New faction 3 month rule.

I'll give you one thing, unlike half the other failed attempts at making popup factions over the last year you are very well versed in writing with the English language, not only that but you've put together a very good explanation of your views on the situation.

I'm not in the business of fighting off new people, simply speaking from experience i can say many of the complaints you may have received about the population were most likely because people didn't know half of them are useless currently. And from my personal experience I can also say many people are worried about the fact that Wes gave the go-ahead so quickly, is because it wasn't all that long ago there was a total ban on new factions, one which every new person to the site seemed to want to oppose. The reason for this ban was simply to help boost some of the existing factions rather than stump new ideas, at the time and even now the active member count is spread very thin across the existing factions hence why people including myself always recommend playing for a while before making a new one.

Another point i'd like to bring up is that I have heard that there is plans for this faction to join forces with Jack Pine's NDC as well as Dragon God's MOD and potentially a faction Leonardo is working on with the purpose of becoming the faction to rival yamatai for largest and most powerful in the setting.

I admit that this is definitely one aspect I am not particularly fond about, as it seems to me this decision was reached in advance of the faction coming into existence and before it has a chance to get rp sorted out on the site.


To sum up, I am not against new factions, provided they have time and effort put in and aren't just used as the means to a single end for a very small group of people, your earlier statement has me hopeful that you are willing to invest this time and effort to make sure its not just "Generic sci faction no0367" and I will appologise if my own comments have come across as threatening or dismissive. The one thing i will say in response is to not shrug off what everyone else is saying immediately, yes there are some of us who are firmly in the belief you shouldn't be able to have it yet, there is value in listening to things those with more 'local' experience have to say.

And as for the part you mentioned of people trying to advertise yamatai and nepleslia, thats all it is, advertising. I don't advertise Neshaten too strongly as at the moment I don't have the capacity to run more plots for the faction and the existing one was never designed for a lot of players. So if you have a plan in mind and are going to be able to run plots within this faction for your players then i am curious to see where it takes you, and while reading the ENTIRE wiki is a bit much, getting to know the basic structure of the other major factions isn't a bad thing, there is also a set of requirements surrounding the creation and maintenance of a faction, some of these include that the FM provides plots for characters and that they must have a minimum amount of players in their faction.

Is this not what Star Army is about in the first place?

Nowhere does that say 'make a new faction on day one', which is an elevated role in the community that needs trust to be built first.

You quickly dismiss the value of trust here. Trust is what allows you to attract players not only to your faction, but to play with it period. Trust is what lets us know you can manage the sea of wiki articles and prerequisites required not only to make the faction but maintain it. You do not yet have it, and it is causing an issue.

You could be the most competent and experienced GM in the world with a wonderful idea. But if you aren't willing to put forth the effort to acclimate to the setting and build a relationship in the playerbase first, that doesn't look good for you and the others may well respond in kind by rejecting a narrative that they feel is inorganic and forced on them. This appears to be part of what's happening.

Now, an idea would be if instead of playing a faction on day one, you had a smaller group that could be a scouting or advance force. Perhaps a single small vessel? Maybe this advance force is explicitly looking for a place to put their people and learn about/interact with the universe before just plopping them in this reality. Not only would that serve the purpose of letting your group of players acclimate and familiarize, but it could also lead to more in character groundwork for the faction being laid later and benefit the faction in the long term by having it start out with some more connections to local governments if those governments so choose. In the interim, you could fine-tune the faction's premise and details to be in-keeping with the setting as you grow familiar with it. Work toward it in character as a goal instead of getting it all at once while improving and revising the premise out of character as you go, and I'm confident that the faction will ultimately be better off if it's meant to work out at all.

If for some reason it doesn't work out, then the IC explanation would be that they just elected to find a different universe more suited for their people.

This in and of itself might be comparable to granting the GMing of a plot, which is still a lot to hand off to a new person, but Wes seems to be leaning that way anyway.

If you had asked you would have known they never intended to show up here. They were going someplace else. Therefore; no. That idea would not fit the concepts that have already been laid out. Their placement in this universe is by mistake. Specifically an anomaly that they have no prior knowledge would occur.

