Ren-Hua Mant
Whom Does the Stars Know
Fleeting has long been a cornerstone of the Chaos community, yet it has always remained somewhat of a niche. Though the fleeting community has always been rather small, its presence has been a near constant in macro PvP roleplay. Because of the community's smaller size, it's understandable that it would often seem to take a back seat to more traditional styles of roleplay. Despite that, why does it feel like fleeting is and has been taken for granted?
After a quick tally of invasions that have taken place since last year, I'd say that about 56% had only generic fleeting objectives (beat the enemy fleet), 19% had decent fleeting objectives (and I feel I am being generous at that, e.g: objectives with "special" conditions like CQC or some loosely defined objective outside of destroying your opponent's fleet), and 25% had no fleeting objectives at all (which is fine if there is no fleeting interest from either side, but this wasn't always the case). Though ground objectivesalmost always have more writers, they also have some variation in them, and in almost every case they have some direction. That is not the case with fleeting. Fleeters can be pretty crafty in creating their own direction, though I would surmise it is almost always secondary to and arises from the generic "space superiority" objective.
There is also the fundamental conflict between respecting that people shouldn't be forced to roleplay something they aren't interested in and the common courtesy of fielding opposition for your opponents. A disproportionate distribution of fleeters make things difficult enough, but fleeting is often one of the first things on the chopping block, even further limiting the narrative opportunities for fleeters. People have been good about hosting the occasional fleeting tourneys, but more often than not they are either non-canon or fizzle out prematurely.
I don't want fleeting to feel like a chore - for the faction staff launching invasions or for the fleeters participating in them. To that end, I wanted to initiate a conversation about this aspect of roleplay to see what can be done to bolster interest in fleeting, spice things up spaceside, and make fleeting matter again.
After a quick tally of invasions that have taken place since last year, I'd say that about 56% had only generic fleeting objectives (beat the enemy fleet), 19% had decent fleeting objectives (and I feel I am being generous at that, e.g: objectives with "special" conditions like CQC or some loosely defined objective outside of destroying your opponent's fleet), and 25% had no fleeting objectives at all (which is fine if there is no fleeting interest from either side, but this wasn't always the case). Though ground objectives
There is also the fundamental conflict between respecting that people shouldn't be forced to roleplay something they aren't interested in and the common courtesy of fielding opposition for your opponents. A disproportionate distribution of fleeters make things difficult enough, but fleeting is often one of the first things on the chopping block, even further limiting the narrative opportunities for fleeters. People have been good about hosting the occasional fleeting tourneys, but more often than not they are either non-canon or fizzle out prematurely.
I don't want fleeting to feel like a chore - for the faction staff launching invasions or for the fleeters participating in them. To that end, I wanted to initiate a conversation about this aspect of roleplay to see what can be done to bolster interest in fleeting, spice things up spaceside, and make fleeting matter again.