Rules of Engagement — July 2023 Rediscussion

[khadijeh.]

Hello.

 

The purpose of this thread is to rediscuss the content of the Rules of Engagement. These rules have been in place for a lengthy amount of time now, however, given recent changes, there are now some discrepancies of things that are not clarified within these rules that should be.

 

For example:

• Clarification on what a mercenary is, what counts as a mercenary, what doesn't?
• Clarification on how Rules of Engagement works around the new dual faction script.
• Adjustments to current rules and explanations; changing how "circling" is written or other clarifications to ensure the rules are clean cut.

 

Illegal Faction Management will monitor this thread, if there is any trolling, bashing, or toxicity, both forum & in-game admin action will be issued. This discussion is to benefit everyone, please keep it on topic.

[sribvlad]

Add some sort of requirements for mercenaries.

Clarify the rules regarding circling a specific turf/faction area.
Disallow "locals" (unaffiliated members of a faction that are in the faction) from attacking or allow people to kill them. 

 

[khadijeh.]

Just now, sribvlad said:

Add some sort of requirements for mercenaries.

Clarify the rules regarding circling a specific turf/faction area.
Disallow "locals" (unaffiliated members of a faction that are in the faction) from attacking or allow people to kill them. 

 

Please can you be more specific, "some sort of requirements" is very vague.

[EmptyGood]

I would personally say disallow mercenaries entirely, as it adds the ability to just kill randomly for money. Instead, focus on actual allies with IC connections and reasoning to join said wars.

[frost.]

5 minutes ago, sribvlad said:

Add some sort of requirements for mercenaries.

Clarify the rules regarding circling a specific turf/faction area.
Disallow "locals" (unaffiliated members of a faction that are in the faction) from attacking or allow people to kill them. 

 

How do you expect the opposition to know who "locals" are? I mean, it's not like they can hire Sherlock Holmes to do a deep dive on them, you know?

 

People who are unaffiliated and just hangaround said group get shot all the time IRL.

 

  

2 minutes ago, EmptyGood said:

I would personally say disallow mercenaries entirely, as it adds the ability to just kill randomly for money. Instead, focus on actual allies with IC connections and reasoning to join said wars.

 

But in order to join in on the war as a mercenary, you need an IC connection either way. Not like these mercenaries are spawning in out of thin air, and if they are, you should report them.

Edited July 25, 2023 by frost.

[45 caliber]

if you are going to allow mercenaries, make strict restrictions on it. such as gang members should not be used in a BIKER vs BIKER war or in OC wars, also the list of five mercenaries should be submitted before hand to avoid random people jumping in during conflicts.  it should also be a max of four mercs.

[sribvlad]

1 minute ago, honey. said:

Please can you be more specific, "some sort of requirements" is very vague.

I guess the development/previous interactions of the character with the faction that is about to hire someone as a merc, does it make sense for the character to take up the contract? Would the character realistically take the contract? Etc..

 

Any sort of a background check, there's too many cases where factions just recruit OOC shooters and give them guns with no prior interactions in game to shoot the rival faction and win the war.

 

[sribvlad]

6 minutes ago, frost. said:

How do you expect the opposition to know who "locals" are? I mean, it's not like they can hire Sherlock Holmes to do a deep dive on them, you know?

 

People who are unaffiliated and just hangaround said group get shot all the time IRL.

That's why it needs to be clarified, there's a lot of cases where people get ajailed or warned for killing unaffiliated members of a faction they're at war with even tho the "locals" sell drugs for the faction, hang around known members, or even go on hits. 

[liq]

Someone's primary faction should be the one they are actively representing, despite that having led them to be under the umbrella of an official faction. It's very anticlimatic to try to war a random small group that then brings 100 other people against you due to dual-faction permissions. If your character somehow makes it apart of the core structure of an umbrella faction, then you should primarily be an insider in that script.

Perhaps there should be a clause letting you involve the umbrella faction as mercenaries with the same limit, so 6.

