I've read countless posts reguarding the attempt at a stable government or leadership positions. Given the upcoming reset, would it not be wise for some type of organization? Even the smallest amount may help, considering the amount of changes to be made. Whether it be those who are patroling the home sector, those escorting traders, etc... maybe?

Maybe the smallest step would be: What nation do you plan to play under/for, the time you generaly play (GMT), what you're good at (defense / offense), etc.

I'm not fishing in order to gain some high position in anything that may form. Even a pawn has been known to corner a king into checkmate. I don't expect anyone to listen to what I have to say, considering I started playing no more then a week ago. Infact, I expect most people to be somewhat critical given the subject.

I like the idea, but we've tried it... 4 times? Everyone's too lazy.

Sadly I have to agree with Roguelazer. The biggest problem was getting organized and setting a common goal for the nation. With such a diversity of players, everyone had a different idea on how to do things and nobody could get anything productive done as a result. Until we get some strong leadership I don't see it happening. IMHO If you want a perfect example look at the United Nations.
Just my 2¢ worth :-)

Some people are lazy, but for the most part - those who have been playing latley would gladly prove you wrong. Every system that you or I could come up with, much like governments or a united representatives such as the United Nations, will be flawed. However, those who decide to pick up the pieces wherever or whenever the system was abandoned, prove that it's worth keeping some type of order amongst chaos.

A branch collective as opposed to an individual, would obviously prove useful. There are probably 10 catagories we could come up with (minimum) that could be addressed.

Defense - Trade escorts and home sector patrols
--Heavy bombers / fighters
Offense - Flag cap team, sector control / raiding, general pirating to prevent national advancement, etc
--Heavy bombers / fighters
Others - Scouting for general intel (ships, trade routes, and defensive locations of enemies), logging of sorts (someone to note activity for possible strategic analysis), a treasurer*, etc.

*Treasurer - Lets assume that everyone is working as a whole. Since the traders are being protected by national defense, they could supply money to the treasurer for general offense/defense necesities/expenses.

Blah blah blah. More or less, if worked out and thought through, everyone could have more of a role as opposed to: Trade until you can buy the best ship X amount of times to win X amount of duels.

A lot of spaces to fill...
leader for general / mass offensive
leader for offensive heavy bombers
leader for offensive fighters
leader for general defensive
leader for defensive heavy bombers
leader for defensive fighters
leader for scouts


1 scout per trade convoy
2-3 scouts to cover sectors
leader for pirating / sabotage missions (could even break it down to heavy bomber and fighter squads)

treasurer could be broken down to several people

Obviously there's a vast area that could be covered. Whether it be simplicity or complexity - it can be done.

Ziffus, if you want a group of pilots to either defend a sector against pirates or escort traders, I would highly suggest that you check out the Defense Ships, a guild that I have created for this purpose.

www.defenseships.tk

I've heard this at least a dozen times now.

Every time I bother to comment on this, I say the same thing. Until players organizations are built into the game, attempts to create governments are going to be futile.

All the peices you need to have a government are missing:

1) You have no provable mandate (a voting system, or at least the ability to prove that you are 'the founder').
2) You have no authority to enforce anything. (kick members out, ensure that everyone claiming to be a member is, etc.)
3) You have no means of ensuring communication with your members. (No bulletin boards, no motd, no faction channel).
4) You have no means of collecting taxes, and nothing to do with them really even if you did that couldn't be done with just one player's income.

The first couple of times I said this, people got angry and scorned the position. After all the so called guilds, governments, and so forth have come and gone, I wonder if people still feel that way.

FM - move to roleplaying?

Celebrim said it best, there is no way you can enforce anything on Vendetta during this point and time. We've tried the gov thing at least 4+ times, all failures. The first time lasted the longest but since people already saw the first one fail the second, third, and forth followed but at a much faster rate.

