Why is there only one Alliance faction in Tionisla?

[FoolishOwl]

I wasn't sure if this were more a lore and role-playing question, or a background simulation question.

Tionisla is an Alliance system, and has figured in Elite lore since the original game in 1984. Galnet posts suggest that Tionisla is a major pillar of the Alliance; for instance, Councillor Nakato Kaine is Prime Minister Mahon's strongest rival for the office, which implies she has a strong power base in Tionisla.

So it puzzles me that when I look at the factions in Tionisla, there is only one Alliance faction, and that's a player faction, though it's the controlling faction. All of the original factions in the system are Independent, except for one Federation faction.

Why is that? Was there an original Alliance faction that was replaced, or was this originally, in ED, an Independent system?

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Why is that? Was there an original Alliance faction that was replaced, or was this originally, in ED, an Independent system?

It was originally independent. Kaine's faction took it over from nearby Zaonce - quite a while ago, now.

It's an interesting twist that Mahon's biggest rival - and someone largely disapproving of Alliance expansionism, at least as Mahon does it - only holds their Assembly position at all because of that expansionism.

 

[FoolishOwl]

That's interesting. Is there anything specifically linking Kaine to Alliance Rapid-reaction Corps?

I was looking at Zaonce on EDSM.net, and it has a statement from ARC that they don't specifically require support for Mahon -- an exception that proves the rule, by implying that in general they do support Kaine.

EDSM - Elite Dangerous Star Map

The Galactic Positioning System of Elite: Dangerous at your service.

www.edsm.net

Also the stuff I've read in GalNet about Kaine emphasizes they've been a councillor in the Alliance Assembly for a long time.

I'd read Kaine as a parliamentary left critic of the technocratic centrist Mahon, so I'd thought that Social Tionisla Labour sounded about right as their base of support -- but, it's Independent. I'm guessing that was the original controlling faction of Tionisla

It's kind of screwy that the obvious way to signal support for the egalitarian ideals of the Alliance is to support Mahon -- or for that matter, Kaine -- but that's gaming logic for you. It bothers me a bit more that everything I've read about Mahon makes him indistinguishable from a Federation politician.

 

[FoolishOwl]

That is, the problem I was wrestling was how to signal opposition to Mahon but support for the Alliance, and for Kaine's criticisms of Mahon's policies: expansionism, centralization, provoking attacks by the Thargoid. The obvious way to do that was to gain ally status with whatever minor faction represented Jaime's base of support. As it stands, it looks like my player can choose between supporting Mahon or opposing the Alliance, and neither of those are what I want.

Most of the players I interact with have pretty much written off the politics of the Bubble entirely. I could see moving in that direction, but it would leave my character disconnected from the overall storyline and kind of rootless.

 

[Novarek]

That's interesting. Is there anything specifically linking Kaine to Alliance Rapid-reaction Corps?

I was looking at Zaonce on EDSM.net, and it has a statement from ARC that they don't specifically require support for Mahon -- an exception that proves the rule, by implying that in general they do support Kaine.

You know, Alliance BGS player group which are not doing or supporting Mahon PP exist for various reason, the most obvious is the corporate things.
If you are an Alliance BGS non-corporate group, trying to expand into Mahon exploited space, you gonna probably get a call from the Mahon boys for that (even if you are expending into an non-Alliance system, it could be Fed, Imp, Indy, as long the leading faction you attacking is corpo, you gonna annoy them), fortunately most of them are reasonable people open to dialogue, but yeah for several Alliance BGS group, Alliance PP is sometime like a "cell"

But yeah that would be really surprising if Kayne was linked to an Alliance player BGS faction, I really doubt it is the case.

 

[FoolishOwl]

Oops. I meant above that ARRC saying they don't explicitly require support for Mahon implies that, in general, they do support Mahon. Which leaves the problem that as indicated by the BGS, the second most influential political leader in the Alliance has no base of support at all.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

How much support does Mahon have as indicated by the BGS, though?

Most of the top-level players in the superpowers are big enough that they don't really show up on the system-by-system basis that the BGS works on, because they're too big. Sirius and EGP - and as of last week, also Kumo - are the only ones with both direct BGS and Power/Galnet representation.

Kaine's probable [1] faction is the tenth largest Alliance faction and the largest Alliance Cooperative, so in those BGS terms they're not small. But more important is likely that in the Alliance Assembly, she has the respect and votes of many other Assembly members.


[1] Kaine has been in the Assembly a long time, but until relatively recently, Zaonce was controlled by the Lave Fortune Organisation. So it's possible that Kaine is the representative for Tionisla regardless of which Alliance faction is primarily running the system, and not associated with a specific BGS faction as such.

 

[FoolishOwl]

Which BGS minor faction do you think represents Kaine then? Though you're right, ARRC doesn't represent Mahon, per se.

The problem I'm getting at is that for Kaine to have been the councillor representing Tionisla in the Alliance Assembly for nearly a decade, that implies she had that position before the start date for Elite Dangerous, and before ARRC took control of the system. But from what I'm reading of the minor factions that existed in Tionisla, there was no Alliance minor faction until ARRC became established, which was relatively recent.

It's a contradiction.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Which BGS minor faction do you think represents Kaine then? Though you're right, ARRC doesn't represent Mahon, per se.

None, specifically. Which one represents Hudson, or Patreus? For that matter, which of the various "Sirius X" factions represents Li Yong Rui personally, as opposed to the Sirius megacorporation more generally?

