good day.
after watching the standing system development for 2 years and waiting for a final and sense making solution i felt somewhat asleep.
the recent change has been made about 8 or 9 months ago introducing the system we have right now where POS is only possible with your home nation, anything else can be turned to 600+, doing so with
Itani when you're Serco has repercussions and vica versa...
when we look at it that makes as much sense as the 13 gold bar system we had back in the past: none at all.

what doesn't make sense right now:

- why can't UIT acquire POS with one side of Itani/Serco? they're a congragation of trading corps and do heavy trading and supplying which should bring them in magnificent standing with atleast the nation they primarily supply with goods
- the system doesn't allow for traitor rp. itani turning against their nation and Serco turning against there's. while this is a funny way to do RP and seed some confusion these guys can only go to 600+ and won't get access to the top class ships even when they'd agree to go KOS with their home-side
- why can't Serco/Itani achieve UIT POS? that makes even less sense than UIT being unable to gain POS with one of the factions at war. If an Itani dedicates to keeping UIT space safe RP wise and flies for them doing good business than this trader nation, only on the lookout for money would have absolutely no reason to deny them access to higher class ships to make even more money
- an UIT engaging for one of the two parties in Deneb Wars is not rewarded at all for it. this leads back to pint one where the limit makes no sense. you would atleast expect to receive access to top class ships when you risk your life for some nation lol

of course the criticism that will come up, whether voiced constructively or not, will address that a change would cause access to all "nation specific" ships for everyone. while i never saw what's wrong about this in the first place since PvP is still skill based i still have minor understanding for hard-engaged RPers.
therefore my proposal to turn it into a sense-making, yet hard to outsource system would be as follows:

- allow the UIT to gain POS standing with one side only based on their choice which military they engage in. they will get no chance to draw this back. it's a one-time only decision.
- Serco and Itani can join the other side's military aswell. this would result in a constant KOS status (irrepairable) with the other side but would allow for them to gain POS with the side they ran over to
- Itani and Serco can achieve UIT POS. this however requires being POS with every other possible faction part of the UIT and then again needs a lot of work and time invested

- the old system doesn't change apart from this as most of the suggested changes in military based. the only thing that's not is achieving UIT POS which is made hard to achieve in other terms.

thanks for reading.

+1

I like this idea. Persobally I always found the latest change to be a bit harsh. Having possibilities to alter your rp an ship access at cost of other things seems quite fair.

UIT should be able to choose a side by:
* Joining the military
* Participating in military activities

This should allow them to raise their standing with the respective nation above +600 (perhaps to +800)
UIT should not be POS with anything bar their own nation and subfactions.

Let me explain why:
The UIT, Serco and Itani as nations do not need non-nationals as a Pillar of Society, they do not rely on individual actions so much as subfactions do. They have a sizable military each (bar UIT, where society is built on economic agreements) which they use partly as their governing body. Such military would not allow non-nationals holding a very high position in the military, therefore becoming Pillar of Society.

I'd suggest linking the progression of standing from +700 to POS based on military/economic involvement to benefit the nation in question.
As far as the traitor thing goes, I'd like to see us be able to choose to be Unaligned.

UIT Standing in excess of +600 could be based on the average standing of the nations under UIT governance (perhaps TPG, Orion, Tunguska, Valent OR Axia (whichever is highest) and BioCom).

The only thing I don't fully agree with in what Kierky said is "As far as the traitor thing goes, I'd like to see us be able to choose to be Unaligned. "

Yes, unaligned should be an option. To me, treachery isn't based on criminal behavior, but on intentional betrayal of ones birth nation whether to an enemy, friend or neutral power. So, yes, it should be possible for Serco & Itani to switch allegiance and gain some level of admired status- and possibly some access to excluded ships. POS should be out of the question for traitors however.

Nice try to get back valk and scps.
+600 with enemy side is already too much.
Whine harder.

^ this.

You really are a transparent pathetic carebear Mr Absurd

Serious.Person - thanks for the input. i agree with that fully.

Kierky - limiting it to +800might be a smoother approach so you are right. i just never thought of it.
i never liked the idea of a grey faction or being unaligned. there would not be many benefits to it

Fluffy - yup. the backstabber rp is different from being unaligned indeed!

DeathSpores - yep. what's the problem with that? no one is whining. there is nothing wrong with thec chance of getting access to more than one nation specific vessle. there were just a few whiners (you and theredspy) who cried and sobbed loud enough and for some reason the devs listened. thats why we are where we are.

thredspy - your comment in invalid because you are partly responsible for the current standing system. were you tired of people being able to choose whether they owned you in a valk or a prom? lol.

Maybe I was bored because people couldn't kill me with any measure of efficiency in either.

I think Incarnate would highly dispute that I had anything to do with the current standing system because if you read into the game design notes he has written over the years it was always always intended to be this way. You're trying to argue against one of the basic design goals and fundamental tenants of the way VO is supposed to be which is why you'll fail miserably here.

i never liked the idea of a grey faction or being unaligned. there would not be many benefits to it

Uhh, why? Differentiating the people who are *not really* part of your nation seems like a pretty big benefit. Not to just us vets, but to the newbies who are consistently killed because they "mistook" that person as an ally.

since serco and itan are at war, the max standing each should have with eachother is hate.

