shrimp

While the AI system of LFS is remarkably useful for giving Republic pilots enemies to combat that aren't always players, I'm not entirely sure how well optimized the system is. @Phantom It's certainly worth looking into.

ur welcome

five knights at fnaf

Well, pedophilia isn't exactly in the rules, but forget the rules, we're gonna ban him anyways. +1 Chief gang!

Not every gun is supposed to be a swiss army knife, but anyways, this doc is from the 2nd iteration of SWRP and I thought some of you would like to see the numbers we used for reference.

Establishing definite structure to MRP Factions, organizing leadership, and raising standards. A return to an enhanced version of a previous form as well as setting an organizational standard for the more complex shit. The Changes Structure 1.1 Faction Layouts & Purpose 1.1.1 The Scale Right, let’s get started here. I think it’s no secret that with the recent removal of Marines, the grand scale of the server is finding itself a bit more on the balanced side. However, the removal of Marines opened a void for AFSOC to fill, thus restoring the long withstanding and prehistoric imbalance between US, RU, and formerly Afghan. In my entire time on the server, the US has always had at least one more faction than its opposition, and at most three. The current layout looks something like this on the US side. -> USASF -> RRC Army -> AFSOC -> MARSOC -> DEVGRU The structure is clearly and distinctly split into both an Army and Navy branch, starting and converging on single points, giving a very straightforward path of progression. It is a functional model that has been proven to work well over the years, while inviting a lot of room for drawing down the chain of command, and discouraging inter-faction fuckery. The RU model looks a little different right now. -> GRU 2GA -> SSO -> Vega -> PDSS I know I talk about this a lot, however it should be alarming enough that the two sides of what should be a symmetrical server are anything but. Progression in the wild-west era of the server under Gildarts’ administration typically boiled down to any players of reasonable quality jumping immediately into one SF faction, making their friends, and staying there for their duration on the server. Anyone less fortunate to be selected typically found themselves stuck in a base faction for months, and not by choice. This is a very backwards practice of the server that became normalized under Gildarts. Players should be the ones choosing the faction or path they take in the server, not the groups of friends that make up the factions. It’s just bad for business. 1.1.2 OMRP The solution for the aforementioned problem is literally in balancing the scale, and sticking to it. RU happens to be down a faction, particularly on it’s Naval side. PDSS is lacking a T1 counterpart to feed into, which has resulted in obvious problems. My recommendation is adding OMRP, or Russian Naval Special Reconnaissance. Other than that this is another SF unit in the Russian Navy, OMRP is useful to fill the gap here for a variety of reasons that I will get to later on. With adding a faction comes with its more obvious questions of weapons, models, and leadership. These questions will be answered later on, but I think many of you will come to understand that choice of leadership will no longer be as big of an issue as in the recent past. I also highly expect a large number of the current generation of RU players to come with arguments of ‘we’re fine how we are, and another faction would just complicate things’. To that I say, for how long? The instability of the server caused by imbalances as large as entire factions has contributed to countless heaps of nonsensical bullshit. Actions described in this thread are being suggested with the intention of improving the sustainability, retention and quality of the server permanently. Being proactive rather than reactive and finally mopping up an old mess. With the addition of OMRP, the RU model changes to look like this. -> GRU -> SSO 2GA -> Vega -> PDSS -> OMRP Looks familiar, doesn’t it? With this model, we can start drawing parallels from RU to the US side of the server (finally). MARSOC is equal to GRU, PDSS is equal to GB, SSO is equal to DEVGRU, and OMRP would be equal to RRC all in terms of class setup. Done deal. Class Russian OMRP : Rifleman Russian OMRP : Surgeon Russian OMRP : Spectre Russian OMRP : Commander Primary khr_cz858 N/A cw_jng90 khr_cz858 Secondary khr_cz52 khr_cz52 khr_cz52 khr_cz52 Equipment N/A fas2_ifak N/A N/A Model 1.1.3 Identity Now that the factions look a little less fucked, we can talk about each faction's respective purpose from an RP standpoint. The function of a faction is important in retaining its niche on the server. For the longest time, most of the factions on the server attempted to fill the same role, and in some essence, it naturally aligned the server by competitive methods. Over time, factions gradually established their roles in the server other than simply just ‘War Factions’. Some of these roles happened to be more explicit than others. For example, MARSOC or GRU might attribute themselves as being ‘Sniper Factions’ due to the presence of sniper classes in both, however it’s not something directly stated in the server rules or otherwise. This often results in, over time, factions bouncing around and not sticking to what should be their one and only niche. Something that occurs as a result of this is two factions occupying the same role, one doing it far better, and the other being deemed redundant as a result. When the factions are what make up the server, and an entire faction being worthless is basically 10% null and void. Not cool. Ironing out a faction’s purpose is the first step in reorganizing the entire faction around that single purpose. It needs to be explicit, clearly defined, and consistent. Faction leaders should not be able to decide the function of 10% of the server at a whim. With the recent resurgence of RP and the introduction of the event server, establishing purpose is more important than ever so that members of the server understand exactly what it is they should be doing when under the microscope. A brief chart of faction purposes would look something like this (open to suggestions here), and most are pretty self-explanatory. 