Fixing Escalation Rules (they suck)

[Davis]

Section 1 Updates to Alliance and Agreements

Alliances are limited to a maximum of 5 factions. (Mega alliances may not team up together, defeats the point of the limit) (This limit includes districts, a district is regarded as an ally, a vassal you own, but an ally nonetheless) This will increase amount of diplomacy Roleplay and prevent the server from splitting into two massive alliances (Boring!) [Added benefit of reducing number of puppet factions]

This rule is not followed either enforce the rule more thoroughly or change it back. All this rule created was proxy factions agree or disagree that's how it is currently.

Reasons for Conflict:

Extortion
Extortion or attempted extortion could be a reason to cause conflict. The two factions would have to meet and reach a suitable business agreement to maintain the peace. For example if one group wants to control a certain aspect of storefronts within their territory they may put pressure on another faction for 50% of their profits, and after some escalation and sit down negotiations a deal of 20% in exchange for security is made.

I've firsthand seen a faction attempt to extort another faction for impeding on their racket which UA denied. Either remove this reason for escalation, rename it to impeding on said faction's business, or allow factions to extort other factions for stepping on their racket without the need for a mutually agreed contract beforehand. In the mafia the bigger group is going to try to tax the smaller mafia for cutting out a piece of their income IE illegal gambling, selling drugs at a certain location, etc. Another thing is the term "within their territory" there is no definition of territory found anywhere in the rules or conflicts. Assuming it refers to the faction's business fronts you could just get around this by doing it right outside their property. Either define territory or change it to business fronts. 

Section 2: Sit-downs and meetings

Not every sit down needs to be logged to UA, while UA is going to hate this change its ridiculous having to record and make a ticket for every sit down that occurs between factions especially internally within alliances. Most sit downs get resolved by the first meeting and making a ticket for every single one is aids and no one does it. To better balance this, sit-downs that require a UA ticket should only occur after the first sit down fails and further negotiation is needed. 

UA should not mediate sit downs, this is just fail rp. Why would some random guy act as the mediator between two dons of criminal families. I understand the practicality of the rule and how it makes UA's job a lot easier managing conflicts but end of the day there needs to be a separation of staff and rp and when you mix the two it ruins the roleplay. Complete immersion break tldr, if both factions can't agree on a mediator, then there shouldn't be one. 

I propose that there should be three distinct different types of sit downs that can occur. 1. Internal (factions inside the alliance) 2. External (factions outside of the alliance) and 3. Full Scale (Between whole alliances.) 

Section 3: New Escalation Tiers

Level 1: The first sit-down
Provided the transgression is minor and both faction leaders are good at what they do then most conflicts will not escalate past this point. Both factions will have met and discussed the issue and outlined an agreement to resolve the problem. Should they fail to do so they should make a UA ticket and find a mediator. The first sit down must be recorded in order to move to Level 2.

Level 2: The simmer (2nd sit-down)
The second sit down will occur with an agreed upon mediator to help hash out the facts of the case and both factions will have support tickets open with UA so they may submit any relevant evidence and keep management up to date on the status of the conflict. During the time between the first meeting to the second the two factions may put their business with the opposing faction on pause, halting trades and other events or niceties until the situation is resolved. 95% of conflicts should be resolved by the second sit down unless the issue is so atrocious that proper settlement terms cannot be reached.

Level 3: Boiling point (3rd sit-down)
A failure of the second meeting is the boiling point and by now bad blood has likely formed, small breakouts of violence are likely to occur, bar fights, obscenities maybe even some road rage or the occasional out of territory mugging. After the third sit-down and no resolution is found the escalation is moved up to Level 4.

Level 4: Brothers Spat (4th sit-down)
At this level target mugging (on your main characters…) the opposing faction is fair game and barring rivals from your establishments is expected. Loitering or graffiti may also become commonplace but tolerating loitering is also less practiced. Both sides will seek to annoy and harass the other to the dismay of both the police and your suppliers. While this stage of escalation allows you to openly harass the opposing faction it also strains your business, as your suppliers don’t want the extra heat your shipment arrival times and shipment costs increase 25%. Business is impacted.