I do no disregard the value of trust. I regard the values of creativity to be just as important. If people are not allowed to create what they would like to create then it is essentially telling them "Make what I want because I said so".

Furthermore I do find it more than a little curious that despite several very loud members that are in this group of going against this concept knew of this well before the RP even started. Yet they said nothing about it until now. Why is that, I wonder?

Besides that, coming back to the earlier point of the plot, if they did send a scouting force and they found all these places why would they not send something more like an entire battle group to defend their interests? This is just a small patrolling or escort fleet. We're back to square one immediately with this concept. And no, the idea that somehow this 'entire battlegroup' would be upsetting to the universe isn't something that is simply because it doesn't follow the lore since Yamatai battle groups are routinely comprised of hundreds of ships according to multiple accounts by various users whom have gained their information through your wiki. Which in turn would ALSO mean that they have the capability to transport materials at a whim through dimensions, meaning that even Yamatai (strictly speaking of a numbers and logistics without taking into account commanders and sheer dumb luck on both sides) would likely either need to forcibly close that portal, eliciting an even higher military presence, or submit to a new faction. Both of these concepts are not in the best interests of the setting.

And both concepts ultimately lead to one thing: military campaigns. How many times have we seen those in a scifi setting? All of them. The answer is all of them.

'Single small vessel'. Let me reiterate: their frigates are the smallest ships in their universe capable of FTL travel discounting corvettes. A corvette wouldn't carry enough supplies to last more than a month at 'sea' (space). Given the fact that their FTL is also subpar compared to the SA universe by a wide margin, this means any crew onboard would have starved even IF they somehow had the capability to navigate the space that they have no landmarks for (pulsars, black holes, major planetary systems that are colonized and have beacons, etc).

There also seems to be a lot of assumption that I haven't done anything to help make up the difference in bringing something new to this setting. There also seems to be an assumption I am new to GMing. I will say this much; I am not new to GMing. I have a great many years of experience and the number one killer of any campaign or plot that any GM runs is that it goes stale and becomes the same thing over and over again repeating itself. The idea that trust is necessary is true however it is not something that is simply going to be gained by RPing in a given setting but rather by establishing a new, interesting plot, players taking a small leap of faith, then building rapport by doing so.

Furthermore, I'm not even GMing the plot I'm in. Jack is. So the idea that I am GMing anything yet is simply hearsay and facetious.

Even still, even this exact moment, not a single person is asking me anything and instead continues to assume. I'll say this now because I don't think I've said it yet. Compromise works both ways. I would have loved to simply 'open a portal' and let SA and my own universe collide in a drastic turn of events that none of us humans can fathom behind the scenes. To say I have made zero compromises is to assume that I'm full of shit.

And with that I am far less willing to compromise. Why? Because even though I have been putting forth a hellacious amount of effort into getting things done properly, through proper channels that I am learning more and more everyday about, not a single person that opposes this idea has asked anything about it. Therefore any further attempts to compromise will be ignored until that happens.


Edit: Also nowhere does it explicitly say 'wait three months and then make a faction' since that was apparently a point of argument.

The three months thing was alex asking if people thought that would be a good idea, it isn’t currently a rule.

Since you’ve mentioned no one is asking anything how about this, what are your goals and plans with this faction, what are you going to do to continue its development and maintain it, and what compromises are you looking for?

I’m not taking the piss either, these are genuine questions I believe are important to help me at least understand your point better, though i cant speak gor anyone else.

Try looking at it from our perspective. If you spent ten or fifteen years on a roleplay (not an exaggeration, some have been here even longer) and a group of people suddenly showed up and one new player wanted one of the most influential roles in the setting, the role of FM, would you really just hand it over? And let some people you knew nothing about the capabilities or ideas of just suddenly have a bunch of power without earning it in any way, shape, or form without proving themselves? Because that's what's happening. And people are immediately going NOPE even before learning of the details because that alone is a deal-breaker.

