An idea that's been floating around, but not yet been truly presented is the idea of Corruption among the ranks of SM's. If our fears are realized and the majority of players become SM's, i.e 30-40%, it would seem natural that the fight against Corruption be a very real part of the game play.

The mechanic of Corruption would be a measurement of how proud and/or adverse to authority your character is. Ignore objectives or orders from your Strike Force leader, showing mercy to Xenos, and especially the forces of Chaos, and Corruption may start to take hold, growing extremely slowly at first - unnoticeable for the first few offenses - but like a contagion, it spreads, it grows, and then suddenly explodes into an uncontrolled pandemic. Players who follow into the path of corruption are a danger to themselves and of players who associate with them. Corruption stacks, and grows faster depending on who's company you keep. Players who are corrupted beyond salvation are assumed parlaying (even unwittingly, or unwillingly) with the forces of the warp. They are deemed traitors to the Imperium, and for the remainder of the campaign, they are without a faction - fighting a desperate struggle to survive the tides of war, but able to kill any player at will. At the end of the campaign, the player may choose to "Expunge Record" and rejoin the Imperial Faction, or to stay rogue, fighting for a cause of their choosing.

Thoughts?

"However, the more radical elements of the Inquisition also possess many forces of their own, such as the Radical Malleus' daemonhosts bound in Emperor blessed chains and seals or the trillions of pertinent and brainwashed former chaos or renegade marines that go to war with their armor devoid of any markings. The Ordo Xenos has radical elements as well like hidden android robotic armies from the Iron Men or the freed Necrons souls of the enslaved Void Dragon on Mars, a hope for the radicals that the Emperor can bind the corrupt xenos into his service."

it is plausible but yet again inquisition which some have something against it.

Lore supports the switching from SM to CSM and CSM to SM.

Hmm , in principle is ok but doesn't go far enough. Corruption is insidious.

The strike force / war council must have a way of getting corrupted to.

Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

edit: Maybe giving bad commands that get large amounts of players killed/ or wasting large amounts of resources

That would actually be really interesting. At the same time, however, it would also really impair playstyle, as they wouldn't be able to play with their friends any more, and while I think it would be neat, it would be too detrimental to the community I think.

araghast! Waht is that quote from?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inquisition_(Warhammer_40,000)

Just the inquisition.

Fills a lot of holes in lore and gameplay.

Any kind of "leadership" position in a game like this should give you bonuses for following them, but shouldn't punish you for not following them. If possible, players can and will abuse a system. A particularly awful leader shouldn't be deciding your track record in the game by giving terrible orders you don't want to follow.

be 100% that with how this game is being built around conquering land, and many factions etc... every faction will have spies within it's ranks...in game mechanic or not.

That's not the issue, its about the complete dominance of SM players over the other factions. Although that does bring up a good point....

I think there will be an overwhelming number of SM players, but just at the beginning.
As in every MMO there will soon be a change to other classes (see SWTOR for instance: everyone said they´re going to play as Jedi or Sith Lord... but after like a month there are now more Soldie-class players or headhunters around on all servers (at least on the server I´m playing on))

About the possible corruption:
This should be defenitely somehow involved in the gameplay... If you reach a certain amount of corruption you should be tempted by the chaos god you somehow spent most of the points and then choose to follow him, or, receive a death oath quest to repend and rejoin the ranks of your battle brothers...

How to get corruption:
I think DoW did a good approach on that. You have the possibility to "learn" great dmg or whatever abylities by choosing to let yourself be corrupted step by step. the more of this very powerful skills you choose the more you start to become corrupted by chaos. The same goes probably by choosing to wear special armor you find, or weapons etc... or to be able to wear that armor you need to spend corruption points?

I know this leads to another balance problem... because this items and skills need to be powerful enough to be tempting enough to invest corruption points. so on the other hand the rewards to stay in the holy emperors light have to compensate this in some way, but not enough to not consider being corrupted again...

going through this again, i am happy to not be the one to decided to implement this or not