Make Spying Allowed + Custom Restrictions

[Hard Hat Harry]

If I want to send someone to try to loot a faction, and the privs aren't properly done, then you deserve to lose all your stuff. It gives "internal security" departments something to do and adds another element to gameplay. It also adds a "shadow war" proxy to MR, which would make a new type of gameplay and an interesting dynamic. A lower ranking spy could try to hack into the colony control of the faction and send info to the faction he's spying for. "Spy" and "intelligence" roles would make the gameplay 1000x more interesting.

Also, on a similar note, the ability for CPC to go undercover would be AWESOME. They would appear to anyone looking at them as a member of the faction they're infiltrating, and they would have the ability to change their names. This would make life more dangerous for Most Wanteds, and clans would have to be more careful when having faction meetings to talk about plans. There could be an implant used that is similar to a scanner to determine real identity. The undercover would have all the powers of a uniformed CPC (arrest, stun guns, etc..)

 

[RadishGamma]

If I want to send someone to try to loot a faction, and the privs aren't properly done, then you deserve to lose all your stuff. It gives "internal security" departments something to do and adds another element to gameplay. It also adds a "shadow war" proxy to MR, which would make a new type of gameplay and an interesting dynamic. A lower ranking spy could try to hack into the colony control of the faction and send info to the faction he's spying for. "Spy" and "intelligence" roles would make the gameplay 1000x more interesting.

Also, on a similar note, the ability for CPC to go undercover would be AWESOME. They would appear to anyone looking at them as a member of the faction they're infiltrating, and they would have the ability to change their names. This would make life more dangerous for Most Wanteds, and clans would have to be more careful when having faction meetings to talk about plans. There could be an implant used that is similar to a scanner to determine real identity. The undercover would have all the powers of a uniformed CPC (arrest, stun guns, etc..)

This is something I always wanted to implement and in the early days of FOM was something the GMs toyed with. The trick is its hard to code such a mechanic in fairly or even how best to uncover spies in a legitimate way (folk could always use 3rd party systems to communicate.)

I love the idea of undercover cops infiltrating gangs and on the flip side criminals sending their own people in to subvert the police...

A very 'Infernal Affairs' dynamic.

 

[Hard Hat Harry]

This is something I always wanted to implement and in the early days of FOM was something the GMs toyed with. The trick is its hard to code such a mechanic in fairly or even how best to uncover spies in a legitimate way (folk could always use 3rd party systems to communicate.)

I love the idea of undercover cops infiltrating gangs and on the flip side criminals sending their own people in to subvert the police...

A very 'Infernal Affairs' dynamic.

I play another game that is kind of text based FoM-like. The intel people just talk to one another and use people skills to catch spies efficiently, and they are often effective. Basically intel would have to keep track of people and who they are. This would make it harder to join a faction, and I think would be more "realistic".

 

[Shakespears]

It's a fun idea but the practicality of it is quickly limited by how fast paced information is spread in the game mixed with how much impact crimes actually present and the punishment of them.

Gank 50 in a row like a mass murderer, go work off pp or get killed before arrested, then out of jail no issues or come out of cloning.

While the general idea of the mechanic has a good idea to it, we really have to ask(in any suggestion) what does it provide vs effort and how plausible/practical it really is.

 

[RadishGamma]

It's a fun idea but the practicality of it is quickly limited by how fast paced information is spread in the game mixed with how much impact crimes actually present and the punishment of them.

Gank 50 in a row like a mass murderer, go work off pp or get killed before arrested, then out of jail no issues or come out of cloning.

While the general idea of the mechanic has a good idea to it, we really have to ask(in any suggestion) what does it provide vs effort and how plausible/practical it really is.

I do see its limitations and it would be hard to keep track of, I dont necessarily want to rule it out because it isnt practical though. I personally would like to see more of an impact from individual crimes ingame (not random ganking, im thinking more organised robberies where shipments are hijacked, vaults are raided, stations shutdown etc.)

I dont know... The concept is a good one its just getting it to work.

 

[Ninkazi]

I really like the idea, It'd be neat to see a mechanic similar to how LED could scan your inventory, but instead it would be a faction specific scanner than can scan for the "integrity" or "loyalty" of a faction member.

Perhaps all factions could offer a "spy" service, which is basically an item or purchasable from an NPC/terminal that lets you temporarily appear (not become) a factionless civilian with a new name. You'd then have the ability to attempt joining an adversarial faction pretending to be a newbie.

Once in, possibilities are endless.

 

[Necidious]

It'd be neat to see a mechanic similar to how LED could scan your inventory, but instead it would be a faction specific scanner than can scan for the "integrity" or "loyalty" of a faction member.

This sounds actually surprisingly interesting! I would love to see how this would affect gameplay. How would "integrity" or "loyalty" be defined mechanically, though?

