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[Arnulf Ogunkoya]

A while back I posted some musings on extending FW to the pirate groups in this thread:
http://backstage.eve-inspiracy.com/index.php?topic=763.msg8525#msg8525

I was exchanging evemails with Arvo Katsuya recently about the problems of being a pirate faction loyalist and having that show up in your in-game standings.
 
The only way to improve pirate faction standings at present is to mission for them. However their home stations are all in low or 0.0 space that is de-facto controlled by various player groups.

So, with that in mind.
 
Create militias for the major pirate factions. Unlike the empire militias joining isn't standings based (because so many people will have negative standings from their initial empire based time). To join you have to accomplish a moderately difficult mission to prove yourself. Once you are in then space that is under that group's sovereignty effectively becomes high-sec for you.  Attacks by other capsuleers on you will result in an NPC response by pirate faction craft similar to the CONCORD response to attacks in high sec, or alternatively to the navy response to invasions by enemy militia. It goes without saying that your faction's NPC ships won't fire on you unless you aggress them. And if you do they will swarm you exactly as CONCORD do.
 
Pirate faction militias shouldn't be joinable by alliances, only by individuals and corps as per their empire equivalents. I figure this might make life fairly interesting for alliances holding space near pirate faction held 0.0.
 
However. Once in, high sec empire space, or at least empire space controlled by that group's "opposed" faction becomes deadly. You become KOS to the local navy and police. And you loose docking rights at their stations.
 
A possible exception to this would be Sansha militia, who might get an invite to jump into an incursion zone with their NPC brethren and help defend it from other players. Maybe getting picked up by a carrier/mothership and then being transported there by that to avoid breaching opsec about their wormhole tech?

This is all a bit vague I know. But it seems to be a pity that people have so much trouble formally associating themselves and not having the eternal embarrasment of being KOS to your own side.

[Invelious]

Pretty interesting concept, sounds like living in o.o would be a blast at that point. Mind you, with the amount of super capitals in o.o, those pirate faction navies need to be able to pack a mighty punch.

What would be absolutely amazing is not being to dock in enemy stations once your in the militia, or, if your have negative standing with a certain corp/faction, not being able to dock even if you are not in the militia. Only makes sense. If they hate you, why in the hell would they let you in.

[Chell Charon]

Because they would like you to work for them?

Also to get to a corporation X's standard agent you need to dock. So Docking ban would put the low level one agents again out of your reach.

[hellgremlin]

This idea is great. Being able to 'pick your highsec' would add profound depth to Eve.

To extend upon it: Pirate players with negative sec flagged to a pirate faction could go raiding in empire space, instead of just being insta-nuked by Concord. To them, empire would be the equivalent of 0.0 to a carebear. When they enter 0.5 they might attract the attention of a few police frigates; if they try to blast into 0.0, they have to deal with not only players, but Concord spawns equivalent to something in a C6 wormhole (meant to harass and prevent large-scale operations, but still defeatable if focused upon.)

[Ken]

GREAT concept.  Sadly, dynamic subjective 'hi-sec' is probably a pipe dream since it would take some drawn-out nitpicky overhaul of code deep inside the client somewhere to make feasible... but this should absolutely be a feature of EVE 2 (or maybe a development goal for post-post-Incarna).  As has been discussed here before, the pirate factions are so large that they really are nations unto themselves.  You should be able to pick race, bloodline, and ancestry and then pick your faction (including 'pirates') in the chargen.  Failing that, there should absolutely be more support for non-empire loyalists to benefit from their professed loyalties.

[Borza]

Do want Thukker militia

[Casiella]

I thought that the Thukker militia was the Cartel...

[Silver Night]

I think a system where being aligned with a particular faction had benefits, and not being aligned with any faction had its own benefits (free movement at the price of being attackable anywhere or something.)

[Esna Pitoojee]

I actually like this idea a lot... so, being a good Devil's Advocate, I'm going to point out what I see as the one big flaw and hope we can figure out a solution.

Attacks by other capsuleers on you will result in an NPC response by pirate faction craft similar to the CONCORD response to attacks in high sec, or alternatively to the navy response to invasions by enemy militia. It goes without saying that your faction's NPC ships won't fire on you unless you aggress them. And if you do they will swarm you exactly as CONCORD do.

So, it's like highsec to you... you get all the bonuses - a safe place to fly, dock, access to agents... agents who happen to provide shiny, expensive, and rather potent ships and gear as LP store rewards.
Now, in my opinion at least, CCP has done quite a bit to balance the sheer power of Faction gear with the difficulty of acquiring it. However,, I see the potential in this to turn NPC 0.0 into a prime faction-farming territory, with no real way to stop it. Insta-undocks combined with smart piloting make it really hard to restrict a good player to one system, and I've seen plenty of unprobably T3 setups that would make attempts to combat scan targets futile.

Solutions?

[Graanvlokkie]

I am not sure how this would work.

I am currently living in Stain doing lvl 4 Sansha missions, so I assume I would qualify to join thier militia. I join the Sansha militia and now thier space is high sec to me? I can now run around and when the black-ops battleships drop in on me they get concorded?

Now I am immune to attack, exept from other pirate militia's, who would be found exclusivly in thier own "high sec" faction space.