 

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Fully disallow OOC mask in all wars and conflicts. It's goofy as it is, people sit and /id your name then /id the ID to see if you're masked OOC or not. This should come with the prerequisite that if you meet someone who's still masked even though their nametag is in the open, you need to show how you identified and/or suspected them.

 

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For official factions, clarify the approved alternative character rule a bit better — whilst someone shouldn't willingly involve an alternative character in a conflict, if an alternative character gets involved by the means of defense, then that is the character that stays involved. Right now the rules say you must carry out any and all conflicts on your highest ranking character structurally and it's a bit of a mess if you get caught in a defense but survive, then change characters to participate with the other slot. 

 

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Locals should preferably not exist in factions anymore, or should hold no weight in all conflicts. The reason is simple. You can go and be the most successful shooter ever but what the rival losing faction(s) often tend to do is spin the block to kill any members they see the nametag of. The scoreboard looks scuffed because one party is actually targeting an entity, the other party is blockwiping unarmed people. 

 

Note: This refers to standalone Locals. If you're a hangaround to core individuals within that faction and get shot at then that's your fault for being seen as associated to them.

 

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Include clarification when it comes to heavy weaponry. As soon as a war kicks off OOC, people yank out their stashed rifles with no real reason to further escalate something to more than drive-bys / walk-downs / pistols for example. The same applies to dusters and stabbing, no longer consider the usage of dusters as a valid reason to escalate to gunplay, it is and has been silly, and all conflicts feel like a GTA:O checklist of, "damn they disrespected me, "damn they used dusters", "time to go shoot them" and it creates more DM than fun for anyone involved. At the end of the day, someone with an AR on any block in LS and openly shooting it has the likelihood to become the evening news domestic terrorist, and that should 100% be something that you are ready to CK and/or take life in jail for, alas there's not that many consequences and people's way of justifying their actions never makes sense.

 

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Set-in-stone consequences to wars of any kind. Whilst many wars revolve around supply or territory for the most part, there's the usual PK wars that result in simply nothing. You have factions who war each other even though they're across the map from one another, or as someone explained above, there's a gang warring an OCG who in turn involves an MC and so forth. It's a mess.

 

There should be clearly defined consequences for drivers and detractors in wars on top of what can happen in game such as investigations, raids and whatnot. Right now it makes no sense to even struggle to win a war because you can just PK, lose on the scoreboard, let some nerds make a DM video about it and you can respawn and keep supplying or minding your own business as if that war never happened. There's no real loss taken and PK wars feel like fever dreams. 

 

Consequences could be as far as diminishing supply temporarily (cut back on the amount of stuff people get if they're suppliers, on account of transportation and impending law enforcement action concerns), turf restrictions (e.g. cannot expand turf in X area, or have to cut back on existing turf), and more (such as scheme limitations).

 

The above achieves two things. It puts a good perspective on people's actions and actually makes things competitive in a sense, and it emphasizes the necessity to be smart in all-out wars—this is where actually hiring mercenaries makes sense so that they can carry out dirty work without blowback on the actual perpetrator(s).

 

Right now if you aren't warring a faction whose turf you want to claim or you aren't warring a neighboring faction because you want their turf, you're just warring for an OOC scoreboard & it's genuinely stupid. Sure, it's up to the factions to role-play loss accurately but we know that doesn't really happen or it only happens for a few more likes on a SS.

 

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Enforce RP fear aspects when it comes to Gangland Wars as described by the ROE, this solely has to do with gang factions. Right now it isn't unheard of for random gangs to come and try to provoke factions to just start a war. This shouldn't be the case, and instead should result in CKs on the perpetrators. Walking up to a group of gangbangers who also happen to be an official illegal faction (or unofficial but clearly established) shouldn't give you the benefit of provoking for fun, more often without consequences, and should instead have lasting effects. If you're war bait and you die then you need to die for good.

Edited July 25, 2023 by liq

[FNSevN]

dont change anything its good the way it is, The guy commenting above me probably just gets smoked every war thats why he wrote an Essay, No disrespect to anybody I'm just stating my opinion.