Maybe it's about time VO finally gets the Grey faction?

Faction Redux moved things in the right direction but.... we still have, to say the least, idiotic situations.

Itani pirates with Itani POS camping Edras I-2 wh and killing Itani, UIT pirates with UIT POS camping Edras B-11 wh and killing UITs.

Atm this is exploited to the max and if for nothing else, then for the sake of the newbies, this has to be dealt with.

I propose a very simple solution - give pirates their own Grey Faction - permanently admired by Corvus and permanently disliked by all other sub-factions and KOS by all Nations.
No more UIT, Serco & Itani pirates with home nation POS and admired by other sub-factions.
They need gray names in chat and orange dots on radar.

Players who consider themselves real pirates can open a support ticket with a request for their char to be changed to Grey faction.
Others who just like to exploit Nation POS statuses and nation specific ships and avoid sending request for a change of Faction can be reported by the rest of the player base using the same support ticket system to point them out - so you can change those chars to Grey faction.

I think, as an intermediary solution, this could work.

Playing a pirate should not be as simple as deciding to kill everyone with no repercussions and staying POS or admired everywhere.
Playing a real pirate should be hard and challenging.

permanently disliked by all other sub-factions

lol whut? Otherwise, +1

"Others who just like to exploit Nation POS statuses and nation specific ships and avoid sending request for a change of Faction can be reported by the rest of the player base using the same support ticket system to point them out - so you can change those chars to Grey faction."

Hell no!

I'm all for people having an option to go Grey. My character, is Itani and is a 'pirate'. I happen to like the option of maintaining my national POS. Grey or rather Corvus stations have precious little to offer that would give me reason to sacrifice this. As a matter of fact, I have high standing with all factions but Serco. And at one time had the golden belt of all 13 factional pos. No one has the right to tell me I have to sacrifice anything when I'm already making sacrifices by respecting the current (and previous) faction system.

This is a sandbox game and just because the op is upset about players using the system to their advantage, that does not justify imposing some arbitrary status upon other players.

That said, I also have absolutely no problem with nations extending monitoring to both sides of the wormholes that provide access into their space. In fact, it makes sense that they would want to do this for national security reasons.

I am not upset about this, some players will always exploit anything they can to gain advantage over others.
I have been playing this game from 2004 when there were no border or system or station turrets and all POS was a standard.
Pirates roamed thru all nation spaces and killed newbies wherever they wanted. Red vs Blue nation conflict was all over the universe and ctc convoys were chased till the end of their route.
Those who decided to stay and play - adapted and kept playing, however, many newbies who found themselves amidst all of this craziness quit very fast.

My main problem with the current state of pirate roleplaying is that unaware and unexperienced newbies are their exclusive targets. Those guys are getting killed right outside their door by players of their own nation that have POS standing.

Yes, venturing into gray space is dangerous and every newbie learns that from day 1 but nobody tells them that they will be killed by their own nation POS players as soon as they exit Edras or Latos wormhole.

At least give them a chance to target the pirate and see a red dot on their radar.

This situation is very confusing and potentially very bad for the new players influx and I think we can agree that VO needs new players.

P.S. This exploit can also be solved by returning to the old system of friendly fire restrictions - so, if you're UIT with UIT POS, you can't kill another UIT.

I'm all for protecting new players within nation space. I would rather them have reasons to stay there longer before yielding to the sirens call.

faction reddux bojan instead

Perhaps there should be an explanation in one of the training missions warning about pirates and about how greyspace in particular is dangerous and confrontation should be expected as an outcome for taking the risk.

Oh. Wait....

To be honest... Edras I-2, Edras B-11, and Latos H-2 are all grey space. If there's anywhere newbs should be expecting an ambush, that's it.

UIT do get a pretty rough deal though, since the only subfaction they start off with >= +600 is TPG. That leaves a lot of stations in their home space where they can be killed without penalty.

Actually, what we need is a new faction (perhaps named "Fuo Kinmo-Ron") that we can submit support tickets to confine people like bojansplurt to.

Heh, I can see lot of so called pirates are highly uncomfortable with the idea of being all Nations KOS and without privileges of exploiting home nation POS to score easy kills on unsuspecting newbies of their own nation.

I can sympathize of course, where is the fun in making RP pirate hard?

They would not be able to kill newbies and brag about their masterful pirate skills on 100, real spoilsport so yeah - let's diss and insult me, thats far more easier.

Your suggestion doesn't really address the problems... nor does it really identify any.

1. POS has no bearing on unmonitored sectors.

2. In-nation kills could be dealt with harsher, but you're mentioning new players in grey space... as ARF pointed out.

3. Your grey conversion gives no real inventive to be grey and locks grey players out of too many grey faction merchandise.

