Hey all.
tl;dr: I am now CEO of ILF and I have plans! First, I’ve decided to change how we interact with FW groups because what we have been doing doesn’t work. Points of interest:
- No, we are not actually neutral and never have been.
- No, we are not going to join FW.
- Because of our RP, we need to treat militia corps more or less the same as any other corp so we can actually interact with them and do more stuff. Being neutral has meant doing a lot of nothing.
Changing our “neutral” stance could cause confusion, etc, so this post is here to hopefully foster OOC understanding and support from our RP peers as we move forward and try to improve.
Wall o’ text explanation:Historically, IPI/ILF has stated we are “neutral” when it comes to Faction Warfare. It has meant we would not join a militia, trade militia intel, share fleet time with militia pilots, etc etc. In practice this has resulted in what (I believe) people call an RP block, or negation. How many opportunities have we missed to build relationships and do
stuff in-game because we repeatedly turned people down solely because they are in FW? I wouldn’t blame anyone if they’ve given up on ever trying to interact with us again at this point.
Fact is, being “neutral” isn’t realistic considering our RP. To be truly neutral about FW would mean not caring one way or another ICly who has occupancy in the Intaki sov. However, last I checked, we’re a bunch of secessionists, so by definition, we don’t support either government fighting over Intaki nor its neighboring systems, and we don’t want either of them to have power in that area. That doesn’t sound like neutrality to me!
Additionally, ILF wants to participate, even marginally, DUST514. We have four mercs so far (we had five but one biomassed, sadface). The change CCP made to the availability of DUST FW missions is pretty inconvenient if we try to say we’re “neutral”. DUST players can just hop into those missions whenever they like and there is no chance in hell I can expect any of them not to for the sake of RP.
We also need balance between having this antagonistic political agenda and being able to engage in more meaningful in-game actions, regardless of FW.
What does this mean for our RP?We are still not going to join FW. Wanting to create an independent Intaki sovereignty means not being aligned with any empire. We will continue to lobby for secession.
FW is a persistent game mechanic. We can’t engage in FW and we can’t ignore it, so we need to find a way to mitigate its effects on how we interact with others.
We can do this by saying, ICly, that CONCORD has created a stalemate, as there is no allowance in the militia war powers act for any empire to be able to formally declare victory, and thus no reason for us to lend the act any special credence. Combat that occurs in a war that cannot end is no different to regular, anytime combat between sworn enemies, except there are no gate guns and no sec hits. Thus the “militia” designation will carry no special weight with us either. After all, any corporation with a combat group could technically call itself a militia, too, and we recognize that New Eden is full of groups who blow each other up every day according to whatever reasons are meaningful to them.
This should allow us to build relationships with any group on their own merits, supposing we can find common ground with them.
Neither will we set
all the Federation and State militia corps red “just because” we are abandoning the “neutral” stance. We are in no position to launch a campaign like that (and have no desire to), as we don’t have the manpower nor the PVP experience. Our NHDS philosophy means
any corp not dabbling in hostile acts against us, peaceful neutrals, or blues in our area of operations is free to go about their personal business.
Some militia corps will end up red over time just like any other group we’ve ever set red. Aggression is aggression regardless of what uniform is being worn or what loyalty is sworn to, and we all know there are pirates in FW. Whether this is giving “aid and comfort” to the opposing militia (empire) will be irrelevant to us, because any time we manage to blow up a non-militia red, we are technically giving “aid and comfort” to
someone. Rather, our point will be: if we perceive a threat to the safety of the Intaki sov, we’ll act according to our mandate of providing security to the citizens who live there.
Ideally I hope to start working with more groups for other reasons: joint ops into exploration sites, non FW mission running, mining, and anti-pirate patrols for mutual reds could all become viable activities for us to partner up on. For RP purposes it could be said those pilots are flying with us in an “off duty” capacity or some such. As for our DUSTers, if the militias are making contracts available to unenlisted troops, well, the mercs go where the money is and that money will benefit ILF.
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We will integrate these changes gradually rather than making something like an IC press release, to see how it goes and give ourselves a chance to back off if it goes badly. Our IGS posts, website content, and live chats will start to take on these new ideas, and our ROE will be amended accordingly.
Looking forward to doing new stuff with some of you.
