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[Alain Colcer]

I'm writing this here before posting it on SHC or Eve-o, considering many of us posted recently in a thread about why standing didn't mean much as a mechanic supporting RP.

As a basis idea, each faction has X number of member corporations in it, each of them with different characteristics or portraying different industry sectors. In reality not all are corporations per se, some are institutions, organizations, representative bodys, governments, non-profit causes, etc.

However the important part is that each corporation has certain attributes that can be used for the standings mechanics in a meaningful way:
a) Investors, owners, shareholders
b) Partners
b) Competitors

So let's see a general classification of corporations for the Gallente Federation:

Government
   Federal Administration
   Federation Customs
   President
   Senate
   Supreme Court
Military
   Federal Defence Union
   Federal Intelligence Office
   Federation Navy
Mining, Construction and Engineering
   Allotek
   Astral Mining Inc
   Material Acquisition
Science and Research
   Chemal Tech
   CreoDron
   Duvolle Laboratories
   Poteque Pharmaceuticals
   Roden Shipyards
Retail, Transportation and Commerce
   Aliastra
   Federal Freight
   FedMart
   Inner Zone Shipping
   TransStellar Shipping
Banking and Investment
   Bank of Luminaire
   Garoun Investment Bank
   Pend Insurance
Agro-industry
   Combined Harvest
Entertainment & Media
   Egonics Inc.
   Quafe Company
   Impetus
   The Scope
Education
   Center for Advanced Studies
   University of Caille
   Federal Navy Academy

This idea has been evolving in my head for quite a bit, but did not fit right until I read a chronicle in one of the e-on magazines (a freeze on freedom).

The assumptions are:
1- As a capsuleer working for a NPC corporation, you will earn standings directly towards the Corp for each mission you complete, then a derived calculation at a lower ration towards the shareholders/investors of said NPC corp, then another lower ratio calculation towards its partners, and finally a derived negative ratio towards its competitors. A corporation could have no investors, partners or competitors at all or could have up to 10 entries.

2- Althought Creodron and Duvolle could be considered competitors in the research and science industry, in reality they often compete against corporations outside their own faction. So the attributes in the competitor category are carefully designed and deliberately chosen to not negatively affect standings for other NPC corps within the same faction.

3- Only corporations in the government and military groups affect faction standing. Aggressing government and military NPCs will negatively affect your standing with their corporation but not towards the overall faction.

4- LP gained with one corporation can be "exchanged" to other corporations classified as partners/shareholders at a 0.9 ratio, and at a 0.5 ratio with any other corporations in the same faction. The only requisite is having at least 1 Loyalty point in the destination corporation that you wish to trade LP towards.

5- Data Centers and Circle Agents are revisited and enabled to become the basic tools to "open up" different corps within a faction, and not just "increase" the overall faction standing. Delivering some pirate tags to Fed Navy will increase your standings with them and through the derived calculations with the partners/shareholders and Federation itself. However there could be agents representing each industry and requiring other items or assignments as a way of "fixing or increasing" the standings with said groups and their shareholders/partners.

6- Storyline missions will only increase corporation standings. And through the derived calculations affect partners/shareholders/competitors. But will not affect faction standings at all (unless it’s a military/gov NPC corp).

7- Player corporations standings will be calculated using the current design, based on the pilot standings composing the corporation and establishing an average value.

8- A player will never gain standings towards an agent, only to the corp.

A couple of practical examples:

Federation Navy
   Shareholders
      President (0.8 ratio for the derived standing calculation)
      Senate (0.8 ratio for the derived standing calculation)
   Partners
      Federal Administration (0.4 ratio for the derived standing calculation)
      Federal Defence Union (0.4 ratio for the derived standing calculation)
      Republic Fleet (0.2 ratio for the derived standing calculation)
   Competitors
      Caldari Navy (-0.6 ratio for the derived standing calculation)
      Imperial Navy (-0.4 ratio for the derived standing calculation)
      Serpentis Corporation (-0.4 ratio for the derived standing calculation)

Quafe Company
   Shareholders
      Garoun Investment Bank (0.8 ratio for the derived standing calculation)
      Anonymous (0.8 ratio for the derived standing calculation)
   Partners
      Aliastra (0.4 ratio for the derived standing calculation)
      Federal Administration (does not make much sense, but its currently listed in evelopedia, 0.4 ratio for the derived standing calculation)
   Competitors
      Echelon Entertainment (replacing Impetus as it is listed in evelopedia, -0.6 ratio for the derived standing calculation)

Take note that the standings derivation towards competitors is not the full negative value of the gains, so if you earned a 3% gain for Fed Navy, you would get -0,018% towards Caldari Navy, Imperial Navy and Serpentis Corp. This design choice is mostly to compensate for the fact a single corporation will be affecting your standings towards multiple competitors.

Faction Standings

A player will have its faction standings calculated out of his gov/military corporation standings, more as a byproduct rather than a direct gain with storyline missions. Also the negative standings with the oppsosing factions will be a byproduct of the "competitors" list.
As an example, working with the Fed Navy will give you Federation standings, and the Fed Navy competitors will give you standings with Serpentis, Amarr and Caldari.

