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Implemented Add a 'Can this be adopted?' line to the business/corporation/faction templates

Whisper

Retired Staff
TL;DR: Add the above field with an extra bit underneath it that acts as a 'will' of sorts representing the creator/s' interests.

So one of the things that I'm always a little sad about is coming across some great piece of old tech or faction identity and finding out that the creator isn't around.

I often wonder a few things:
  • Is the corporation/faction even active without the player behind being active? Should we consider corporations/factions that aren't being actively managed OOC as inactive IC?
    • This opens up room for new players to create things to fill in the void, but potentially causes a lot of repeat submissions
  • If the corporation/factions isn't active, what happens to their staff/population, IP/technologies, etc?
    • I hate to see things (corps, factions, etc) sit unused. It feels weird to have a flag planted in the setting and then it just ... does nothing. I'd rather see these things kept alive in some form or fashion by an active player, personally, or have them naturally 'dissolve' over time.
  • Should all of the above be picked up by other corporations/factions, so that they continue to 'live' in the broader setting?
While my own opinion is probably clear - I'd rather have things kept 'alive' rather than go unused and forgotten - not everyone feels that way. By adding a 'Can this be adopted?' line and a 'will' of sorts to our corps and factions as required fields on an article, we can help to reduce confusion and have a plan for how to handle orphaned content in the future that is aligned with its creator's wishes.

If someone says, 'Yes' to the 'Can this be adopted?' line, then the will can tell us the specifics behind how they'd like to see that handled. The will should include some helper text - some suggestions on keeping the will reasonable, etc, and general things to address.

If someone says, 'No', then they don't need to worry about the will. They can still fill it out, if they wish, but the same 'keep it reasonable' requirements apply.

In either case, a faction or corporation that is not adopted will slowly begin to dissolve/go into decline over time. A corp's holdings, a faction's territory, etc, will go up for grabs in a manner that fits the creator's will as best as possible.

A new player can pick up an adoptable faction/corp/etc and bring it back to its glory days, merge it in with another corp/faction/etc (if the will allows it), and so on.

This would add one additional step to the review of a new corp/faction/major setting piece for Submission Reviewers to review the will and make sure it seems reasonable. This can be a headache, but personally I think it's worth it.
 
This suggestion has been implemented. Votes are no longer accepted.
Anybody can already put adoption/will information in the OOC section and several corporations already do have it. Maybe, to cut down on that extra reviewer work you mentioned, any addition to the template could be explicitly labeled as an optional section so that the path is there if someone desires to take it.

Getting struct dropdowns about adoptability for corporations like characters have would definitely be cool if it’s an easy implementation for the namespace. Very simple.
 
I was thinking about this today and the first thing I was thinking was that corps should always be adoptable after...uh... The player is gone for over a year?

Then I thought, wait, that doesn't make sense because players don't control corporations. Under current policies for SARP, ultimately they are managed by the FMs. A recent suggestion for corp managers to be recognized was not popular and was closed.

Furthermore, there no adoption policy currently exists for anything other than characters.

I'm thinking should encourage corps to be for the community as a whole and not individual players. This is still an RP about playing characters.

Thoughts?
 
I think the people who have made the corp should have some say in what gets created for their corp. As even an FM might not fully appreciate one of the corporations under his supervision and what it is/should have or be capable of. Corps shouldn't really be private for only certain players to make stuff for, but should also have some controlling influence in some minor way that isn't the FM to make calls on if something makes sense, and the NTSE and FM should respect their opinion on the matter tho should still use their own judgement.

Should they have absolute authority rivalling an FM? No.

Should they be able to say a product doesn't really fit the nature of the thing they created that they prob know best if they are around to do so? I think so.
 
I agree with what Char said. Definitely opposed to corporations acting as mini-factions that can self-approve their articles and such.

Corporations, to me, seem a bit like characters in that a person invests a lot of time into them and should have some degree of say in what happens to them. Ideally, they show up in RP like any other 'NPC'.

Adding some clarity around what happens when their creator is gone is probably good, but if you think that it's sufficiently clear that corporations are under the FM's control from the moment of submission - then that works, too. Might be a good idea to clarify that on the template or something so that it's clear for everyone.

I've seen the 'what do we do with..' conversation pop up around corporations a handful of times and I think it'd be good to have a concrete response somewhere on the wiki.
 
If you think of it as a pure character thing, he who controls the head character of the corp controls the corp. And characters can be adopted.
 
I like your idea of it being under an FM's supervision (where applicable, there are still some indi corps out there~).

Don't think they should be adoptable, and that anyone should be able to make stuff for any corp. Just that we should not discount the people who made the corp if they are still around and have an opinion on the matter, and their headcanon around it since it is after all their idea and they know it and what is it/was/will/can be.

I didnt mean to imply they should be micro-fms either if thats how it came off. Just that if someone who made corp X says something doesnt make sense the FM should take that into consideration and find an alternative solution (like maybe having it be made by a different corp in their faction.).
 
I'm cool leaving it up the FMs if we want to go that route, but again we just need to make sure it's explicit. If someone leaves or goes MIA for more than a couple of months, I'd personally like to have some clear something that says what can/can't be done with things.

If it leads to drama down the road, I think the drama would be somewhat lessened if we could point to a rule on the matter.
 
Thinking on this some more, it's one of those things where if no one is OOCly in charge of a corporation, it will tend to get neglected because people aren't sure they have the authority to do stuff with the corp. Furthermore FMs have enough on their plate without having to OOCly run every corp in their faction. I agree with Whisper 100% that in any case we should explicitly say who is responsible for what and what can be done with the corp, even if it's on a corp by corp basis where some corps like Origin have a manager and others are a public use one that anyone can do anything with. Maybe we should just say that some corps have managers and if they disappear, people can ask to become the new manager?

Finally, I want to apologize for letting this topic sit around without a response for a while. Your input is still valued and I'm sorry for the slowdown.
 
Go ahead and implement this please.
 
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