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Official Factions, Warehouses and Distribution


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After reading through the LS:RP Museum topic and the Insanity topics, I see that quite a few people, including me, are concerned about having drug warehouses and weapon warehouses. I personally think it's a bad idea, and I wish to make a suggestion/discussion based on this. This is how I envision it should work really, though I think it would require some feedback from you lot, alongside the community.

 

We have a script in-game that allows you to purchase faction chat, so why do we not make use of that?

Official Faction slots are redundant, outdated and, in my frank opinion, prone to alot of mismanagement.

 

So, how should it work?

The whole idea of Official Factions should be scrapped. Should a faction consider it truly requires a faction chat, for whatever reason, they should make use of the in-game script allowing them to "create a faction". As an extension, the concept of warehouses disappears. Bear with me:

From my experience of Gang roleplay, allowing gangs to have an outright monopoly on drug distribution is an issue. However, as I can see there can be issues regarding drug trade early on as the server develops, we can concede the following:

 

Allow weed/marijuana to be a drug which any player can grown, and this way gangs will be able to grown their own product which they can distribute later on without depending on a criminal organization.

Allow crack cocaine to be mixed/created by any individual that possess cocaine in his inventory. After all, it is one of the most well distributed narcotics by gangs, and it would make sense for them to be able to freely make this product, provided they have the materials.

 

Now, the following part is where the criminal organizations / networks come in:

As a product, methamphetamine is synthetic and made from several prime materials. So how do we go about handling it? With the use of the furniture system, players can create themselves something similar to a laboratory, in which they will roleplay the creation of the product. A collage/story of the roleplay around the laboratory and the entire manufacturing process, alongside with pictures of the interior can be PM'd to Faction Management, who will then assign the property as a laboratory entity. In this laboratory, and only inside it, methamphetamine can be created.

 

Cocaine requires importation, and thus in my mind it should be something akin to the strawman system. The faction places an order to faction management (the money and amounts will be decided by the faction n FM, I guess; I do not think there should be a hard cap, but a cap based on the amount of money the organization can afford to spend). A drop off will then be designated by faction management, and the organization members will scramble/head towards the drop off point to collect the product. I suppose it can arrive by plane or by boat, somewhere in the middle of the desert. I do not think however gangs should be able to do this, unless they are actually a big set, and not a gang holding the odd corner at Grove Street.

 

You have the general idea, it can be adapted on whatever other sorts of narcotics will come in later on or are available in the drug script.

 

It is important to note, that a gang should never, ever have a monopoly on narcotics. For crack cocaine and weed it is perfectly understandable. They are narcotics that can be grown and/or created with small effort so long as you have the materials. Cocaine however is something that a gang on Grove Street will not be able to get its hands on reliably and in large quantities. If this said gang encompasses a district, then fair play, but not a small gang. Meth is also a drug that I'm not exactly sure is produced by street gangs (correct me if I'm wrong).

 

In general, FM shouldn't micromanage drug economy as it currently stands. It should be player run. Yes, I understand the fear of stockpiling, but stockpiling weed and crack in an environment allowing a wide majority of players will do you no good. Why? Because it's a player driven trade, and everyone will try to sell their product. That mean's lower prices. Stockpiling cocaine will not be a solution, as they will be dishing out a pretty penny for them just to sit on them, and with the way the economy works on GTAWorld, they'll be hard pressed for cash should they try to "deal with it".

 

What I haven't exactly figured is how you procure weed seeds. Buying them legally from a store would require IC legislation. Illegally though, how?

 

 

Moving over to firearms, this is abit trickier as it's difficult to balance.

 

However, the bottom line should be similar to the distribution of cocaine. A faction places an order for an X amount of firearms, which will then be dropped off at a certain point by Faction Management. The order costs a set amount of money depending on the quantity and grade of the firearms.

A Desert Eagle will obviously be more expensive than a normal pistol, and a Carabine will be more expensive than a AK47. Of course, normal pistols can be purchased in larger quantities, alongside AK47.

