10-31-2018, 04:56 AM
There are many problems I find with the current FC. It needs more military type goals and reworks of the old goals. The current factions just run around and do whatever until they run into each other, which results in a clash.
The first I will talk about is the least worked on group: The Covenant.
Right now the Covenant is very limited on what they can do. The RoE has three major rules: find artifacts, sabotage Humanity, stay hidden. The restrictive nature is imposed on the entire Covenant and makes it so it is impossible to do anything else. Every round has become the same thing. The highest rank in charge has the ship go from place to place until they go to VT9, where everyone goes to Crescent Base and that is where the fighting happens. If not, this means the Covies were caught and opened fire on the Humans to stay hidden.
This problem is furthered by lowpop. A lone T'voan is the only person on the Infraction, yet he still must go at the objective the exact same way since the RoE not only establishes the goals, but the one way to go about it. It doesn't apply well to most races aside from the Elites. The Elites fit well with the RoE, since it is tactical and they are all about following the Prophets for the gods. But grunts, minors and majors, are just slave level people. They don't necessarily care. Deacons existed to educate grunts because they knew so few about the Covenant. If 3 grunt minors are the only ones online, they will have to get very creative with following the RoE since it doesn't fit with the extroverted, stupid, and friendly nature of the grunts. Jackals are established as being dumb pirates. The only thing keeping them is riches and bounty. They don't care about religion. If a shipmistress is on, you bet they will disregard RoE when they find the diamonds on VT9. It's shiny so it means it is valuable. They want more monetary gain, but RoE doesn't account for this. The brutes are constantly trying to compete with the Elites by doing their own thing, aggressive, testosterone induced forwardness that has them take the straights path to victory. No doubt they would attack the Bertels just to show that they don't need the reinforcements on the way to win.
I suggest that the RoE is split up so each race has its own race laws. I will start with the Elites, the easiest. Their laws would be as follows:
1. You are a scouting party for a larger fleet. Do what you must to make sure knowledge of the Covenant stays at a minimum.
2. The gods have sent word of relics on the Ice planet and Sand planet. Locate and flag them for the invasion force.
3. If the Humans have the artifacts, find out where and record that.
4. Find any other information deemed important enough to send to the fleet and do so.
5. Make sure that Humanity will not be a threat to the fleet when it arrives.
6. Honor is everything. If you have been dishonored, work to correct it immediately or be shunned.
This will keep the same idea as the old RoE, just modified slightly to give them a clearer objective and allow for more creativity on how to do this.
The Jackals, regardless of subspecies or rank, would be as follows:
1. Everything is about the bounty, not the gods, but the Covenant promises a great bounty for servitude.
2. Cooperating with the Elites will be rewarded with bounty
3. Information will be taken and adequate payment will be made in return. Find out everything you can on the system.
4. Grunts and prisoners not eaten will be rewarded with payment per unit.
5. The Vindictive Infraction is your own vessel. All damage will be covered by you.
This new set of rules is more money focused. It is a compliment to the Elite RoE to encourage unity. The added part at the end establishes that it is still their ship, but throwing it at the UNSC is their own costly decision. The idea is that this new RoE will truly allow them to act like pirates.
Grunts, minor and major, are as follows:
1. Insubordination will be rewarded with pain.
2. Do everything told to you, and your food nipple will always be full.
3. You are apart of the Covenant. If you are found talking with the Humans without consent of a higher power, they can enact whatever they feel is necessary to solve the situation.
4. Vital information giving to those deemed unauthorized to receive the information is punishable by death.
5. If you do anything that impedes the other members of the Covenant, you will be put in a suicide squad.
Grunt Deacon (if they ever come) are just additions to the other RoE:
1. Inform and strengthen the grunt ties to the Covenant.
2. Follow the principles of the Prophets and make sure everyone is working for the gods.
3. You are allowed to transfer artifacts in place of zealots when they are not around.
The grunt RoE would promote acting more like a grunt. Their drive is surviving and being happy. The Food Nipple makes them happy for the most part. Deacons would just act as a force to keep them within the Covenant as a voice of positivity, since their race rules are designed to be extremely negative.
Hunters, as they are a thing, are as follows:
1. The Elites are the only ones who earned your respect. Don't let others order you around, unless the Elites bow to them.
2. Help the Elites in their goals, and anyone deemed important by the Elites.
3. Keep the Elites safe.
This is with the idea that the hunters also don't care enough about religion. However because they care about the Elites, they care about the religion.
