Doc, I don't think Zoners having caps makes a difference in whether they can be pushed around or not. I actually think it might make a difference in whether they will be pushed around though. In what way - I'd say that depends on the area. I also think it might make a change in their behaviour, which is a good thing. Maybe they now start to play more defensivly instead of sitting on their cap power. Other factions have stood up against cap wielding factions with no more than cruisers as well almost the complete time since .86 was brought out. So, whether they will be pushed around will for some part also depend on whether they act like all-powerful still or not. And on how many players still swarm to that faction.
Caps are easy targets anyway and most of the Zoners who use(d) them, use(d) them, because they though they are the most powerful thing around - which is not true, once the bombers show up and wreck them. (Actually gunboats are the strongest thing around currently - by far. But better don't tell them that, or they will end up blowing up Crete.)
I applaud this step, finally a decision that makes sense lore-wise regarding the Zoners. Now on to removing Gran Canaria, please, yes? Make Zoners back into the mysterious outsiders they were, not group of military equipment wielding megalomanic war lords with a bigger population than some sub-houses. (Though when you start going back up that road, you might also have to cut down several other factions, so that real houses actually represent their strenght and power again. Not like it is now, having everyone and their mother's faction and their pets having big ships and unlimited power and all...But that's another story.)
Long story short:
No moar big Zoner-caps - good!
Also, I like the transports' looks.
Now I just hope that what is planned for them will not make them crappy.
And I hope they will not be oversized.
Disclaimer: I was not involved with most of the decisions relating to the changes for Zoner ships, and as far as I recall, these plans have been in motion for quite some time.
(02-22-2014, 06:39 PM)Sarawr!? Wrote:
(02-22-2014, 06:34 PM)Gytrash Wrote:
(02-22-2014, 06:32 PM)Sarawr!? Wrote: Is anything other than ship types going to be changed here?
If not, then I fail to really see the issue so long as the Zoners will still have Gunboats and the like. Jinkusu's and Nephilim's are nice and all, but if you really think about it...those ships will still exist, no? Just having been slightly repurposed.
Nobody is being "Forced to be a trader", so far as I can tell. Losing battleships that provide heavy firepower does not limit RP, neither does it limit your ability to take down "enemy" capships.
Turning battleships with established lore, purpose and role play into battletransports is the issue. People will lose billions of credits of investments and months worth of RP for the sake of a faction of lel. You'd be singing a different tune if it was liberty caps being turned into battletransports.
One of those "Battleships", was originally meant as a habitable colony ship, yes? So all I really see is that they're taking the military bite out of it, and making it actually function as more of a colony ship, which...makes sense.
Also as far as I recall, the Nephilim and Jinkusu "Battletransports", if you want to call them that, are still going to be pretty well armed, if I remember what was said in the thread a little while back.
Additionally, I have no interest in getting into an argument here, I was just adding my opinion, but uhm...Yes I admit, I would be markedly upset if the devs decided "Oh hey we're gonna turn Lib caps into transports", because that wouldn't make any sense at all, Because Liberty is a well established interstellar government with a well funded and properly organized military.
This is something the Zoners are not, and do not possess, lorewise.
It's nice when non-Devs beat me to the punch. (Yes, that is quoted from a locked thread.)
This change is definitely not just because of the Zoner Alliance player group. They are simply one group in a long line of lolwut Zoner groups that have sown discord, confusion, and mis-representation of Zoners in general. (For example, the ORI group were utterly malicious; the members of that group were all perma-banned with good reason.)
While I wasn't active at the time, the introduction of Zoner "capital ships" was probably done at a time before Discovery was a roleplay server, or during the early phases of "relaxed roleplay" [citation needed]. This means that certain lore content of that age is not quite up to par with the current era of Discovery, the latter which can be generally described as having more veracious continuity. Therefore, it is most appropriate to solely consider the status quo of Zoner "capital ships" today.