11B United States Infantry 2GA Russian Infantry GB Unconventional Warfare GRU Unconventional Warfare MARSOC Naval Infantry PDSS Naval Infantry RRC Special Recon SSO QRF DEVGRU QRF OMRP Special Recon Vega Covert Operations AFSOC Support 1.2 Ranking Structures 1.2.1 Limiting Ranks are the de facto indicator of progression on the server. The higher the rank you are, the further along in the server you are. Ranks are also the foundation for the chain of command, something that has been in a sort of limbo for years. The CoC is something really important for RP in a server like this, but is scarcely respected or followed. The power of the CoC has always been retained where it doesn’t belong; in SF Factions. Gone are the days of the FADM and the DGEN, where SF leaders would hold ranks to rival that of whoever was supposed to be in charge of their entire country. In reality, SF leaders should not be the decision makers in a country, but rather the base faction leadership and Generals therein. Thanks to the ever generous concessions of SF faction leaders over the years, most of the SF factions have dropped down to the rank of Colonel or some equivalent (most), but still most SF leaders refuse to give into the authority of the Generals, and as a result find themselves rarely giving into authority of anyone real. SF leaders have a hard time listening, which is kind of a bad thing that I'll address later. The important takeaway here is that SF factions should have a universal rank cap at O-6, and operate at the discretion of their side’s respective O-11. 1.2.2 Standardization With consistency issues comes again the topic of ranks. Some factions really like to change their ranking structure often, or maintain nonsensical ranking structures altogether. Here’s what they should look like. 11B GB RRC 2GA GRU SSO MARSOC DEVGRU Vega PDSS OMRP AFSOC E-1 PV1 PVT Pvt SR CDT SR AB E-2 PV2 PFC PFC SA OPT SM AM E-3 PFC JSG LCpl SN SO SA A1C E-4 CPL SGT Cpl SO3 JA SSM SRA E-5 SGT SNS Sgt SO2 AGT S2C SSG E-6 SSG SHS SSgt SO1 FA S1C TSG E-7 SFC POS GySgt SOC SFA GS MSG E-8 MSG PPS MSgt SOCS SA GSS SMS E-9A SGM SSP MGySgt SOCM SPV MM CMS E-9B CSM ENS SgtMaj MCPON CSA SMM CCM O-1 2LT LT 2ndLt ENS SSV JLT 2LT O-2 1LT SLT 1stLt LTJG CSV LT 1LT O-3 CPT KPT Capt LT GCL SLT CAPT O-4 MAJ MAY Maj LCDR COS KPLT MAJ O-5 LTC PPKN LtCol CDR DDR KPT LTC O-6 COL PKN Col CAPT EXD CADM COL O-7 BG GenMay x x x x x O-8 MG GenLt x x x x x O-9 LTG GenPkn x x x x x O-10 GEN GenArmii x x x x x O-11 GA MF x x x x x 1.2.3 Approved Niggas will be probably be like ‘ShRImSp youC An’t JuST ChAANge OuR FAcTion, MY FACITion WhtIout Telling ME!!!111’ shut the fuck up and get that dumb idea out of your stupid heads, none of you own shit 1.3 SOCOM & KSSO 1.3.1 Brief Explanation So, as I’m sure many of you have already seen, USSOCOM is a thing on the US side of the server. In the past we’ve all seen many a faction’s various attempts at doing garbage designation shit to clutter up their MOS or add unneeded complexity to a faction in ways that provide little to no benefit. SOCOM and KSSO are not of this nature. SOCOM was introduced on the US side by myself as a RP initiative, Event Server function, and an experiment. I’m sure many of you are aware that within the military, there are other jobs than just ‘Infantry’, which right now is the bulk of the server. The SOCOM system is an attempt to give players secondary roles in RP to fulfill so that every player in every faction isn’t a dedicated rifleman, as there are other duties that will need to be fulfilled in events. 1.3.2 Purposes Within SOCOM, there are seven primary specialties (4 more for AFSOC) that every enlisted member of SOCOM can be assigned to. Medical - In charge of keeping everyone alive. EOD - The guy who makes sure everyone doesn’t blow up. Engineering - Combat Engineer related duties. Intelligence - Pertains to the intelligence gathering and recon parts of operations. Comms - Responsible for communicating status with Command elements. Operations - In charge of planning and logistics of missions. Infantry - Standard Infantry, responsible for security. Each US SF has a faction specific MOS/NOS adaptation of one of these roles, and every SOC enlisted fulfills one of them. Leaders assign roles at their own discretion to ensure every base is covered in the field. This is a necessary evil and complication to ensure the success of operations. For instance, without an Operations Specialist, a faction might enter a situation unprepared or run out of ammo without someone coordinating logistics. Without an EOD, a faction won’t have anybody to properly disarm landmines and other IEDs commonly found in the field. Without a Comms Specialist, Command elements will not be able to properly coordinate and direct an operation. These are the gears required to make the event machine run smoothly, and allow factions more operational freedom and flexibility to overcome a variety of challenges in RP. Officers do not maintain a specific specialty, as their job is to make sure that the enlisted specialists are doing theirs. As a result of everyone focusing on a singular job at any given time, they will gradually become more and more experienced at roleplay in that role, and thus generate higher quality roleplay. 