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Expanding the Setting Is Not Just Tech Articles

What if the story and the set up of your faction doesn't allow for such things simply because it doesn't make sense?

The vdtf is a faction of 100,000 Vekimen and 200,000 thousand iee I think. They are a military government, and every citizen is a member of said military. I think the only vehicle they have that isn't armed to the teeth for combat I the shuttle train that goes from the hangar to Komodo city and the Komodo headquarters. This is because they just aren't big enough to worry about a civilian sector. Galaxy is big, people are out there and even with the union, khelena can't just take the population and suddenly tell them military is optional. It would cause a massive issue in how the society is balanced. I focus on military simply because until I'm able to solve the population problem, I can't write then it off being a military faction with using a crowbar and botching the species.

Isn't there an alternative where you can make vehicles for enemy factions to supplement the civilian ships?
 
What if the story and the set up of your faction doesn't allow for such things simply because it doesn't make sense?

The vdtf is a faction of 100,000 Vekimen and 200,000 thousand iee I think. They are a military government, and every citizen is a member of said military. I think the only vehicle they have that isn't armed to the teeth for combat I the shuttle train that goes from the hangar to Komodo city and the Komodo headquarters. This is because they just aren't big enough to worry about a civilian sector. Galaxy is big, people are out there and even with the union, khelena can't just take the population and suddenly tell them military is optional. It would cause a massive issue in how the society is balanced. I focus on military simply because until I'm able to solve the population problem, I can't write then it off being a military faction with using a crowbar and botching the species.

Isn't there an alternative where you can make vehicles for enemy factions to supplement the civilian ships?
While it's nice to make and promote helping NPCs, this argument can be narrowed down to a prime NPC enemy, the Mishhu.

Even with the large amount of articles, the NPC faction has been detrimented through shedding of quality. That'd be my one fear: people opting to make NPC tech or articles won't feel obliged to work on them as hard as they would the initial submission. It's why I personally like the culture/civilian tech idea: it promotes established quality while preventing the whole "It's just for NPCs!" that is bound to spring up if we give that route.

I'll also point out that a military state will always have underlying culture. The Vekimen could and likely would develop a "support division" culture if they're all really military. This would likely form the backbone of a civilian culture, so it doesn't make sense to say they'd have none. They have to keep focused on more than war or they'd go extinct. Just a matter of reality to any species.
 
The problem here, is that you can't force creativity. Any wise NTSE mod will simply ignore it, since it drives away the creative by de-motivating them. You simply cannot force someone to work on something they don't want to. More importantly, there is a rather finite amount of cultural articles and the like. This means that with particularly well fleshed out factions, it is far more harmful than good since things will run the risk of becoming rather frivolous as more pressing ideas are all taken.

This is a well intended, but bad idea.
 
The problem here, is that you can't force creativity. Any wise NTSE mod will simply ignore it, since it drives away the creative by de-motivating them. You simply cannot force someone to work on something they don't want to. More importantly, there is a rather finite amount of cultural articles and the like. This means that with particularly well fleshed out factions, it is far more harmful than good since things will run the risk of becoming rather frivolous as more pressing ideas are all taken.

This is a well intended, but bad idea.
As someone who cares for the setting, I've never felt discouraged by the enforcement of the "one civilian for a military" thing. The thing that miffed me as a creator was ignoring this for certain people.

If people feel they can't help the collective setting with culture and civilian tech, then they likely aren't the kind of creators we want. It's not forcing anyone to work on anything if they care for SARP beyond just wanting to make their one-time plot tool.

Just my two cents. But I also actively work to renovate, rather than outright change, things for the setting. So while I'm not a Mod, I've had active involvement and worked alongside many other creators for the setting (such as @Primitive Polygon, @Syaoran, and @Ethereal). Culture and small things like civilian tech are their enjoyments alongside the fun/gun stuff. So I dunno where the idea of "forcing" comes in for anyone save those who have no desire to help the overall setting.
 
You guys always take the most simple things and complicate them. There is an easy answer to this;

First and for most, I don't want to be so pointed about this, but -new- culture articles -are- better for the site than the majority of new tech articles. The reason for this is most of our tech articles are "This faction's version of X" or "A new and improved Y". There are some tech things we don't have articles for, but plenty of things are made that we simply don't need more of, people just want to make more. Now that doesn't mean that tech articles are bad, it just means right now a culture article is worth more. Because after all, just recently I wanted to look up Nepleslian alcohol, and couldn't find a page for it. For NEPLESLIA of all places. That's just crazy. HOWEVER, adding more restrictions to the submission process is -not- the answer. Plain and simple. All that will do is discourage people, and hurt factions that don't have people good at anything but tech. Rather what should be done is have an incentive for creating culture articles and fleshing out a faction.