I've tried being nice, so I'll be blunt. I don't care if you're not a rookie to RPing. You're a rookie here and I have no cause to know or trust you yet. The fact you have no interest in getting that trust from anyone is also a red flag.

I try to come up with another way to help you work toward your goal and earn it and our trust along the way instead of handing it to you on a silver platter. You respond by being completely unwilling to change a single thing, demanding battle fleets without having any of the resources (There are rules on this site about battle fleet sizes here related to how many star systems a faction or corporation has, so you would not have thousands of warships anyway) or considering the fact that people don't bat an eye toward Yamataian fleets provided those fleets aren't entering, approaching, or too close to another faction's space. The setting is at war with an NPC race that is known for using other conquered or allied races to attack in underhanded and unexpected ways. People are watching for anything shady. If your whole battlegroup appears nearby, it would not simply be met with an "oh well, that's a thing now".

I don't know the details of your faction or plans, I get that. My problem is the more fundamental issue that you're a newbie demanding a faction in the first place and are emboldened enough to prioritize that over all else -- even acclimating yourself to the setting you want to improve.

Yet I have a feeling this rule would definitely apply to the faction if the vote passed, therefore undoing the RP plot I have with Jack and a handful of others as well as the work I've put into it. Arguably that isn't as monumental as some of the other factions but it definitely sets a terrible precedent when new rules can dismantle entire factions at the whims of the crowd.

I thank you for asking a question. Investigating a potential problem is the first step to solving it.

At the moment, I have no goals with the faction other than seeing how it interacts with others already established in the setting. As for how I shall maintain it and its development, I have a number of RPers that I've run with for years now that will likely join. If I do ever leave one of them will immediately pick up the faction without hesitation and they know it like the back of their hands. If you mean in-character, that will require more information before I can answer.

Potential compromises is a bit more finicky because it will depend on what is offered. My method of compromise is usually being offered a compromise and then working in conjunction with the people or person proposing it to find a solution that equally benefits both parties. The main gripe I hear, primarily from Mecha Meme, is the amount of people that the colony ships are carrying. I'm willing to cut down the number at the very least however I will note that the population will still be fairly large. Without going into a lengthy discussion about it; I have stated numerous times that the generous casualty counts are estimated to be nearly 60% as I have explained to Mecha Meme multiple times in DMs and can provide screenshots upon request.


I would also like to point this out:

A faction is simply put merely a group of people. This doesn't necessarily require a government or territory. We have factions inside the United States in reality; namely the Republican and Democratic party which are both factions. Though they control no territory and largely (at least theoretically) have no internal government of their own they still control or influence a majority of the population.

Additionally, my faction isn't simply going to fart out onto a planet. Jack and I have already planned to do a lengthy campaign in order to explain not just the victory of settling their first worlds but also the trials and tribulations that come with it. Most of the work, especially that of the solar system they will eventually inhabit, is simply being done in advance to avoid later headache.


In this thread, posted above, the fleet has just now arrived. I see no evidence in that thread, biased as my opinion is, that this fleet is a significant threat to any established nations nor is it lore unfriendly. With that said, the idea of a crossover (which is essentially what this is) is to input something new into the setting and to see how they interact with one another. Naturally, there are going to be times where certain things seem out of place or seem unfair on one side or another.

Specific examples, merely in the context of conversations had, would include things such as most factions seemingly having the ability to simply clone soldiers at a whim, revive the dead, use heavy augmentation for the majority of their population and so forth. The faction I have in question does none of these things. They are considered immoral to forcibly do. Individual citizens can augment at their leisure but the military is already behind a massive power curve because of their unwillingness to augment their soldiers or clone 'disposable soldiers'. Not to mention the public's reaction to these events if they ever occurred, even in small scale and relatively secret operations.

In short; I think there is a hell of a lot more to this faction than people are giving it credit for already. Not to mention what isn't yet on the wiki simply because I haven't had the time to post it yet. They control no territory, their ships are subpar in a few key areas (although admittedly better in others but usually not by much), their ground forces are almost entirely either matching on average or subpar. I don't see any potential way, other than a population bloom, that this could be unfriendly to the lore.