1.3.3 Conversion & Application Due to the experimental nature of the SOCOM system, I wanted to start and test its functionality on the US side of the server before doubling down and integrating it into RU. Now that I’ve got what I believe to be a stable mold, it’s time to fully push it forward so that RU has its respective bases covered as well. That brings us to KSSO. KSSO is the Russian Special Forces Command, and is functionally identical to SOCOM. Further designations will be up to the general consensus of RU Spetz, but I will be personally integrating the system myself. It’s up to the leaders therein to manage it properly, otherwise RU’s event scores will suffer. 1.4 Progression 1.4.1 Cooldowns The value attributed to ranks by any given player is directly proportional to the amount of time and effort put in by a player to earn said rank and title. A person who earns an Officer position through a mediocre at best tryout and an overnight waiting period of minimal contribution is a lot less likely to commit themself to the position that they ‘earned’. As a result, players who earn a position quickly leave it just as fast. Setting long and concrete cooldowns per rank, given that the rank structure is standardized, can greatly prolong the amount of effort required to earn an officer position, adding value and merit to said titles. Once upon a time in MRP, such ranks were quite difficult to get, leaders swapped hands far less frequently, and being something meant something. Over time, that has become less and less of the norm. To counteract this, scaling the promotion cooldown on a broader and more fair spectrum is the single most effective way to limit the rapid promotion and poor retention rate of the server in its current state. Promotion cooldowns would start relatively short to give new players the feeling that they are achieving something in their first few days on the server. From there, the cooldowns would rapidly scale up to slow down progression. General ranks will be done by appointment from active officers. E-1 No Cooldown E-2 1 Day. E-3 2 Days. E-4 2 Days. E-5 5 Days. E-6 5 Days. E-7 1 Week. E-8 1 Week. E-9A 1 Week. E-9B Officer Discretion. O-1 2 Weeks. O-2 2 Weeks. O-3 2 Weeks, 4 days. O-4 2 Weeks, 4 days. O-5 3 Weeks. O-6 By Appointment. 1.4.2 Specializations The specializations granted by the SOCOM system allow for, as previously stated, a much higher level of concentrated roleplay by individual players within their respective specialization. In terms of progression within specs, players will naturally become better at doing what they do, and to compliment this growth, official guides for the proper way to perform each specialization’s designated duty will be posted in guides and tutorials. Progression translates to getting more and more advanced, as well as creative, with the tools provided. Leadership 2.1 Faction Leader Guidelines 2.1.1 Laissez Faire Gildarts had a very unique take on the act of managing the factions of the server in the sense that he didn’t manage them at all, totally hands off. The fact of the matter is that the server is made up entirely of the factions on it. Without the factions, there is no server, and if a faction is rendered inoperable due to their own mismanagement, then a portion of the server is rendered inoperable. As a result of Gildarts’ policy, faction leaders were given an exceptional amount of freedom to do whatever they wanted with the faction they happened to be in control of. This was a problem because the people who became faction leaders during this time weren’t exactly properly selected, it was more just a matter of succession, and those who succeeded the position had free reign over a large portion of the server, which in most cases is unacceptable for properly managing the health of the server. 2.1.2 Permissions Faction Leaders are responsible for managing their faction, and doing whatever necessary to keep it operational. Factions are meant to be run like military entities (hence the term: MilitaryRP), and as such certain rules need to be followed, certain precedents need to be set, and certain things shouldn’t be happening. For example, as previously stated, ranks are one of the many things that should remain relatively constant. I’ll leave it to current management to more explicitly define what constitutes a concrete feature, but things like rank, internal structure, tryout, tier (some people legitimately think they can just “change” tier), and standards are all things that should not change with the leader. A new leader should not mean an entirely new faction. In fact, if leaders are prevented from being able to fuck up a faction, new leaders shouldn’t have to change anything to fix it, and suddenly, we have consistency. Not so much as to take away freedom from leaders, but to ensure that they aren’t able to do stupid shit for no reason, which is often the case (See: Conway). 2.2 Staff Relationship 2.2.1 Succession No faction leader lasts forever, and the turnover rate has only increased over the years. As a result of it being much, much slower in the past, there was never a defined standard for staff appointing a new leader. Sometimes it gets handed to the next in line to the throne, sometimes staff intervenes. Determining a leader on a case by case basis has typically invited some much unwanted dissension from the playerbase, especially when staff stick their noses into a friend faction. It gets messy, people threaten to leave, the whole tantrum. By establishing a standard, we can avoid the mess altogether, and I believe that the chosen leader should not just be a staff member or an officer (legitimate or illegitimate) of the faction, but the most qualified candidate. To determine this, management should look to applications whenever a vacancy presents itself in order to cull the whining. 