Super Long Megapost First post working version.

[Gytrash]

http://askhelixfossil.com/#ih92kj

On a starting note in line with Discovery policy of the Sandwich rule. I have actually gone and had an entire eighteenth for my brother and have had a pool party and a whole day off. So this is not written in the heat of the moment but in the cold hard light of the morning. Well, it started off then. It’s ending up being longer than I thought.

Comments on this to the chats or PMs please. I’ve posted this somewhere I’m not certain of people’s lack of being a dickness so it’s not open to anyone to edit. Sorry bros. I’ll prolly move it to a new Gdoc later and then make that one editable. Quoted every relevant post here.

Just to let you all know I’m sick as all hell and not overly happy with having to write a rebuttal to more than 9500 words. But because I love the Zoners and don’t want to see the official factions disbanded (And this is something that has been put forward as an option) I’m writing this.

My text is gonna be in purple for ease of differentiation

To quote Aerlem before we start.

As I already said, your frustration (you being the zoner players in general) is quite understandable, and I knew the extent of it full well before that thread was even posted and unlike a lot of pointless whining going around, this one actually holds some merit and is completely justified and not something we'd want to dismiss as "QQ", which is why I personally brought up the idea of a system to reimburse Zoner players for when the update is released. On top of that, it is also quite understandable if you want to vent out by going on a swearing-spree, but it's better kept to your own Skype chats where it belongs. Nothing good comes out of dragging it to the forums, which is the sole reason the ban was issued.

Moving on to the more important points...

1. The community has never agreed to "nerfs" of any kind, and every single poll posted prior every single nerf (no matter how much sense it made or how much positive effect it had on the server gameplay in a long run) has ended with the majority voting against it, so I'm afraid results of a forum poll is hardly a good enough argument.

2. As I already mentioned in my post, it's ok if you're against the idea, but how you express your disagreement is the important part. If you think this is a bad idea, look at the bright side: It's not implemented yet. So, take a while until you've calmed down, then write a proper post offering constructive points and a comprehensive list of the reasons behind your stance, and it will be taken into account. Long as you don't include the answer to "why" this is a bad idea, there'd be nothing to discuss dev-side, and hence, nothing to reconsider.

As a side note, from an outsider point of view the whole "Jinx bashing" deal is starting to look quite ridiculous, and mind you, this is coming from someone who's had countless arguments and disagreements with Jinx in dev chat, not only about his models, but about a lot of his other ideas as well, so would be nice if you can tone down on that one as well. If you want to voice your disagreement about something, do it about the original decision of revising zoner line, and not the mere model proposals Jinx came up with.

P.S: Only lead developers have gold name, which means in case of model-related matters only the model lead gets gold name, and not every modeler, but that doesn't make the lead devs any more important than regular developers.

So let’s start with addressing this.
You’ve stated that you wish to reimburse the Zoners. Okay, how can you reimburse people for literally hundreds of hours of time. In some cases thousands of ship hours. That not including all the time and effort spent on the forums writing RP backstories and posting inRP and all the time and effort involved in that.
These ships have been around on the server for YEARS! longer than I’ve ever played and I was playing back in like 2007 or something. (I took a long time to make a forum account, I was young enough that my parents didn’t let me have an E-mail address or go on the internet unsupervised, yay for overprotective parents.)

Two, I didn’t swear, Sabre did. I’ll have you know that I cursed like a sailor who has just been told that he has to have his balls removed without anesthetic when I first read the news. But most of that was screaming internally and then a spew of anti-jinx profanity-ridden rubbish that I deleted before posting because despite my rage I still delete things with incorrect spelling. And I lose the ability to spell when I’m blindingly angry.

Sabre also had a point and it’s just annoying as hell that his post got deleted for two swear words and he got a week tempban but I can’t do anything about that. Because you guys are all very strangely protective of Jinx.

Okay, so this is not a case of the community being mad about a nerf. This is not a nerf. A nerf would be changing the ships to be less effective. So like removing some gun hardpoints from the ships or a nerf to armour. This is removing the ship. You can say “But we are changing them to another model” all you desire. It doesn’t change the fact that you are removing LITERALLY tens of thousands of hours of combined RP. The change from a Battleship to a battletransport is not something that can be roleplayed. “By the way, this defence ship that I’ve ben threatening you with if you screw around in my No-Fire-Zone? It was actually just a transport all along. So I’m not sure why you moved on Mr. Battleship but there you have it.”

Two, here’s my response. And please don’t delete the PMs from this one. They are here for a reason.

And as to the Jinx bashing that’s something that a lot of Zoners are going to do because of how he handled the Omicroners in their last moments. Keep in mind that the disbanding of one of the most active and largest playerfactions on the server can be attributed solely to Jinx. He just said “I don’t want to search for a replacement. The faction is disbanded.” with that he broke down a hell of a lot of RP over the course of years and broke the balance of power in the Zoners and caused a lot of resentment towards him.

This has been counteracted by the Phoenix but it’s taken a while. They should not have to be a faction that rides off the demise of the Omicroners because the Omicroners should never ahve been disbanded. I know that and OSI and the Omicroners used to fight like cats in a very, VERY small sack and I was OSI HC at the time.


Onto Jinx’s PM
So thanks for deleting this when I quoted it in the thread. Because transparency is something that we all dislike. Please leave this one in here. I don’t want to have to write this whole thing again.

when the ZA trouble happened early last year - the anti-zoner rants had started again. and many ppl questioned why zoners had evolved into that direction.

