Forums » Suggestions

The Grey Faction

Dec 11, 2014 Serious.Person link
Greetings Vendetta Online Community!
Over time a lot of interest has been voiced regarding the creation of an Unaligned or "Grey" faction. The devs have more than once said that they would not cross this out, meaning it might very well happen one day.
In order to give them some ideas and push their thoughts I have opened this thread to collect ideas of those in favor of it and of course to give voices against this a place so they may be raised.

Before we go on about considering stuff we need to become aware of the first important thing.

Who would fit into this group (on role playing terms):

- Pirates (very obviously)
- Independant Traders (who have abandoned their nation's heritage)
- Mercenaries and Smugglers and of course Manufacturers
- People who "live" in grey space mostly and draw a certain advantage from it

Giving this group of people a certain advantage would certainly increase the interest of players to choose the path of piracy atleast on one character. However not only the pirates will like this faction, there will be other types of players aswell who might prefer this path. Such rp individuals are listed above.

The benefits of going "grey":
(Note that the following is just a collection of ideas that I have come up with. Feel free to comment or add to this in your postings.)

- Unaligned people have the chance to make it to Respect with all three major factions at the same time (but not higher)
- the factor determining the Standing increase with minor factions is multiplied (x2), thus making standing regaining easier
- Grey and (only grey) get access to a special feature that has been suggested a few times before: The manufacturing of grey space varients of nation spefific ships

The Manufacturing of "fake" nation specific ships:

- Manufacturing missions show up for grey space space people, the following ships can be manufactured:
- The Grey Valkyire (Stats of the Valkyrie X1, Pelatus C12), The Grey Raptor (Stats of the Raptor UDV, Bractus M14) and the Grey Prometheus (Stats os the SCP, Latos I8)
- Manufacturing of this ships is NOT easy. A solid list should be required including Guardian and Queen Cores. It should be only a bit easier to make than a Superlight

With this rolled in, we can finnaly implement ship trading! The trading of normal nation specific ships would be impossible because it's not neccessary; grey people would provide the people in need of such ships with these manufactured
replacement at a fairly high price. Problem solved: We have a cool grey faction and the ship trading problem and the nation ships debate is silenced.


The downsides of going grey:

Of course being grey has serious downsides, like being Itani, UIT, Serco has:

- no nation space is really safe anymore as standing above respect can no longer be achieved with the three major factions
- no "own" ships as grey is not really a faction; you lose your boundaries with your old alignment. there is the manufacturing-ships advantage but this is really a tedious process.
- grey people need more player interaction in order to get access to manufacturing goods more quickly and of course if they want to sell their produced goods
- the mission to go grey won't be easy...

How to become Grey:
Very obviously one important bit is missing here. How to go unaligened?

At first I've considered suggesting here that we can pick from the start but I think that is not wise and would overburden newbies. Rather hint to it in the tutorial at some striking point. I've thought about a mission here:

- the mission is taken at Odia M14 after achieving Admire with Corvus
- the mission (I rely on some experienced mission makers with this one perhaps?) requires travelling to your home capitol and talking to an executive about your wishes
- after agreeing formally you go back to grey and take on a series of tests to test if you are "fit" for life in grey which involves: Shooting pirate bots, destroying a queen, mining x amount of ore y, making profit selling commodity x to y etc.
(more suggestions are welcome here!!!)
- the mission is available from 5/4/4/4/4 (full sub to have a cool white name...)

Other things that need solving (and that I can think of now):

- Players with Mentor Level 1 get reduced pricing on all stations located in grey space.

Yep...
Dec 11, 2014 Dr. Lecter link
Why would a single faction be able to make crappy versions of BOTH the "best" ships in the game? And why would these be tradable, but actual valks and proms not be tradable?

And the idea that you can get Respect with all nations but still be "Grey" is just silly. At least native KOS should be required and Bi or Tri KOS would be better.
Dec 11, 2014 NC-Crusader link
I agree with the good Dr that you should be KOS with your old native nation. I would also suggest that you not be able to get above Dislike or Neutral with the other 2 main nations. The minor nations that are within UIT borders should be same as for UIT. Only at those factions that are exclusively located in grey space would you be able to rise to a level of say Admire +800.

As for the ships suggested, I agree that it would open up an avenue for ship trading, which may or may not be good for the game. If they are made, then some of the parts/ores needed for making them should be only available within each of the 3 main nations, which would force a lot of co-operation within grey and open a large market for the traders to supply those goods to the "Grey Pilots" who chose to make ships.
Dec 13, 2014 ryan reign link
No.