Super Long Megapost First post working version.

[Gytrash]

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

This. Despite the fact that we may RP all we want, if the Confederation didn’t have the ability to deny docking rights via Official faction supported FR5s or via the application of semi-indie battleships to the face you can bet that everything we have written and all fines we try to apply would be completely and utterly ignored under the “We have guns and you do not” clause of Discovery Diplomacy.

The phrase is “Speak softly and carry a big stick”
Not “Speak softly and don’t carry a stick”
If we know this in 2014 there is no reason that in the far future of 820 AS the Zoners would not know this. I knew that when I was in year two. Of course in that case we were in the school bush area and the big stick was a literal stick. The point still stands, if I knew that at eight years old then everyone should know it.

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.

OMG stop restricting indie rights! For serious, we have had a bunch of good suggestions in the past for reducing the number of Zoner indie caps or restricting their actions.; The answer to all of our suggestions has been something of a resounding “NO <CRUDE WORD FOR DESCRIBING SEXUAL INTERCOURSE> YOU!”

Keep in mind that in Jinx’s PM he lambasted Sabre for attempting to restrict indie battleships?

Where was that exact quote.

at that point i got into contact with RedEclipse and tried to get hold on MadJohn to ask both of them as leaders or as ppl in leadership of their factions to stand up for their stuff and oppose the naysayers.

i did not try just once and gave up - i asked again and again and again for the entire freakin time ( which was around 2 months while the drama continued )

RedEclispe did post at least a shy post here and there trying to defend their assets - the only BIG vocal voice of a TAZ member was Sabre - and for all the wrong reasons. he continously asked to cut indie rights and favour factions - a policy we DO NOT SHARE as told again and again. - nither DocHoliday nor MadJohn as respected leaders replied to the skype call nor argued against the crowd.

Cutting indie access to battleships and favouring factions. Welp. So much for that not being policy. Because you are actually going so far as to pretty much eradicate any and all indie access to battleships and restricting it entirely to factions. Not only that you are going to be erasing a whole bunch of RP to do so. Not the best of policies I feel. Would it not be better to just have some way of restricting the indies from purchasing the current battleships? Perhaps have there be a registry so that the Zoners can have the good RPers with their battleships grandfathered in and the poor RPers with them on an FR5 or something?

Because removing the shipline in it’s entirety (Or changing it to a transport line, same thing effectively.) is not the best solution to this in my opinion.

OH GOD WHAT IS THIS ANOTHER LONG POST I THOUGHT I HAD DONE WITH ALL THAT COPYPASTING QUOTE STARTS AND FISHES! Oh wait there’s a lot more. I’m only like half-⅓ done.

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.

Neither was any Zoner, Just so as you know. And none of us were aware of it until now so perhaps you should have considered before setting these into motion.

Just a helpful hint for stopping outrage in future, it doesn’t help when you don’t involve official factions and their first set of responses is a resounding “I do not support this”

For the first time in quite a while you’ve managed to unite all three Zoner factions under one banner. Although I’m sure that that is not what you had planned it’s what happened. So good job on that.

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.

The zoners do not possess a well organised well funded military no. This is something that I will not argue with. Because to argue with it would be dumb. The Zoners have assets, I had this exact argument with Golanski about Order-Zoner politics, I argue that the Zoners have assets totalling roughly what the Order has, enough to be a significant Edge worlds presence, enough to fight back aggression from the Corsairs and Maltese and other pirate groups. This is in total though. It’s not a cohesive military force so someone would have to piss off EVERYONE to get that sort of response. for the most part it’s spread across Sirius.

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.)

So let me just stop you right there for a moment. One of the big gripes of the official Zoner factions is there is no support for any of them or them combined to control Indie access to the Capital ships. It’s been shut down time and time again by admins and Devs saying “This is policy you can’t do it.”. So don’t turn around and then say “We are punishing you for not controlling indies better.”

We can’t.

Because you won’t let us.

Because policy.

So let me show you the cycle
“There are too many indie Zoner caps”
“Because the Zoners cannot police the ownership of said caps”
“Because it’s against policy”
“So there are too many indie Zoner caps”
“Because the Zoners cannot police the ownership of said caps”
“Because it’s against policy”
Repeat ad nauseum.

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.

What is that I feel? A sudden sharp pain upon my forehead? Ah! It is this. My head has been introduced to the desk. Let me ask you this my good sir. Have you watched the introductory video for Freelancer?

Did you see the colony ships? They took a helluva lot of fire from a fleet and were pulverising cruisers left and right in their bid to escape Sol. Heavily armed, heavily armoured colony ships. So technically the Nephilim being a battleship fits perfectly with Freelancer lore. Everybody knows that the edge worlds are dangerous places. There is no reason to make a colony ship lightly armed. What purpose would it serve? All it takes is one drunk captain, or one jellyfish to turn the whole thing into a floating pile of scrap.

We also have the lesson of Freeport 7 to remember. that was pretty much a station version of what you are proposing the Neph turn into, lightly armoured and armed space station. It got nuked by Nomads. Lesson learned. Wear a cup because not everyone is nice enough to not kick you in the balls on principal.

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.

The fundamental lore elements of the ships will change. And here’s why.
Because people have been RPing them as battleships and heavily armed/armoured ships for Zoner peace of mind. There is no way that you can say that changing the Zoner capital ship line to a transport line without cracking a smile. I actually snorted while typing that.
Also the Nephilim is the mobile freeport. The Aquilon is the closest thing that Zoners have to an actual warship. The Nephilim has biodomes and things that freeports also it’s much less of a warship type profile.
It’s been that way for as long as I can remember. A lot of people swapped Nephs for Aquilons when the model came about for that very reason.

Another point is that Aquilons are currently the TAZ’s main defensive heavy hitter for Baffin. They have a small squad of Fearlesses but changing the main line of defence from a battleship to a transport is sure as hell going affect that faction. Also the Zoner cruisers are pretty ordinary from a PVP standpoint.

So there’s a creek that you never really want to be on, but if you are stuck on it you’d better hope that you have a paddle because using your hands to paddle through faeces is something that nobody wants to do. And these changes would well and truly strand the TAZ up said creek. Hell, you don’t even have the common courtesy to give them a canoe.