Indies. Not official Zoner RP. There was an FR5 request from official Zoners that was denied by the admins.

at that point - the general mood of the forum was very much anti-zoner and "how can they DARE to have such big ships"

now let me tell you that - the only person who stood up for zoners vocally was Tel Aviv (and minions) - in a ... lets say... rather detrimental manner, cause he was and still is "the bad guy with the stupid ideas" .. and the other person was trogdor.

I was offline to prevent a mental breakdown. I’m sure that a lot of the officials tried their hand, filing for an FR5 and sanctions against them for breaking with Zoner RP. But the admins denied it so what can you do?

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.

Doc Holliday as much as I love the man (100% homo) is literally the most frustrating person to get into contact with via skype. Similar but less infuriating for Mad John. You just can’t get onto them. I can say “I asked the wall whether I could put a photo hook on it and it never responded.” That’s because it won’t respond. Doc has ALWAYS been this way and as someone who roleplayed a Zoner and was an official faction Hc member you should know this. Almost everyone else does.

You could also have contacted Fox. He’s been TAZ for about as long as I’ve been around the server. A very long time. And he’s almost always contactable and can send messages to the people that need to hear it.

Also there should not need to be arguing against people. This whole thing should have been nipped in the bud and the ZA ships all transferred to the BHG CORE. Or something. A faction that has RP reason to pew on the Order and get into fights with them. they could keep the ships for all I care, they can RP that they raided some dudes and stole them.

There is also the fact that what you are doing is not cutting indie rights here. You are in fact removing avenues of roleplay for indies and official factions alike. Unless the indies are taking an “If I cannot have this then everything must burn!” view I’m sure that having to file an SRP request for a ship and/or have approval from an official faction or have the ship removed that would be preferable to having the ships removed in their entirety.

If you do not allow factions to police their capital ships at all (Please note that LNS or RNC or KNF or BAF or Corsairs or Outcasts would remove a capital ship for offences much less than making an entire subfaction and then declaring war on an inRP ally and blockading a central faction system entirely) then do not punish them when the indies go out of control with them. You can either have the indies with maximum freedom (Something that you endorse) and have the official factions facing no consequences for their actions because they cannot influence them or you can have the indies rights reduced and the official factions being allowed to police them and thus facing consequences for the actions of indies.

You can’t punish me for the actions of my brother. I am not my brother’s keeper. He is his own person, I would not have my driver’s license revoked if my brother got his revoked. Why are you revoking my battleship license because someone who I have no control over was reckless with theirs?

I also told the leaders "if they do not FIGHT for what they want, they WILL loose it, cause we, the devs.... WILL cater to the ppl asking for change IF the ppl affected do not fight against it." (and cause we simply cannot take silent ppl into account - cause we are no mind readers)

Here we are, fighting against change. I ask of you, where are your previous posts stating this? On the forum where everyone can see, the transparent process. If you indeed have any there. And you bumped them and PMd the people like you should do if you want a thread for sure to be replied to. Most people just check the top two pages and then call it a day, I’m guilty of this as well.

now why is that relevant when it was a year ago? - cause change takes time. and consequences ... REAL consequences do not always just happen right away.

of course we know you wanne keep your toys - but we are also sure that those toys are detrimental for the general perception of zoners - and zoner players have NOT provided us with the FIERCE determination why they should keep them.

so - yea - don t give me the crap about not making an efford to get hold of the leaders of the factions. it was tried it either fell on deaf ears or was ignored. you simply cannot ask for more of a dev. - it is not our job to beg you to talk to us.

Fierce determination to keep their assets. Everyone assumed that that thread poll would come to nothing. Now here you are stating the change to the general community, and guess what? Fierce determination that such a thing is no. If you play a Zoner character at all you can see that this change is not going to help the server to change in the correct direction and that it will be detrimental to future and current RP alike.

The Zoners live in the edge worlds. We need guns. As much as I love my diplomacy, I’m a terrible PVPer and can’t beat a starflea in a battleship. I died to a stork while I was in a blarghest. That’s how bad I am. The fact remains that there are some people you simply cannot reason with and though we may love our allies we cannot have them always online at every station all the time. Our own Zoner defence ships make sense inRP. It’s been twenty years or so since we got the big wake-up kick. Someone who didn’t care about diplomacy came and pewpewpew’d Freeport 7. So we learned to defend ourselves. We built guns and ships to mount them on to prevent something like this from ever happening again. At least not whilst we drew breath.

This thing that you are trying to do. Please do not do this thing.

[Gytrash]

yes, the poll was reviewed and interpreted. - 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.

We have concluded that there is a combined majority of players wishing for change though - which beats the single majority wishing for no change whatsoever. This is an interpretation to which we stand.

Option 1 got 43% of the vote. at 47 votes.
Option 2 got 25% of the vote at 27 votes
Option 3 got 25% of the vote at 27 votes
Option 4 got 7% of the vote at 8 votes

50% to 43% with 7% abstinence (Effectively) is not a clear majority. It is in fact half. Half is not a majority. Ever. Under any circumstances. It may be the most voted for option but the correct thing to do in this instance is to eliminate the least popular option and run the vote again. In fact. Here’s what I would suggest we do.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1xzlPXj2...4/viewform

And I even filled out all the questions for you!
AND THERE’S FISH! Who doesn’t like fish?
Of course, there’s the problem that people can fill out that form falsely but I’m sure that a poll on the forums that shows what people voted for would allow us to cross reference the data.