The Huragok are as follows:
1. You don't give a fuck. Wars don't concern you. Fighting, unless you or friends are in harms way, do not phase you.
2. You exist to repair things, just as the Forerunners had made you. That is your primary concern.
3. The Covenant is not your allegiance. They will hurt you if you don't comply, a lot. Keep their ship running for your own good.
4. Forerunner artifacts and their wellbeing will be a priority over the ship, and that is allowed.
5. Stay alive, as to bear witness to future technologies.
Yadda yadda yadda, they don't care, yadda yadda, fits the Huragok, you get it. Also, add role.
This will greatly improve the Covenant and make the races seem more special. I only left the Brutes alone because I myself am not to educated on them, the only race I haven't researched.
Now for the URF:
The URF I feel are fine. Just giving them targets is all that is necessary:
1. The UNSC presence seems to slip to a uncharted part of the system. Follow them back to see what they are guarding.
2. There is a old abandoned mining station that acted as a URF base, modified with a MAC canon. Take it over and use it as a hidden base of operations.
3. KS7 is UNSC controlled. Pacify the planet to 'liberate' the UNSC supporters from there and see if you can recruit URF supporters.
4. Stay hidden, but if located, fight and misdirect.
These new objectives will just give them something to do rather than run around until the Bertels shows up.
The UNSC, I feel, needs objectives badly. They just fly around with no goal whatsoever. Everything they have done is reactionary. These goals should solidify what they should do. They go as follows:
1. Keep VT9-042 hidden and uncharted. Anyone who has seen the planet is to be arrested, brought to a secure facility away from the planet, and investigated. It is recommended to patrol around the system rather than sit on it to snag ships as they approach,
2. Rumors of aliens have been spreading in the system. If these are true, rendezvous with ONI and establish first contact. Keep it peaceful if possible.
3. KS7 is a UNSC colony and the point of control in the system. Work with the Marshal to ensure it remains safe.
4. Monitor traffic and discern where the URF cell is. Find out where they are operating from and eliminate it.
5. The UNSC Thorin was captured by the URF. Retake the vessel and purge the encrypted databanks of the Thorin to prevent knowledge of VT9 from getting out. URF that surrender are to be captured and investigated by ONI, away from VT9.
ONI also needs rules, to make their role more intelligence gathering than over complicated HRUNTING producers.
1. The Research Director must decide if the ORION project is safe to be conducted. MARINES are to be chosen by operatives after testing, 3 at max. Once complete they are to be field tested against the URF, stored on the Bertels with the ODSTs.
2. If unauthorized personnel find VT9, they are to be brought to another location and interrogated for information. Terminate if they know too much, subjugate them as ore extractors if little is. Word is not to get out about VT9.
3. ONI knows of a alien presence in the area. Establish a friendly first contact, find out their goals, and decide from there what should happen.
4. Investigate the Mines. Prior to your assignment, a mining crew was 'reassigned' after finding something in the caves. Find out what was found that caused ONI to kill them, secure it, and bring it back for testing.
New RoE and objectives should help the military side of things a lot. I do think that KS7 should be revamped with a new Forerunner facility there to be interacted with. VT9 should have artifacts, but those should be pointing towards KS7. This will produce a race to locate the Forerunner stuff between ONI and the Covies. If possible, make a teleporter to the new admin world from within the Forerunner place as kind of a small shield world.
The asteroid base should be in a asteroid field for sure, to better hide it. The base itself should not be seen and the URF should have to ping it on the map so they know where to find it. There is a lot of space to be filled between everything (no pun intended) and I don't think adding new ships and planets will fix things. Modifying the older stuff will be much more beneficial.
Though I do want to say this last. VT9 is a shit map right now. No offense to Flak, but the "hidden" ONI base is the most obvious thing there. The Covenant will blow by the forerunner artifact and find the base much quicker. Aside from the comms station, that is the biggest thing there and the map is centered around it. The ONI base should be much smaller, more underground and low profile on the surface. Think of the sarlacc pit in Star Wars. There is a little hole in the top hidden in the dunes, but deep inside is a very large creature, unseen by the unlucky passing traveler. If you want to find Crescent base, you actually have to look for it. This will create different scenarios and prevent metarushing, as the umbilicals would be far from the base. ONI, having a warthog, would easily be able to transfer stuff to the umbilical or just keep the cargo at the surface with the Pelican LZ.
