(Hostile) Third Party Ships (and Canonicity): Clarification Needed.

[Kintsugi]

Third party ships. They rock. In my opinion, they're the best part of the NBT. I'm working on a few right now: One thing I can't work on without clarification, however, is third party ships that belong to factions that are explicitly hostile to the SCC and Biesel - for example, the League, SRF, anti-Biesel insurrectionists, low-level pirates, and what have you.

In my opinion, I think we should absolutely have them. Third party ships are set up in a way that they can't really stand toe to toe with the Horizon - they get limited equipment, only enough to keep them from being completely toothless. As such, they're not able to take on the Horizon alone, not without facing certain defeat, and as non-antagonists they are more strictly bound by the rules regarding escalation and IC conflict. The only thing I could see complicating the matter is the fact that if my memory serves correctly, third party ship encounters are canon (it would be good to get outright clarification on this as well, and I strongly feel third party ships should be canon). This means that if a hostile ship got into a conflict with the Horizon in some way, there would be canon repercussions (though under the normal round to round non-antagonist canon rules, not canon event rules.)

Edited April 11, 2022 by DanseMacabre

[ClemTheDuck]

In terms of canonicity, it could work like the burglar spawn pod ghost role, in which hostile ships can spawn on any round that isnt extended and follow antagonist canonicity rules, other third party ships following standard rules

[CourierBravo]

I think hostile 3rd parties would be amazing, but I think we'd have to divide it. Independent groups like pirates, warbands, smugglers, etc. would be ghost roles, where things like EE ships, Dominian skirmishers, whoever's angry at biesel in the current moment, would all be event vehicles/done with oversight from a loredev of some flavor. That's just my thoughts though, no matter what I'd love 3rd party hostile non antag ships.

Though a thought of mine is "why would either party even engage each other? " So my solution is this:  a point of interests for the round. Distress beacons, scanners picking up anomalies, things of that nature. Something for the hostile 3rd party and Horizon to have to fight over rather than one docking to the other in some way.

maybe having crew pop minimums like 20 crew (not readied players) for the ghost role to open would also keep things in check? I'm just spitballing at this point.

[Caelphon]

Whassup Danse. Anyway, as the Loremaster I think adding additional third-party vessels are completely fine and with what you said they are lore-congruent to a degree. I do, however, believe that there is a time and place for them, and that perhaps some of them would be exclusively reserved for events - such as encountering a SRF vessel while investigation phoron signatures for example, to keep their "freshness". Besides this minor suggestion regarding SOME exclusivity for events, I do not have qualms with their addition to the Corporate Reconstruction Zone or wherever else. 

Regarding whether these can be canon (I do not have absolute authority on the matter, I believe it would likely fall as a Head Staff vote? I'm not sure but another member of the Head Staff can clarify at a later time), I think that they would be? At least thats what I would vote for. We have rules regarding escalation and roleplay, and I trust our players (most of them) to further the round without being stupid. I do believe there would need to rules and/or clarifications in place regarding the destruction of the SCCV Horizon or whether there are deaths due to the third-party ship.

[Kintsugi]

23 minutes ago, Caelphon said:

I do, however, believe that there is a time and place for them, and that perhaps some of them would be exclusively reserved for events - such as encountering a SRF vessel while investigation phoron signatures for example

There is a weighting system for third party ships, so certain ones can be made to be very rare.

[ClemTheDuck]

1 hour ago, Bejewledpot said:

I think hostile 3rd parties would be amazing, but I think we'd have to divide it. Independent groups like pirates, warbands, smugglers, etc. would be ghost roles, where things like EE ships, Dominian skirmishers, whoever's angry at biesel in the current moment, would all be event vehicles/done with oversight from a loredev of some flavor. That's just my thoughts though, no matter what I'd love 3rd party hostile non antag ships.

Though a thought of mine is "why would either party even engage each other? " So my solution is this:  a point of interests for the round. Distress beacons, scanners picking up anomalies, things of that nature. Something for the hostile 3rd party and Horizon to have to fight over rather than one docking to the other in some way.

maybe having crew pop minimums like 20 crew (not readied players) for the ghost role to open would also keep things in check? I'm just spitballing at this point.

i love the idea of adding points of interest, adds more fun stuff to do

[Arrow768]

I quite like the idea of "unfriendly" 3rd party ships.