TL;DR: We have more than enough similar or repeating tech, while we have a lot of holes in culture info. So while they both are good for the site, culture has -more- worth than tech -right now-. But we shouldn't force the making of culture articles, rather we should -reward- it, without penalizing the making of tech articles.

Edit: Also I want it known, I'm not saying Nepleslia is doing wrong by not having drinks there. Just that no one that's worked on updating the Nepeslian area has been in that mind set, and that's not 'bad', just surprising.
 
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You also gotta remember a lot of tech is locked behind 'faction only' walls, especially the higher quality stuff though I'm working on remedying this with the Pact (much to the Asterian's enjoyment atm).
 
You guys always take the most simple things and complicate them. There is an easy answer to this;

First and for most, I don't want to be so pointed about this, but -new- culture articles -are- better for the site than the majority of new tech articles. The reason for this is most of our tech articles are "This faction's version of X" or "A new and improved Y". There are some tech things we don't have articles for, but plenty of things are made that we simply don't need more of, people just want to make more. Now that doesn't mean that tech articles are bad, it just means right now a culture article is worth more. Because after all, just recently I wanted to look up Nepleslian alcohol, and couldn't find a page for it. For NEPLESLIA of all places. That's just crazy. HOWEVER, adding more restrictions to the submission process is -not- the answer. Plain and simple. All that will do is discourage people, and hurt factions that don't have people good at anything but tech. Rather what should be done is have an incentive for creating culture articles and fleshing out a faction.

TL;DR: We have more than enough similar or repeating tech, while we have a lot of holes in culture info. So while they both are good for the site, culture has -more- worth than tech -right now-. But we shouldn't force the making of culture articles, rather we should -reward- it, without penalizing the making of tech articles.

Edit: Also I want it known, I'm not saying Nepleslia is doing wrong by not having drinks there. Just that no one that's worked on updating the Nepeslian area has been in that mind set, and that's not 'bad', just surprising.
That edit is wrong. U kno Nepleslia should have them. We did get the Meganut a while back, booze next will be good. I'll work/annoy @Ametheliana and @Gunhand4171 to get a new discussion picked up on it elsewhere.

I do agree incentivizing things is preferable, but it comes to the issue of what could be an incentive. Not only that, but it doesn't necessarily stem an agreed issue of too much mil tech. It might get us a few culture articles but not resolve the flood/imbalance.
 
You also gotta remember a lot of tech is locked behind 'faction only' walls, especially the higher quality stuff though I'm working on remedying this with the Pact (much to the Asterian's enjoyment atm).

I already addressed that concern here, @Arieg - and if the Pact's tech is available to all, then shouldn't Elysia and Nepleslia also be able to utilize it if they so desire?
 
Legix when I say it's not 'wrong' I mean that it's not like points against them or anything.

And @Arieg That doesn't at all change what I said. Even if things are faction locked, that doesn't change that a lot of our tech articles are "This faction's version of X" or "A better version of Y" That just adds a reason to why that's the case, but that doesn't change the situation. I also already accounted for that in my statement. But there's an easy way to fix that. Granted you have to find people who want to do it, but people could focus more on making 'generic' tech articles. That way people wont have to make faction specific articles for the basic stuff, just the specialized stuff. You can just say "So and so faction uses pistols comparable to the [insert the generic pistol article here]"

@Legix As for the military tech thing, you can't really fix that unless you just put an outright slow on military articles as a whole. Because if you do something like "You can only add this military article if you add a culture article" or anything like that, you end up stopping the development of smaller factions just getting started, because they just so happen to not have the touch for creating culture articles.
 
I already addressed that concern here, @Arieg - and if the Pact's tech is available to all, then shouldn't Elysia and Nepleslia also be able to utilize it if they so desire?

The lack of first contacts, planning threads, and other paperwork you tend to demand is all that stands in the way.

Edit: That and the cultural pride endemic to both factions in the IC.
 
All these replies are proof positive why a policy designed to promote non-tech articles will fail. In fact, it's pretty obvious that creating any sort of progressive policy regarding factional quality will make some players more averse to improving their faction.

But everyone knew this a few posts ago.

Perhaps incentivizing the creation of non-tech articles for FMs and creators could be a more sensible path than making any new "mandatory" requirements for approval. For example, give someone who simultaneously posts a tech article with a culture article the option to change their user title upon approval of both. Or maybe get a week of site supporter status.

