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Rejected Submission Sesestran Colonial Union: Cover Page Resubmission

Arieg

Arieg

DEFCON Everybody Dies
Submission Type: Faction Article
Submission URL: https://wiki.stararmy.com/doku.php?id=sesestran_colonial_union:sesestran_colonial_union

Faction: Sesestran Colonial Union
FM Approved Yet? (Yes/No; Who, When) Yes, Myself
Faction requires art? (Yes/No) Yes?

For Reviewers:
Contains Unapproved Sub-Articles? (Yes/No) Yes, this is just approval for this cover page.
Contains New art? (Yes/No)
Previously Submitted? (Yes/No; explain reason if rejected) Yes, this is just a rehash.

Notes:
 
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I'll just be honest and up front with it. Why should this submission be approved after you've dropped and scrapped so many other similar submissions in recent history? You have a history for dropping projects when you don't get your way, and usually end up wanting to just delete everything as soon as it happens. What guarantee do we have that this won't be the case yet again?
 
I believe you have Kyle's, Wes's, and Nashoba's guarantee of that not happening, I may flame out and walk off or even attempt to be that pig headed and stupid again but in the end none of my articles will b vandalized by myself again.
 
That covers half of Aendri's questions. It doesn't answer the other part that you point to so well -- why should this be approved if you might flame out again? Then we have another dead setting piece.
 
I'd be willing to help run it in the event he drops it. I've run a small faction in the past on another website. I'm sure I could adapt to the Star Army way of FMing. I'm active and personally would like to see this fly.
 
As far as ensuring this won't join the ranks of dead factions and protected states that have become common on SARP I have Tylium as a second in command and he will be in charge should I vanish or flame out.
 
I really should visit this forum before committing to something as I thought you where still just building the faction. At-least I had some time to read the articles and having it all sink in.

As people noted, the primary concern here is the fact that we don't want to end up with a dead setting piece. And believe me, I can understand why they don't want that. Small factions\organisations are one thing, but this group takes up a large chunk of space.

Which takes me to my biggest peeve with the Sesestran Union. It's HUGE!
It encompasses 9 systems as noted on the landing page. By comparison, a much larger group (In terms of activity) the Nepleslians have only 11 systems on their page. The two system difference is crazy when you think about the amount of players active in Nepleslia.​

As Arieg noted to me that this would only be a NPC nation, it struck me as a bit odd. Why does it need so much space? Not to mention the fact that having as much space as they have now, means we will have other problems down the line (Invasions of their space by something “Evil” (Neko's, Nepleslians on a quest for more guns, etc.) can only be deflected by the power of plot. They have the upper hand in terms of players and tech.) My advice would be to take it slowly with the faction. They are a union, so adding more territories later-on isn't going to be a problem. And the interaction with these new systems and the existing one will give life to the faction.​

Another point, I would advice waiting with submission of the landing page until you finished most of the faction. Right now they have some placeholder articles and that's it. I leave the finished pages to people that are more in tune with the setting them me but the faction needs a lot of work before the landing page can actually be accepted.

Judging from how people react to this submission it would be best to take heed of their concerns. The faction (in terms of size) would collapse on its own without a solid player-base. Just having two people isn't going to cut it with a faction this big.

Just my two pennies.
 
Let me start by saying this isn't approval of the faction, this is more of an approval of the outline of what they're intended to become by the time all the boiler plate articles have been submitted and approved (aka the government, territory, economic, and military pages). One could argue at this point the faction is already green lighted by most of this merely being part of their retcon move off map and that their sector map was approved with their territory painted across it. But I digress and I can only try to explain what I'm up to here.

Firstly Nepleslia isn't an NPC faction nor is it part of the recent crop of factions that have no ties to SARPs turbid, militaristic, and chaotic history. That period consisting of a mixed bag of genocide, bad out of character policy, and tech that varied from sensible to power armor that could destroy entire battleships with one shot. Nepleslia grew up in this situation where a factions growth and power weren't measured by conventional means, rather it was based on how many systems you controlled and more often then not the location of these systems meant the difference between falling or successfully driving off the various conflicts that where part of that time in the site's history. Nepleslia is that size because the site's out of character politics and in character events shaped it that way.

