Please create a pirate faction or state (restate?) why it's not something we can/will have.

No, that's........no. but I love you Greenwall so :)

+1

-1 many exist... FAMY, VOID, etc... maybe what you want are player/guild built stations?

+1, but will never happen.

https://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/25025#308894

https://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/28397

I've actually been thinking about how to implement my old "roving pirate station" idea, lately (Lecter's link #1 above). There are some definite caveats and problems, but it's getting closer. The Latos N2 economy change has some value too, as it feeds into the notion of a black market that's actually driven by player supplies. We didn't have that option before, and it's a pretty important one for this kind of topic.

Also, my pirate-station idea is not the same thing as a "pirate faction". In fact, I'm not sure that a "pirate faction" even makes sense, per se, it implies too much organization and rules. But mechanics to support piracy in the form of a.. futuristic Port Royal, that's of interest.

Anyway, I'm not promising or estimating diddley **** right now, non-binding or otherwise. But this is on my radar.

If you want i can draw up a standard release for you incarnate, something alone these lines would be suitable no?

"I, John Bergman of Guild Software, XXX Technology Drive, WI [insert rest of address here] as a lawfully authorised agent of Guild Software LLC, with reference to the below feature description ("the description") am not promising or estimating diddley **** right now, non-binding or otherwise. But this, the description, is on my radar and will be delivered SoonTM or never or whenever I fucking want."

I'm not sure that a "pirate faction" even makes sense, per se, it implies too much organization and rules.

How else would one handle exclusivity? Access to exceptional piracy toys should be handled like access to proms/valks - if you want them, you give up a lot of other stuff. As it stands now, we have piracy-designed interceptors being used by 'POS everywhere they can be' traders to get around the universe quickly. It's both silly and a good reason to restrict the abilities of the piracy toys. You wouldn't want a ship with the X1 or SCP's abilities for sale to every pilot with a few thousand credits, after all.

The pirate faction isn't a faction, it's the lack of a faction. It's a simple implementation really; if you get KOS with your home nation and you have no other safe major factions (i.e. admire or better) your name turns grey and you're unaligned.

Then, quite separately, you require that purchasers of the greyhound, corvult and cormaud to have the requisite Corvus faction but NOT the faction with the major factions.

This is literally all that greyspace people want.

i am tri KOS, i still want to be shown as serco, not unaligned, i am a rogue serco.
-1 to any grey faction that doesnt leave you the choice to join or not.
+1 to pirate station where nation KOS status gives advantage over carebears.

I think the Grey faction should be a mission you can take at combat 10 to renounce you nationality and thereafter only be able to get +600 with any of the nation factions. I think having a ship that is grey only would also be cool, but I'd like to see it be a different ship/version than the things already ingame.
Perhaps a Greyhound Fighter/Interceptor that has the armor and maneuverability of the WTD but the speed and turbo drain of the Greyhound and 2 or no cargo. Perhaps a cool skin for the vult or something could also be included.

"i am tri KOS, i still want to be shown as serco, not unaligned, i am a rogue serco."

That should be noted on your character screen, but the system should work on the roleplay justification that the colours are faction IFF and so if you are indeed a rouge serco you will show up on a normal serco's radar as a grey target.

All of this frankly assumes a faction system that's more complicated than the one that VO has at the moment. The basics are as I set them out above for the moment it needn't be more complicated than that as an implementation. It would make a world of difference.

You guys are over-complicating this. Pirate gear is sold by Corvus, so just make Corvus standing mutually exclusive with all three nations (and maybe TPG too). To avoid complications with home-station reassignment, tune the exclusivity so that POS standing with a nation only drops you to the lower boundary of Disliked with Corvus, not Hated or KOS.

Maybe you missed this.

"Corvus is not a pirate faction, never was, and never will be."

No, I didn't miss that. Nor did I say anything contradictory to it. What I said is that Corvus sells pirate gear. That is a simple fact. I then suggested that Corvus should be made mutually exclusive with the three major nations and (possibly) TPG. They don't need to be a pirate faction for that to happen. It says quite clearly in the in-game description of Corvus that they're known to harbor pirates, black markets, and other such skulduggery. They are not a pirate faction, but they are shady as hell. That is more than sufficient to justify mutual exclusion, especially mutual exclusion that doesn't quite go so far as to make you KOS.

Re Pizza's suggestion, I think something along the lines of the Valent - Axia excusivity or perhaps a bit more, but not the full Serco / Itani excusivity. I would also tend to make it more one sided where the nation penalized good Corvus standing much moreso than Corvus penalizing players for having good nation standings. Corvus isn't necessarily trying to prevent players from making transactions at it's stations and being a small faction would be inclined to accept new contractors in order to build it's business since it is being pressured by the nations and subfactions. So I see Corvus as wanting to encourage nation positive players to engage in business with it rather than deter.