 

Reading this far you might think that, welp, its the same shit.

 

Well, I think we should revive the Strawman system. Have players provide weekly updates. If they fail to provide their updates, do not allow their weapon orders through. While it's abit more difficult to supervise the Strawman system, with the increasing numbers of the team, it will be easier to monitor their activity. Allow a counterbalance for organizations.

 

Now. How do we make a difference between a criminal network encompassing the entirety of Western Los Santos and a criminal crew in Mirror Park? Member base, quality and age. A small crew should be able to order a smaller amount of firearms than a well established criminal network. Is it similar to official? Kind of, but there is no dick measuring contest, there is no elitism and there is no petty incentive. We should make use of the existing faction script. If they truly require a faction chat, let them form the faction in game. Faction vehicles should be addable to player created factions, provided the owner is visible through the script (the person who added it).

 

This way we make use of garages too. Garages can be used to stock narcotics and firearms. Garages can be properly used by illegal factions. Allow spread out garages to be buyable through-out the city. The city is flipping humongous after all.

 

Going back to properties like labs for drug creation. Well, there should be a script that allows the person who owns the property to duplicate the property key. That way, the faction members can choose who has access to it and who does not. Holding this key also allows you to make use of the laboratory.  (this could be changed to be bound to an IG faction rank, should the faction choose to create the actual faction entity)

 

@Nervous@Justus@HypnoSe

 

I'd also want to post it in general discussions to see what the others think. Is that okay with you lot?

 

What does everyone else think?

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I'm down with pretty much everything you said here. Most drugs should be produced in game by players who simply choose to dedicate time to doing it.

 

Official faction status is meant to reward factions that manage to maintain a high standard for a long period of time. We can still reward such factions with the system you're suggesting if we allow them to purchase more than other, newer factions. That makes sense because a stronger, older faction would have had enough time to form the infrastructure necessary to import such items.

 

Note that the scripted weapon warehouse system doesn't have to go to trash. It simplifies the whole strawman thing, an admin sets any property as a warehouse and assigns any faction members as suppliers, then the said admin only needs to set components in the warehouse once in a while.

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I have personally created a realistic cocaine production system for an old SA-MP server. In order to ensure that system was realistic I have researched the production of Cocaine quite a bit. What most people don't know is that the very first product you need to create cocaine is actually a plant, just like Marijuana, called Coca.

Coca plant leaves are harvested and dried up to then go through a process including a couple of differnet machines and ingredients. I will gladly write up an organized and simple tutorial explaining how realistic cocaine production works if any developer would agree to take up on that. I would really love to see the server going in a direction of actually making the production of drugs realistic and immersive.

My suggestion: All players could acquire the main component of the drug (i.e marijuana/coca seeds) and go through some intense labor to produce the relevant drug out of it. The quality of the drugs can depend on their experience (how many times they've done it, simple stat). Better quality drugs will result in more HP gain/better effects. For Cocaine production, as mentioned previously players would need a couple of machines, so they would have to purchase and place those machines (furniture system, as suggested by the_criserk) in their property to then use them in the process. If cops were to come into the property and find those machines organized together it should be pretty clear what was happening there and very immersive.

* The more players would invest into drugs (time and money) the better results they will have (drugs would have stats based on their quality) and the more money they would be able to get from them. All players would be able to create drugs, but only those who are really interested in them would put the money and time to create anything close to good.

* Furnitures would be used to increase the immersiveness, some specific machines could possibly be used in more than one type of drugs production.

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That ability to purchase a faction in game is metagaming and needs to be removed. Purchasing a OOC tool with IC money is retarded. The entire faction system needs a rework, not just the ability to sell drugs and guns.

 

The title of "legal" needs to be changed to "businesses". Those wanting to start a business should be able to register one with the City. When they register it, they get functions that allow them to create pay cheques for positions within their business. These pay cheques are paid through their business' bank. As discussed in the staff meeting, business vehicles too can be given to these businesses. The ability to create a business or criminal organization should not be limited because someone is in one or the other. If I am in a criminal organization, I should be able to register a business and operate said business.