[Gytrash]

to be more precise

nephilim:

this is the most prominent candidate - and the one that may have cause the most immersion-breaking-problems. Its original purpose ( 4.82 and before ) was to be a secret zoner dreadnought of immense power, capable of withstanding an entire corsair taskforce and able to rain retribution upon whoever threatened the freeports.
its purpose and role changed to that of a semi-generation-ship or rather a ship for extended missions and semi capable autonomy.

HOLD IT!
.82? And before? This is going back years and years and years. Surely people have established RP around this ship? Changing it from one sort of heavily armed-armoured ship to another doesn’t really change that much in terms of gameplay. And roleplay can be either kept the same or adjusted with minimal effort.

the role of the ship will focus on that aspect - and the ship is about to become a sort of superliner with teeth. - think of a battletransport in of greatest size - not capable of withstanding any serious assault, but capable of defending vs. the occasional attackers ( like a wing of nomad NPCs ) - while being able to take a lot of punishment and ferry a large amount of goods ( maybe comparable to a minibarge - but for the sake of game mechanics - thats all rather in your heads and not in the stats )

I can’t defend against a wing of Nomad NPCs in a cruiser. I live in Australia and I sit on about 400 ping and 10% lag/loss as standard so NPC ships tend to flip out around me. It’s hard to shoot things that teleport all over the place.

There’s also the problem that the Nephilim model currently is huge. Literally. Apart from Barges and planets it’s the largest thing in the game. (And some Gallic stations but we don’t talk about those. Official Dev policy I’m afraid. The game resources that get put in Gallia stay in Gallia).

And Zoners can’t land in anything above a 3.5 (3.6?)k cargo ship. So a big ship that carries less cargo than the whale. Is less maneuverable than the whale but is about the size of the entire solar system and holds less cargo than the only other ship that fits these criteria is the barge and that has been stated in the past to be the only ship that will have more than 5k cargo because reasons. Reasons that I personally agree with. I think, I can’t remember them very well. but it was something to do with balance.

look and feel of the ship is meant to be more like a superlarge utility ship that is meant to operate long long long periods of time on its own, sustaining its crew.

the ship won t be capable of assaulting other ships even half its size though but maybe it might be capable of taking the damage to get to a friendly port. - for that matter we must hope that other ( non zoner ) players respect the new role, too and do not attack "just cause they can" but only if they have sufficient RP and reason for it. ( but thats a lost cause i know )

It’s me again! Surprise. So let’s see, you expect that other players will respect the new role and vulnerability of the ship? Let’s look at the main faction that will not under any circumstances respect this. And rightly so. The Nomads. They exist to kill Humans, or something. That seems to be their main purpose in the mod, they are the antihuman alien. I can get behind that, sometimes I really want to go on a genocidal killing spree too. But the fact of the matter remains that the Nomads have good reason inRP to kill a colony ship. And a lightly armoured big as all hell ship floating around in the Omicrons is asking for a rocket up the backside. Let’s not forget that the Nomads also have gunboat patrols in Omicron Kappa (And used to have Battleship patrols, not sure if they still do… Anyhow. in a whale I can barely get away from a gunboat patrol. And that’s only because I can dodge. Something that is like 5 times the size of that and gets stuck on every asteroid going is never, EVER, going to be able to dodge any kind of fire. The fact that it can still not land in house space is going to be a turn off as well. I mean, some of the house factions might start using them but Zoners won’t use them.

[Gytrash]

the aqullon:

the original role of that ship was a short-mission-patrol-carrier, the only true zoner military ship. it is rather small and compact atm. its armament is fairly average though.

it will be replaced by a battletransport, kind of a typical type of that class. it will be meant to be a sort of ship that can take on a pirate transport or equivalent and or scare minor attackers away - while having the armor to get to a friendly port.

another ship that won t be used much for attack but for defense.

I spy with my little eye. Something beginning with B and ending in T… And it’s not battletransport. I’ll give you a hint. Bulls produce it, farmers use it and plants love it.

See also, Zoners cannot land in house space in it. And it carries less cargo than the whale. Transports can’t defend against battleships. Especially if they have someone to CD you. And the Nomads normally do. Transports can’t defend against bombers easily. And I know that you are gonna say “Then you should get some good”. I’ve tried. When I get into a fight my lag spikes to about 70% and my ping to about 700. It’s embarrassing for all involved and it generally ends really awkwardly and I type “//You win. Probably… I’ll just go.” That or I just get shot to death because my ship refuses to move.

the leviathan:

right now the TAZ have one and the phoenix have one. those two ships will be converted to nephilims ( current ones ) - and the leviathan model will be removed from the mod. - they will become two actual military grade flagships - getting the current nephlims stats and model and serve as what the original intent of the juggernaut was for ( minus the lore of awesomeness and plus the stigma of balance )

I’ve been trying to prevent myself from just putting in a whole paragraph of NO NO NO NO NO… Or NEIN NEIN NEIN NEIN NEIN… Or however you want to say it. But this section almost pushed me straight into it.

What’s the point? Do you hate your models Jinx? I love the Leviathan model, it looks fancy and is actually more practical as a battleship and something that traverses asteroid fields than the current Nephilim model. As much as I loved my Neph (Before it got sold or inactivitywiped or whatever happened after I went offline) trying to fly through an asteroid field on that thing was like trying to ice skate with two water buffalo taped to my feet. It was just not going to happen. The leviathan on the other hand just slices through the asteroids and isn’t the size of a planet.

the final word of balance is NOT uttered yet. it is a semi finished concept - but the intent to proceed is there.

the zoner fleet will become a more utility ship based fleet with minor military assets. they will keep the cruisers and gunboats for light and heavy military support but won t have enough to actually cause trouble for their neighbours ( outcasts, corsairs ) - who in turn should take that into consideration.