It's actually a silly idea, imo. Still, it's an idea. In the absence of universal cooperation, though, those who do better and strive for better should be given better treatment.
 
I agree with most of what raz is saying. Any mandatory requirement will fail because it feels like punishment, especially for . The best we can do is encourage people to make new culture submissions. Maybe we should have an event where we have a sort of contest involving creating culture articles? Or we could have a thread where every week a different species is selected to make an article for. At the end of the year whoever has gotten the most approved gets a bit of money going to art.

I guess we could also limit new tech articles for a time unless they are for smaller factions with little in the way of tech articles. There's no ideal solution here.

However, another thing is some people are extremely frustrated with the NTSE at the moment. I think the underlying problems in the NTSE need to be addressed before some content creators are comfortable submitting again. Implementing this article's tips as the guideline for participating in the NTSE would be helpful, as it points out the things that are not appropriate in the NTSE.
 
An event could be cool. Align it with an IC holiday like Hanami and hand out a super special title to the player who submits the most (fully complete without sections missing) articles. Run it every other year so people have something to look forward to and plan for, maybe? Incentives that the Staff will actually hand out are up to them, but I'd participate in things like that for sure.

Speaking to the "cultural/non-miltech articles are cool" point, NPC factions — which is a step to full faction recognition — are themselves required have a few article types approved. As in player factions must (or should) also have all of those requirements fulfilled. Culture is mentioned first, and the technological requirement cites "any interesting technologies" rather than "you need warships and guns." I'm sure that wording is fully intentional because those things are what make SARP factions so cool and worth playing, and are what the community has always looked for during the factional creation process.

It doesn't matter if you have a fleet of badass ships if there's no underlying draw beyond that.
 
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[...] Any mandatory requirement will fail because it feels like punishment, especially for .

Punishment for whom, @ArsenicJohn? Those that make corporations, then insist that they're actually factions? I mean, if someone is "more averse to improving their faction," then, well, why are they even making a faction in the first place?

However, another thing is some people are extremely frustrated with the NTSE at the moment. I think the underlying problems in the NTSE need to be addressed before some content creators are comfortable submitting again.

What "underlying problems" are you referring to, @ArsenicJohn? As far as I know, the NTSE - though a bit slow, but that's hardly grounds for complaining - has been functioning normally these past few months.

Implementing this article's tips as the guideline for participating in the NTSE would be helpful, as it points out the things that are not appropriate in the NTSE.

I agree, though in my opinion there should be actively (and equally) enforced consequences for those that repeatedly violate it.
 
Raz seemed a little salty, I thought we were having a nice convo here, then I hit ‘show ignored posts’

Holy crap, huge mistake.

Ultimately I think Raz is on the right track. Let’s give incentives to players to do what they already like doing rather than trying to pushing players for not doing something they aren’t all that excited about.

USO has a bunch of cool, detailed, articles that aren’t about starships but not everyone enjoys that and we should also cater to players who are just here because they want to make cool starships. Fixing the problems with the NTSE would be a great place to start since it seems like the healthier the NTSE is the better the site is as a whole. The goal should be making it easier to get approval for something on the first try by removing guess work, which will free up approval mods time and energy.
 
Raz seemed a little salty... Ultimately I think Raz is on the right track. Let’s give incentives to players to do what they already like doing rather than trying to pushing players for not doing something they aren’t all that excited about.
Two things:
  1. I don't know what I seemed salty about because I hadn't really read every post, as I'd assumed it was just people arguing
  2. This was Syaoran's idea first because of point 1.
Lol.
 
I support the inclusion of more cultural articles.

This seems to also be a sort of function of us growing up and caring about different types of stories too. For instance, character development instead of constant combat has been a big draw for me in many of the plots I help and JP in. It seems to be a natural progression to create culture articles as a result.

As for my part, as @ArsenicJohn and @Bullroarer can attest, one of my personal fm requirements for GMing for Asteria is to flesh out the factions, planets and places that they utilize. They rewrote a whole system article and gave it a unique culture and I am very proud of them.

Perhaps instead of regulating this through the NTSE, which has become an unpleasant experience, we FMs and GMs can simply make this idea a new focus as Wes originally suggested.
 
@Zack don't call people out, you just start stuff like that. Keep the discussion on the discussion not on what you think people are doing.

@ArsenicJohn while there are problems with the NTSE might be best to leave that out of here, SARP has a habit of 'problem-ception' and we get sidetracked from the problem that was originally brought up and we never get it covered.
 
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