this reminds me on what Del asked as a spring cleaning. - from what i remember, the AW adopted the zoner tag, cause - at the time they needed a tag - this choice was the best one available, - and their RP was spun around that, too.
now, the time has past since these days - the zoners have changed, the corsairs have changed, the outcasts, too - and all in all, there are four times the people playing if not more. - new factions cannot be created like back in the days anymore - and so, new people do not really understand some of the necessities of some old factions anymore. -
the AW have their own tag, they are their own masters - not derived from anything ( well, but a strange halfgod/alien thingy - which would cause many nasty comments nowadays if presented in a faction creation ) so they have no tag available.
while it is true that the best way to keep the faction is to give them their NPCs, make omicron 84 and theta their ZoI, possibly reassign the freeport to AW ownership ( like IMG owns some ) and do the same with corfu. as a consequence, add the zoner ships to baffin or gran canaria instead, cause it makes little sense to sell them on an AW station. - leave the civi ships at the AW, and give them the civi bombers, too.
now, all that should be done - - - if we want to keep the AW alive as they are now.
another easy way is to ditch the whole faciton, take the ID away - and create a faction that is dedicated to defend theta as a zoner faction .... from the scratch. such a faciton would have to do everything a new faction has to do, - starting with 500.000.000 faction request money, a lot of critizism from the community ( and some gloating, unfortunately, i predict ) - many modified faction creation sheets - and finally become official. - again.
version 1 requires a lot of work from igiss and the admins - and other facitons might wonder, why the AW gets the special treatment, - but it would be for the good of the faction and the server.
version 2 would change the face of the whole sector around theta. - the AW is a power not to be ignored - and if they vanished, ... new and most probably unofficial structures may appear there, starting with zoners policing there to BHGs and mercs.
while that can provide the sector with an increase of brilliant RP, it can aswell cause pointless pvp battles, cause there are some of the most misunderstood factions involved. - zoners, BHG and the archetype pirates.
and - there d be less control over the situation, - at this time, ... we have a contact person for things to steer the political issues into a RP direction. - without the AW, this place could become a free-for-all and a hard to control place.
the question is - what do we want the future of this sector to look like. - do we want the AW to remain the way they are? - then we must work to get them fit into this part of freelancer again. - or do we want to get rid of them? - are we ready to take the consequences for that?