Player Organisations
Player Organisations
A large part of any MMO are player organisations, be they guilds, PAs, cities, or groups.
In ATF we have three main types of Organisations, Cities, Corporations and Pirate Groups.
Cities – Cities are geographical organisations, players can join open cities or apply to join or be invited to closed cities, city citizenship doesn’t effect your ability to join other organisations, although all citizens have the right to vote for and stand for the job of mayor of the city, along with other civic posts, such as spokesperson and treasurer.
Corporations – ATF helps pilots form new corporations, these are groups of players working towards a common goal, or just a group of friends out to make money. Corporations can have a permanent headquarters in space, setup trading posts and run ship yards and factories.
Pirate Groups – In ATF players can become pirates, infact anyone can become a pirate, simply switch your ships IFF circuit off and you’ll be open to attack by police and other players, you can also attack other players in this mode. Switch the IFF back on again and you’ll be safe again (or safer anyway, see APS and Penalties below), note that turning the IFF on and off is not a simple job and takes time to perform, but real pirate groups are another story, pirate groups use their own jury-rigged IFF systems to help identify themselves to each other, they can prey on much larger vessels and can setup a defended hideout in non-faction space from which they can organise raids on the faction systems.
APS and Penalties
As you may have noticed, even players with their IFFs turned on can attack Pirates and any ship and be attacked by someone with their IFF off, the problem of pirates was becoming so great that the ATF setup a scheme to help protect other ships, the APS (Alliance Protection Scheme), ships signed up to the APS identify differently to ships with their IFF turned off, attacking or destroying a ship under the APS will incur a penalty, the standard penalty is 1 ship destruction. The first offence gains you 1 SD penalty, your second 2, third 3 and so on. Every day you go without destroying a ship reduces the gain rate by 1 (i.e. if you were at 4 and went 24 hours the next gain would be 3). There are a few provisos though, firstly while your current insurance will payout on destruction as normal, all reputable insurance companies refuse to insure pilots with outstanding SD penalties (good business sense, no point insuring a ship you know will be destroyed).
As you get more SDs the level of enforcement sent after you will be increased, both in power and frequency, the idea is that if a player griefs newbies, they’ll end up either completely broke from buying new ships (without insurance) or so harrassed that they give up playing. Players who take the Bounty Hunter Supplimentary skill can take bounty missions on players with outstanding SDs.
It should be noted that the APS only applies in faction controlled space, all three factions signed up to the APSE (APS Enforcement) Treaty and will enforce all SDs in their space, and hand out SDs as required, however outside of Faction space the APS may or may not be enforced dependant on who controls that space (be that Corporations, Pirate groups, or no one), Corporations can sign up to the APSE themselves and their members can then enforce SDs in their controlled space.
Ground and the APS
The APS only applies to ships, on the ground PvP is consentual only, in contested areas the Federation and Empire are at war, in certain areas either Faction by be fighting the Alliance, everywhere else PvP is via duels, players cannot attack other players except when they consent to PvP.