Oh god. Not more of this stuff, please.
In defence of zGHBz (who was Achmed last night when we were with the CE Rebels, and who has created a new character, Carl Robberts, since the whole fiasco with the CE thing going pear-shaped)....
...ArmouredNinja explained to us that the $500,000 price for the rebel license was set so high in order to prevent lamers and RDMers simply buying rifles, and due to some of the past issues with CE, and THAT THIS MIGHT BE CHANGING... so neither Carl Robberts nor myself (who wasn't there during this incident) bought rebel licenses TODAY. We were advised that Ninja was in (or going to be in) negotiations to have the price lowered to something more reasonable, and maybe we'd better wait until that was done.
Hence why Carl/zGHBz didn't have a license. In all but name, he is a rebel thru and thru, and (just as I did last night) I would vouch for his ability to RP (although he is a little trigger-happy and mad, that is partly his backstory, as we've discussed). But he can still RP well, to my mind. As can Ninja. They are too good to lose as rebels, imho.
As for Jimmy, he is an RL friend of zGHBz, and was not a rebel member, as such. He was a civ from Athira dragged along to help on a coke mission (at his suggestion), with the view that if he did right by the rebels, he'd possibly join in with us on a permanent basis, once the rebs grew to trust him. We gave him no weapons - as he said, if he had any, he'd picked them up. We gave him no ammo. If you like, he's a 'rebel on probation'. All of us are either saving up the 500k to get licenses, or we're waiting for the price to reduce, per Ninja's discussions as new rebel organiser (if that is indeed happening).
Moreover, if we (well, they - I wasn't there) broke the rule on use of arms in a city, then this should've been RPed better by the cops, imho. Either the cops should have restrained, arrested and incarcerated the errant rebs-without-licenses, or they should've been shot dead in their tracks.
Seems to me that there are several issues at the root of this.
1 - the 'new rebels' (formed after the implosion of CE left behind a few rebels-in-training that had not been converted yet to 'full' license-holding status) are still waiting to find out what will happen with license prices and were in limbo deliberately until that was resolved. This created the 'unlicensed' problem that exists right now... it will sort itself out given time, assuming Ninja is successful in working out what the final price will be, and the route forward for the rebels per se.
2 - There is no way that the rebels can spawn directly to their base(s), nor can they obtain food or water from anywhere but a city, so even if they are 'unlicensed rebels in training' there will inevitably be situations where they are in towns, carrying weapons. This is a tinderbox situation. If anything kicks off with the cops, trouble and firefights is almost bound to ensue, and there will be rebel trainees with weapons, involved in these firefights with disastrous results, possibly. It's not really fair to expect rebels to be instantly able to afford 500k for a license without some training time, nor is it fair that the cannot stay out of town and cop-trouble until they've amassed that amount of money. They need access to food or water and a spawn point that is not in a safezone
3 - Part of the problem is the lack of cop numbers. If there had been more cops on the server, then either the NLR wouldn't have been broken, or there wouldn't have been such a long wait whilst one remaining cop tried to 'sit on' several restrained rebels whilst several more rebels tried to mount a rescue mission. I'm not blaming the cops for not having enough numbers (see my other post as proof of my 'out-of-character' support for them)... but their lack of numbers does mean their response time is slow in situations like this. Can't be helped... but it seems unfair to use that as an excuse to simply ban everybody involved in the rescue mission once it went pear-shaped. Either there needs to be a variation in the rules that makes players aware that cops can break NLR if there are too few of them on the server, or there needs to be an acceptance that the cops will fail in missions like this if there aren't enough of them. That's just hard cheese, and not a reason to ban people for lack of RP, surely?
I appreciate I wasn't there in person (I was having a break after a mammoth session today, with some excellent RP from the very people you have just banned!) I may not have the minutae right in terms of who-shot-who or who fired first, or who said what... but to be honest, most of that is largely irrelevant, imho. This situation was BOUND to happen, since the shutdown of CE, and the fact that trainees are 'in limbo', and all the factors listed above. Without these guys, I wonder how many licensed rebels are actually left on the server? Most of them will have presumably been canned when CE got banned en-masse yesterday. I'm one of the few 'organised' rebels left from the stub of that group, and even I don't have enough for my full license... and I'm now without my chopper pilots and ability to conduct enough coke missions to raise that kind of money for the foreseeable future! It's all gone to hell in a handcart.
Rebel without a cause, that's me! Billy no mates with a rifle that I can't even stuff in a hedge and go back to civvy life! LOL
Please, show some recognition of the mitigating factors here, and at least give us back enough rebels to work with... Carl, Campbell, Jimmy, are too good to lose, imho. No-one's going to say that their in-game characters are the kinds of people you'd want to babysit your kids or meet your mum... but that's 'in-character'. They're rebels FFS... but they CAN RP. I've seen it first hand, and it's made for a very enjoyable couple of days on this server. I was kinda looking forward to a lot more...
Thanks for listening.