At the moment we (the maintainers) see them in the position of a "auxiliary" antag.
They are not supposed to be "the main attraction" of the round and instead just be a "minor" side thing.
We also do not want to see them as a "fixed thing" in every round, as that can quickly remove the novelty from them.

With that there are the following restrictions:

• They should not occur during every round, so they do not quickly become "yet another antag shuttle".
• Their capabilities need to be restricted, so they do not easily overpower the crew/other antags
• There must be a certain variety in the sector, so it is ensured that there are not only "antag shuttle away missions" (there also need to be planets and other stuff)

The canonity of them is another issue.
As we have different ships that might or might not be canon, we need a way for the players to know if the interactions they just had were canon or not.
We already have a system for that in place: the antag system.
By integrating the (unfriendly) shuttles with that system it is possible to transparently communicate to the players that a certain shuttle / its crew members were antags and the interactions they had were non-canon.
This integration allows other players to see who has been an antag at the end of the round.
And it also allows the player on the third party ship to know if our antag rules apply to them or if they are bound by our "normal" roleplay standards.

Next week I will look into creating a system ("unfriendly shuttle system") that integrates (hostile) third party shuttles with our existing antag/gamemode system and handles the above limitations.
So it is possible to create PRs for "unfriendly" shuttles at this time, but they will not be merged until the system for the "unfriendly" shuttles is implemented.
The existing PRs will also require some changes to make them compatible with the "unfriendly shuttle system" once it is implemented.

[Kintsugi]

1 hour ago, Arrow768 said:

-snip-

Very glad to hear that third party ships are going to be allowed to be hostile. It is disappointing to me that the antag system will apply to them, thus rendering hostile ships non-canon, but not altogether unexpected.

I think with that in mind, there should be a sort of category system, even if it's a non-mechanical category system and is solely an OOC thing. Hostile, which are explicitly going to act against the Horizon (these will be the antag ships), and unfriendly, neutral/wildcard, and friendly ships. The latter three all have varying opinions of the Horizon, but none are explicitly going to attack it, unlike the antagonistic hostile ships. An unfriendly ship might be one from the Solarian Navy - a wildcard ship could be a neutral smuggler - and a friendly ship could be a TCFL ship, for example. A hostile ship, on the other hand, could be an SRF, pirate, or League ship. The non-hostile ships are canon, and the hostile ones are non-canon.

Edited April 12, 2022 by DanseMacabre

[Roostercat]

I think the non-canonicity of the ships is for the best. Having hostile ships constantly propping up would get old very fast, especially if they were all canon, so spacing them out with non-hostile ships and such would be good. The category system seems a good fit for this, though I still believe antagonistic ships should be rare.

[Butterrobber202]

I think the hostile third party ships should be canon, but rare. The Spur is a dangerous place, and this should be represented outside of events hosted by members of the staff.

Edited April 12, 2022 by Butterrobber202

[Zer0Winds]

I agree with making them canon, but rarer.

Not every third party ship needs to be hostile, either. Make the more hostile ones rarer compared to the less hostile ones. By this, it shouldn't be "just another" antag shuttle.

I don't know if third party ships should be outright hostile though. Maybe save that for actual antags like merc and raider. That does limit what you can do for unfriendly ships though, perhaps. I'll leave that to someone else to figure out. I'm fine no matter what.

[Owen]

On 11/04/2022 at 20:19, DanseMacabre said:

I think with that in mind, there should be a sort of category system, even if it's a non-mechanical category system and is solely an OOC thing. Hostile, which are explicitly going to act against the Horizon (these will be the antag ships), and unfriendly, neutral/wildcard, and friendly ships.

I really like the idea of having the possibility for there to be canon unfriendly and neutral/wildcard ships. This leads to a lot of interesting actions, so long as it doesn't just devolve into a massive firefight every single round. There was just a round last night where there was a Free Solarian Fleet ship that interacted with the Horizon, and it was nice to see some tense negotiations occur, posturing, etc. over an asteroid that both groups wanted to use without it actually devolving into a firefight.