Jinx, a tear rolls down my eye. You are assuming that people will be excellent to each other. Truly you are a shining beacon of optimism in this cold and dreary world we live in. Unfortunately there’s someone knocking at the door. It’s Cynicism and his friends Basic Human Nature and Common Stupidity. They are telling me that what you say is never going to happen because people aren’t wired like that. Oh dear.

it is felt that possessing anything up to cruisers is sufficient to survive in the omicrons while not having grand ambitions about conquest - and that superliner /transport ships is of more use for zoners. - the nephilim replacement should serve well for any peaceful roleplay conducted by players who wish to fly the huge exploration vessels. it is not yet clear if they will only do transport weapons - or if they can mount hybrid weapons ( like transport + GB or so )

Prepare your bodies and grab hold of your socks. I agree with Jinx. At least in part. A small part. A part that is cowering before the rest of me while holding up it’s hands screaming “I CAN EXPLAIN!”.

So let’s get the part that I agree with out of this paragraph and then I’ll disagree with the rest

it is felt that possessing anything up to cruisers is sufficient to survive in the omicrons while not having grand ambitions about conquest

Yes. If we had never had Nephilims and Aquilons and built roleplay around them and only had cruisers this would be the perfect thing to say. Unfortunately you (That is the Devs) gave us them and said “Be roleplay” so we took these ships, and we were roleplay, and we spent months building up stories, characters, factions and bases around them. We took the original lore that we had and made it fit with what we now have and the Zoner community as it stands has a lot built around these two ships. The nephilim more than it’s less popular cousin. Ad it’s less popular cousin is the ship that seems to be built better for PVP.

The rest

- and that superliner /transport ships is of more use for zoners. - the nephilim replacement should serve well for any peaceful roleplay conducted by players who wish to fly the huge exploration vessels. it is not yet clear if they will only do transport weapons - or if they can mount hybrid weapons ( like transport + GB or so )

Not today Zurg!

And here’s why. See previous section. If these were ships that were being added as new and all we had in the past were cruisers then I’m sure that a whole bunch of people would bring up transport sizes and armaments and a whole bunch of balance complaints.

Mounting gunboat weapons won’t help because gunboat weapons cannot travel the length of a neph. Does not work as a weapon because the ship is so damn huge.

[Gytrash]

current replacements:

http://p3d.in/fW2Cn

top to bottom : (unused) , aquillon, nephilim

http://fc00.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2014/0...73tybs.png
aquillon

http://fc03.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2014/0...75se24.png
nephilim

no need for a leviathan picture, cause it ll use the current nephilim model.

Why do the ships look like Assault rifles? I’m not even kidding. I asked my 50 year old dad if they looked aggressive. He said yes. I asked my military friend what they looked like and he said military spacecraft. I’m not joking here. Why do these ships look so much more aggressive when you say we are moving away from aggressive shiplines?

you may discuss things here or even point fingers and get mad. - constructive ideas may be considered but rants or other unpleasent stuff will be ignored.

Nothing really to say here, Except here we go on the next one. I think that’s pretty much the end of really long posts anyway so I should not have to split them up in future. I think. I hope.

actually, gytrash - last year i have contacted both phoenix and taz to be much more vocal to keep their assets - and both factions have failed to fight their fight. - so yes. the ppl were informed that "if they do not stand for what they want and actually FIGHT for it - they will loose it"

afraid to say, your rant is false. - both factions have failed to counter the vocal majority back in the days ( about a year+ ago ) - and both were addressed not once but multiple times via skype. - i know it, cause i tried to get them to fight for their stuff.

We have already established that all the official factions are against this. There is no single official faction leader or even HC member who has said “These are fantastic changes and I love them.” I suspect that what happened was you said
“I want to change your battleship lines a bit”
The official faction leaders said
“How?”
“Into transports, isn’t that a good idea?”
“No, let us never speak of this again. Final answer.”

That or they didn’t get your message.

And then thought that because, you know, official factions the caretakers of the NPC factions would agree to losing so much RP by official faction members and the factions themselves not to mention by the indies. As well as weakening the faction in general by an unacceptable amount and making the ships into novelty targets of opportunity is not an appealing idea.

[Gytrash]

@sindrom: we won t. it is not dev policy to reimburse players for loosing assets. it has never been and and it is unlikely that it will ever be done. if one is affected by change - so be it, tough luck.

it has happened to rogues in the past, corsairs, hackers, IMG etc. they all lost assets in the past and had to deal with it.

Changing assets a bit and losing a light fighter here and there is nothing compared to losing an entire line of battleships due to them being reworked as transports. The only comparable thing is the loss of the spyglass and there were like 7 total on the server a the time that it went to the HF. That’s because the Spyglass was so hard to acquire inRP.

Why is it not a dev policy?

Because devs don't have the power to do anything about that. I'd ultimately come down to the admin team of each server to decide whether or not they'd want to reimburse their players for these assets. In case of Disco GC, it is still being discussed, but most probably we will start a thread where people would be given the option to trade in their zoner cap and get solid cash in return.

Also, gents... Keep it civil.

Don’t make changes that are going to affect the server in a huge way and say “We don’t care about the IDs, not our problem. If they don’t change them then you are just completely out of luck.” YOU ARE DEVS! The wellbeing of the mod as a whole is your responsibility. If you are not going to reveal your plans until they are completed then at least have all the information sorted. You should have spoken to the admins already and said “Hey, we are planning to do this, will these ID changes be able to be implemented to cut back on the consequences of this action somewhat?”

