War mercenaries and the state of making them known to the opposing party

[Sniper]

To keep this short and sweet, the fact of the matter is that currently war mercenaries are required to be revealed to the opposing party.

 

I think that a large part of the purpose of mercenaries is, in addition to supplementing the ranks, they are outside agents and not necessarily known by many parties at all.

They operate often via the assumption their opponent is not ICly aware who they are.

 

By forcing them to be revealed at the earliest moment, this opens it up to metagaming and decreases their value as a war asset.

 

Metagaming, especially when characters are at risk and adrenaline is in play, is often subconscious.

There is also the issue that by forcing the enemy ranks to know, they hesitate IC because they now know OOCly and can't determine whether or not the identification of an enemy mercenary (Which relies usually on intuition of subtle behaviours, much like IDing hitmen) stems from their IC or OOC knowledge or a mix of both.

 

It is a messy affair.

 

I propose 'mercenaries' to be forcibly made aware to IFM only, with increased vetting to make sure who could feasibly be one.

[Engelbert]

I agree with this suggestion, mainly because I seen few hitman roleplays. And I think, this is like a next level or something won't you agree folks, that such concept, similar to a supplier should be approved by IFM? Because as we know, despite much of roleplay and IC work done to commit a murder for hire, this usually ends up in report section anyway, where the hitman actually has to oocly compromise themselves while explaining, that the kill was legit roleplay. I know this firsthand, because while an old character of mine wasn't a hitman, he earned his living by collecting information about victims for a hitman. Which was rather boring, but necessary job in order to make the roleplay plausible. I usually spent hours in a car or mingled in a club where alleged target was supposed to be. Now all of this is kept secret, so I guess IFM should have the final say in this.

[kenichis]

i agree hidden war mercenaries are greatly hindering my revolutionary war roleplay, thankfully recruiting mercenaries lower your overall army professionalism so i think its already quite balanced

[Midwest]

IFM are the only ones that should have a roster of anyone involved, anything further just promotes accidental MG (or purposeful). There's literally no reason OOC for any faction to have a full OOC roster of people they're in conflict with. This is a good example of something that we shouldn't know because it *will* promote accidental MG. This makes even less sense when its branching towards associated groups who are purposely pulled in and the relationship held in some form of secrecy IC.

[Goonbag]

1 hour ago, Midwest said:

IFM are the only ones that should have a roster of anyone involved, anything further just promotes accidental MG (or purposeful). There's literally no reason OOC for any faction to have a full OOC roster of people they're in conflict with. This is a good example of something that we shouldn't know because it *will* promote accidental MG. This makes even less sense when its branching towards associated groups who are purposely pulled in and the relationship held in some form of secrecy IC.

One hundred percent agree with this statement. 

[sage]

1 hour ago, Midwest said:

IFM are the only ones that should have a roster of anyone involved, anything further just promotes accidental MG (or purposeful). There's literally no reason OOC for any faction to have a full OOC roster of people they're in conflict with. This is a good example of something that we shouldn't know because it *will* promote accidental MG. This makes even less sense when its branching towards associated groups who are purposely pulled in and the relationship held in some form of secrecy IC.

 

Yep, no war on here is without a bit of metagaming and this would definitely help to reduce it.

[Hendrix Jackson]

+1