Just a thought

Soven Taliesyn

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I'll have to dig a bit further into it but, piracy. I know it's been talked about in here from time to time and I don't think there is an "official" division, similar to Rock Raiders. Since outlaw is an actively worked and improved upon game mechanics I think we should put our TEST (best) foot forward and get the ball rolling on this.

Thoughts and opinions?
 

Soven Taliesyn

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Correct. Yet nothing official going on there. There are a couple others that also touch on it. I'm talking an actual division and maybe getting some small fun ops together.....blah blah blah inspirational and motivational words that inspire and support my point......closing point goes here. More words here and here to extend this to make it look like I have more to say.
 

Han Burgundy

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Official? OFFICIAL?! Have you MET a TESTie before? Good luck organizing anything beyond your next bender. TEST: We play together.....separately.
(An official group for pirate raids and such would indeed be super cool)
 

marcsand2

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Official? OFFICIAL?! Have you MET a TESTie before? Good luck organizing anything beyond your next bender. TEST: We play together.....separately.
That depends on organization. I met a bunch of TESTies once in Flightschool. Unfortunately the session wasn't repeated. I also wanted to participate in an Aurora competition, unfortunately it got postponed because RL interfered with a few of the other participants. Allot members enter forum and proceed to discord, others are waiting until the game becomes more interesting for them and fall asleep. Right now the only thing you really can do is dogfight or FPS. Then of course there is the matter called time-zone, some people must sleep, others have to go to work, family also isn't unimportant.

If you really want to organize something, then you first must find and bind / interest a bunch of members which like to play the right now available game modes, be active on the forum and discord, or at least attract the attention of the discord members. Organize on the forum. You can't organize something on discord, its way to real time. Find a good time for everybody or at least the majority. Time-zone really matters.
Move to discord to get the members in real-time contact and commence the planned activities. Make sure you plan your activities good on the forum, so there won't be too much discussion before starting.
And yes there will be bumps on the road. Just make sure that every session makes enough fun so people get involved and keep coming back.

My first team-session was so much fun that I started to buy more ships to have even more fun (now I have a whole fckng fighter fleet at my disposal), but I still love to fly my Delta the most :).

[EDIT] I'm no pirate, I just like to dogfight for fun, even if it costs me money ;)
 

Han Burgundy

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That depends on organization. I met a bunch of TESTies once in Flightschool. Unfortunately the session wasn't repeated. I also wanted to participate in an Aurora competition, unfortunately it got postponed because RL interfered with a few of the other participants. Allot members enter forum and proceed to discord, others are waiting until the game becomes more interesting for them and fall asleep. Right now the only thing you really can do is dogfight or FPS. Then of course there is the matter called time-zone, some people must sleep, others have to go to work, family also isn't unimportant.

If you really want to organize something, then you first must find and bind / interest a bunch of members which like to play the right now available game modes, be active on the forum and discord, or at least attract the attention of the discord members. Organize on the forum. You can't organize something on discord, its way to real time. Find a good time for everybody or at least the majority. Time-zone really matters.
Move to discord to get the members in real-time contact and commence the planned activities. Make sure you plan your activities good on the forum, so there won't be too much discussion before starting.
And yes there will be bumps on the road. Just make sure that every session makes enough fun so people get involved and keep coming back.

My first team-session was so much fun that I started to buy more ships to have even more fun (now I have a whole fckng fighter fleet at my disposal), but I still love to fly my Delta the most :).

[EDIT] I'm no pirate, I just like to dogfight for fun, even if it costs me money ;)
It's really the timezones that will be our biggest foe. You also bring up a fantastic point when you say that many folks who own the "game" aren't playing it at all yet. The way I foresee us overcoming this issue when the PU goes live is focusing more on ongoing operations rather than "Strike missions" where everyone needs to meet up and go all at once. If its an ongoing thing, you just go do whatever activity it is when you are able to log in instead of scheduling a playsession. So if we wanted to impose an embargo on a system or station for some reason, it could be approached like that. Do it when you can and hopefully we have enough people to keep the task covered 24/7. We would be way more successful pulling that off than we would be trying to do something like fully man a Bengal and put around with it (That's over 1,000 crew apparently)
 

AwesomeDude

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Well Rock raiders is the only organized section of test at the moment and most official divisions only have generic names. One example is that Yellow jackets is not officially recognized. Yellow jackets is a rather important one as it is the security division. But in all fairness there is no real leadership for yellow jackets and definitely no codex.
 