2.3 Coordinated Initiatives 2.3.1 Making Stuff Happen If the server is the United States, and management is its Federal Government, the faction leaders are the Governors of its many states. That means that, if factions want to be bitter and not cooperate with others, certain things just can’t happen (for instance, SOCOM). Staff have no real way of broadly communicating with, coordinating with, and organizing with faction leaders. In the very near future, it’s going to be incredibly important that every leader in the community is on the same page in order for things to get done. 2.3.2 Getting Together Meeting regularly is an important aspect to maintaining a common focus over time. Staff meetings happen bimonthly at best due to a lack of initiative from upper staff, and a regular concrete schedule hasn’t been in place since I was a T.Mod three years ago. Keeping staff on the same page is one thing, but the community has never attempted to keep the pillars of the community on the same page as well. Faction Leaders and management should be meeting weekly (Sundays at 7 EST are usually good) to make sure everyone is on the same page to make the server run smoothly and without unwanted deviation. 2.4 Reserve Policy 2.4.1 The Status Quo A recent re-implementation of the reserve policy was pushed out by the management team, however the guidelines lack any sort of specific requirements. The current guideline is as follows: 1. “[Player must have] strived for greatness within the faction while active duty.” 2. “Lead the faction while/while not being the faction leader.” 3. “Left due to medical issues. “ On top of these three guidelines, the new mandated reserve rank is now exactly O-1, but only retains the power of an E-4 for whatever reason. 2.4.2 Toeing The Line As a result of the now vague guidelines and the previously non-existent guidelines, reserves have been warped over time from a scarcely awarded tool to provide players struggling with personal issues that force them to take time off the server with a chance at maintain their rank to what it is now; a further extension of the friend-faction system. Players now consider it a personal favor to be awarded reserves upon the end of their time in a faction, which is rarely of a long duration. It has become so commonplace that, in fact, some players feel insulted when they don’t receive reserves, when the reality is that most if not all players maintaining reserve ranks do nothing or have done nothing exceptional for said faction. The newer guidelines almost promote the less desirable usage of reserves rather than endorse it, and seem to encourage players to seek leadership positions within a faction just to guarantee what is effectively a permanent whitelist. Frankly, that’s not how it should work. 2.4.3 Broken System In reality, the reserves system was introduced to allow players that had external circumstances appear that prevented them from playing on the server, or playing video games in general. Players who were granted reserves for a legitimate reason were expected not to play on the server, or any server for that matter, while their rank was, quite literally, being reserved. This was a way for players to not be penalized for things out of their control. As time went on, the original intent of reserves fell into obscurity and here we are today, where the system is now regularly proven to be ineffective. The typical reason for requesting reserves is to play another faction on the same server, which strongly promotes disloyalty, poor commitment, and reckless behavior due to having the safety net of a reserved rank. In my opinion, I think it is in the best interest of the server to remove the reserve system altogether for the above reasons, or simply revert it back to its original purpose and have it enforced strictly by staff, not by factions. Standards 3.1 Tryouts 3.1.1 Difficulty As stated above, tryouts need to maintain some level of difficulty in order to keep the image of all the factions at a respectable level. If a tryout is too easy, or if they’re are suddenly a lot of people in a faction, people notice, start bickering, and a faction’s image suffers. It’s a constant back and forth where a faction that has a difficult tryout struggles to get numbers because there are factions with tryouts that are way easier. Over the years the server has become a competition to see who can have the easiest tryout in order to bolster the most amount of players and stage some claim to superiority. It’s back and forth, and a dumb cycle. Management ensuring that factions at the same tier, on both sides of the server, have tryouts of similar difficulty would ensure that tryouts are less manipulable, and less prone to frequent change. Because tryouts will be standardized and wont need to change as often, the player base will gradually adapt to participating in more challenging tryouts because they won't have an easier route to turn to. Players that do complete the harder tryouts will feel more rewarded and commit to their faction longer. 3.1.2 Generic Components Generic parts of tryouts are common items like combat sims, OC/Match, or other universally used courses. While these are useful in setting a common standard to compare relative skill among players, including too many common items allows for a tryout that can be easily passed by many players on the first try, making what should be a hard tryout very easy for some players. Ensuring that a tryout includes a number of elements on top of the generic items is important in making sure a tryout is passable but not on the first try. 3.1.3 Quality Assurance With this new way of overseeing tryouts, staff will need to keep a tight leash on the amount and circumstances of handpicks, or modifying a tryout in order to allow certain people an easier time. Faction leaders, like staff members, should have the capability to record their in-game footage. From now on, faction leaders (or officers) should record and be able to present footage of all their faction members passing a legitimate version of their tryout in the event that questions arise surrounding the inclusion of a player in a faction where they might not belong.