That is what I have to say on the subject so far and I hope this feedback will help the dev team.
The first I will talk about is the least worked on group: The Covenant.
Right now the Covenant is very limited on what they can do. The RoE has three major rules: find artifacts, sabotage Humanity, stay hidden. The restrictive nature is imposed on the entire Covenant and makes it so it is impossible to do anything else. Every round has become the same thing. The highest rank in charge has the ship go from place to place until they go to VT9, where everyone goes to Crescent Base and that is where the fighting happens. If not, this means the Covies were caught and opened fire on the Humans to stay hidden.
This problem is furthered by lowpop. A lone T'voan is the only person on the Infraction, yet he still must go at the objective the exact same way since the RoE not only establishes the goals, but the one way to go about it. It doesn't apply well to most races aside from the Elites. The Elites fit well with the RoE, since it is tactical and they are all about following the Prophets for the gods. But grunts, minors and majors, are just slave level people. They don't necessarily care. Deacons existed to educate grunts because they knew so few about the Covenant. If 3 grunt minors are the only ones online, they will have to get very creative with following the RoE since it doesn't fit with the extroverted, stupid, and friendly nature of the grunts. Jackals are established as being dumb pirates. The only thing keeping them is riches and bounty. They don't care about religion. If a shipmistress is on, you bet they will disregard RoE when they find the diamonds on VT9. It's shiny so it means it is valuable. They want more monetary gain, but RoE doesn't account for this. The brutes are constantly trying to compete with the Elites by doing their own thing, aggressive, testosterone induced forwardness that has them take the straights path to victory. No doubt they would attack the Bertels just to show that they don't need the reinforcements on the way to win.
I suggest that the RoE is split up so each race has its own race laws. I will start with the Elites, the easiest. Their laws would be as follows:
1. You are a scouting party for a larger fleet. Do what you must to make sure knowledge of the Covenant stays at a minimum.
2. The gods have sent word of relics on the Ice planet and Sand planet. Locate and flag them for the invasion force.
3. If the Humans have the artifacts, find out where and record that.
4. Find any other information deemed important enough to send to the fleet and do so.
5. Make sure that Humanity will not be a threat to the fleet when it arrives.
6. Honor is everything. If you have been dishonored, work to correct it immediately or be shunned.
This will keep the same idea as the old RoE, just modified slightly to give them a clearer objective and allow for more creativity on how to do this.
The Jackals, regardless of subspecies or rank, would be as follows:
1. Everything is about the bounty, not the gods, but the Covenant promises a great bounty for servitude.
2. Cooperating with the Elites will be rewarded with bounty
3. Information will be taken and adequate payment will be made in return. Find out everything you can on the system.
4. Grunts and prisoners not eaten will be rewarded with payment per unit.
5. The Vindictive Infraction is your own vessel. All damage will be covered by you.
This new set of rules is more money focused. It is a compliment to the Elite RoE to encourage unity. The added part at the end establishes that it is still their ship, but throwing it at the UNSC is their own costly decision. The idea is that this new RoE will truly allow them to act like pirates.
Grunts, minor and major, are as follows:
1. Insubordination will be rewarded with pain.
2. Do everything told to you, and your food nipple will always be full.
3. You are apart of the Covenant. If you are found talking with the Humans without consent of a higher power, they can enact whatever they feel is necessary to solve the situation.
4. Vital information giving to those deemed unauthorized to receive the information is punishable by death.
5. If you do anything that impedes the other members of the Covenant, you will be put in a suicide squad.
Grunt Deacon (if they ever come) are just additions to the other RoE:
1. Inform and strengthen the grunt ties to the Covenant.
2. Follow the principles of the Prophets and make sure everyone is working for the gods.
3. You are allowed to transfer artifacts in place of zealots when they are not around.
The grunt RoE would promote acting more like a grunt. Their drive is surviving and being happy. The Food Nipple makes them happy for the most part. Deacons would just act as a force to keep them within the Covenant as a voice of positivity, since their race rules are designed to be extremely negative.
Hunters, as they are a thing, are as follows:
1. The Elites are the only ones who earned your respect. Don't let others order you around, unless the Elites bow to them.
2. Help the Elites in their goals, and anyone deemed important by the Elites.
3. Keep the Elites safe.
This is with the idea that the hunters also don't care enough about religion. However because they care about the Elites, they care about the religion.
