In Discovery, the House corporations get no love, no love at all. The IMG and Zoners expand exponentially, far beyond their vanilla roots, and become at least as (or more) powerful at the GMG, which was the only 'independent' supercorporation in vanilla. They get bases, systems, shiplines, gunboats, cruisers, battleships, commodities all for themselves (technically not, but when they're mined in Zoner/IMG systems...). And what do the venerable House corporations get? The shaft.
Seriously, they get absolutely nothing. BMM, for example, is supposed to be the chief competitor of the IMG... In vanilla I think it's actually significantly larger than the IMG... But it has nothing compared to the systems/ships/minable commodities which the IMG has developed. Omega-3 has Bretonian patrols, and always has had them, yet it's the IMG who gets a base put there recently, not BMM or Bowex or Gateway. The House corporations should be the largest, wealthiest, and most powerful trading factions in Sirius (perhaps barring the GMG), but they're... Not. Most are lucky if they have a couple of bases and a few half-decent trade routes.
I'm not bashing the IMG, or the Zoners (not opening that can of worms), I like both factions. I just think the House corporations should be getting more.
I think this issue is worthy of discussion.
DISCUSS!
I agree that the house corps could use more bases. Synth doesn't have ANY bases of its own that I know of. Maybe also some new shared ships, like a <house> Corporate gunboat or something, but they should tread lightly in this department. That's what navies are for.
Corporations have long been neglected because of lack of diversity in them. Lately, with new economic system, some of them have bloomed into popular ways to trade, but they still lack any proper distinctive charm and coherency. (also 666 posts annoyed me)
Gateway has one base, and its supposed to be pretty big. The base that it does have is sort of...
measly. There are bigger Xeno bases. ALG, I think they have the base in sigma 13.
They're really not well off, the house corporations, because, as a whole, the houses aren't that well off (cept for Liberty) in the department of developmental love. They're the least loved bit of houses, the corporations (they don't even get guard systems, you know?).
Corporations could use Guard systems just like the Zoners, the Dragons, the Xenos, the IMG, the GC, the LWB or the Gaians(of all smallish factions) could use guard systems. And yet, they don't get them. Not that anyone should have guard systems, per say, as I believe that they should more fully integrate into the game, by slapping a couple different factions into one guard system....but the fact that house corporations have -no- guard systems, while some other factions have -multiple- is...well, indicitive of the lack of love for House Corps.
Synth is getting three bases
No one loves Planetform. We have nothing.
Oh yes, the corporations definitely need more love.
I'd like to see Daumann and a small army of hired Bounty Hunters trying to muscle their way into some new Omega systems to strip them of all resources for one thing.
I'd like to see both Kruger and Daumann expanding their operations in Omega 7. (Or at least see Kruger try to, they are not in very good shape)
Oh, and ALG has two bases, the other one is Dortmund smelter in New Berlin.
Cargopods, If I might interject, are still vanilla.
Change them. Update them. Why, yesterday, I was thinking about how cool it would be to have shiny silver cargopods. Or cargopods with windows. Or cargopods with treedomes, or cargopods with BOWEX or Cryer or...BRETONIA or a picture of a house insignia or...
well. Custom cargopods. I'd love a cargopod with a tree painted on it, or a dragonfly, or a fairy. Or even just BOWEX in huge letters. Maybe a set of 4 which, when lined up, spell BOWEX even larger...
Yeah I've been on a soapbox about this exact thing for a while. In vanilla, corps>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>img and zoners. Now the latter two are like, ridiculously powerful, and corps are completely neglected.
I mean can you imagine a new dockable corporation planet now?
But how many are there in vanilla? Like 8?
And now IMG and Zoners both have dockable planets.
This is how far the paradigm has shifted.
So few corporate bases have been added, whereas zoners and img have had a disgustingly disproportionate amount of stuff. Corporations have gone from these huge, important economic forces, to just trading factions for people who want 5ks and don't understand how to get quad bribes.
Corporations should be huge, basically, in my opinion.
But I am a vanilla whore I guess.
But yeah when jinx wasn't sure cryer could afford some medical ship, whereas no one bats an eyelid over zoners having 5 capships, something has changed there.
Samura which is supposed to be one of the huge powerhouses in Sirius has really got an update since vanilla, Kishiro has a small base in Okinawa, but I would love to see some development in both of those companies.