4. For a grey faction to work and be more than a novelty, it needs to support a legitimate range of play styles. Pirates need access to a 200cu transport to steal some capital ship parts as one example.

A grey faction should have benefits unique to it and drawbacks as well. Nobody buys that "real pirates must be universal kos" anymore because the people who did that figured out it's a pretty limited way to play with no real benefit.

Thank you for a constructive comment Savet.

I posted a pretty rough and unpolished suggestion that hints at a possible faction redux improvement regarding grey faction. Did I went over the top with restrictions and disregarded adding benefits - I suppose I did but... that's why this is just a suggestion and is open for comments and additional input on how to make this work.

Will possible new grey faction need more variety in ships and weapons - probably yes since they will not have access to nation specific equipment but, Old (2004) BLAK did pretty good in Rev c, corvus vultures & marauders with neuts mk2 & flares. They never needed SCPs or valks or neuts 3.
'New age' pirates are a bit more sensitive about their favorite toys so I suppose they can get some new ones if that will help.

P.S. About identifying problems... how about this: pirate X is Itani POS, homed in Jallik. Sits in Jallik waiting for newbies going to Edras. As soon as he spots them, he turbos to wh, jumps before them and when they emerge from jump kills them. and returns back to Jallik station. Rinse and repeat.
Same thing for UIT POS pirate Y homed, sitting & waiting for newbies in Verasi O7.

Newbs that venture into grey space must be killed. It is the only way they'll learn.

I kill them too and I'm not even officially evil.

Spence, if you so much want to improve your pk count fast and want to teach Itani newbies that greyspace is dangerous go sit at jallik wh and kill all Itani newbies going out, why waste time searching for them elsewhere?

"P.S. About identifying problems... how about this: pirate X is Itani POS, homed in Jallik. Sits in Jallik waiting for newbies going to Edras. As soon as he spots them, he turbos to wh, jumps before them and when they emerge from jump kills them. and returns back to Jallik station. Rinse and repeat.
Same thing for UIT POS pirate Y homed, sitting & waiting for newbies in Verasi O7."

Add faction monitoring to both sides of the wormhole. After that, the new player has an entire grid of choices that they can choose from in order to make their next jump. The only border where this would not make sense is the wormhole between Geira and Deneb.

"Heh, I can see lot of so called pirates are highly uncomfortable with the idea of being all Nations KOS and without privileges of exploiting home nation POS to score easy kills on unsuspecting newbies of their own nation."

Actually, I'm already KOS with UIT, Itani, Serco, and TPG, and have been for years.

"so yeah - let's diss and insult me, thats far more easier."

No, actually the suggestion you proposed is so glaringly stupid that I assumed you were just trolling, so I responded in kind. Fortunately, I'm not of the opinion that the immensely dumb should be treated with respect, so I feel no obligation to apologize. I will at least point out the flaws in your suggestion so that perhaps you can become less stupid in the future.

First and foremost, a person's status as a pirate should be determined through game mechanics, not through support tickets. You should really practice some self flagellation over that one.

Second, pirates should still be able to have good standings with at least the other grey factions, so long as they behave themselves with those specific factions. That is the point of having grey factions in the first place.

Third, if newbies are going out into greyspace and dying because they eschewed common sense and assumed that the color of a radar dot means anything in the explicitely dangerous and unmonitored area of the game, then that's just too damn bad. They shouldn't have gone into greyspace if they didn't want to risk dying.

Oh I don't kill Itani newbs just the other less perfect nations newbs

heh take a drink and relax there Rin Ganborro. this dude is trying to help newbies which aint bad. and i have to second his observations. a lot of crying has been done lately because some idiots raided nation space again. others asked 500k of people with low levels checking out Edras b-11. i agree that newbies learning a lesson by getting shot once or twice is cool, but if we make them quit, we have no gain. you may Counter argue "i don't want any dumb people playing". but we'll eventually need "dumb" people so it looks more active and other decent people stick around. haha. vrzzzt

as for your ideas bojansplash... rorzzth..
Savet is perfectly right. Being a pirate is already insanely unattractive. Traders fly around in their fancy Trident... people like me turbo by and wreck your ships, not many people paying... it can get very frustrating. so if you propose they get their own faction or name color, give them some serious benefits to go with their repercussions.
making pirate requirements so the people camping WHs lose their POS is a wrong approach aswell... you'll just make the pirates quit. i was happy we had some new ones.

there is no ultimate solution. newbies Need to be warned more aggressively in the tutorial or when they plot for grey. e.g. every time you plot to grey when being below Level 3 everywhere it tells you "Warning! You have plotted course into a grey-space System. You go there on your own risk as other people attacking you (including Players of your own faction) is likely. It is adviced to Train combat and increase your licenses beforehand!