The functionality is available to prevent it, is what I refer to. If I were to hire you (or your next character, rather) into Alissma, then you simply CANNOT steal anything if I don't give you privs. If I give you NPC privs, and have all the NPCs* protected, you can't steal NPCs*.
* - replace with Vehicles, Ships, etc.
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"May the Grace of Ara go with you, and His Vengeance be wrought upon your enemies."
Which brings me back to my inherent disappointment with the single god like ruler concept we are required to accept for government, even if we were the alliance to restore the "Republic"
Considering the fact that the republic is the ideal that one side is supposed to fight for it would be nice to have the end goal attainable.
“The Alliance to Restore the Republic (also known as the Rebel Alliance and informally as the Rebellion), was a loose alliance of planetary-level, system-level and sector-level resistance forces formed in direct military opposition to the Galactic Empire. It was originally formed by a group of Loyalists determined to preserve the ideals of the Galactic Republic, which had transformed into the Empire.”
This seems to indicate a major missing feature in SWC. But I recognize that I am getting off topic, though a discussion on how the coding of such a feature could be made would be nice.
“Which brings me back to my inherent disappointment with the single god like ruler concept we are required to accept for government, even if we were the alliance to restore the "Republic"”
Which brings me back to my inherent disappointment that you guys were stupid enough to give that godlike status to Ingo R. Valis!
YOU guys, the ones who are whining the loudest about this whole thing, are the ones who brought it on YOURSELVES!
But it's not just you that has to suffer the consequences - EVERY SINGLE PLAYER is going to have to deal with having the RA/NR having been raped and left bloodied and wasted. Even the highest levels of the Empire should be pissed off that they don't really have a valid opponent to fight anymore. All because a few of you were too blind to see what was coming.
You KNEW the limitations of the game. You KNEW the reputations of those involved.
Stop crying, and blaming the game for your own mistakes, and start trying to fix those mistakes instead.
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"May the Grace of Ara go with you, and His Vengeance be wrought upon your enemies."
In that Hal I agree, sadly I was not able to play while that election happened... and now we get to pick up the pieces. I'm not really even arguing for undoing what has been done, (it would be nice but I can't see the reason for it) I do agree Hal, it's not something I like at all, and it makes our life much harder. I'm not blaming the game for a failure here, I am just wishing that we had a way to actually program a republic.
You are right, the election of IRV was the fault and choice of the members of the New Republic, and now we are trying to recover the Republic and fix the damage. Though there is little we can do right now except force the dissolution of the Republic, and that would be worse. But as Adam will not be followed, nor will he leave we have a stalemate, if we could just kill him for treason we would, heck I probably wouldn't be dead, nor a few other members, this game is in progress, I just think that this highlights an area that can be developed.
Personally, (I can't speak for the people who elected IRV) but yes this was the fault of the NR, there is just damn little we can do about it now.
As for jeb, calling someone 'guilty of cheating' simply because they were punished by the admin's is like calling Aung San Suu Kyi guilty because the courts said so.
Besides, I'm not exactly sure when *our* side aws 'caught' cheating... as far as I know there has never been an incident in that case. We were completely absolved of all guilt in the last contreversy where the innocent alph and atoris were banned. And prior to that there was never an issue.
Sorry, only recently come to this thread, but had to address a couple of points from posts on page 3.
First of all, from David Kellar's post at the top of the page:
“True from a coding standpoint, but within a non dictator government faction this rule seems to need to be enforced broadly. i.e. we agree that the emperor could reveal Darth Vaders location if he so choose, to destroy him. He is the emperor and the supreme power in the government, and all the little NPC's in the government will obey him. In a republic however that would not happen. I.e. the millions of NPC's would not instantly obey the admittedly criminal dictates of a faux leader.
- David Kellar ”
The use of "faux" here is, to me, a bit facetious. The leader was elected. How is that "faux"? Let's see, a legally-elected leader, using his positional power to twist his nation to his own power-mad will... Do you want a SW or RW example? Call him the new Hitler... or the new SENATOR PALPATINE! Jesus H., THIS HAS HAPPENED IN THE STAR WARS UNIVERSE BEFORE!!!! It's nothing new... it's CANON. I know it completely sucks and I'm sorry for your loss, but bloody hell, get on with it already.
