Ideas to stop company/faction abuse by Governors

[JudahR]

Governors have too much power to screw over players in their companies. On Lemosyne, we just had a Marauder governor boot his company members and hand over Restless Shores to Covenant via a thrown war. He then changed factions. Before that we had a Governor take his company’s money and switch to yellow. It isn’t a good feeling to see your in-game investments squandered because of a bad Governor. The following are some examples of checks and balances that could help the unranked company members (THE MAJORITY OF THE PLAYER BASE) feel less powerless (and happier about playing the game):

1. VETO MONEY WITHDRAWALS - Companies need an option to have a vote to veto a Governor’s action to withdraw money (25k+ over 48 hours for example) with a 24-hour window to cast a vote. This would be a certain amount of gold within a certain amount of time so that they can’t use a lot of little withdrawals. Once the Governor tries to withdraw that amount, the company members should be notified in-game. The money shouldn’t leave the company until the vote that was called is resolved. If the company votes to stop the withdraw, the ability to withdraw again should be disabled for a period of time (3 days - week). This would still allow the Governor to slowly embezzle the company, but it wouldn’t be as drastic.

2. VETO MASS BOOTING OF COMPANY MEMBERS - Companies should be able to vote to veto a TERRITORY HOLDING Governor’s ability to boot players en masse (10-20+) within a certain window (48 hours for example). If a vote is successful, the ability to boot that number of players again should be disabled for a period of time (3 days - a week).

3. SMALL COMPANIES CAN’T HOLD TERRITORY - A company should require a certain number of company members (20-30) to even be allowed to hold a territory. Let smaller companies still go to war, but if they win, the territory goes to the highest bid of eligible companies in the faction. If a company has less members than the required minimum at any time, the territory should be bidded on by other companies in the same faction to take it over. If a company loses enough members to go below the minimum to hold territory, give them 24 hours to replenish their ranks.

4. VOTE OF NO CONFIDENCE - Give company members the ability to hold a vote of no confidence for TERRITORY HOLDING Governors. Have a vote system that queues the votes invisibly. Company members can privately toggle the vote in their company menu. Once say 50% or so have it toggled, the system would call for a vote from the whole company. If a certain percentage (say 75 percent) of the company voted no confidence, the Governor would be demoted to Settler and a vote would be held to elect a new Governor. Governor’s demoted to Settler wouldn’t be able to become an officer again for a certain period (a week). Ranked members would lose the power to boot other members, change others’ ranks, or withdraw money during this time. This would allow a new Governor time to change the ranks of company members if needed.

5. FORCE AUTO-FILL FOR WARS - If a Governor doesn’t have slots for war selected within 10 minutes of wartime, force auto-fill of the ranks. That way the Governor can’t remove everyone from the war to intentionally throw it.

Company members have the ability to provide a Governor with a lot of power, but no recourse if the Governor is planning on turning on them. These are not perfect solutions, but something in this direction would be a start. It would give company members time to respond to bad Governors. We need checks and balances!

[Xejo]

@JudahR

SMALL COMPANIES CAN’T HOLD TERRITORY

No. 100% no. The last thing in the [new] world we should be considering is removing influence from smaller companies. Small companies are already completely cut off when it comes to wars/invasions experience.

One thing you should have added was Civil War. It should be entirely possible to bring your own faction to war.

[JudahR]

If you can’t even recruit 20 members, you probably shouldn’t be making decisions that affect the faction.

[JudahR]

Although, maybe if they win war, give them 24 hours to recruit the minimum numbers of members they need to hold the territory. They should have no problem recruiting if they win.

[Xejo]

The size of the company is no way represents the leadership abilities of the governor and consuls. Smaller companies can band together to overthrow a territory. Alliances can be and should be a big part of this game. NW should NOT be dominated by 100-player companies and mega companies, but that’s so far the status quo. We want more players to experience more content, that means getting smaller companies more opportunities to make a difference.

[Doktarok]

Viva la revolution!

[JudahR]

The reasoning behind the idea of no ownership for small companies is to prevent certain Governors from throwing territories to other factions by having a small enough group that they can avoid a veto system. If a small company of ten friends decide to throw territory to a different faction and then jump sides, then you can’t really stop them. The faction members that helped them in the war get screwed over.

[nrage147]

Another way to tackle this is change how regions/towns are owned and controlled, specifically I was thinking that instead of a single company being in control they should be controlled by the faction.

How would that work? I hear you cry, well…

In short we need “Proportional representation”. Specifically, all companies within a faction should be able to contribute to a town and based on their contribution should have a number of ‘seats’ on the town council.

For wars, these seats would grant them a number of slots in the army. In each battle they can chose to fill them, or forfeit them (to be re-distributed to the other companies). In addition, if any company slots are not filled by a suitable deadline, they are redistributed to the other companies.

For town decisions, each seat has a vote and majority rules. This covers treasury decisions as well as upgrades etc.

This should resolve a lot of the issues described in the OP. It also has added benefits that make smaller companies more viable, allowing them to contribute in a meaningful way with meaningful benefits.

It opens up PvP war to smaller companies, in a fairer more balanced way.

I think this more equal representation needs to manifest in game, also, with company banners appearing in towns, e.g. a wall of banners where each companies banner size shows representation/contribution with the main contributor having the largest.