Let us consider what is currently the Nephilim (internal nickname dsy_munificent). It is, as Sarawr referenced above, a colony ship above all other things. Since there is no "colony ship" vessel class in the game, it was introduced to the mod under the mechanics of a battleship, which the developers of the time must have considered to be appropriate for the size of the model. Unfortunately, the ship's infocard also described it as a battleship; something I feel is inappropriate. Being described as a battleship, and also having the mechanics of one, are the primary factors for the unwarranted concept of Zoners having warships equivalent to the capabilities of more militarily-orientated factions. The general Discovery policy of having open access to capital ships only made things worse.
The same approach was used for all of the Zoner "capital ships". The Aquilon is an ultra-light mobile freeport. The Fearless is heavily-armed cargo ship. The Corvo is a research vessel... not a platform for military-grade munitions. That said, I'm not sure if the latter two ships are changing model or ship class, as they're not the worst offenders of this scenario.
With certain capital ships being changed to transports for purposes of game mechanics, the fundamental lore elements of the ships are not going to change. There will still be ships for colonisation, exploration, and mobile habitation. That is what this change is about.
(02-23-2014, 05:52 AM)Kazinsal Wrote: Doc, the TAZ will still have their Persephone (which will become the Nephilim). The change is to get rid of the thousands of indie zoner battleships.
Two Zoner battleships in existence makes sense. Two hundred does not.
What if you were to apply this line of logic to other shiplines? How would that go over? "Gee, too many indies are flying around in thousands of BSes in factions X,Y and Z. My game immersion is ruined. Time to cull the numbers." I'm thinking folks might get cranky. But hey, you'd have a nice, purist RP server with 50-70 players on it.
Personally, the only Zoner character I have is a transport, so I don't have a dog in this fight. However, I think reducing the Aquilon to a battletransport is too much. The Nephilim decision I can understand from the perspective of the ship's lore. Having 2-3 of those in existence is a reasonable compromise.
(02-23-2014, 05:52 AM)Kazinsal Wrote: Doc, the TAZ will still have their Persephone (which will become the Nephilim). The change is to get rid of the thousands of indie zoner battleships.
Two Zoner battleships in existence makes sense. Two hundred does not.
How come restricting indys,develop the populace and the activity of this server.Before anyone starts arguing in the grounds of "they should join the official factions,RP their way to Battleship class vessels and blah blah" I would like to point out that,some people just want to have fun with these vessels.No one would want to join a faction just to get one of their Battleships.
Everyone have their own interests and motives to join a faction.Take this case:
A X person is in a N number of factions.He wishes to get one of those shining and his dream Battleship,which belongs to a Y faction.But since he is alreadyin a N number of factions,he could not dedicate time to the Y faction if he joins them.Also a B faction that he is a part of is at war with the said Y faction which makes him applying to them even more awkward.He ends up being screwed.
I can foresee a lot of cases similar to this if your point of view that "there are thousands of indy lolwut caps roaming around,lets just slay their ships and give them nothing worth but disappointment.Also they dont use the ship for the very purpose that it is mentioned for.All of us will nerf their vessels and laugh at them while they are pissed off and ragequit disco in all"
For some of them,getting a BS was their motive when they start off this server.For me,the day I started playing,the first vessel I saw outside Erie was a magnificent pimped up LAC.From then on I played hard to get those beautiful things and ended up with a Valor.Now,if someone had raised a question at that time,when I got my first BS,as to "there are many indy Valors pewing in there,so we delete that model and give them a transport" and which had led to my first,precious valor,which I put so much effort and time(approximately 1 month of game time) being deleted just like that,I would never have been here commenting on this damn argument.That applies to everyone else here,to all the newcomers,to all the people who return to Disco,to some of the old members too,just that the scenario is different for the different people here.Some well to do people just dont care about this loss and some people moan and whine like me,and some others just move on to a better game for sheer fun.
To put it in simple words "you are going to destroy the server activity if things such as this show up from time to time".People play here for fun.Dont take away that.This is no job that they have to work and get paid for.The reason I am saying this is because I heard someone say before that "reimbursements are not devs' work,let the admins take care of that,if they want to" which eventually led to "there wontbe reimbursements,and for all those who bought have this ship,just put up with the loss".Doing great job pissing off the newcomers to quit.So sick.
Commerce related factions should reflect efficiency.
Anarchists should reflect anarchists. Zoners have had so many different philosophies over the years its hard to say that this "generalising" of the ship line does fit perfectly or not. But what i don't see addressed here is the jurisdiction of the devs screwing with factions that don't use a zoner ID.