Toshiro said:

Try looking at it from our perspective. If you spent ten or fifteen years on a roleplay (not an exaggeration, some have been here even longer) and a group of people suddenly showed up and one new player wanted one of the most influential roles in the setting, the role of FM, would you really just hand it over? And let some people you knew nothing about the capabilities or ideas of just suddenly have a bunch of power without earning it in any way, shape, or form without proving themselves? Because that's what's happening. And people are immediately going NOPE even before learning of the details because that alone is a deal-breaker.

I've tried being nice, so I'll be blunt. I don't care if you're not a rookie to RPing. You're a rookie here and I have no cause to know or trust you yet. The fact you have no interest in getting that trust from anyone is also a red flag.

I try to come up with another way to help you work toward your goal and earn it and our trust along the way instead of handing it to you on a silver platter. You respond by being completely unwilling to change a single thing, demanding battle fleets without having any of the resources (There are rules on this site about battle fleet sizes here related to how many star systems a faction or corporation has, so you would not have thousands of warships anyway) or considering the fact that people don't bat an eye toward Yamataian fleets provided those fleets aren't entering, approaching, or too close to another faction's space. The setting is at war with an NPC race that is known for using other conquered or allied races to attack in underhanded and unexpected ways. People are watching for anything shady. If your whole battlegroup appears nearby, it would not simply be met with an "oh well, that's a thing now".

I don't know the details of your faction or plans, I get that. My problem is the more fundamental issue that you're a newbie demanding a faction in the first place and are emboldened enough to prioritize that over all else -- even acclimating yourself to the setting you want to improve.

Click to expand...

Then settle it in-character. Because simply attacking 'because they might be hostile' is going to be a PR nightmare which sounds like a very interesting plot hook.

Im at work now so i cant post heaps but i think I’ve identified a major conflict source.

The definition of faction you have is different to how this site works which isn’t your fault, it’ll need further discussion but the faction concept on sarp just happens to be a very major role in the community thats all.

It has also come to my attention that others before me have done similar things and left factions unattended or left for some reason or another.

I will say this:

The only reason I have to leave so far is the genuinely hostile attitudes expressed by Reynolds and Mecha Meme. I already know Mecha Meme dislikes me. The first thing out of his mouth was that he "wanted to ask you about your bullshit faction". I don't play that game so I set him straight. Was I a bit harsh? Potentially. The way I see it with as young as he is he might as well have been one of the people I served in the military with that I outranked.

Then look at my first interaction with Reynolds; it was very hostile. That was made abundantly clear in the discord chat.

So far I like the setting and think it could be fun to explore through the eyes of a people that have never seen such things or imagined them in their lifetimes. Not an individual. An individual can adapt relatively quickly and learn new things. But a culture? A board of science directors? A group of generals? These things take much more time and can be strenuous on the group mentality.

That to me is a far better plot than seeing one individual bumble about for a week before he adapts to the universe.

It's clear people think that being the manager of a played faction should be something that's earned by spending time RPing on the forum.

Would you guys be interested in some sort of "credit shop" type system added to the forum where people earned credits for posting in RP areas of the forum, and then you could "buy" unlocks like making a new playable faction through a sort of "store?" Players could pool credits to make factions faster and this would allow factions that have lots of support from the active community members to form faster than the ones that are just one random dude with a lot of time to make wiki pages. I'm not talking about pay-to-win or using real cash just points, I would like to incentivize posting, encourage interesting, high-quality factions, and reward active people for being active on the forum. Also this would prevent instant factions from being a thing for people who just joined in an automated and fair way that's not just oldbies discouraging the new members from making a faction, which comes off as elitist and un-welcoming and none of us have to be the "bad guy" holding people back until they're "ready."

Also whatever we decide in this thread, I think it's fair that Rascal's faction is grandfathered in since they came in before this discussion and I ask that we don't make this discussion specifically about him.

I think a point system could become too complex but i do believe that getting experience on the site first too some degree is a good idea.