I would say Kaine (and current diplomat and former Presidential Candidate Elijah Beck) more generally represents the "Social" tendency within the Alliance, while Mahon (and the late Fazia Silva) represents the "Corporate" one, while Gibson Kincaid represents the more "Authoritarian" tendency from the comfort of his jail cell.

In terms of BGS factions aligned to those tendencies:

• Social Alliance factions - including ARRC - control approximately 422 systems between them
• Corporate Alliance factions - including the Alliance Office of Statistics which controls Mahon's home system of Gateway - control 579 systems between them. Mahon's structure as a Powerplay figure obviously encourages Corporates generally.
• Authoritarian Alliance factions control a mere 113 systems between them.

At the moment, based on one-system-one-vote, this gives Mahon a significant structural advantage, in that over half the votes are with systems controlled by Corporate factions, who have benefited strongly from Mahon's incumbency. But obviously that doesn't tell the full story when it comes to an election.

The problem I'm getting at is that for Kaine to have been the councillor representing Tionisla in the Alliance Assembly for nearly a decade, that implies they had that position before the start date for Elite Dangerous, and before ARRC took control of the system. But from what I'm reading of the minor factions that existed in Tionisla, there was no Alliance minor faction until ARRC became established, which was relatively recent.

Yes, it's an issue. Assuming you don't want to stretch "six years" to "nearly a decade", one explanation might be that Kaine has been an Alliance Councillor for nearly a decade - perhaps representing another Old Worlds system - but moved to representing Tionisla when that became an Alliance system without a break in service.

The current Galnet implies one Councillor per system, while the original Frontier lore post said systems were represented in rough proportion to their population. Possibly what's happened there is that the Alliance getting ~5x bigger has meant that the Councillors were reapportioned out to the extent that some "minimum of one per system" rule applied, and Kaine's seat therefore moved from Lave or Zaonce to Tionisla when it joined the Alliance, and Kaine happened to move with it and keep being elected. So she's been in the seat which used to be Zaonce-3 and is now Tionisla, in continuous service for almost a decade.

 

[FoolishOwl]

In terms of BGS factions aligned to those tendencies:

• Social Alliance factions - including ARRC - control approximately 422 systems between them
• Corporate Alliance factions - including the Alliance Office of Statistics which controls Mahon's home system of Gateway - control 579 systems between them. Mahon's structure as a Powerplay figure obviously encourages Corporates generally.
• Authoritarian Alliance factions control

Okay, this starts to fill out the picture. Is this your personal interpretation, or something more widely agreed upon among people roleplaying through Alliance politics?

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Okay, this starts to fill out the picture. Is this your personal interpretation, or something more widely agreed upon among people roleplaying through Alliance politics?

Personal interpretation, but based on a bunch of in-game mechanical stuff as well as the lore.

Social, Corporate, Authoritarian and Criminal [1] are real (though mostly hidden) BGS categories which factions belong to, which affect various properties of how those factions act in-game. Most of the time, you can guess which category a faction is in based on its government type, though this isn't always the case. The Federation only [2] contains Social and Corporate factions, the Empire only [2] contains Corporate and Authoritarian factions ... the Alliance (and Independents) are more diverse and contain all four types.

When they did the Alliance President story arc, it was pretty clear to me from the descriptions of Beck, Silva and Kincaid that they were representing those three categories as archetypes within the Alliance. I think Kaine is less clearly "Social" than Beck is - some of her isolationism I think has Authoritarian tendencies to it. Mahon's Corporate / Finance tendencies can be read off his Powerplay page, of course.

As far as RP and Alliance politics, probably as many interpretations there as players Plenty of the Alliance BGS/Powerplay players - and this goes for every superpower - are more interested in the in-game strategic problems and generally growing the Alliance, than in the internal fine details of whether it should be a loose coalition of systems (Kaine) or a more conventional and somewhat corporatist superpower (Mahon).


So getting back to your original question of how to signal support for Kaine but not Mahon? Very tricky to say - potentially, since the rescheduled election should be happening later this month, there'll be some rather more obvious in-game event around that. I think it would be quite neat if they did the election result based on the relative balance of power of tendencies - so you could support Kaine by increasing the number of Alliance non-Corporate systems relative to Alliance Corporate ones, either by flipping governments internally within the Alliance, or by taking over new systems for Alliance non-Corporates - but I really have no evidence that it will be that, and it would be an unusual way for Frontier to do it.



[1] Sorry, I forgot to mention those. 15 systems under Alliance Criminal control. Still gives the Corporates a slim overall majority.
[2] Perhaps excluding a few very anomalous factions here. But 99% true, anyway.

 

[Novarek]

I would say Kaine (and current diplomat and former Presidential Candidate Elijah Beck) more generally represents the "Social" tendency within the Alliance, while Mahon (and the late Fazia Silva) represents the "Corporate" one, while Gibson Kincaid represents the more "Authoritarian" tendency from the comfort of his jail cell.

The fact that Mahon PP take benefit from corpo always disturbed several Alliance players like myself, especialy when you see the codex entry of the guy.
Mahon was a farmer boy and strugled against the power of money and oligarchy when he was a Fed citizen, Mahon biography make him more in line with cooperative (if you want to keep the "business" side of his PP) but clearly not a pro-corpo.

 

[FoolishOwl]

I had forgotten that Galnet had dropped a hint about a postponed election. I'll have to think about whether I want to make an effort at promoting a possibly Quixotic campaign for Kaine.

 

[FoolishOwl]

Looks like it's time I headed back home.

Alliance Unrest as Mahon and Kaine Clash