The onus is on you to have thought through all of the consequences of your action and to have done everything you can to accumulate the maximum data for your public release. You cannot say “Not my responsibility because I don’t deal with it directly”. You are making the changes it is entirely your responsibility. If you cannot make the changes directly then talk to the people who can about it before you do something like this.

@sindroms:

to be a bit more detailed about why there is that policy about no reimbursements.

firstly - i will not say it is fair or unfair.. or lets say... yea - it is unfair kind of. but it has been like that ever since.

back in the days when igiss ran the show - we moved ships from one faction to another if it made sense - deleted stuff or removed it from sale. - the affected players were usually given a period of grace to adjust their things ( sell it to the vendor or delete it ).

to start exchanging assets because of change now would be unfair to past generations who had to deal with it, but even if those past generations did not care - like aerelm said... it is admins work to seek out players and swap their stuff or reimburse.

i am not sure if there can be a macro to sell the stuff, - not sure cause we never did it before. personally i do not think it is necessary as the loss is fairly managable for most players who have the money to fly a battleship.



in terms of stats:

no idea.... i guess we will not exceed the 5k cargolimit, so the whale remains the top transport for zoners. we will also most likely not go overboard with experimentation in terms of hybrid loadouts ( if any [see necrosis])


when will it happen?

not the next update for sure... this thread is a FYI - and depending on whats left to do it might be update 7 ( thats the update after the next one if we keep miniupdating the mod )


edit: @Gytrash

first ... let it go
second ... you asked who was contacted and if any efford was made to contact the leaders - and i wrote you that yes - it was made an efford to tell the leaders exactly that. we did a lot more than is our job in that case to get in touch with the leaders and push them to fight for their stuff - much more than we may have done for other factions - cause yes, we knew that once we started to actually DO something about it - ppl would crawl out of their little hiding holes and start ranting how surprisingly unfair life is.

If you say “I’m thinking about making a change” and the person who is going to be most affected by that says “This is a terrible idea, don’t do this thing” and then after a year of silence you say “This change is happening” then you can be assured that people are going to start ranting about how unfair it is. I was a ranking member of the OSI. Still am. I’ve also been involved with the CoF for ages, I run it actually, in there we have almost all the independent station administrators and the leader of the Phoenix, the leader of OSI and always the 2IC of the TAZ.

Of all of these people when I asked them all “What’s this then?” Everybody said “Never heard of it”. And really, considering the lineup of people we have there someone should have heard of it. Seems a bit like you didn’t contact people as well as you thought you had Jinx.

[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.

[Gytrash]

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.

link to my poll
http://discoverygc.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=112339

link to jinx's poll
http://discoverygc.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=110566

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.

Now while I have to say that I disagree with the majority of this post, I don’t really buy into the whole admins and devs don’t listen to the community this whole debacle is pushing me towards it faster than a massive gathering of Bronies causes Drag Queens to run. (Funny story there, big group of Bronies I was shepherding around Sydney, every time we met up with these drag performers they nicked off, obviously we were lowering the tone of the neighborhood ).

The point that Dirk’s poll was pushing is that the majority of Voters (At least before the poll was shut down as it was linked to the original post. I think that the poll had merit as a measure of community interest but anyway) believe that the official factions should be consulted before any changes to the ships and lore of said faction. It is clear from the reaction of the Official faction leaders that this is something that did not take place either at all or as much as it should have.

A singular majority is not the same as the general majority.

A poll with four options where one gets 43% of the vote is not a poll where that option should be dismissed out of hand. As I have said earlier there is actually based on the votes a much higher percentage of people voting to keep the Zoners in battleships, remember, combine the “No change” with the “Rebalance” crew and you get 68% that wish for the Zoners to keep battleships in one form or another.

I don't know what you're referring to nor why you're attacking a development team member but I'm going to advise you to stop doing the latter.

There is a reason a lot of Zoners are bitter towards Jinx. I said it earlier but it bears repeating. Jinx got the ire of a large part of the Zoner community with his actions at the end of the Omicroners. Now I’m not going to say that I’m aware of every part of what happened there. But I was frantically contacting people trying to find out what happened and all i could really get was Jinx saying “It’s Over”. A ranking member of the Omicroners and someone with whom I had cordial relations and was planning to have some RP of a reconciliation between OSI and the ‘Croners, Moebus, had no idea what happened. Jinx did not attempt to fnd a erplacement when he didn’t want to lead it he just ended it.

And that got a lot of people mad and they have remained mad to this very day. So anything proposed by Jinx regarding the Zoners has this pall of “Remember the Omicroners” over it.

If making the game more compatible with lore is fascism then my goal is to exterminate all democratic government.

Seriously, come on. The Zoners have a population of, what, maybe thirty thousand peoples spread across over a dozen stations and hundreds of small craft and transports around Sirius. That is not a military force. That is not a group that can support heavy warships.

The only groups that can logically support one or maybe two battleships at the most are the ones who currently have Persephones: TAZ and Phoenix.

Okay, any reference to current Zoner lore is annoying to me, and let me tell you why. Because the Zoner lore as it stands has been pieced together by people working independently of others over the course of years. Everyone is confused by it and I suspect it’s why we get a lot of lolwut zoner factions. Because the lore is confusing. I’ve got everyone who wants to and plays a Zoner working on hammering out lore that fits together and is workable. I would prefer it if there were no eral changes to the Zoner shipline before that occurs.