The Huragok are as follows:
1. You don't give a fuck. Wars don't concern you. Fighting, unless you or friends are in harms way, do not phase you.
2. You exist to repair things, just as the Forerunners had made you. That is your primary concern.
3. The Covenant is not your allegiance. They will hurt you if you don't comply, a lot. Keep their ship running for your own good.
4. Forerunner artifacts and their wellbeing will be a priority over the ship, and that is allowed.
5. Stay alive, as to bear witness to future technologies.
Yadda yadda yadda, they don't care, yadda yadda, fits the Huragok, you get it. Also, add role.
This will greatly improve the Covenant and make the races seem more special. I only left the Brutes alone because I myself am not to educated on them, the only race I haven't researched.
Now for the URF:
The URF I feel are fine. Just giving them targets is all that is necessary:
1. The UNSC presence seems to slip to a uncharted part of the system. Follow them back to see what they are guarding.
2. There is a old abandoned mining station that acted as a URF base, modified with a MAC canon. Take it over and use it as a hidden base of operations.
3. KS7 is UNSC controlled. Pacify the planet to 'liberate' the UNSC supporters from there and see if you can recruit URF supporters.
4. Stay hidden, but if located, fight and misdirect.
These new objectives will just give them something to do rather than run around until the Bertels shows up.
The UNSC, I feel, needs objectives badly. They just fly around with no goal whatsoever. Everything they have done is reactionary. These goals should solidify what they should do. They go as follows:
1. Keep VT9-042 hidden and uncharted. Anyone who has seen the planet is to be arrested, brought to a secure facility away from the planet, and investigated. It is recommended to patrol around the system rather than sit on it to snag ships as they approach,
2. Rumors of aliens have been spreading in the system. If these are true, rendezvous with ONI and establish first contact. Keep it peaceful if possible.
3. KS7 is a UNSC colony and the point of control in the system. Work with the Marshal to ensure it remains safe.
4. Monitor traffic and discern where the URF cell is. Find out where they are operating from and eliminate it.
5. The UNSC Thorin was captured by the URF. Retake the vessel and purge the encrypted databanks of the Thorin to prevent knowledge of VT9 from getting out. URF that surrender are to be captured and investigated by ONI, away from VT9.
ONI also needs rules, to make their role more intelligence gathering than over complicated HRUNTING producers.
1. The Research Director must decide if the ORION project is safe to be conducted. MARINES are to be chosen by operatives after testing, 3 at max. Once complete they are to be field tested against the URF, stored on the Bertels with the ODSTs.
2. If unauthorized personnel find VT9, they are to be brought to another location and interrogated for information. Terminate if they know too much, subjugate them as ore extractors if little is. Word is not to get out about VT9.
3. ONI knows of a alien presence in the area. Establish a friendly first contact, find out their goals, and decide from there what should happen.
4. Investigate the Mines. Prior to your assignment, a mining crew was 'reassigned' after finding something in the caves. Find out what was found that caused ONI to kill them, secure it, and bring it back for testing.
New RoE and objectives should help the military side of things a lot. I do think that KS7 should be revamped with a new Forerunner facility there to be interacted with. VT9 should have artifacts, but those should be pointing towards KS7. This will produce a race to locate the Forerunner stuff between ONI and the Covies. If possible, make a teleporter to the new admin world from within the Forerunner place as kind of a small shield world.
The asteroid base should be in a asteroid field for sure, to better hide it. The base itself should not be seen and the URF should have to ping it on the map so they know where to find it. There is a lot of space to be filled between everything (no pun intended) and I don't think adding new ships and planets will fix things. Modifying the older stuff will be much more beneficial.
Though I do want to say this last. VT9 is a shit map right now. No offense to Flak, but the "hidden" ONI base is the most obvious thing there. The Covenant will blow by the forerunner artifact and find the base much quicker. Aside from the comms station, that is the biggest thing there and the map is centered around it. The ONI base should be much smaller, more underground and low profile on the surface. Think of the sarlacc pit in Star Wars. There is a little hole in the top hidden in the dunes, but deep inside is a very large creature, unseen by the unlucky passing traveler. If you want to find Crescent base, you actually have to look for it. This will create different scenarios and prevent metarushing, as the umbilicals would be far from the base. ONI, having a warthog, would easily be able to transfer stuff to the umbilical or just keep the cargo at the surface with the Pelican LZ.
That is what I have to say on the subject so far and I hope this feedback will help the dev team.
