Inc, congratulations!

You manage to make me agree with lecter, and only Haters will Hate this first step... but even haters will agree this is an improvement...
-(it's not exactly what I asked, so I'll flame it)

Anyway, what about that quadratic distribution of factions I proposed?

ASCII without fixed font is not suited for this, but the alignment map would be something as:

..............UIT..............
..Ax.....Or...|...Bi....Va..
Serco....--TPG=-....Itani
..Ae....In....|....Xx....Tu..
.............Corvus............

So, Axia and Aeolus would favour Serco players, but Axia prefer UIT and Aeolus prefer Corvus... And TPG becomes the only "neutral" facion in universe, regarding other factions.

And for me, Corvus/UIT seems the next exclusion, or Axis...

Finally, for me we should limit any player to one single PoS....

That isn't actually a bad idea Alloh.

I don't disagree to the single faction POS....but it's currently impossible to lose Corvus faction, so theoretically, at some point, every player is going to be only POS with Corvus if this is implemented. Not that POS with Corvus is a bad thing ;)

Good suggestions Alloh.

Good suggestion? Did anyone notice that BioCom is on the Itani side of that graph?

I took it as merely an illustration of what it would look like rather than an actual disbursement of sub-factions.

I'm not happy with the 'perfect split' of 2 sub factions to each quadrant, nor am I convinced that only one POS be allowed, though I think it now needs to be far less than 11. I do think Alloh's concept is food for thought.

Yeah, you figure there would be business/political interactions between the subfactions that would prevent it.

Oh suggestion: Change subfaction "Pillar of Society" to read "VIP Platinum Business Partner"

Good start but, as Ryan said, some 'testicular fortitude' in implementing more rigid faction redux would be welcome.

I've said elsewhere (in the big standing thread from 2007) that I intended it to sway down as far as Dislike. We can revisit all of this at a time when we aren't in the midst of a big anniversary and promo, when Ray and I can churn through all the other difficult-to-foresee standing-based ramifications and side effects. In the meantime, like I mentioned in the initial post, it's a reasonable starting point.

Regarding the matrix of relative like/dislike for minor and major factions.. we're moving in a direction not unlike that, but dynamic instead of static. Minor factions going to war (for a month, or a few months), then making peace, and so on. A shifting and complex landscape is my goal, instead of fixed certainties.

Probably a stupid question, but is there a clear writeup of the meaning of the standing levels in the different factions?

e.g. in Itani space, attacking any ship that has disliked or better status with Itan results in a penalty of etc

It seems like the "penal code" would be common knowledge among pilots, at least the codes of the major nations/factions (I can imagine some mistery about the greyspace factions), but I can't find it explicated on this site or the vo-wiki page?

Where the heck did you get that, vanatteveldt? I blew someone up in Itani space yesterday who was Itani neutral and received no penalty as expected.

Assuming that nothing has changed other than the TempKOS rules and the Itani/Serco and Axia/Valent mutual exclusions, this is how it works:

If you kill somebody who is Admired or POS with the local faction in monitored spaced, and you weren't in an official /duel, you take a penalty unless they forgive you. If the player you kill is not Admired or POS, you do not take a penalty.

In general, if you shoot somebody and see a yellow warning message show up in the middle of the screen saying that the player is under so-and-so's protection, you will take a penalty for killing him.

In addition to the above, there are special rules governing the bots in the Itani and Serco CTC convoys. Killing those bots even in unmonitored sectors will get you hit with a small penalty. There are also penalties for killing Serco or Itani ships in Deneb.

Note that this has absolutely nothing to do with the NFZ (not that you said it is or anything, I'm just saying this for completeness). I've seen countless silly newbies who think that the NFZ is somehow involved. It is not. The NFZ only impacts the Temporary Kill On Sight penalty, which as its name indicates is only temporary. Killing people in the NFZ has no permanent penalty, unless that person happens to be admired by the local faction.

The NFZ works like this: If you damage another ship inside the NFZ (you don't have to kill it), you take a temporary penalty with the local faction. This is called TempKOS. You will be unable to dock with that faction's stations, and if you enter their territory they will dispatch ships to attack you. This lasts either for fifteen minutes or until you die, whichever comes first. (That part is new - it used to last until you either died or left the sector. Now it persists when you leave the sector and has the temporal component.) When it expires, your normal standing is restored.