And before you say “This then is the perfect time to change the shipline!” No. It’s not. Because the people who are hammering out the lore are Players, not Devs. We are going to fit it to current RP as well as we can and the original lore. We are trying to get the definitive origin of the Zoner movement down as well as how the Zoners have developed since vanilla down. Because not much developing of Zoner official lore has happened and we want to fit as much player RP into it as we can.

That's not what's happening, sorry.

Also, next person to take a shot at Jinx or any other member of the development team is getting 24 hours to think about what they've done. Harassing other members of the community is against the rules, period.

See also, previous chunk of text by me.

Whos done any harassment? I would say your threatening me and others with that comment. Jinx made us mad, were going to refer to him in our complaints. We see whats going on as an attack on our group, can we ban Jinx?

It was more directed towards the people blaming Jinx for everything and deriding him for the Persephone etc.

Zoner ID won't change. They seek for ways to reducing zoner activity, not balance.

I'm going to have to ask you politely to stop, go make a sandwich, maybe have a cup of your preferred calming beverage, and think about whether this is such a massive deal or not before you post again. You are overreacting majorly. This is not intended to damage the Zoners. This is intended to make some sense of the lore and inject some much needed logic and common sense into Discovery.
[/quote]

Having had an entire pool party in between reading these posts and writing this feel that I have more than fulfilled the requirements set forth by you.
Yes this will be damaging to Zoner factions, official and unofficial. And here’s why. The Zoners are currently a powerful neutral faction. Not as powerful as the Houses but powerful enough that the Corsairs and Outcasts aren’t walking all over us. Because lets face it, that’s what will happen if you do this. Not to mention the Red hessians and other pirate factions. We would also be weakened enough that the Houses would feel far less hesitant about completely dictating policy. At present the Zoners are a powerful but scattered people, not able to raise in any one point the forces required to be a major threat but give them sufficient reason and feel the consequences. Also in case you complain about house militaries stomping the Zoners in ten seconds flat. Okay, they can do that. Then http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asymmetric_warfare also it would look bad to the voters.

I have no idea what's going to happen with the Zoner ID. That is not a task of the development team's, but rather one of the adminstration team.

If people don't calm down, this thread's taking a 24 hour recess through the magic of mister dancing lock such that those who are not being level-headed can spend some time trying to do so.

Let me tell you a tale of Responsibility. Let’s say I’m in charge of a segment of a company and I make a change in policy. This change in policy requires other departments workers to change their ways in a detrimental manner. For example I state that everyone must wear black leather lace ups while at work. And the manufacturing section workers say “That’s not workable” and I say back “Not my problem, why don’t you just stop needing workboots”. See the problem here? You should consider and talk to other departments before making changes. Tou are making a massive change to the Zoner faction, or at least you are trying to and when people raise valid concerns all you have to say is “Not my problem, go bother someone else.” Not really the correct way to show how you are doing this for the good of the community.

We did. That was what the poll was for. 40% of players who voted wanted it to stay the same, 60% wanted some sort of change.

This is literally the development team using community-driven democracy to determine a course of action for the mod.

I’ve said this before but it needs to be said again. 68% of the community voted to keep Zoners in battleships. Of that 68% 25% wished to change the balance of said battleships. Only 25% of the community wanted the transports you are pushing on them. Your argument has been rendered invalid via the application of LOGIC!

Probably. But the fun part of a democracy is that one side is invariably not going to like the result. It's not so much a flaw in the system as it is a flaw in human nature.

Dirk, options 2 and 3 of that poll were close enough that we merged them together in the aftermath of the voting. At least, that was my take on it. Transports and liners are much more passive than battleships.

The merging of options two and three was in error. I shall restate why because it can’t be said enough. Desiring to change the balance of battleships a bit is not the same as turning battleships into transports. I’m not sure how you came to the conclusion that you did but I have come to a completely different one and I have told you why.

[Gytrash]

We did. That was what the poll was for. 40% of players who voted wanted it to stay the same, 60% wanted some sort of change.

This is literally the development team using community-driven democracy to determine a course of action for the mod.

But you can check the results, who voted. Who actually play as Zoner, voted for first opinion.

For example, if you would start same vote for LNS, RNC players would be happy to see their targets as battle transports, a bit stupid example, but it shows what are people are. I'm asking for little, why you are so against to give a damn what actually Zoner players think, involve us in this progress?

This here is actually a good point. Of the people who voted how many of them are going to be directly affected by the change? I.e. people that either actively play Zoner characters or have Zoners as their main faction? I’m sure that Pirate mains would love the Zoners to only have more transports. More zoner transports means more piracy options. Of course repaying people’s loyalty to a faction like this is kicking the dog a bit.