Han Burgundy

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no real leadership for yellow jackets and definitely no codex.
Of course not. For it is the TEST way! If I wanted orders, I would have joined ADI.....
:cool:
 

marcsand2

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But in all fairness there is no real leadership for yellow jackets and definitely no codex.
You need a mastermind who is in charge and makes the big plans, then you need competent leaders who can realize those plans. This leaders can't be assigned, they must evolve in game play, which currently isn't progressed to a capable team play game, so we must wait until game progresses further.
 

Bigcracker

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As much as we joke, TEST is Montoya's and the rest of the staff baby. A piracy division is always going to be a grey-ish area because of a couple of reasons that can be political or whatever and I do not feel like getting into all the reasons because I am drunk. Right now we have people wanting to have pirates and others wanting to be yellow jackets, and honestly at the end of the day what is the point of 2 different combat divisions ( They can both do the same thing at the end of the day)? Right now in the Alpha reputation kind of matters because of Grim-Hex but when the game goes live the only reputation that matters is if you are in test or not because we will own stations and we can do what we want to them and the space around them.

If we do want a pirate division the best thing to do is show initiative and actually fly together and show we are somewhat combatant and have someone show leadership qualities/potential and not just here for J4G. Even though mining is not in the game Black Sunder put a ton of work,time and passion into the mining division already and it will make the org a ton of money/resources when that part of the game is ready. If I was running a Org/guild I just wouldn't slap someone in charge, but make sure I know that person after awhile who can do and wants to do that job and I believe Montoya and the rest of the staff will make that decision when the time is right.

At the end of the day I will be a Test combat pilot and that is all that really matters and I know I am not the only one that feels that way if piracy isnt a thing in TEST.

Hope my opinion makes sense.
 

Soven Taliesyn

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My general thought behind it is this. Round up 2 or 3 people to help plan and organize. Time zones are only minimally important. Eve Online, with a good alliance and a call to arms there would be tons of people who aren't normally on at the given time will be on, as long as there's notice and dedication from the peeps [picture of peeps will be placed here soon(tm)].

As long as there's planning and can get a group together within a certain time frame or two. Which is where leadership would come in. A few heads in different play times that can help head up ops.

All I'm trying to do is get the idea out there to start the planning process.
 

Soven Taliesyn

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The gray area of Pirates in TEST are still up for debate. It really depends on game mechanics and how it affects org as a whole. That doesn't mean TEST can't have a seperate org still headed up by TEST leadership. Still only depends on how pirates will affect the org itself.

All I'm proposing is that we get a few people to help head this up.

As for the debate of combat and pirates, not all combat is pirate but all pirate is combat. Also, it doesn't mean that if piracy and combat can't merge at some point.
 

Black Sunder

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If you want a piracy division, you must be ready to put the time, effort, and planning in. You must do the hard thinking and be able to convince people of a way forward that is in the org's best interest. You must have the drive and willingness to succeed and stick with it.

I want a strong Piracy Division as long as it doesn't bring the org's rep down and if it did there are ways around it such as an alt org. I want a strong Piracy Division so i can feed them juicy info to disrupt TEST's industrial competitors and thereby give us an edge. I want a strong Security/Combat Division I can contract work to and that can be relied on to bring down the sky if another org goes to war with us. I want a strong Logistics Division that can haul people's goods around that need it and build an infrastructure. I want a strong Organization so that we dominate this game as much is humanly allowed by the developers.
 

Soven Taliesyn

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If you want a piracy division, you must be ready to put the time, effort, and planning in. You must do the hard thinking and be able to convince people of a way forward that is in the org's best interest. You must have the drive and willingness to succeed and stick with it.