I’ve been talking this out in discord and we’ve been bouncing ideas off each other about how to neatly slot it in without causing an uproar, but if there’s anything i can take away from my discussion its that rascaldees is not like some of the other wannabies we’ve had and i agree with wes that his faction should remain and im working with him to help refine the ideas.

I mean, if you want to quantify how much people are posting RP, there's either got to be some sort of automation (which is why I suggest a forum mod) or there's going to be a lot of work tracking people's activity that is going to take up our time--time that really would be better spent on roleplaying or working on the setting. A mod can not only track post count in RP forums (only) but it can also assign points based on things like post length or maybe even likes.

Rather than limit anyone, why not set up a simple sort of 'chain of command' with factions OOCly? For example, if I were to suddenly drop out of SA my faction would be picked up by the next person in my line up. If they drop, there's another and so on and so forth. If no players remain the faction becomes an NPC faction and primarily never expands unless someone adopts it.

This also means that other GMs could use these NPC factions as a plot hook too since they could wage war against said factions and use them against each other as plot hooks. In short, this is just putting more tools into a toolbox without upsetting the order of things around here. It creates more flexibility as well.

Since players would still need to verify their creations in the normal sense, this does still prevent replicated factions from appearing as well as gives them the opportunity to adopt relatively small factions in order to get their feet wet.


Clarification:

I mean they can use NPC factions against other NPC factions. Not just lob NPC factions at each other like nukes.

On Star Army, played factions are supposed to have designated co-FMs who inherit the factions and "faction wills", and unplayed factions become NPC factions and can be used by GMs for plots. So I would say that's already implemented.

Ah I didn’t realise you meant a forum mod wes, that could work yeah but i think a new thread for that would probably be good.

In the meantime, now that everyone has calmed down or is asleep, very calmly and in a civilised manner give a basic list on concerns you have that we can address. And for the sake of sanity please don’t all start yelling on again over each other, this isn’t like when snackbar kekwalice tried to make a faction and rascaldees has shown he’s open to suggestions and compromise.

Edit: actually lets make a new thread for this

In that case I'd say the system works as is. At least for me personally but then again I know I'm definitely not a crowd pleaser.

This is the add-on (mod) I was thinking of using: https://xenforo.com/community/resources/dbtech-dragonbyte-credits.5871/

Basically we could scale the credits so that a new playable faction would cost something like whatever posting and/or being active on the forum for 3 months would earn a person.

So, say you get 50 points for logging on per day and 100 points for posting in an RP forum, and we expect say 5 logins and 5 RP posts per week (12 weeks x 5 = 60 = 3000 points for logins and 6000 points for posts) so the cost of a new faction could be around 9000 points. But if you brought in a friend and you both were active and posting RPs, you could half that (per person) and go in on a faction together by sharing. Really all playable factions should have a co-FM anyway.

In this way we reward people to make/invite friends, to post RP, and to come to the forum regularly to check for posts/replies.

We should start simple but we could also extend it later by doing things like:

• Raising the cost if there's too many playable factions already and lowering when we need new ones (maybe scales based on how many we have compared to he overall players on the site)
• Rewarding people points for contributing needed wiki articles (like fleshing out Kuvexians)
• Using it for contest rewards

Im liking this system more and more, my only suggestion is maybe lower it to a 2 month equivalent and add something like “must have characters in more than 1 faction” or something

I agree with the system but argue its implementation. This could also be used to encourage people to merely log in once a day or bring enough people that their cost is so low that it doesn't matter. I'm not trying to be difficult, mind you, but I do see how this system could potentially be abused.

What might be a better alternative is to keep the system as simple as possible and not reward logins on a daily basis but instead a weekly basis. Additionally, make the posting more valuable overall since that will encourage activity in the servers and threads.

Also we might be able to use this to control the growth of factions as well. We could use the faction's activity rather than the number of players to limit their expansion. By that of course I mean having a sort of 'buying' system of purchasing shipyards, stations and the like. It would provide even more incentive for players that partake in leadership and corporate enterprises to show up.