That’s why I suggested the poll that I did. In fact because we can see the people that voted let’s see who voted for the Transport line.
...kur nubégo?
Information on his profile states that he is with the Omega Pirates Guild
Asmodean
Plays Outcasts. Not Zoners
djorde_Petrovic
Actually a Zoner but also a Junker. He has recently divested himself of Freeport 101 which was his mani investment in the Zoner community so I’m not sure that he actually still plays a Zoner.
Eonaros
A Phoenix Zoner but also someone who is in a million other factions. Still, he’s a Zoner so that brings us to two.
Haste
Everything except for Zoners.
Highland Laddie
No information on his profile but he plays Bretonians and Pirates. Not Zoners from what I can see.
Jinx
Voting in your own poll is bad form. You don’t even play Zoners.
Jansen
LWB, Corsairs, not Zoners from what I can see
Kazinsal
No Zoners here. Devs shouldn’t be voting. It taints the results.
Leppy.
Colonial republic recruitment office post. Not many others. Certainly none as a Zoner
IIcecolon
Bretonia. Not a Zoner
LordVipex
Commonwealth, not much else there.
Lythirilux
Not a Zoner, I think. Unless the sisters of light are.
Mercarryn
An OSI Zoner. OSI are only traders.
Mister X
A corsair
Ortog
A Junker
Pancakes
Kishiro, Gallia
Pel
Gaian, Not a Zoner
Reno
Liberty? I think, It’s hard to tell with literally 27 posts in like 6 years.
Roadrunner
A pirate with a Zoner backstory? And he’s a trader too.
Sava
Outcasts. Or at least last tiem I met XTF that’s who they were
Sindroms.
Don’t think he’s a Zoner at the moment.
SMGsterlin
I don’t think he ever was a Zoner. Correct me if I’m wrong.
Teta
Seems a lot like an alt. Only one character and that’s KNF.
Thyrzul
The most active trader-only TAZ from what I can gather.
Void_Nemesis_GOF2
An OSI guy.
Xiphos.
An pirate

So in total 6 Zoners voted for it. And a lot of pirates. I’m not certain if they have since changed their votes.


Still. LEt’s take out the votes that shouldn’t be there. Kazinsal and Jinx. Devs should not be voting on a community opinion poll and then replying to it with answers. You have a vested interest.
That’s two less. Let’s also take out the people that voted twice and get the actual numbers.
Leppy voted twice
Xiphos voted twice.
Pancakes voted twice.
Grunder industries (An alt if ever I saw one) Voted THREE TIMES!.
Alphawolf voted twice
Mercarryn voted twice
Quiron voted twice
Zed26 voted twice

So that’s 7 votes gone from the nerf Zoners bit.
So that actually brings the “Keep it the same” mob into a clear majority.
Seriously. What the hell. Redo that poll if anything.

I'm not against giving anyone a voice. But asking one specific fraction of the community about what we should do with their specific exclusive toys is not a good idea. Otherwise we'd have nothing to take away from that other than "people want a zoner exclusive barge with no hitbox and infinite cruise speed" and other silliness.

When you have a democracy of the few, it's not a democracy.

This is not about asking a specific fraction of the community about what we should with their specific exclusive toys. This is about ships that are used by some of the largest factions on the server and completely revoking those ships and all RP associated with them. Anyone who compares a Neph to a barge with infinite cruise speed and no hitbox has never flown one. They fly like pregnant cows. Cows pregnant with whales.

I have a nephilim for almost 4 years, during that time - it had taken a different shape, now its considered a "colony-ship" - and, clearly some of us are not really into running a community of civilians, some of us actually enjoy the ship in different aspects, that I can deal with - but to strip my only capital-ship, which has done nothing wrong except sitting idle at omega-41 for the sake of "community cohesion" - or in other words, an attempt to slash the zoners due to false reports about their conduct is truly absurd. All generalisations are false, including this one.

I've had one for almost five years. It's the only battleship I have ever owned. Yeah, I didn't really want to lose it, then I thought about it a bit. I bought it because it looked cool. It's a cool RP ship. I just wasn't RPing very much with that ship. In fact I did almost nothing with it. Yeah, it's a bit of a hit, but in five years I think I've gotten my money's worth. The game will always change. I don't always like the way it does. It goes on though.

Let me ask you this Mr. Hawk, would you be so willing if that ship was your pride and joy? If you roleplayed it every day for those 5 years. If you built watering holes and roleplay stories and had your characters lives intertwined with it? Would you be so willing to go “Oh well, change is change”. Of course not. Would you be so willing to do this if it was the Salvager that was being replaced with a CSV? Of course not. Because that would be affecting you. You would be livid.
Your renzu liner replaced with a starflea? Nope.

Just because it’s not affecting you does not mean that it’s failing to affect other members of the community deeply.

[Gytrash]

No idea. That's the admin team's jurisdiction. Try asking them instead?

SRP idea can't work because the goal isn't to grandfather in hundreds of existing zoner battleships.


EDIT: Gold medal hockey game starting, responses will be in between periods.

See also, allowing official factions to police the Zoner capital ships to prevent the hundreds of existing Zoner battleships. We could just take them away from the Jumpers and that would cut the numbers of them existing at least in half.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandfather_clause

This way we don't have to bastille every zoner cap until every single zoner cap gets SRPed.

Would you rather continue RPing without your battleship turrets or would you rather be in Bastille?

I’d rather be in Bastille. I’ll wait.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandfather_clause

This way we don't have to bastille every zoner cap until every single zoner cap gets SRPed.

Would you rather continue RPing without your battleship turrets or would you rather be in Bastille?

Yeah, put the caps to Bastille and read a lot of SRP request would be far more work for the board than simply turn them into transports, but maybe we could reach some consensus in this topic.

If the admins don't want to work more due to lack of time/RL stuff/laziness just say that honestly. It would be straighter than simply push this down in our throat while saying "deal with it, that's life, there is no other solution, lore logic needs it."

You've got it a bit backwards my friend.
It's being changed because of the lore logic. What they're doing about it comes after that.
IIRC Admin forces are already spread a bit thin at the moment, and dealing with that many SRPs will definately take more time from (sorry to say) more significant things.

A post-post thought;
Is this simply a game of morals now? Because whether they tell you they don't want to or don't, it doesn't change the fact of the matter. Just saying.