Potential Benefits

The entire concept described above is aimed to address a few things:
1) To not limit and block the player entirely out of a faction, unless you choose to fly and work for the nationalistic organizations to a large degree.
2) To replace the faction standing gains, and create a new mechanic to unlock several corporations in different ways. Work for Roden Shipyards and unlock the agents of the Allotek Industries. Work for Aliastra and unlock the agents of Combined Harvest.
3) To allow the player the management of "pools" of Loyalty points and move it around (at a loss) towards the NPC corporation currently working with.
4) To remove the concept of working towards a faction and indirectly affecting your reputation towards "other opposing factions".
5) To make it a more reasonable tool to express a player's "alignment" or loyalty in his RP choices.

An interesting outcome of the explained design is a way to "overcome" your negative standings towards a pirate corp.
You have terrible angel standings, but not so bad Syndicate ones, you start working with level 1 Syndicate agents and slowly bring up the Serpentis Standings, then work out Serpentis standings and bring up the NPC angel corp who serves as partner, reversing your situation. The idea is to create this two-step approach for most factions and allow the player to revert former "newbie" choices.

What you guys think?

edit: pwned by a smilie

[DosTuMai]

Interesting proposal, but I don't even know how the standings are worked out now, let alone with that system.
All I know is mission for someone and they like you, shoot them and they hate you.

[Wanoah]

Interesting proposal, but I don't even know how the standings are worked out now, let alone with that system.
All I know is mission for someone and they like you, shoot them and they hate you.

You could argue that it should be as simple as that too. Might make for more efficient code!

Personally, I don't really care how standings are derived, only that they have meaningful consequences.

[Vieve]

Federation Navy
   Shareholders
      President (0.8 ratio for the derived standing calculation)
      Senate (0.8 ratio for the derived standing calculation)
   Partners
      Federal Administration (0.4 ratio for the derived standing calculation)
      Federal Defence Union (0.4 ratio for the derived standing calculation)
      Republic Fleet (0.2 ratio for the derived standing calculation)
   Competitors
      Caldari Navy (-0.6 ratio for the derived standing calculation)
      Imperial Navy (-0.4 ratio for the derived standing calculation)
      Serpentis Corporation (-0.4 ratio for the derived standing calculation)

So, following this example, would you take a hit against your standings with Material Acquisition if you ran a lot of FIO missions? 

[Alain Colcer]

Federation Navy
   Shareholders
      President (0.8 ratio for the derived standing calculation)
      Senate (0.8 ratio for the derived standing calculation)
   Partners
      Federal Administration (0.4 ratio for the derived standing calculation)
      Federal Defence Union (0.4 ratio for the derived standing calculation)
      Republic Fleet (0.2 ratio for the derived standing calculation)
   Competitors
      Caldari Navy (-0.6 ratio for the derived standing calculation)
      Imperial Navy (-0.4 ratio for the derived standing calculation)
      Serpentis Corporation (-0.4 ratio for the derived standing calculation)

So, following this example, would you take a hit against your standings with Material Acquisition if you ran a lot of FIO missions? 

To quote myself

2- Althought Creodron and Duvolle could be considered competitors in the research and science industry, in reality they often compete against corporations outside their own faction. So the attributes in the competitor category are carefully designed and deliberately chosen to not negatively affect standings for other NPC corps within the same faction.

Competitors partners would be adjusted or changed to never create a situation where you loose standings within the same faction, at least thats what i thought would be logical.

[orange]

Thing is; I think someone with 9+ to Lai Dai should have trouble swapping to Ishukone or SuVee.   Someone who works for one Amarrian house should be distrusted by the others/unallied houses.

This of course only matters if you want to highlight some of the internal strife in the empires.

[Dex_Kivuli]

Thing is; I think someone with 9+ to Lai Dai should have trouble swapping to Ishukone or SuVee.   Someone who works for one Amarrian house should be distrusted by the others/unallied houses.

This of course only matters if you want to highlight some of the internal strife in the empires.

I think that's nice in theory, bad in practice. In theory, there'd be players enough from each of the blocks to support Caldari corps of all stripes. In practice, there just aren't enough of us.

From an NPC standing perspective, there is a hierarchy of enemies. In Black Rise, I'm sure a Lai Dai station would welcome a capable Ishukone pilot, given all the Gall around the place.

Any rules-based standing mechanic is always going to face limitations in some form. The real nuances of human interaction are a bit too complex.

Hmm... but I suppose, while I'm sure you think I'm quite nice OOC, perhaps IC Nederland-kirjuun is quite skeptical of Kinuli-haan.

[orange]

I suppose my example was a bit simplistic.  And I am not sure how Lai Dai might deal with a SuVee pilot in Black Rise in comparison to a Federal.

My overall point is that the competitors/partners aspect could include something internal to each faction where internal divisions are played up in someway.  This however has repercussions in industry with regard to datacores as well, but that already exist cross empire's as well.

[Alain Colcer]

Orange

I think the proposal can achieve what you are mentioning to a certian degree tweaking the multiplier ratios. Lets say Lai Dai and Ishukone are competitors, but since they belong to the same faction the "multiplier ratio" in their respective competitor classifications to each other is set to only -0.1, instead of a full -0.6 for an enemy faction competitor.

That way you effectively lower your personal standings with one if you work too much with the other, but not the same degree as your Creodron's/Duvolle standings that got smashed big time.

I artificially chose to set a limit to the number of competitor/partner classifications to keep reasonable the processing time it took to derive and calculate your standing gains after each mission, but if thats not a limit, then you can have 40+ corporations with different multiplier ratios to describe a very broad scenery and relation to each NPC corporation in the game.