' Wrote:The Dunkirks would say hello to the Juggernaut?
THE Juggernaut versus the DunkirkS. The only possible outcome is le kaboom, as the french say, for the juggernaut.
Evolving the zoner down a military path is probably the worst thing one can do since the zoners still have a clear goal of neutrality and independence in mind.
The Liberty Rogues WERE petty criminals, but when more individuals join their rank they become more powerful, and when an individual with potential reaches a leadership position they become organized, and that's just one example.
As for the zoner juggernaut... Heh, that is a bit silly and should be a singular ship instead of a production line.
Actually, Doc, I'm going to throw my wrench in here and talk RP versus game mechanics for a second...now, in-game we all know making ridiculously overpowered ships isn't practical; balance issues and all. In-RP, though, the Juggernaut is, as we all know, described as a mobile fortress; what the Zoner Juggernaut is really is a HUGE construct, twice, maybe even three times the size of a Rheinland Battleship, with appropriately thick armor and number of extremely heavy guns. Whilst this is NOT what we see in-game due to the unpleasant mechanics we have to work with, this is a vision in-line with the ship infocard. If we're talking four or more Dunkirks I could see the Juggernaut sustaining fatal damage, but any less and it would be a total rout of the Bretonians, and even with four or five it would take plenty of them with it before it went down. Really, if the Zoners wanted to be they COULD be a very destructive military force, at least initially, against an uninformed navy such as the Bretonians. The Bretonians, with the resources of a fully developed house and a large standing navy, would eventually win out, but the Juggernauts would make it exceedingly expensive for them to do.
The same, however, cannot be said of the Corsairs. They know the Juggernauts are out there, and the suggested number (A few, which usually means three or four), and, while it would be expensive, could theoretically rout the Zoner's Juggernauts in a first strike.
Quote:Quick comment - we thought that Panzer was the Leader, Swift. -Agmen
' Wrote:Actually, Doc, I'm going to throw my wrench in here and talk RP versus game mechanics for a second...now, in-game we all know making ridiculously overpowered ships isn't practical; balance issues and all. In-RP, though, the Juggernaut is, as we all know, described as a mobile fortress; what the Zoner Juggernaut is really is a HUGE construct, twice, maybe even three times the size of a Rheinland Battleship, with appropriately thick armor and number of extremely heavy guns. Whilst this is NOT what we see in-game due to the unpleasant mechanics we have to work with, this is a vision in-line with the ship infocard. If we're talking four or more Dunkirks I could see the Juggernaut sustaining fatal damage, but any less and it would be a total rout of the Bretonians, and even with four or five it would take plenty of them with it before it went down. Really, if the Zoners wanted to be they COULD be a very destructive military force, at least initially, against an uninformed navy such as the Bretonians. The Bretonians, with the resources of a fully developed house and a large standing navy, would eventually win out, but the Juggernauts would make it exceedingly expensive for them to do.
The same, however, cannot be said of the Corsairs. They know the Juggernauts are out there, and the suggested number (A few, which usually means three or four), and, while it would be expensive, could theoretically rout the Zoner's Juggernauts in a first strike.
Using the Juggernaut would only cripple Zoner strategy. A small population should always rely on mobile, guerrilla warfare, hit and run.
The Zoners don't have the population for any sort of war. Hell, they were afraid of the effects of having Unioners on Freeport 2. Zoners, excepting those in Delta, lack experience in general, largely being non-combat pilots. Compare this to a fleet which sees combat daily.
Using the Juggernaut just centres their strategy on a localised area, making them easy for Bomber Harris to target.
It hardly explains why the juggernaut line is a production line instead of a singular ship. I seriously doubt the zoners could toss out more than... say... two of these ships at max.
' Wrote:It hardly explains why the juggernaut line is a production line instead of a singular ship. I seriously doubt the zoners could toss out more than... say... two of these ships at max.
The RP versus game mechanics is dead on though.
Where would a bunch of anarchists and outcasts from society, get the resources, technology, shipyards and trained crewmen to man such a fleet?
I can't imagine lots of military sorts going off and becoming some sort of hermits in space, when they would more likely be proud of their homes, staying in a more ordered nation. Remember, Zoners are, for the most part , self-exiles, with Freeport One, their first base, being under 80 years old. Actually....
That gets me thinking. I think that the founders of the Zoners may still have some of their number still living.
Bluntie, that's what i was saying... :P The Juggernaut makes no sense RP wise. (And the war on Bretonia is just silly to concider. The Zoners would lose any armed conflict.)