This is the problem. The Zoner lore sucks. It sucks because nobody paid attention to it. What eh Zoners have done is taken the scraps that they started with and build a thriving and vibrant community. To take away that simply because of the actions of a couple of lolwuts would be devastating to the community as a whole. In one fell swoop you would remove years and years of RP as well as taking away the proverbial “Big stick” thus opening up Zoners to even more bullying.

There is disco Zoner lore. Not sure what you think is going on, that Zoners just kind of happened in the mod? And to assume the lore wasn't developed due to the devs being lazy is overly critical, if not hateful. If it's something that wasn't of particular interest, there would have been no reason for the lore to have been embellished.

Seriously, I can understand everyone's frustration in the matter, but I highly recommend that before you continue acting the way you all are you take a break from the forums. Have a drink. Make a sandwich. Because right now it's looking very much like rage induced hate and less like the developmental discussion everyone wants. I love this mod just as much as you guys, and I also want to see the best of it. So let me hear your arguments from a development stand point, not a biased standpoint.

Alrighty then. The Zoners were put into Vanilla with very shaky lore. They actually were kind of there.
The vanilla lore for them is literally three lines one of which is saying they use photon cannons.
There was a little bit of development of lore for the Zoners but most of that was just hocking the ships in there. There is a hell of a lot of RP done by Zoners and for Zoners explaining all of the things that we have. We’ve worked hard for our benefits. We started with scraps and built something great.
Also we have a team working on fitting Zoner RP into a consolidated Lore section. And explaining how they came to be and why the things we have came to be as well.

If this change is only due to Zoner lore,then why is the restriction on transports put in the first place?It was not there before,that was the first step in diminshing the whales population.And now adding transports which are just going to be not used and will collect dust just like the whales.

See the point?The addition of transports doesnt mean anything but another of the ships that will go down the line as a useless addition.And if you say that they need a well defended transport just because of the wild nature of the Omicrons and for their safety,then it contradicts the same ground on which you are removing the Juggernaut and the Aquillon,the reason that they are not useful since Zoners dont have any big threats.

All that I personally am asking is that,what will these new models do to improve the activity of the trading that the Zoners do now?And what will it do to improve the overall Zoner activity,be it indy or faction?Can anyone answer these questions?

EDIT:As far as I have followed each post and said all over this thread,the devs dont care about ID changes,they do ship modifications,remove them and just dont know what might happen after that.Its the admins job as I got reply from some,and in turn the admins havent done anything in here excpet Hawk,who sold his Zoner Juggy to me yesterday and expresses his concern of removing a 5 year old ship.

Not much to say here. If only the Devs would answer our questions like I respond to their posts. It would be so nice.

A comment for the sake of equality:

The proliferation of capital ships by all factions in a mere 20 years is certainly not consistent vanilla production capacities by an order of magnitude (or more). However, the Discovery mod was Igiss' personal vision; it was his to do with what he wanted, and by playing here we've all chosen to accept that. However, we do now recognise that his particular style of storytelling did not provide comprehensive coverage for each faction, or consideration of less tangible elements of lore which did not translate directly to gameplay features. However, one can simply not just "fix everything" overnight, because of the sheer inertia of the mod, and the differences in opinions about how to "fix" the mod.

In other words, while the Zoner players may feel that their wings are being clipped, I would hypothesise that in an ideal situation, a similar demilitarisation would happen across the board. However, there is a saying about the nail that sticks out the most being the first to get the hammer...*

Okay Echo, I crack the knuckles of my typing fingers menacingly.
No, it’s not in line with the lore of Vanilla. Of course if you follow Vanilla lore you can kill a battleship with a fighter really easily. So maybe Vanilla isn’t the best lore to follow excruciatingly closely.
And it’s not a wing clipping. It’s a wing removal. Let me tell you the difference. Clipping the wings of the Zoners would be rebalancing the ships so that they were more armoured but less firepowery. Removing some guns or lessening the powercore and adding armour. Changing them to transports is removing the wings entirely and not even bothering to bandage the stumps.
And as the bird of the Zoners lays on the floor, bleeding out and concussed from the removal of years of memories you lean over and cry out “Are we having fun yet?”

That’s a much better metaphor for it I would think.

And the way that the Zoners stand out is that the Zoners were given a little and started with a little and made a lot. The zoners have probably done the most factionbuilding out of any faction. We started with just some stations and have roleplayed every advance we got.

The liberty navy started out with a whole Navy and has stagnated since. The Zoners on the other hand have continued to grow and to make the most of what they have. And if they don’t have they’ve gone out and gotten it. Either RPed making it themselves or bought it from the people who do have it.

Personally, I would be in favour of having all Battleships only accessible by some regulated system (comparable to a SRP, but perhaps not necessarily quite as detailed). Regardless, I recognise that such a system is simply unfeasible to execute at this point in time.


Aside; it's important to note that IDs are the realm of the Administrators, not the Developers. Yes, there is overlap between the Devs and the Admins, but the two groups are not the same.


*I.E. The Zoners having access to "capital ships" was evidently judged to be one of the worse offenders in this scenario. This doesn't even take into account that the Zoner players in the past haven't been able to agree on what Zoner lore should be, if you ignore the fact they've been given bad cues by previous iterations of the mod.

Addendum: While some factions have become over-inflated, the Zoners are one of the rare instances of current faction lore being completely contradictory to canonical vanilla lore.

The current Zoner RP is not contradictory to Vanilla lore. Unless we have stopped using Photon cannons?
http://freelancer.wikia.com/wiki/Zoners
That’s the Vanilla Zoner infocard.
It’s pretty hard to contradict it.
We’ve just developed it a bit, you know, from three lines to hundreds of lines.