The Sesestrans meanwhile are an NPC faction, their strength isn't tied to the number of star systems its tied to however powerful the GM using them needs them to be. As far as why so many I can give you the in character justification which is them being a fusion era space faring society with economic appities and population growing at a steady geometric rate over the last two thousand years of their history (Nepleslia is less then a decade old as an independent faction). This is how big I think they would be after that period, if anything its fairly conservative compared to various other human factions of scifi on the same tech level given a quarter of that time (Alah Halo).

Now the out of character reason is somewhat interesting and plays to the entire intention of this faction which is to act as a GM resource and a flexible and modifiable source of boiler plate humans without ties to SARP's history or it's various dogmas and prejudices. The systems and faction are the core of that idea as each and every system doesn't play into a military buildup limitation there purely setting material intended to provide the bedrock for a player or GM that wishes to establish a culture without going through the hassle of a full faction build. The Sesestrans are simply aimed at providing the rest.

Now as far as your concerns I doubt invasion is on Nepleslia's mind, Yamatai may be a worry but it will take years and a major political shake up both in character and out of character for them to return to more imperialistic practices outside of direct military provocation (which could happen should a GM need it). But overall the risk of invasion from SARP side is fairly low. Now with your fears of the faction simply collapsing that simply doesn't occur with NPC factions, it tends to be a disease of the player factions and even then they never really die they simply go on to be a resource to the site. Simply look at the freespacers and the former UOC, both formerly player factions that are now significant setting elements contributing interesting settings, stories, and characters into the mix. I'm simply starting at that level and leaving the possibility to build up to the point of an active faction, in the mean time I'm simply a warden and care taker for them.

Now if it satisfies all parties in this thread I'm perfectly willing to sit down and churn out all essential articles for this faction before overall approval. Would that sate all concerns?
 
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Unless asked of me, I won't review the article yet, but I suggest you talk with your Co-FM some more and take his advice. It's best to start small, and from there, see if there are players who are interested in this. Even if you already have several world articles done and even approved, none of it has seen RP yet, and therefore isn't even canon at this point. That means you can simply stash them for later use with what is essentially an ultra-ultra soft-retcon. The fact that such an action is that 'soft' is also telling of how far this has come, and has to go still.

Just having one binary or trinary system - I can't remember which the system sub was - is already a really good deal to start with. Even in a system with one habitable planet like ours, that's a lot for a civ to deal with already, and double or triple that if they only discovered FTL recently.

Remember that bigger is not better in many cases, this being one of them.
 
After reading through this thread a few times and talking to Cadet quite a bit on the IRC I do believe the idea of this faction and what it represents would indeed be unsustainable. After spending a good chunk of the night bouncing a few things off of Cadet, tearing apart their goals and over style I think the only way to quell the issues you guys have with it and now the issues I've discovered is a second overhaul. As such here is what I'm going to do.

  • Abandoning the idea of long distance and being off map, at the time it seemed like a good strategy to answer the question of why they hadn't ran into SARP or vice versa was a simple matter of distance as well as avoid some of the politics associated with on map locations and history. The problem is determining what motivations they'd have to go SARP side with their present situation. As such I do intend to retcon the Danu Sector into an on map 'pocket' location inside one of the nebula, as for the reasons they'll be shown below.
  • Reduction in holdings as well as no nearby possible future colonies, while the motivation for common habitable worlds and systems was mostly intended as a motivation for SARP to Danu migrations at the same time it compromised possible character and plot hooks for them to cross over to SARP side due to the simple matter of plentiful room and lack of conflict (the fuel of plot) as a result. So now my intent is to reduce them down to five star systems with only three of those having earth like habitable worlds with the other two serving as less then ideal but habitable situations (Tatooine?). Additionally these will be the only habitable worlds in what will be effectively the Danu Sector 2.0.
  • Replacement of distance with spacial/geographic anomaly for containment, one idea that I think will solve most of my problems toward why they haven't been contacted or detected is an interesting space time anomaly that blocked FTL traffic and communications until very recently. This effectively bottling them up inside a nebula for two millenia with limited room and naturally human tendencies making the worse of the situation and creating a reason for future player characters to want to leave.
Your thoughts on these @Tylium @CadetNewb @Aendri ?
 
I think the scaling back is a good move. Also having another person working with him should be sufficient to help calm concerns about a repeat of unfortunate earlier events.
 
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