I think the Zoner "fleet" is more hearsay, phantoms and threats than anything else. Look at where freeports are stationed; it's reasonable to assume a self-sufficient fleet could be hidden in a nearby asteroid/gas cloud/nebula etc, but is there really one there? or not? do you feel lucky? well, do you?
I feel the Zoners have become similar to the BHG in organization, ie: a "core" that runs all the bigger ships, pulls the various strings, fosters the interfactional disputes, and generally makes sure the Zoners are safe.
The rest of the population lives on the Freeports, or in their ships (I can concieve a large number of Zoners not putting into dock for extended periods of time), not taking any interest in interfactional disputes, save to check who owns the space they're in, and thus which set of laws they're following today.
An individual Zoner could be practically anyone from practically anywhere, I could imagine ex-military pilots "joining" (perhaps not the right word for such a lose organization), as well as people that haven't the first clue what to do in combat.
As such, when threatening/interacting with a Zoner, one would not know what one was dealing with, unlike dealing with an Outcast or a Libertonian.
Zoners and pirates or Zoners and lawfuls? Well, in my opinion, Zoners should be more well recieved by unlawful elements than lawful elements. Sure, Freeports provide a staging area for Bounty Hunters, but, without them, many criminal groups would cease to exist (cf: Xenos, Unioners, Corsairs (food)).
On the other hand, lawfuls would not be too friendly towards them, as they harbour criminals (check the vanilla news on Freeport 2-Liberty wants to arrest any Zoners found to be harbouring criminals). The only real reason any lawful house would permit them within their borders is to supply Deuterium.
But we have "Zoners" running diamond-niobium or VIPs-xeno organisms or any number of other routes, so they have to be pirated (I think they should be called out for being OORP), increasing the distrust felt by many unlawfuls towards them.
Got up to Baconsoda's post, and realized I should spit out my own ideas before getting all idoctrinated.
On Zoner Military:
Zoners are weak, in comparison to the houses (I'm counting the OC and sairs as houses). I've argued before, that even if they did have a military on house scale, it would be so spread out as to be very weak. Their main threat, the Juggernaughts, are old threats. They don't build many, and they keep their location rather secret, which keeps people from attacking them, in the large part, because they don't know where the dozen or so Juggernauts are...its possible that an invasion force would find itself facing six..and that would be an incredibly expensive battle. But if they were attacked, if they did lose a freeport, one of two things happens: A, their military forces are more concentrated, because they didn't fight much, or B: they're overall weaker, because they put up a great fight. In the case B, I think its likely that they would get attacked again and again, by overwhelming House fleets in every sector, reasonably quickly. The zoner fleet is very weak, because even if its the size of two house fleets, it has simply too much space to defend.
I don't think GC is secret. I think the idea of hiding a planet, for any duration, is ridiculous. I think the Zoners had moved away from that hope when they let in the Corsairs to pressure bretonia, and even farther away when they let in the BHG(or perhaps just saw the BHG enter) to fight off the corsairs. GC is safe, for the time being because Bretonia is busy, and again because of the threat of the Juggernaughts, and the rest of the distributed zoner fleet, because the corsairs are there, and the Mollies are in the way. If Bretonia had the energy, it would probably conquer the system. It needs the planets.
Economically, I don't expect the Freeports affect the 4 central Houses much. I do suspect they play a major role in the borderworld economies, and I will argue that they probably have a great many people. But not many if compared to a house. There are more zoners than Outcasts, less than Corsairs, and the number doesn't even compare to the Houses. Though some zoners are mightilly rich, I don't expect the zoner net worth to really be able to compare to that of a house interstellar corporation. They build warships, sure, but not on the scale that say, liberty does. I don't really believe the zoners could build warships at the rate that Bretonia nor Kusari have been losing them, but certiantly more warships than the Order, or the BHG can build, probably on par with the Hessian's(largest pirate nation, if I consider Crete a house, which I do.) military production.
As for their fingers, and their strings...well, certiantly. But no more so than say, Interspace Commerce.
I doubt it would be a secret. I imagine the Corsairs that eradicated Cork with thermonuclear wareads would have been based from Omega-49.
No matter how much the Mollys hated Bretonia for the ridiculous excesses of the BMM, they didn't nuke a planet's life out of it.
I can imagine that the Mollys and Bretonians would find common cause in eradicating the Corsairs in 49. And... they're based on the Zoners' only planet. The Mollys know where it is.
And again, on the population... less than most other factions, even corporations. They're only 80 years old. Some founding members may still live. They have only recently colonised a planet. Hell, Planetform and Samura have more planets. Orbital Spa and Cruise has a planet. The Outcasts have been around ten times as long. They weren't a mass exodus of free-thinkers, it was more minor than this, but they are over-represented because they live in space in a spaceship game.