Level 5: Wave of Violence (5th sit-down)
At this level the violence is palpable. Shootings of properties and businesses may become commonplace and will not be considered a raid. Shipment arrival times and shipment costs increase by 50% of the original amounts. More attention from police means your suppliers may request cash or certain amounts of drugs / weapons as payment in order to keep operating, failure to meet these payments could see additional vendor penalties apply and possibly have your faction lose access to selling certain drugs. Individuals responsible for the initial cause of the conflict can have hits (PKs) placed against them. (For instance if the conflict stemmed from a certain member target mugging and the offending faction had refused to hand him over. Seek UA approval for these hits.)

Level 6: Defcon 2
This level can be reached if more than 5 sit-downs have occurred and failed. At this level you are basically a few days if not less from hitting the mattresses, your suppliers disappear seeking to wait the impending conflict out. At this level you may firebomb the rival properties to put them out of commission and cause significant financial harm as well as openly target one member of their high command for a PK hit.

Level 7: War
Level 7 is war. You know how war goes. Your factions are fully blocked from selling drugs to any NPC as the sellers aim to not choose sides. War lasts until one side falters or until an agreed win condition must be met. UA has final say if war is approved or not and can end it at any time.

The things I changed

- Every escalation level represents a sit down up until 5. Both factions have 5 chances to resolve the conflict before it escalates to violence. 
- Removed the Level 0, needing approval from UA for every instance of conflict resolution is a waste of time, 99% of conflicts are resolved are resolved by the first sit down and you should not need UA involvement until it moves up a level where an initial resolution could not be found.

Section 4: Taxation/Compensation Changes

Remove the max escalation level for all of the offenses. Any and all offenses can move towards conflict if neither side eventually comes to a resolution. Bad blood simply doesn't stop because the conflict has a max escalation tier. This just makes the escalation system put an absolute stop on the possibility of real conflict, if both sides can't agree on a resolution, then conflict is inevitable not based on what max escalation level the offense was. The tax amounts should stay and are a good reference for how much you should tax someone for an offense. 

Edited Thursday at 08:42 PM by Davis

[Canadian-bacon]

6 minutes ago, Davis said:

This rule is not followed either enforce the rule more thoroughly or change it back. All this rule created was proxy factions agree or disagree that's how it is currently.

I don't see how this rule isn't followed, faction alliances are very clearly defined and there's a maximum 5 factions in each? What proxies exist? If you mean puppet factions those have 'existed' or have been a thing long before conflict rules existed.

7 minutes ago, Davis said:

I've firsthand seen a faction attempt to extort another faction for impeding on their racket which UA denied. Either remove this reason for escalation, rename it to impeding on said faction's business, or allow factions to extort other factions for stepping on their racket without the need for a mutually agreed contract beforehand. In the mafia the bigger group is going to try to tax the smaller mafia for cutting out a piece of their income IE illegal gambling, selling drugs at a certain location, etc. Another thing is the term "within their territory" there is no definition of territory found anywhere in the rules or conflicts. Assuming it refers to the faction's business fronts you could just get around this by doing it right outside their property. Either define territory or change it to business fronts. 

Maybe, I plan on making more direct definitions for certain things, like territory, in the future, but some of it is blocked by development timelines.
 

8 minutes ago, Davis said:

Not every sit down needs to be logged to UA, while UA is going to hate this change its ridiculous having to record and make a ticket for every sit down that occurs between factions especially internally within alliances. Most sit downs get resolved by the first meeting and making a ticket for every single one is aids and no one does it. To better balance this, sit-downs that require a UA ticket should only occur after the first sit down fails and further negotiation is needed

9 minutes ago, Davis said:

- Removed the Level 0, needing approval from UA for every instance of conflict resolution is a waste of time,

Unfortunately people need to confirm with us because in the past they just act on their own which generally means Mass RDM or a fail conflict, I also think level 0 is good because all you need to do is inform us of your intentions and we can look into the matter in case there was some sort of rulebreak in the initial scenario. Let's us get ahead of something developing before it's properly approved, I think it's more annoying for your RP to commence then need to be voided later.

10 minutes ago, Davis said:

I propose that there should be three distinct different types of sit downs that can occur. 1. Internal (factions inside the alliance) 2. External (factions outside of the alliance) and 3. Full Scale (Between whole alliances.) 

This is a good idea. I'll look about defining them.

10 minutes ago, Davis said:

UA should not mediate sit downs, this is just fail rp

We don't really mediate unless absolutely necessary, it's listed in the thread but the two sides should agree on a third party mediator, if they fail to agree on one because neither trust the other instead of letting the RP stall or die we offer UA to possibly be an ingame mediator since we're meant to be completely unbiased. They can also opt to not have a mediator if it's necessary.
 