 

[Ninkazi]

Perhaps, at a basic level, monetary contribution through taxes and things you do that benefit the faction. Your daily quests/tasks, eco tax, vortex tax, etc.

Maybe kills against factions your corp is declared at war with. Team kills decrease your standing. Things like amount of chat messages typed in faction chat, "rep" points of some sort, completed contracts, etc.


Eve online has a mechanic called "paps" which is basically a proof-of-participation for fleets/battles you took part in that your corporation can pay you for depending on your role and the objective of the mission. Maybe something like this can be awarded by faction leaders to linemen who fight in battles/colony takeovers.

 

[RadishGamma]

Perhaps, at a basic level, monetary contribution through taxes and things you do that benefit the faction. Your daily quests/tasks, eco tax, vortex tax, etc.

Maybe kills against factions your corp is declared at war with. Team kills decrease your standing. Things like amount of chat messages typed in faction chat, "rep" points of some sort, completed contracts, etc.


Eve online has a mechanic called "paps" which is basically a proof-of-participation for fleets/battles you took part in that your corporation can pay you for depending on your role and the objective of the mission. Maybe something like this can be awarded by faction leaders to linemen who fight in battles/colony takeovers.

This could be tied into the commendation/awards mechanic we were discussing - faction leadership can award a member with certain commendations etc for good work or exceptional duty.

 

[Shakespears]

The big issue with this whole idea would be determined by the size of the player base. If there's less than 100 on at primetime, that's less than 20 for each faction. In order to covertly infiltrate any faction, you'd need a good amount of player activity to blend in with otherwise any "new" faction member would undergo serious investigations and tests to weed out spies.

Don't get me wrong, I too really like this idea but there's so many factors to work against it without a very large play base and with how little standard faction operations would change from that.

Such ideas work in shorter round based games like ss13 but MR is persistent and ever continuing

I honestly think the best route for this idea is to be shelved in potential later content updates, determined by the size of the player base once the game is more operational.

 

[Safwan]

in-game scanner to check loyalty and integrity of a member? what the fuck did I just read

 

[Banjo]

I don't see why we need all these mechanics specificly for spying, what's wrong with just joining the victim faction as if changing faction and then simply reporting back to your contacts??

 

[Meliarion]

Perhaps, at a basic level, monetary contribution through taxes and things you do that benefit the faction. Your daily quests/tasks, eco tax, vortex tax, etc.

Maybe kills against factions your corp is declared at war with. Team kills decrease your standing. Things like amount of chat messages typed in faction chat, "rep" points of some sort, completed contracts, etc.


Eve online has a mechanic called "paps" which is basically a proof-of-participation for fleets/battles you took part in that your corporation can pay you for depending on your role and the objective of the mission. Maybe something like this can be awarded by faction leaders to linemen who fight in battles/colony takeovers.

Keeping track of those stats might be nice but it would be a mistake to tie any metrics to them. Logging team killing would make duelling and combat training show up as red marks. These stats are not very good for detecting spies because the main thing that a spy is going to do to mess you up is leak information and there is no way to monitor that using ingame stats. All these stats would tell me is that this player who has recently joined the faction and likes to afk a lot, helpful if all you are doing is hunting for a low effort alt rather than the active infiltrator this is aimed at. If the infiltrator does not actively engage with the faction then they are not going to get access to sensitive and potentially useful information.

Still it would be nice to be able to award medals and commendations to commemorate player achievements but this is getting somewhat off topic.

I don't see why we need all these mechanics specificly for spying, what's wrong with just joining the victim faction as if changing faction and then simply reporting back to your contacts??

I would guess it is so that you can get a new name/identity without having to make an alt or remake your character. Its usefulness will be determined by how tough a line the staff take on using alts.

 

[Banjo]

I would guess it is so that you can get a new name/identity without having to make an alt or remake your character. Its usefulness will be determined by how tough a line the staff take on using alts.

It would be cool if the character creator were good enough to where you could recognize players by their face, so we didn't have to have names above everyones names. Sadly that would require way to many resources for a small indie game with very limited resources.

 

[Chip Lawrie]

As much as I like the idea of having deep cover spooks I agree with shakes that this should be a shelved mechanic until such point as the game has the population to support it (it’ll be a good expansion)

Until such a time suborning enemy faction members and switching factions to gain intel worked well in FoM and isn’t alt abuse

 

[BioXide]

We can add a few faction tools to facilitate this type of gameplay, although this is mostly leaning towards the rp side of the game

 

[Hard Hat Harry]

in-game scanner to check loyalty and integrity of a member? what the fuck did I just read

I only meant for that to check undercover CPC (since they can arrest and all there'd have to be a way to counter it). With normal spies, fuck no just switch factions.