 

The title "illegal" needs to be changed to "criminal organizations". The main illegal currency for all criminal organizations needs to be drugs. Drugs, drugs and more drugs. Guns have always been the currency of 9/10 servers - this is because it was never properly done and the server was treated as a liberal European Country because the administration of said server was treating it as a video game as opposed to a role-playing environment. You can't balance an role-playing environment, so don't try to. Every reaction someone should have should be an IC reaction. This means, if the server is having a epidemic of murders, then the Mayor should get on the Police Chief's ass - not the administration getting on the player's ass. Stop being afraid of allowing things to play out IC. 

 

So, back to the drugs and guns issue which is plaguing the server. The warehouse system in it's original form is stupid and makes no sense IC. How do we fix this? We'll start with drugs.

 

  1. Cocaine/Heroin and certain pharmaceuticals should be import only. To safely grow heroin in the United States is near impossible due to the way it's grown and where it's grown. Cocaine comes from coca and coca doesn't grow worth a damn in North America, which is why it's only cultivated in South America. Certain designer drugs come from Europe.
  2. Marijuana is one of the easier drugs to obtain, grow and sell. If this server is using California as a reference for state laws and other things, then Marijuana is practically legal.
  3. Methamphetamine right now is the drug of choice for many states. It can be produce in the United States, but it's also brought over through Mexican Cartel pipelines as liquid meth or they mold it into some products.   

Those are the big 4 in the drug realm. If you want to get into legal drugs like Vicodin and other prescription drugs then sure. Designer drugs as well.

 

Now for cocaine and heroin there are three major pipelines into the United States. That's south-east Asia, South America and the Afghanistan region. If someone wants to import something through there, they need to have the proper ties to the region. 

 

Marijuana should be allowed to be cultivated in the United States, but organizations should also be allowed to import it, especially from South America.

 

Methamphetamine is actively produced in the United States and is one of the easiest drugs to produce. You can go to any pharmacy and get the ingredients, although the DEA has been keeping close eyes on it. 

 

The one thing that's always bugged me about drugs on RP servers was the fact that it was never scripted properly. Going from whole sale drug dealing to street level drug dealing doesn't change. In order for street dealers to make money, they have to inflate prices. But that's now how real world dealers do it. Cocaine and heroin are the two that stick out. Let's say that a kilo of cocaine in Los Santos is 40,000$. So a street dealer buys a kilo for 40k, how does he make money? He cuts the product (regardless if it was already cut or not) with some sort of agent, baby powder, laxatives etc etc. This doubles or triples his product. He's now got 80k worth of cocaine. That's how they make money. But as of right now, dealers inflate their prices to make up the difference. So we need a drug cutting system. This is where dealers buy cutting agents and then cut their drugs with it. It makes the strength of the drug weaker, but gives them more product in the end.

 

Guns on the other hand shouldn't be as complex as everyone is making it out to be. Regardless of people's stances on guns OOC, the country in which we RP is the United States of America. Trying to balance this aspect of American life is retarded and anyone who wants balance, there's a nice multiplayer feature called Grand Theft Auto Online.

 

Guns should not be the main currency for criminal organizations. Like drugs the way they get sold in our server matters, Gun operations just as drugs should have a legit way to be obtained. Contrary to popular belief, the majority of guns on the streets of any major city ARE NOT IMPORTED. The US has the biggest gun culture in existence. So the organizations who want to deal in such things should provide the faction team with a proper way they'd obtained it. Guns should also be priced REALISTICALLY. No more 5k for a single pistol. That's retarded. As stated before, all IC actions should be countered IC. Not with OOC nonsense.  If there's an epidemic of gun violence in the server, you have the sentences for carrying a gun be extremely long to deter people. 