I don't suppose it would behove the devs to see that TAZ and OSI still have their own ID's right?... With that much distinction i fail so see why "THEIR" ship line should be affected at all.
In before zoners use zoner ships. Feel free to mess with the Zoner ID as a dev. But I would have guessed the TAZ and OSI would have held tightly to their unique identities and RP enough to make sure they arent De toothed on the hubris of "development" interpreting a single polls data on its own.
(02-23-2014, 05:21 AM)Doc Holliday Wrote: I've said it before and I'll say it again, I oppose Zoner losing cap ships. Yes, yes, I know, then maybe the Sairs and so on will stop harassing. I see it differently. You take the teeth out of the tiger's mouth and it's easier to boot it when you want to without consequence.
In short, you just make it easier to push the Zoner populace around. I mean, what else do people do when they get bored.....cough..cough...Sairs...SCRA......Outcasts....cough
If you need someone who can model and texture and import and export into freelancer I can do it.. you dont need to depend on one dev's dictates.
Then again there are still talented modelers and people out there at the starport hell even Kuze is around still and has been modeling for years.
I dont see why the devs cannot shift the old assets over based on Taz philosphy and rp alone. You guys got clear of the ZONER id years ago. Thats a real difference when it was given to you and if reapers of sirius and hellfire could get thier own shipline you can too.
So we've fought to get a Leviathan warship, and in result we're getting nephilim model? Don't you think someone in dev team has too much of pain somewhere lower than pelvis?
If you think Zoners should be turned into trade faction, remove trade restriction "Zoner should stay Zoners, Sairs are Sairs, Coalition is Coalition" and we will see how your logic would benefit house activity, Phoenix and TAZ turn their IDs on OSI alike. We don't need useless ships, with crappy models(obviously, they will stuck in asteroids like a boss, no need to mention it's looks to be an import from Homeworld, mixing up Turanic Raiders and Hiigarans design). So I have an idea, can we Zoner players at least decide what we are want to fly in future, and ask massdriver for new models?
So, nowadays freelancer turned into complainlancer, who's complaining louder is winning, you don't let us to play and enjoy the game, because devs since 4.84 nerfing zoners every mod realize. So, I'd suggest to remove all non-vanilla caps. Too much of nonsense, everyone can build a battleship nowadays. Too much fun for players, devs know better how we should play.
Wow, well I think I'm done with this QQ fest. Obviously the only voice that gets heard around here is a few devs and a few admins, and not the hundreds or even thousands that actually make the game worth playing and really make it functioning and fun for everyone. I hope you all feel really big, you know who you are.
PS: Want proof? I started a poll to ask what actual players thought about it. It asked an unbiased question, a simple yes or no. I get 90% Yes players should be consulted and listened too and it get shut down by Hawk. The reason? Admins couldn't handle it. Oh... but Jinx can do his own poll, and then twist the results however he wants too. Then I get told that there was actually a discussion. Well I saw that discussion, and your doing the exact opposite of what the players asked. I have a idea for the admins and Devs who don't care about what the majority of players here want, go start another server with nobody playing and control that, or better yet go play another game and run that into the ground.
PPS: If you look at Jinx's pool you will see somthing like this,
Option 1 "leave it as it is"* 39.81% 41 39.81%
Option 2 "change the ships to a more passive stance" 26.21% 27 26.21%
Option 3 "change the ships to a unique transport line" 26.21% 27 26.21%
Option 4 "i have my own ideas which are: ....." 7.77% 8 7.77%
Even though option two and three COMBINED make a majority, its a split vote and in any civilized society option one is still the clear winner.
(02-22-2014, 02:41 PM)Jinx Wrote: There is a single majority of people wishing to keep things as they are and two groups of people either for a balance change or a change of roles of Zoner ships. - then there is a minor position of people either undecided or wishing for something else.
Wait Dirk, Jinx don't think so. According to history, Jinx don't give a damn about opinion of others and doing what he want. or trying to tamper results of "the majority".
![[Image: 7tAtSZe.png]](http://i.imgur.com/7tAtSZe.png)
