The past, present and future of Zoners as an NPC faction

[John Churchill]

I agree that Zoners have capabilities comparable to those of a small house. What they do not have is a single governing entity. Now if some President / Dictator / Khan were to emerge, that could make things interesting.
Personally I felt that my idea of Zoners was outdated as soon as they had a Guard system and were trying to keep others out, so I'd quite like to see how the faction develops further, maybe towards nationhood.

[Sanguines]

The problem is, Is it worth it?

Thsi is a server with allready 5 houses, and is allready imho having problems with the amount of poeple online to get action everywhere.

I think a better alternate would be in rp diplomacy with houses that own/share space.

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Wiki: http://discoverygc.com/wiki/User:SonyaSilverfall (My chars, etc)

[Crackpunch]

I agree that Zoners have capabilities comparable to those of a small house. What they do not have is a single governing entity. Now if some President / Dictator / Khan were to emerge, that could make things interesting.

The original idea of the Zoners was to get away from that sort of thing.

Still, Khan Holliday would be epic.

Although a large amount of Zoners looking to pew = OMGWTFBQQQQQQQQQQQQZONERZONERZONERZONERBANBANBAN
So that would be rather bad.

On the other hand, the majority of Zoners accepting some sort of calm, diplomatic, spokesperson would be nice.

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[Markus_Janus]

I was waiting for this thread to show up.

To me personally, Zoners are the most bastardised faction Disco currently hosts.
The official factions have done a great job of playing their parts and portraying what they feel being a Zoner is all about, kudos to them.

I enjoy playing my Zoner, it is a lot of fun to have someone that has no allegiance to anything but his individual family, he would sell a freeport out if it suited his purpose.
But that is just one interpretation of being a Zoner and who am I to say others views are any better/worse than my own.

What I can say however is that as soon as they started building capital ships, sticking up for and defending each other, they became a group as opposed to individuals.
You can not control an Aquilon let alone a Nephilim as individuals.
You need a military-esque command structure where you follow the orders of your superiors and form into regimental groups.
You can not sell capital class warships to other groups as large as you need to pilot these vessels and say you have no command over them, otherwise they would be sirius wide civilian craft.
But they are not, they are only sold to certain individuals.
Hence there is responsibility shown towards others and that can be held accountable.

The point is that as soon as you start to add ships that are beyond the capabilities of small family/friend units, you can no longer hold to the ideal that you are just a group of family/friends.
You have to be a group that has a command structure.

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Samura Omotai Zaibatsu.

[John Churchill]

The original idea of the Zoners was to get away from that sort of thing.

Absolutely, yes. I would just enjoy a story about someone losing their way. The entire "He that fights monsters take care, lest he thereby become a monster"-thing.
But of course it would be a very dramatic change, and obviously many people like Zoners the way they are.

[Jinx]

what breaks the Zoner NPC faction are mostly other players.

players need to acknowledge the importance of the zoner factions deeds - even if they are not reflected in actual gameplay. - but players cannot be forced to see those deeds if they believe that it harms their understanding of their own faction.

the power of zoners is the money. - but as an example - only very few pirates finance themselves ENTIRELY. same applies to other organizations that lack trading fleets.

this is not a matter of what players actually fly ( if that was any measure, the huge interstellar cooperations would die, too - so would the houses ) - it is all about imagination and admitting the necessary.

in the whole context of discovery - the zoners have not changed more than most other factions that gained ships, new locations and stations. - the balance is still there.

as a matter of fact - the exception to the rule are factions that have NOT gained significant military power. ( its an elevator effect - everyone gets better, but the balance is maintained ) --> except for house vs. any other faction, cause house faction have not gained much - they have maintained their strength - others just reached the same level.

had the zoners not gained ships and stations - it would have been even harder to explain how dependent factions could have gained such an increase in power.


in terms of lore however - things did change a bit - but again... not more than for other surrounding factions. - when zoners may have been loners in vanilla or maybe families, they have formed more micro societies ( of town or city scale ) - they have started to form societies they consider to be fitting for their way of life - which may actually become closer to what the "original zoners" fled from.

it had also been mentioned that the original zoners may not be the same as the current zoners at all anymore.

look at the change of generations. - the kids of Hippie parents from the 60s or 70s may not share the ideologies anymore - nor might the former parents as a matter of fact. but that does not mean that they do not live where they once moved to anymore.

also - do not forget that zoners is a term coined by outsiders - they may still call the dwellers of freeports "zoners" but that does not mean that what they actually call zoners are what their stereotype of zoners is all about. in any case ... don t be too quick to call any faction a "house" - there are only 5 houses, liberty, kusari, rheinland, bretonia and gallia - NO other faction comes even close to the political and military strength.



in technical terms

we cannot retcon or rollback the faction. not without a MASSIVE effect on all the factions that are in dependency of zoners ( tons of pirates to start with )

we can take away all their extra ships - thats no problem. but whats won by doing that?

we can also split them up into regions or even freeport IDs - and while that might have some benefit to at least the diplomatic level - it does not change much about the faction itself. - unless each gets their very own diplomatic status - and then things may start to become a bit messy

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Shipdesigns made for DiscoveryGC

[Gypsie]

As usual Jinx was here before me to say more or less what I would have said.

I will say tho that GMG does have House-like financial, political, and territorial power. And both of Hispania's are half houses too.

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Malaclypse Freeport

[SMGSterlin]

When I first saw the title of this thread, I thought "oh no... Not another Zoner thread...", then I saw Spazzy had posted it (originally though Tel-Aviv posted it), and I thought "oh, this might not be so bad then". I've read this entire thread, and me gusta.


Regarding the separation of ID's and IFF's...

It's a good idea in my opinion. As has already been stated, Zoners have evolved, and many different types of groups of Zoners have sprung up. We've already done separation of the Zoners to an extent, with the making of the OSI ID, TAZ ID, and that other Zoner group that got their own ID.

It should not be separated based on Freeports though. There's what? 14-15 Freeports currently in Disco? That would get very messy very fast, as Jinx stated. The idea of only having a few Freeports with their own ID might be said, but here's the problem with that... Let's say FP 14 and FP 5 got their own ID's, it makes a bit of since inRP, it could work, but then you'll have someone that will want Freeport 2 to have it's own ID, so he can protect it from the Liberty and Rheinland war-fighters *cough* Tel-Aviv *cough*. Then someone will want Freeport 9 to have IT'S own ID, so that person can play a roll in the Red Hessian/BHG vs Corsair war. It will lead to a bunch of Q_Q ultimately, because making individual ID's and IFF's takes time and effort, and not every Freeport is going to be able to get it's own ID, because the dev team has more than Zoner ID's to work on.


I would like to see some sort of clear separation for the Zoners though. Not all Zoners are the same, and as such, one ID doesn't really fit all. But, however it is going to be separated needs to be thought long and hard about, if the idea is considered by the important people.

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[Ursus]

remove the caps, remove the problem. there's no way those anarchist farmers were building those things anyway. let them buy/steal warships from the houses, and deal with technerf, like everybody else.

zonerzonerzoner

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Discovery 24/7 Negotiating Tactics:

[NonSequitor]

remove the caps, remove the problem. there's no way those anarchist farmers were building those things anyway. let them buy/steal warships from the houses, and deal with technerf, like everybody else.

zonerzonerzoner

And while you're at it, wave a big retcon wand and remove every vessel larger than a gunboat from the unlawfuls.

I'm sure that would go over real well.