Another problem we ran into a lot is control. To have a successful government on Vendetta you need everyone who is into the idea to "listen" and "obey" what the "leaders" command. It ended like 30% of the people liked one guy over the other and so they would only listen to that person. Another group of lets say 40% hated one of the top leaders so they won't listen to that guy even if he's the main guy in charge at the time. Stuff like that happens all the time. Then there is a lot of fighting and yelling of people not listening and so on.

Until you can give BIG rewards for people listening and obeying the leaders command, people just won't fight or listen to what they say unless they like that person.

hmmm...
about what celebrim said:
#2 is solved (in theory and practice), the solution is being put to the test. cembandit wrote a bot that would single out faked memberships (by ways of tags) and it also allows recruiting and other things. here's hoping it works out.

the other points... sad, but true. i saw only one trial version of a government fall, but it taught me a great deal.

I think the point is being missed. Everyone get excited at the idea of "governments" believing that (if they work and campaign hard enough, or have enough money and fame <cough Arnie cough>) they could one day be elected (or force) their way into the governments top positions and have control over the destiny of the nation. I think this is being a little unrealistic. I'm not all that clued up on online games (this being my one and only) but I don't really think that giving a single or small group of players the kind of capacity and power needed to maintain and run a government effectively will be in the interests of the game. Think station nukeing with a whole nation ;)

The way I see it, the devs themselves will form the governments, with some kind of story writer(s) deciding the course of action. They may well hold elections and referendums, for action (ie declare war etc) so that we may contribute, but ultimate control will rest with them. They would set major missions and allow positions of minor power to players ranked highly enough (squadron commanders, etc). Guilds will be an integral part of the finished game (as said earlier) probably with ultimate control over its members given to the founder(s), but this is a little different: You chose to join or are invited into a guild. This implies knowledge of the guilds history and and repercussions for not paying along, but is is a choice. With nations, there really (cummon, be serious here) is no "choice".

I would write more, but I'm, tired and hungry.

Hey hey! Somebody remembers that the devs might know what they are doing and have a plan already in place!

[moved to Role Playing]

simondearsley: In the case of Factions like Itani or Serco, you are probably right. The game universe is too dependent on the direction in which the Itani or Serco government moves to ever allow a PC into the position of leadership of either one. That isn't to say that you couldn't by fulfilling _alot_ of military type missions that would give you a 'rank' (Major General, Fleet Marshal, whatever) in those factions which would give you alot effective authority (salary, weapon access, freedom of movement, possibily limited ability to give orders to DEF bots type NPC's (for instance docking with a station and then taking control of its turrets), respect of your peers), but in terms of manipulating the entire economy of the Itani or being able to flip thier relationship 'flag' to 'war' with respect to say the Serco will probably always be something that the future Admins will want to have control over.

But I don't think that it is completely out of the realm of possibility that some of those guilds you speak of will be in effect minor governments. Exactly how many of the 4 'pillars of faction power' they plan to give to the guilds, and to what extent they plan to develope them and make them custumizable, I couldn't say.

You can really go overboad with the guild interface and make it the focus of the game (alla EVE: Online) or you can just make it a bare bones 'club' type structure. Both have thier merits. On the one hand, it can be alot of fun to run a simulated government or business, but its very time consuming and most people won't find it very satisfying for more than a short while. Since only a small portion of the community is going to be more interested in running assembly lines, answering email from underlings, and managing organizational charts than in flying around shooting things, any time that you don't spend developing a potentially superflous government structure is time you can spend improving the game elsewhere.

/me wonders if roguelazer meant something by saying everyone is just to lazy

*attempts to become the laziest person*

/me yells i cant reach the enter key....

-io

oh look at that i got it

sorry that was off topic, the fact is that people are indeed to lazy and most are unwilling to start a govt even though t'would help give the game a little more interest to some players

-io

Hopefully someday there will be a guild structure in-game. Governments too will hopefully be put in somehow. But until that time comes around we can just do our best to keep the game fun and interesting

is Itani making one now?

the Itani are making a command structure type military not a *government*. A government implies dominoin over all players that are Itani which is not the case at all

how can members "join" this military?

Information will be made public at a later date as of yet unknown.

ok