I want a strong Piracy Division as long as it doesn't bring the org's rep down and if it did there are ways around it such as an alt org. I want a strong Piracy Division so i can feed them juicy info to disrupt TEST's industrial competitors and thereby give us an edge. I want a strong Security/Combat Division I can contract work to and that can be relied on to bring down the sky if another org goes to war with us. I want a strong Logistics Division that can haul people's goods around that need it and build an infrastructure. I want a strong Organization so that we dominate this game as much is humanly allowed by the developers.
I want a pirate and combat division but I don't want to really devote THAT kind of time. Assuming that nobody steps up to take the reigns like you did with the mining division then I will do what I can. I'm just not active enough.

I'm considering maybe getting something started so that maybe a leader or two can step up out of the group(s). Maybe over the next few weeks I will see what I can get started. I was actually hoping someone would step up after I posted this. Haha.

Guess I will spend some time thinking on it and then get in touch with our glorious leader to work on building up something that may or may not resemble a lemonade stand.
 

Frisbeerocker

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Piracy was always what @Krystal LeChuck and myself had wanted to oversee. We spent quite a bit if time discussing it back when. But since there had been no game containing piracy for us to play, there hasn't been much need for us to do any actual work.

Since those early days of TEST, a lot has changed and this org has grown quite a bit. The game itself is also starting to take shape and this playstyle may soon be a reality.

But since then, both our lives have also changed significantly. Krystal's business idea became a reality and he is incredibly busy, as most self-employed entrepreneurs are. I too have been spending much more time at work. Gone are they days of sitting around for hours a day talking of what Star Citizen could be.

Like Black Sunderer and others have said, you have to put in the work. If you want to see a structure form around piracy, you will need to help build it. The general nature of TEST makes this a challenge.

As staff, our general position to subdivision has always been "wait until there's a game". Even now, there's still barely a game. But at the same time we cannot and will not ignore the work and devotion people put in to what they are passionate about.

Please hit me up on discord if you want to get this going. I'm more than happy to help in any way I can.
 

Lexicon

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Honestly I see Shadowrunner-esque pirates being valuable to TEST. Not necessarily in the sense of "you have a thing I want, and me killing you to take it will get me in trouble, so 'these unrelated guys' are going to kill you and I'm just going to conveniently take it while you're dead." Even in Star Citizen, pirates are a means of producing and controlling a market.

The Rock Raiders have effectively demonstrated that a large noncombat core of TEST wants to make money mining, right? Based on what we know of Star Citizen's node-based market, a large force of organized but concentrated miners can saturate a market and drive the local price of ore down. The obvious solution would be dispersing, flying to far away sectors and selling the ore there for a markup, risking product loss and requiring logistical organization.

But what if we opened an ore sink in the host sector?

What if the logistics arm of TEST did the research and found out which tradelanes carried NPC ore into the market, and sent the Blackout Drunks to kill everything that moved on those lanes, driving the cost of ore up? What if the Blackout Drunks were just encouraged to start more fights and do more ship-destroying in the sector (or a sector nearby), driving up the number of people buying ships from that location's NPC ship builders - and thus driving up the NPCs' demand for ore? The Rock Raiders could keep selling ore close to home, saving time and logistics on shipping, and the Blackout Drunks would get to blow things up.
 

Soven Taliesyn

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Piracy was always what @Krystal LeChuck and myself had wanted to oversee. We spent quite a bit if time discussing it back when. But since there had been no game containing piracy for us to play, there hasn't been much need for us to do any actual work.

Since those early days of TEST, a lot has changed and this org has grown quite a bit. The game itself is also starting to take shape and this playstyle may soon be a reality.

But since then, both our lives have also changed significantly. Krystal's business idea became a reality and he is incredibly busy, as most self-employed entrepreneurs are. I too have been spending much more time at work. Gone are they days of sitting around for hours a day talking of what Star Citizen could be.

Like Black Sunderer and others have said, you have to put in the work. If you want to see a structure form around piracy, you will need to help build it. The general nature of TEST makes this a challenge.

As staff, our general position to subdivision has always been "wait until there's a game". Even now, there's still barely a game. But at the same time we cannot and will not ignore the work and devotion people put in to what they are passionate about.

Please hit me up on discord if you want to get this going. I'm more than happy to help in any way I can.
I would like to get a convo going with you two.

As I don't think TEST needs people to be ONE specific area, I do think that it does need people in charge of specific areas to plan and coordinate and combat and piracy are actually manageable features in game (even if piracy now is really just greifing and not fully ready to be explored).
 
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