13 minutes ago, Davis said:

- Every escalation level represents a sit down up until 5. Both factions have 5 chances to resolve the conflict before it escalates to violence. 

12 minutes ago, Davis said:

This level can be reached if more than 5 sit-downs

Technically this is higher than the current requirement of failed sitdowns involving a mediator, is your intention to raise the number of required sitdowns?

13 minutes ago, Davis said:

Remove the max escalation level for all of the offenses. Any and all offenses can move towards conflict

In the escalation themselves it says that if it continues it can exceed the max, for instance of a territory dispute hits the maximum escalation and one of the escalation options is to PK an opposing rival then it becomes a new offence (Murder) with a higher max esc cap, they can still begot bad blood, but the point there is if two factions start having issues one minor incident should not lead to war, factions should be rivals for a while before a war, at most here I can see editing around the definitions for max esc or the levels, also a lot of these offences are just examples, there's other reasons that aren't listed that can occur. 

Smaller less serious conflicts can maybe take place instead for instances of lower escalation, like instead of a bar fight leading to an all out 5v5 war the two factions can have a 1v1 conflict of firebombing / bar fights for a week.

[Davis]

6 minutes ago, Canadian-bacon said:

I don't see how this rule isn't followed, faction alliances are very clearly defined and there's a maximum 5 factions in each? What proxies exist? If you mean puppet factions those have 'existed' or have been a thing long before conflict rules existed.
I suggest you talk to some players about the current alliance system in the city cause it's still 1 side versus the other

Maybe, I plan on making more direct definitions for certain things, like territory, in the future, but some of it is blocked by development timelines.
 

Unfortunately people need to confirm with us because in the past they just act on their own which generally means Mass RDM or a fail conflict, I also think level 0 is good because all you need to do is inform us of your intentions and we can look into the matter in case there was some sort of rulebreak in the initial scenario. Let's us get ahead of something developing before it's properly approved, I think it's more annoying for your RP to commence then need to be voided later.
If UA had to look every time, we sat down with another family about some associate doing something stupid there would be more escalation tickets than donation tickets.

This is a good idea. I'll look about defining them.

We don't really mediate unless absolutely necessary, it's listed in the thread but the two sides should agree on a third party mediator, if they fail to agree on one because neither trust the other instead of letting the RP stall or die we offer UA to possibly be an ingame mediator since we're meant to be completely unbiased. They can also opt to not have a mediator if it's necessary.
 "the two sides should agree on a third-party mediator" Both sides not agreeing on a mediator is part of the roleplay and making UA act as a mediator is forcing resolutions between factions actually creates the "letting the RP stall or die." which you mentioned. Maybe it's not the RP scenario UA was looking for (resolution) but factions should be free to negotiate without a mediator especially when forcing a resolution isn't in the interests of one of the groups. 

Technically this is higher than the current requirement of failed sitdowns involving a mediator, is your intention to raise the number of required sitdowns?
The intention is to align every sit down with every level of escalation making it much easier to visualize the timeline towards violence. 

In the escalation themselves it says that if it continues it can exceed the max, for instance of a territory dispute hits the maximum escalation and one of the escalation options is to PK an opposing rival then it becomes a new offence (Murder) with a higher max esc cap, they can still begot bad blood, but the point there is if two factions start having issues one minor incident should not lead to war, factions should be rivals for a while before a war, at most here I can see editing around the definitions for max esc or the levels, also a lot of these offences are just examples, there's other reasons that aren't listed that can occur. 

"one minor incident should not lead to war" Most wars start with a minor incident that boils over due to a lack of a resolution. Maybe the reason isn't enough to jump to war immediately but weeks of no resolution should lead to more violent interactions which will in turn lead to a more bloody conflict. 

Smaller less serious conflicts can maybe take place instead for instances of lower escalation, like instead of a bar fight leading to an all out 5v5 war the two factions can have a 1v1 conflict of firebombing / bar fights for a week.

I full heartedly agree with this

 

[Canadian-bacon]

I'll take these points into consideration, better than just ignoring the thread. For what I outright agree'ed with, we can see about amending that soon. Feel free to message me directly if you want to discuss further. 

 

I'll label this as 'partially' accepted otherwise.