 

This probably doesn't make any sense and doesn't mesh with the original topic, it's just been on my mind for the longest time and I needed to get it into a post before I forgot it.

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Sadly I'm not going to write an essay like everyone else, but I've read what OP has to say as well as Caporegime and I agree with both, We should remove the archaic warehouse system in favour of a new one. Like one of the systems outlined above or a combination of the two.

 

- You shouldn't be able to purchase a faction IG but you should be able to request one and this shouldn't be hard to obtain (nothing like offical faction) it should just be given as long as the faction clearly isn't poor RP/trolling and has been active for a couple of weeks. 

 

- I'm also not sure if I see a place for official factions, maybe there could be awards given to certain factions as recognition of their success on the server but again, that's as far as it should go. 

 

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In agreement with OP, the supplier system wasn't perfect but restricting guns/drugs to only official factions is just incentive for people to metagame. I suggest, in collaboration with what Notbond's suggestion, that when you apply for turf, your faction is then awarded the abilities.

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3 hours ago, Caporegime said:

That ability to purchase a faction in game is metagaming and needs to be removed. Purchasing a OOC tool with IC money is retarded. The entire faction system needs a rework, not just the ability to sell drugs and guns.

 

The title of "legal" needs to be changed to "businesses". Those wanting to start a business should be able to register one with the City. When they register it, they get functions that allow them to create pay cheques for positions within their business. These pay cheques are paid through their business' bank. As discussed in the staff meeting, business vehicles too can be given to these businesses. The ability to create a business or criminal organization should not be limited because someone is in one or the other. If I am in a criminal organization, I should be able to register a business and operate said business.

 

Completely agree, I always have and always will. Well said.

 

4 minutes ago, Bospy said:

In agreement with OP, the supplier system wasn't perfect but restricting guns/drugs to only official factions is just incentive for people to metagame. I suggest, in collaboration with what Notbond's suggestion, that when you apply for turf, your faction is then awarded the abilities.

 

Couldn't disagree more, giving the ability for anyone and everyone to create a faction and after a few weeks be able to pump out guns and drugs? It would create a system where factions do not need to rely on anyone. Every faction would be against one another because they would have no reason to ally. The whole concept of official factions is that they allow for a hierarchy of illegal organizations, just like it is in real life. Regardless of what you read via the internet, there is a select few organizations who call the shots, whether that's indirect or directly. Official factions should be a representation of that system IC. 

 

4 hours ago, Caporegime said:

Guns on the other hand shouldn't be as complex as everyone is making it out to be. Regardless of people's stances on guns OOC, the country in which we RP is the United States of America. Trying to balance this aspect of American life is retarded and anyone who wants balance, there's a nice multiplayer feature called Grand Theft Auto Online.

 

Guns should not be the main currency for criminal organizations. Like drugs the way they get sold in our server matters, Gun operations just as drugs should have a legit way to be obtained. Contrary to popular belief, the majority of guns on the streets of any major city ARE NOT IMPORTED. The US has the biggest gun culture in existence. So the organizations who want to deal in such things should provide the faction team with a proper way they'd obtained it. Guns should also be priced REALISTICALLY. No more 5k for a single pistol. That's retarded. As stated before, all IC actions should be countered IC. Not with OOC nonsense.  If there's an epidemic of gun violence in the server, you have the sentences for carrying a gun be extremely long to deter people. 

 

I understand where a lot of you are coming from, it may not be a perfect delivery system. But this has to do with a lot more than what's realistic, sure in the US anyone can buy a gun, and sure a lot of the weapons used in gun violence originate in the US. But there are somethings that just won't work in this game, you can't make every system like it is IRL. Because it doesn't translate into a video game properly. 

 

The reason why factories are positive, is it creates a criminal hierarchy. An example; Official Faction A will supply faction's B-E on the condition they kick-up, cut them in, be a war ally, protect each others turfs. Whatever the reason, it creates partnerships and the only reason that works is because everyone wants guns and drugs. If you start handing them out to anyone after a few weeks, you take that element away and there will be organizations acting independently from each other, and that just doesn't work. It doesn't work because everyone will want to be the alpha dog and it will be a full on war frenzy because everyone has the ability to supply themselves. 