And lest anyone think I'm biased... to Hal and Togan: yes, absolutely, they should deal with this IC... but what is the mechanism for them to do so??? At the moment, due to the "god-like" powers of faction leaders, they can hardly charge in and arrest him. When combat gets added that will enable them to have a form of redress for this sort of action, but until then, it seems like there's little that can be done.
"You've been very naughty! You should step down as faction leader now so we can replace you, arrest you, and put you on trial before summarily executing you!"
"Gosh, you're right, very sorry, here, I'll hand over my leadership privilidges now, terribly sorry to have been such a nuisance."
Hardly a likely scenario. Until combat arrives, there's little that can be done IC in this sort of instance.
So to review, both sides here are wrong: David for suggesting it's unrealistic that it would happen, and Hal and Togan for telling him to do something about it IC when, really, there's little to nothing -- at this time -- that can realistically be done by anyone to redress the situation IC.
Ah this is where I think you miss heard what happpened
Adam was not elected, never happened. his friend IRV was (yes that was foolish imho), and then voted out of office for incompetence. He then gave the faction to Adam, hence the faux leader part. In cannon the Palpatine became the leader on a wave of popular support. Not here. still the rest of your point it well take. It is our fault (yes Grant all our fault) but we have no recourse, no A/E and no ability to use force.
Ah, see. My mistake. Still, it's not that much different -- in end result, mind you, not necessarily in methodology in that power was voluntarily handed over -- to a coup (military or otherwise), so one could argue that this is, in effect, what happened (in terms of IC explanation -- or whatever you want to call it -- for what happened). So my original point still stands: it *is* realistic in that dictators take over countries all the time, both with and without popular support. So again, while it's unfortunate (and, I'm sure, aggravating as hell), it's still possible and, indeed, rife with RP potential.
It's just unfortunate that, in this game, at the current time, no method exists to take on the dictator in an attempt to forcibly oust him from his position. That, from my point of view, is what would be most frustrating to the experienced offline-table-top-pen-and-paper RPer: you can't rally the troops and go after the bad guy with all guns blazing. :/ :) In that sense, this game is (currently) more economical/political than anything. Sort of a Star Wars version of Diplomacy: gather as many Supply Points for your country/alliance as possible, try to block the other side from doing the same, and hope your allies don't stab you in the back. :)
To have a coup, you need the popular support of the military. That doesn't seem like that was the case. In the face of a loosing election, the leadership pressed the magic button that disabled all military ships allowing only the leadership control. While in reality, if a person doesn't have the popular control of the military, the military itself will rise up and kick the man trying to take control out of power.
So no, I don't think what happened is like real life, as in real life the person taking power had the support of some powerful group, either the people or the military.
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"Somewhere, there's a bullet with your name on it. The trick is to die of age before it finds you"
aye, that is a very good analysis here. the coup entailed maybe 5 people, some of which weren't even in the faction when it started.
If one of the political parties had done this it would make sense RP wise. But in this case it was Cos who had been voted out of office, and a few minor cronies, non of which had military or even civil support. We even retained the ability to destroy the HQ, at least in term of firepower, but the ability to "un-assign everyone" seems to be problematic at best, especially if it is done from a freighter in hyper.
Ok I can see my soap box, it got out my closet and I need to go put it away.
“there's little to nothing -- at this time -- that can realistically be done by anyone to redress the situation IC.”
Okay, I'm going to call bullshit on this one. Did you miss, just a couple of weeks ago, the death of Isolder Storm?
Or, if you go back considerably further, the death of Vlademar Von Ismay (not sure if I spelt that right).
Both Government leaders. Both arrested and executed. Vlad was killed by elements of his own faction. Isolder was killed by someone outside of his faction.
Even Vodo Bonias has been executed before (although that was due to one or more bugs, and was obviously reversed), as well as the Kathol leader when the GE-aligned 2IC turned on him (and if other bugs hadn't been exploited, that one would have worked, too).
So it's easy to wail that there's nothing that can be done, but in reality it's definitely not impossible to kill a Government faction leader. You just need to work hard at it. If as many people are as upset about this as it seems, then they should be able to come up with something between them.
Maybe they can even scrape together enough of a payment to hire Lance Hawke?
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"May the Grace of Ara go with you, and His Vengeance be wrought upon your enemies."
“To have a coup, you need the popular support of the military. That doesn't seem like that was the case.