UIT should get a max standing of respect with both (and vice versa for itan/serco with uit) but not have access to any top level military vessel. They are a trading/mining neutral faction regarding Itan and Serco, without a military like serco and itan. They're the people who didn't want to pick sides in the war made up of ex members of both nation states. Those are your un-aligned in the VO universe.

There should be no having your cake and eating it too when it comes to finding a balance in a simulated universe with only a finite number of ways to differentiate the pros and cons of choosing one thing over another.

They did fix the standing system, it was much worse before. :)

All ships available to everyone is a total bullshit.

No decent Roleplaying game on the market allows you to equip all the cool stuff on a same character.

Vo shouldnt allow you to do that as well as you have SIX Slots available to build different characters.

If UIT engage in serco/itani conflict they could have access to a lesser version of a Valk or Scp but they will have to complete military missions on a regular basis on their playing time (as should do serco and itani for top military gear as Draugath suggested once)

If you roleplay a trader or a pirate you should not easily have access to military ships Valk/Scp period.
Instead of suggesting to bork the faction system back where is was, make player to player ship trade available or allow to steal a ship after a fight (disabling engine, killing life support, tract a ship).

Flying a ship not intended to you should always come at a cost and a risk.

PS: i still dearly miss my dual flare IDF that some of my relative used to kick your funky asses. But i accepted the faction reddux cos it MAKES SENSE for people who CAN ROLEPLAY.

Bleed well lazy bitches : ]

you can't really make player to player ship transfers (either willing or unwilling) possible without accomplishing exactly what your entire post espouses against DeathSpore.

You'll get players who make use of those 6 character slots simply transferring niche or nation specific ships to the one or two characters they actually care about. Or they'll just get guild members who have access to transfer them. Essentially letting any player with money or time have exactly what you, rightly so, say is total bullshit to allow.

The extra features that would have to be implemented to create risk in a game change allowing ship transfers between characters to compensate for the outright abuse that will definitely follow are probably far too significant for the devs to even consider it.

Picking your nation, choosing your role in the universe should require investment and provide rewards equal to that investment and there needs to be a level of mutual exclusivity between roles to keep the fake universe and players honest.

The extra features that would have to be implemented to create risk in a game change allowing ship transfers between characters to compensate for the outright abuse that will definitely follow are probably far too significant for the devs to even consider it.

Not really, there are lots of relatively simple mechanics. Like giving player ships a small probability of being "salvage-able" after being destroyed in combat, but then saying after a successful salvage that the respective dropping character won't drop another salvage-able ship for at least 14 days and 100 deaths. People could re-roll characters, but the time required to get back to a point where they could acquire the desired ships, and then try and farm them until one drops, would be highly annoying. If the post-salvaged ships are no-drop and non-transferable (as they are now), then.. not really a lot of chance for things to spread. I'm not saying that we will do this (it's off the top of my head), I'm just illustrating that there are a lot of simple mechanics by which things could be possible, that are difficult or extremely time-consuming to exploit.

Anyway, I do not intend to make ships globally available to any nation, UIT included. There may eventually be a way for UIT to acquire ships due to military affiliation, but it'll be on a very specific basis, handed out individually and tied to military missions; attempts at farming (or just running off and failing missions) will likely result in getting ejected from the respective military, with negative ramifications.

Equipment is part of the national trade-off. If you want to fly a Prom or a Valk, roll a Serco or Itani character. I gave you six slots for that purpose.

From a backstory standpoint: Neither the Serco or Itani trust the UIT. The latter plays both ends against the middle quite often, and they're notorious arms traders. Looking at it another way, neither side is interested in allowing un-trusted people to export their military-grade hardware en masse and sell it to god-knows-whomever.

UIT gets to travel the whole galaxy with relative impunity. That comes with a tradeoff.. not all of the shiny toys.

Thanks for the clarification Inc. :)

"Anyway, I do not intend to make ships globally available to any nation, UIT included. There may eventually be a way for UIT to acquire ships due to military affiliation, but it'll be on a very specific basis, handed out individually and tied to military missions; attempts at farming (or just running off and failing missions) will likely result in getting ejected from the respective military, with negative ramifications."

Don't forget letting players undergo multiple faction changes, stockpiling ships with each change. This appears to have been a viable method for acquiring cross-faction ships.

Methinks that was a subtle stab at sieger Heh.

Its a subtle stab at a midnight faction behavior change done with no advanced notice, then letting a few players completely bastardize the new system by exploiting private requests to the devs for faction changes. The wound salt is developers parading on some imaginary moral high-ground about how ships should not be available cross-faction, and is as much a jab at the developers who allowed it as it is the players who requested it.

While there will always be vets who have all ships available to them (not worth dev time to undo the availability)-- they still really need to just stop nation changing for good.

Where's sieger to weigh in on this? I mean something tells me he would have some insight.

And I dont think it would be very hard to run-over the player database and just pull out ships that are now exclusive to a given nationality and the player isn't that nationality. Compensating them with credits as if they had sold the ships at current cost.

Or perhaps even more fun. A bit of code in the client to cause anyone flying the wrong nation specific ship to explode whenever they attempt to fly it. Forcing the players to sell their own stock.