 

4 hours ago, Caporegime said:
  1. Cocaine/Heroin and certain pharmaceuticals should be import only. To safely grow heroin in the United States is near impossible due to the way it's grown and where it's grown. Cocaine comes from coca and coca doesn't grow worth a damn in North America, which is why it's only cultivated in South America. Certain designer drugs come from Europe.
  2. Marijuana is one of the easier drugs to obtain, grow and sell. If this server is using California as a reference for state laws and other things, then Marijuana is practically legal.
  3. Methamphetamine right now is the drug of choice for many states. It can be produce in the United States, but it's also brought over through Mexican Cartel pipelines as liquid meth or they mold it into some products.   

Those are the big 4 in the drug realm. If you want to get into legal drugs like Vicodin and other prescription drugs then sure. Designer drugs as well.

 

Now for cocaine and heroin there are three major pipelines into the United States. That's south-east Asia, South America and the Afghanistan region. If someone wants to import something through there, they need to have the proper ties to the region. 

 

Marijuana should be allowed to be cultivated in the United States, but organizations should also be allowed to import it, especially from South America.

 

Methamphetamine is actively produced in the United States and is one of the easiest drugs to produce. You can go to any pharmacy and get the ingredients, although the DEA has been keeping close eyes on it. 

 

The one thing that's always bugged me about drugs on RP servers was the fact that it was never scripted properly. Going from whole sale drug dealing to street level drug dealing doesn't change. In order for street dealers to make money, they have to inflate prices. But that's now how real world dealers do it. Cocaine and heroin are the two that stick out. Let's say that a kilo of cocaine in Los Santos is 40,000$. So a street dealer buys a kilo for 40k, how does he make money? He cuts the product (regardless if it was already cut or not) with some sort of agent, baby powder, laxatives etc etc. This doubles or triples his product. He's now got 80k worth of cocaine. That's how they make money. But as of right now, dealers inflate their prices to make up the difference. So we need a drug cutting system. This is where dealers buy cutting agents and then cut their drugs with it. It makes the strength of the drug weaker, but gives them more product in the end.

 

Now, one thing is for sure is that our drug system is a failed system. That's just a fact, drugs give zero value to a player and that's an issue. I don't know the solution to that problem and won't pretend I do. But allowing people to simply cut drugs and what not won't fix that system, it's far more broken than some simple added features. Making drugs exactly as they are IRL does not fix this system and goes back to what I said about the factory system and guns, just cause it works IRL, doesn't mean it works here. It's a game, not reality.

 

Guns have value because it allows a player to eliminate other players, like I said above, guns are power in this game as it stands now. It's the criminal currency. Drugs however, have no use to anybody. I'm all about passive role-play and role-playing addictions, I think it's great when people do but it's not enough to create a realistic drug economy to match real life. Making them have drug effects and power-ups helps, but still doesn't allow for large quantities to move. Allowing players to grow them themselves may make their street price cheaper, but who's going to buy drugs when everyone can grow them?


In conclusion, the systems aren't perfect but for now they create a realistic criminal environment.  There needs to be a reason for people to co-operate and work together. And using these systems as the reason why people meta-game is very silly. People meta-game regardless, we'll never be able to stop it but we can police it, which is our job as staff members. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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I do agree with most of what you all said here. I recommend anyone interested and with such good suggestions to join Faction Management. As soon as RageMP work to prepare the bridge and switch will be done, I will focus on faction and change most things ("Buying" a faction etc..", drug focus to make it player ran and created etc...). 

The new drug system is planned but requires a huge amount of scripting so it can't be done while we have the RageMP switch coming, but it'll definitely come soon.

 

I trust you all enough to debate and discuss together with / in faction management, and then prepare me a list of what needs to be changed / scripted, and It'll be done.

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