- Cam Antilles ”
I realise that. If you re-read the beginning of my post:
“Still, it's not that much different -- in end result, mind you, not necessarily in methodology in that power was voluntarily handed over -- to a coup”
The operative phrase there being "in end result... not necessarily in methodology." I realise there was no support -- military or otherwise -- in this case. What I meant was that -- in effect -- he staged a coup, in that he ended up with control of the faction's resources and ships (if not necessarily with the people to operate them).
As for Hal:
“Did you miss, just a couple of weeks ago, the death of Isolder Storm?
Or, if you go back considerably further, the death of Vlademar Von Ismay (not sure if I spelt that right).
Both Government leaders. Both arrested and executed. Vlad was killed by elements of his own faction. Isolder was killed by someone outside of his faction.”
Actually, yes, I did miss that. :) I'm still newish around here and trying to get up to speed be reading around (as here). So I'm still getting to grips with what is and isn't possible. My apologies if I'm underestimating the potential of the players in this case to reverse the situation. Though, as David suggested, if the person in question simply keeps popping around in hyperspace to random locations, it would be difficult (at best) to apprehend him, and yet this person will still retain some sort of nominal control over the faction's resources. Running a government in such circumstances seems, at best, exceedingly tenuous, in RP terms (i.e. not realistic). Yet that is, in effect, what he would be doing (to my admittedly new eyes, again, I admit). As well, I think it's important to try to address one of David's points from way back, which is: is it possible to code in a way for factions for formally align in a sort of uber-faction? This would make the RA more realistically role-playable ("realistically" meaning closer in design to the SW uni). Each system (or a small sub-group of systems) could be a faction (or other existing factions could join, etc. etc. whatever), controlling their own resources, but they could easily share their resources (ships, etc.) through the uber-faction. Also a certain percentage of their income/resources would go to the uber-faction ("tax"), so the uber-faction would have resources of its own (mostly military and ships, but could build cities if they desired as well; hey, it's their money). Any faction could leave the uber-faction at any time, retaining control of their own ground-based resources (i.e. cities etc.) and any ships not dedicated to the uber-faction. Any ships under the control of the uber-faction, though, would stay with the uber-faction.
This way you could easily have a good SW setup with players controlling systems, and easily switching the alliance of those systems if they so choose. And you could have several systems/factions easily working together without requiring it to be permanent, thus reducing the vulnerability of larger alliances to such power-trip power plays (yet still allowing the uber-factions to have the teeth to act as a power).
To tie this all back to the *original* thread -- i.e. spying -- keep it as is for the smaller factions. For the uber-factions, I would loosen/change it a bit. People can change uber-factions as they want, taking what information they want... but leave it up to the government of the uber-faction to decide what info is available to the sub-factions. Some things like which systems/factions are members should be freely available, maybe economic data, but not necessarily ship numbers/movement -- how many of you know all of your government's military secrets? -- or individual character membership of each individual faction: as they're separate factions, data of citizens/membership would of course be restricted as under current rules.
I'm sure there's other things that would need to be ironed out -- this is strictly off the top of my head -- but this sort of thing would help bring the Combine more in line with the SW uni in practice (as I said above). Not only could player-controlled systems/factions change sides, but they could also bring a *reasonable* amount of knowledge with them: what systems/factions are members (likely public knowledge anyway), but *not* what players (unless other factions' players had revealed themselves, in which case they're fair game) (all of which is covered by the rules as is, basically). Maybe some economic data. And likely, at best, limited military data ("We gave them control of 5 of ship type X and 10 of ship type Y a couple of months ago, but we haven't seen them since. Oh, and a patrol came through our system a couple of weeks ago, and it consisted of 3 of ship type A, 4 of ship type B, and 7 of fighter type C."). Unless the uber-faction decides to share its info more freely among its members, in which case it's their own fault, as they knew the risks going in. Caveat emptor.
Or maybe I'm just a dumb, know-nothing newbie talking out his ass and I'll be flamed out of the forum now. :) In which case, fair enough. Serves me right for sticking my nose in. ;)
Thats correct, and we don't want to dissolve the faction as the DC's will be destroyed or removed, if I understand correctly. Now that would be bad for the game. I just don't think that having to dissolve the NR is the best way to go about dealing with this.
Wasn't NIO created because they liked GE and being the Empire and all that, but they didn't like their leader? I think the Dark Empire was the same, before it was forced to re-merge with GE. NR could always follow their example, make a splinter group who's goal is basically to replace the leader then re-merge once they're successful (or if the admins make them).
Then again, I could be totally wrong about all of that.