I understand where you're coming from, and I appreciate that you're trying to look out for smaller or less-established factions. It's a different angle that I wouldn't have really investigated, considering that we already have a few safeguards in place.
1.) Major Faction receives a maximum of
7 starting adjacent hexes (Not 5) of their choice for their starting influence cloud.
2.) New Major Factions may not be invaded for the first 30 days after their application is approved unless they initiate an Invasion first.
Within 30 days, a faction can make room for any potential loss by utilizing the 4 PVE threads available per calendar month. If they choose to invade, they do sacrifice that protection; however, this change would benefit them if they get invaded afterwards. Traditionally, factions also tend to build up a little and then start making waves. While it is not always the case, there is more to the map game than just invading that a new faction with new members might want to explore. There are also diplomacy efforts and junctions where a cloud can be preemptively grown. Look at the MIR for an example of this.
Some mandates do force clouds to stay smaller (
Eternal Fleet, for example...But it also has a get out of jail free card where the faction can teleport and get their hexes back, no harm, no foul...), but that is a risk that would need to be weighed by the MFO. Not me, not you.
Regardless, overall, I do like your concerns because it does cause me to double-check the site rules and make sure the other contingencies are still in play. It also makes me check them because sometimes we leave fragments of old rules behind by accident. I just, of course, stubborn me, disagree with some of the assumptions we're using to get to the point you're trying to make. Some of them just aren't quite true.
For starters, I don't think faction size or age is a particularly reliable indicator of who launches Invasions. Big factions invade, small factions invade, new factions invade, and old factions invade. In my experience, it has much more to do with faction culture, alignment, leadership, and whether the group enjoys PvP than how established they are.
I also think we're looking at smaller factions almost exclusively as attackers in this scenario. What happens when that same five-hex faction is defending against a fifty-hex faction? Right now, they can lose three hexes but gain absolutely nothing if they win. This change would give them an opportunity they don't currently have.
I agree that losing 3 out of 7 hexes is a much bigger deal than losing 3 out of 50. That's fair. But the attacking faction also chooses how many hexes to put on the line. If a smaller faction doesn't want to risk three hexes, it doesn't have to invade for three.
It can invade for one.
I'm also not sure how we'd fairly determine who's punching up or punching down. Hex count doesn't necessarily reflect membership, activity, PvP experience, or how capable a faction actually is. I've seen smaller groups with incredibly active writers and larger groups that struggle to field enough people for an Invasion. I wouldn't want to introduce a system where we have to start measuring which faction is stronger before deciding what rules actually apply because it is often subjective.
I think the accessibility of the map game for newer factions is absolutely worth discussing, but I don't think this change necessarily makes it less accessible. The requirements to launch an Invasion remain exactly the same. The difference is that both factions now have something to gain or lose.
And while I understand that established factions may be better equipped to absorb territorial losses, that's already true when they're defending. This proposal doesn't create that disparity. The difference is that smaller factions would now have the same opportunity to benefit from successfully defending that larger factions already have when attacking.
I don't think we have enough information to conclude that smaller factions are disproportionately responsible for Invasions or that this change would primarily benefit established groups. Recently, I've seen Invasions in the last 6 months with HR/SO/SC/IC...None are all that new. And none, but the IC were small. Not to mention that the IC's smaller cloud was also due to its chosen Mandate, rather than necessarily reflecting its membership or ability to participate in PvP.
This is just a pretty significant conclusion to draw without noting how Invasions have actually happened.
I'm not opposed to potential safeguards should the need arise...I just don't think the answer is necessarily to preserve an advantage for whichever faction happens to be attacking.
More or less, I'm pretty sure we want the same thing...But in contrast to your perspective and the data you may have acquired to support your theory, I think that it is just as important to allow all defending factions the opportunity to gain something tangible.
We should make all writers and all stories matter, but this change makes established factions' stories matter more than others'.
Again, my big bucket of hope offers this up. All faction stories matter, big, small, existing, new, aggressive, passive. I'm not going to go down a path of "existing factions" somehow deserving less just because they happen to have appeared on map a year ago. That defeats the entire purpose. With something like this, any potential MFO would need to prepare and weigh their choices carefully. Is invading worth the chance in the first 30 Days? Do I want to take that time to build my cloud first? To reach out to the other factions? Use the MFO Room on Discord (
that they all must join) to collaborate?
A lot of invasion rules/mandates work as intended
as they are now because the community, MFO's, members, etc.
make them work.
I can't change the culture with a rule....But we can try to offer a consistent, understandable rule or mandate that gives defenders and attackers meaningful rewards. It is preferable to a system where consequences depend on subjective assessments of which faction is "stronger" because more "hexes" doesn't always mean that.
Pretend that you were writing the rule or mandate for this in your ideal circumstances.
What would that look like to you? Remember, it has to be easily understood because if the community doesn't understand the rules as written - How can they follow them?