Something you should note: Even if you are normally POS with a faction, during the period while you are TempKOS, you can be killed without penalty. Also, do not try to defend yourself from the strike force if you value your standing, because killing them will result in permanent penalties (since they are admired).

Oh, and one final thing: Corvus is special. You do not take permanent penalties for killing ships in Corvus space. They do enforce the NFZ, however, but other than that, you can kill people all you want and they just don't care. You can still have bounties placed on your head for killing people there though, so do keep that in mind if you don't want bounty hunters chasing you around.

All of this is subject to change as the devs continue on the faction redux.

@abortretryfail: I was trying to provide a template, not information... I had no clue of the actual rules and can't find them written out, hence the question :-). Sorry for causing confusion.

@pizza: thanks for the explanation. I was (wrongly) under the impression that the rules were much tougher, and indeed confused the tempkos with standing hits.

So, 'corvus monitored' is an empty predicate? What is the difference between monitored and guarded? Will the local faction actively engage with pilots with standing <X in guarded space?

As far down as dislike?! WOW, what a monumentally ballsy move!

I suppose the upshot is that this won't change anything I love or hate about VO. Who knows, maybe in another ten years, you guys may get it right.

Oh yeah, I forgot those parts. The possible standings range from -1000 to +1000, with the progression being KOS, Hated, Disliked, Neutral, Respected, Admired, POS. If you are hated or kos, you can't dock with the station, the station's guards will attack you, and the station will dispatch a strike force consisting of vultures and aerna seekers to kill you.

If you encounter that faction's convoys in space (anywhere in space), the escorts will attack you and the moths and capital ships will fire their turrets at you (but will not use their main-guns, and will not deviate from their paths to better aim at you - unlike their escorts).

If you encounter that faction's turrets (mainly at border wormholes and capital stations), they will fire on you.

If you are roaming inside a nation's space, even in empty sectors, a strike force will eventually warp into the sector to harass you if you are hated or disliked by the nation (the minor factions of UIT space won't do that).

Also, if you are hated or KOS by a nation, you will be unable to dock in *any* station within the capital systems. That only really affects UIT, who has minor factions, and it means that if you are KOS with UIT, but friendly with TPG, you will be able to dock at the TPG stations in Azek, but not with the one in Dau.

There is no real distinction between KOS and hated. KOS is just fully bottomed out. It's possible that a stronger strike force is dispatched, but I don't believe that is the case.

The levels Disliked, Neutral, and Respected are all basically the same as eachother, other than affecting your eligibility to buy certain goods and take certain missions. It might affect prices as well, but I don't think they do. Being Admired grants you the ability to punish people who kill you with a faction penalty, as described in my last post, and might grant you a small discount on commodities. Being POS does get you a discount on commodities, and possibly makes the penalty for killing you more harsh - again, I'm not too sure about that.

One other thing to note is that if you are liked by your home nation (I don't remember what level this requires; it might be anything above hated), you cannot harm other liked members of your nation within the capital systems. You can still harm them in all other systems, and you can harm foreigners, and you can harm anybody who is hated. You can also harm people if you do a formal /duel with them (in which case you don't get penalized for killing them).

I should mention that /duel does not exempt you from the NFZ restriction, only from the permanent penalties for killing.

As for the difference between Guarded and Monitored, I believe it's simply a matter of whether there is a station present. If there is a station, it is Guarded. If there isn't a station, but a nation is monitoring and will penalize murder, then it is Monitored. If nobody at all is monitoring it, so that there are no penalties for killing people, then it is Unmonitored, which is the case for all non-station sectors in Greyspace. There are some unmonitored sectors within nation space as well.

Wasn't there also a smaller standing drop at +400 or so?

Btw that confirmation dialog where you have to put your char name looks like ass. :P

Faction Standing

Pillar of Society 1000

Admire 600 999

Respect 200 599

Neutral -199 199

Dislike -599 -200

Hate -999 -600

Kill on Sight -1000 -1000

I tinhk this is correct iirc

Wasn't there also a smaller standing drop at +400 or so?

Sometimes; It depends on which faction.

Sounds like there needs to be multiple "trigger points" based on the type of "aid" you're lending to the enemy of a power. e.g. Both sides might agree (although not officially) that attacking Hive bots is a good thing. The trigger point for this type of activity would be higher than say conducting a procurement mission for a given side. I would agree that outright attacking one member of feuding factions would result in the worst kind of trigger. i.e. being liked by one makes you disliked by the other.

@pizza if ye'r hated by uit ye cannot dock in any station in arta as well : )