As a result, regaining nation standing could be difficult, requiring the player to commit some act or acts that diminish their Corvus standing outside the current boring methods. Such things should not work the same way everywhere.

Pirate gear is sold by Corvus, so just make Corvus standing mutually exclusive with all three nations (and maybe TPG too).

Unfortunately, Inc. seems dead-set on Corvus being not pirate. Which would be fine, except for how he keeps making Corvus the dumping ground for all things pirate - likely because he has nowhere else to put them, but still.

I agree that doesn't preclude faction exclusivity, but it seems that would be too anti-carebear to fly with Inc...so we're basically stuck hoping a pirate 'group' is eventually added, given pretty vigorous faction exclusivity, and that existing pirate stuff (really only the Hound, as the CV and Maud are less specialized) is shunted over to it. Then again, the Hound is currently a LTS toy, so that complicates things. Which is at least as stupid as making an X1 variant with no faction requirements attached a LTS toy, but I've given up on making sense of these kinds of decisions.

Look, Corvus has another critical function: It is the dumping ground for people who cannot dock anywhere else. If someone becomes KoS, we have to move them somewhere, and that has always been Corvus. Sometimes the people being moved don't fully understand what's happening, or that they are even KoS (newer player situations, etc).

So, I cannot make Corvus into a mutual exclusion, because the crossover point may be seriously problematic for bumping people there. We're going to be extending the TempKoS system, so then you might get situations where someone gets bumped to Corvus, and then their TempKoS expires and then they get bumped from Corvus? It all starts to get a little annoying.

We have a lot of gameplay, missions and code written around the notion of Corvus being a place where anyone is accepted, and changing that is not trivial. Nor it is what I ever intended, or what I want.

I've advocated for a roving (moving) pirate station. You would need to learn the location, which could be trivially done with a triple-KoS mission available in Corvus stations. Aside from that, there might be some other requirements to dock (like triple-KoS status, and a history of selling "liberated" goods? Hard to say). But it's easy enough to make it into something that's effectively a pirate-only station, does not require usage of the actual factional alignment system, and still has exclusive items and pirate-specific goodies for sale (along with whatever people sell there, a-la a Latos-N2-style black market with fewer limits on how things can be bought or sold).

Basically, the road to what people actually want (a pirate locale, without NFZ or KoS concerns, with more exclusive pirate items for sale) is pretty easy.. and in fact, much easier than screwing up any of our current assumptions with Corvus. People just need to let go of their "Corvus == Pirates Faction!" thing. Corvus doesn't have to be a pirate faction, they can just be a 3rd world flea market where a lot of questionable goods are for sale.

Again, if Corvus wasn't (and hasn't been since ever) the only thing even remotely close to a faction for a huge portion of VO's gameplay...I don't think anyone would care whether they're pirates or not.

But pirate stuff keeps getting put there (Unrat missions, Hound, etc.), so our focus on the issue should be pretty understandable. For "pretty easy," it's been a loooooong time coming in any form at all.

Couldn't Corvus remain as it is, with certain items/missions at Corvus requiring pirate type standings/etc?

For "pretty easy," it's been a loooooong time coming in any form at all.

Well, it's definitely easier now. It sure wasn't in like 2008 or something. Or even a couple of years ago. The whole process of making capships more truly persistent and NPC-controllable changed a lot of code (capships are basically flexible, persistent "stations" that can move). The whole Latos-N2 economy thing is only a few months old.

But, perhaps a better way of putting it, is that it's much easier to implement what I'm describing, than it is to try fixing all of the other content that hinges on the universal-availability of Corvus to all players. We'd be chasing that crap for months. So, all things considered, I'd rather go in a different direction.

Pirate stuff does get put there, out of lack of other alternatives, although honestly people were calling it the "pirate faction" (no matter what I said), before any of that stuff existed. Anyway, not important..

Couldn't Corvus remain as it is, with certain items/missions at Corvus requiring pirate type standings/etc?

Sure, but that doesn't allow the whole "furball outside the station" thing. That was part of what brought up this whole topic. Then you get into a whole "tri-kos people can shoot other tri-kos people while in the NFZ.. except.. someone's KoS status just changed, and oh the newer person got the wrong idea from watching this furball without NFZ ramifications" and.. it becomes a mess.

I would rather have NFZs and strike forces and full lockdown. Or.. nothing! And if we want to do nothing, we need to make it a more obscure station, off in the middle of nowhere (randomly placed nowhere!) that is hard to get to and tougher to into.

Can we start by making the race track station the pirate station and then create a second roving one later?

It makes sense for pirates to have a race track for gambling purposes.