Who can attack me while I fly around and do my thing? Can I attack non-pirate people in Sansha space? Am I immune to them while my team gets into possition, in plain sight?

Where is the downside to this?

[Silver Night]

Presumably that makes the Empires your null sec.

[Arnulf Ogunkoya]

I understand the point about being potentially overpowering.

Graanvlokkie writes:

I am currently living in Stain doing lvl 4 Sansha missions, so I assume I would qualify to join thier militia. I join the Sansha militia and now thier space is high sec to me? I can now run around and when the black-ops battleships drop in on me they get concorded?

Now I am immune to attack, exept from other pirate militia's, who would be found exclusivly in thier own "high sec" faction space.

Who can attack me while I fly around and do my thing? Can I attack non-pirate people in Sansha space? Am I immune to them while my team gets into possition, in plain sight?

Where is the downside to this?

The downside is the loss of docking rights with the high sec faction that hates your particular flavour of pirate. Your fights would be with the 0.0 entities near your home area. Essentially you become like a scarier version of normal NPC belt rats to them.

Also. If your backup is more like the response of empire navies to enemy militia it won't be so overpowering that really determined people can't attack you in your home area. It's not as though the empire militias don't rampage through each other's high sec now and then.

Or, alternatively, you cut deals with your neighbours for access to the supercapitals that you can't build (being in NPC 0.0) and go raid that other bunch of pirates that you have a long standing grudge against. And if any of your militia get in your way then lead them into a trap set by whoever they are annoying (you are a scurvy pirate dog after all).

In response to the deadly high sec idea Chell Charon writes:

Also to get to a corporation X's standard agent you need to dock. So Docking ban would put the low level one agents again out of your reach.

This is true. However choosing to go fully pirate affiliated shouldn't be the sort of descision you can easily turn away from. If you hadn't burned your bridges why would the pirate factions trust you (bear in mind entry is not based on good standings in this proposal)?

If you really get tired of the pirate life I guess you could work for an empire faction that isn't specifically annoyed at your sort of pirate. Granted this would be a problem for the Sanshas as they are busy pissing off all of New Eden. But then again why would The Master trust someone who can fly away if they get tired of working for him?

I don't think there are enough consequences for actions in this game. If you run your mouth about a faction on the IGS it would only be reasonable for your standings with that faction and it's member corps to take a nosedive at the very least. It's not as though CCP can't manually adjust them either. One of my corpies is +10 to the Serpentis for taking part in one of the previous tournaments.

I'm not sure about high sec becoming like 0.0. Mind you I still like the registered bounty hunter bit of my previous idea so maybe that would help.

[Chell Charon]

Points to Arnulf.

However, Sansha Nation standings don't kill your standings with the Republic.
If I were to guess for reason "common enemy" of Amarr empire (maybe Cartel?) would be a strong candidate, coupled with plenty of space between them.

[Arnulf Ogunkoya]

Points to Arnulf.

However, Sansha Nation standings don't kill your standings with the Republic.
If I were to guess for reason "common enemy" of Amarr empire (maybe Cartel?) would be a strong candidate, coupled with plenty of space between them.

The alliances and emnities between pirate factions are quite well known. I figure the faction that would lock you out would be the faction that you find that group of pirates raiding the most.

So:

• Guristas / Caldari
• Serpentis / Gallente
• Blood Raiders / Amarr
• Angels / Minmatar (on the basis that they seem to raid there the most)

The Sansha would normally be another Amarrian opposed group given their distribution. However there might be an case for making them opposed to all the high sec factions; given that they are making a thorough nuisance of themselves to everyone. In return for this you get to run with the only pirate faction that has developed it's own supercapitals. I'm sure something could be set up that would compensate a character for being ostracised from the empires. Maybe the ability to get the relevant BPC's for a shedload of loyalty points and then build your own Revenant? Or get a completed ship for an even greater number of loyalty points (to get over the problem of no sov so no capital shipyard).

I'm just writing the first thing that comes to mind but I'm sure the dev's and/or you people can think of something suitable that doesn't make Sansha militia too overpowering.

Personally I think the smaller groups like the Kingdom, Mandate, Syndicate and even the Thukker should get their own formally allied capsuleer groups as well. Maybe even the Sisters, although I suspect given their biases they would be reluctant to employ us on anything other than a casual basis as they do now.

I think it's important that this be restricted to individuals and corps only because otherwise the big alliances near the relevant bits of 0.0 would just dominate it. If they want the goodies that pirate militia can get then they should have to bargain for it. And, hopefully, with groups that can negotiate from a position of strength.

The problem would be stopping them from becoming too dominant in low-sec and freezing out everyone else.

[Machiavellis Nemesis]

Given the events leading up to incursion, I'd cut the sanshas out of this.  But in general I agree. 

Hand back Sahtogas and surrounding systems to the Blood raiders.
Hand over some of the bits of Metropolis that nobody cares about to the Cartel
People more familiar with the Cal/Gal warzone can suggest areas for the Guristas/Serpentis to gain sovereignty over.

I wouldn't make nullsec areas part of FW. Mechanics wise, FW has always been differently flavoured due to the lack of bubbles and bombs (which is why I like it tbh).  An aggressive expansion by various pirate groups into lowsec would spice things up a bit I reckon.