"

IMO, it's even worse than just that. I collect almost all my materials during settlement power-up missions which actually helps the faction it belongs to, be it anarchy or any other governance. The rest is from salvage missions. No worries about bounties, plenty of on-foot combat due to free-for-all-to-kill scavengers present in many shut down settlements and mission POI-s and plenty of materials laying around. Easy to find these missions, too.

It indeed makes absolutely no sense that none of the grind-self-inflicting guides mentions this.

It can be quite the serene experience on some planets, and others it will be mayhem because you have four-five pirate ships landing troops.