i know

Models for: 2GA : Scout 2GA : Demolisher Ranger : Oppressor PDSS : Enforcer Updated

Bro all you had to do was come on here and not say a word or, get this, be respectful and you just have to start arguing with everyone. Not doing a good job convincing everyone, so honestly I'm on team Uphold-The-Ban. Take a walk buddy.

Fun Facts: The VIP classes are not the only perk that comes with VIP, just the cherry on top if I'm not mistaken.

When you buy VIP, you have access to every VIP class provided you have a rank in that faction. Base faction members buying VIP to support the server gives them something to look forward to in the future. Striving for a position in an SF faction, earning it, and then getting to enjoy the perks of VIP. The only thing up there that isn't already on the server in some way is the knife, which is basically a quicker machete. You're not going to find gamebreaking items on any of the VIP classes that can't be bought elsewhere. You're paying for quantity of weapons (already made void by regular donator weapons anyways) and aesthetics. Consider the following: If you join the server and pay $15 to have a class on par with anything in SF factions, why would a player ever join an SF faction?

I can change that with just a few keystrokes. Then don't pay money. This is a free-to-play server, where you can get by just as fine as the next guy without paying a dollar (like me). You're not paying money and receiving a product, you're making a donation to the improvement of the server and receiving perks as thanks. That being said, this is not a pay-to-win server where the more money that you pay, the more guaranteed you are to win. The advantages provided above are purely aesthetic when it comes down to weapon balancing and models, and only grant bonuses in the context of quantity.

It's the SKS-D, totally default (not PDSS' AK-105). Because all the VIP classes in SF factions are locked behind a paywall and a tryout. It would get kinda crazy if every single person on the server had unrestricted access to some insane classes for how cheap they're going to be compared to the average donator class.

log off bro

@Phantom I actually quite like your set of questions from SWRP, could you post them?

Not much I can do about a "fucking goggle". My guidelines for making this were to use server assets. The PDSS model pack happens to have quite a lot in it, GRU only had two more models to work with. Vega has no differences at all.

You sure?

Both of the models used with GRU aren't currently in use on the server, both classes have weapon types currently unavailable in GRU, and both classes are based around the same shit MARSOC has, which is a fair comparison.

I already addressed this before, but the point of every single faction having VIP classes outside their specialization is so that they have weapons outside their specialization.

Do not worry young man, for shrimps has a plan. This is just for the future, once we're ready to move forward with the community and head on into 2.0. I'm not the authority on that, however I can say that VIP and Elite VIP will offer a variety of perks other than just these classes if I'm not mistaken.

It's not off the table as far as I know.

Medic classes usually have zero guns.

The point is to actually give you guys something you don't already have.