Super Long Megapost First post working version.

[lIceColon]

It DOUBLED! Now it's 10,000!

You're making your assumption relative to the existing vanilla population. I would suggest you instead make your assumption relative to house populations. There's no sign up process to be a zoner- as long as you leave house space for the borderworlds, don't join any other faction, then you automatically become a zoner.

Besides there were no zoners 800 years ago, it is logical to assume that people left only after they developed the feasibility for individual space exploration and travel after the colony ships had established a civilisation that could afford the loss of a member and his space ship.

edit: besides zoner stations are really just a minority. you'd think there would be much, much more zoners around in their ships. after all it's not like future space ships aren't well equipped enough for residential purposes.

[Divine]

...as long as you leave house space for the borderworlds, don't join any other faction, then you automatically become a zoner.
...

Freelancers? Mercenaries? Pirates operating on their own?

...for individual space exploration and travel...

In Nephilims and Aquilons?

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[Haste]

Keep grasping at straws. If the population was approximately 5,000 twenty years ago, it being 10,000 today is already a stretch.

Some sort of mass-migration to Freeports, as you are suggesting, is a silly attempt to try and make the illogical nature of the Zoner faction's increase in size, logical.

These Freeports were designed to house a certain number of people. The biggest had 2,000 people on it, and was the biggest by a very large margin. Let's say that one went up to about 3,000. Let's say even the ones with 100 people on it somehow attracted 2,900 new people and managed to house and feed them. All of these assumptions are silly and unlikely, but let's roll with it anyways. We'd still be stuck at something like 30,000 people for the entire Zoner population.

So basically, the equivalent of a small town on Earth. Would you expect the inhabitants of a small town to build a dozen aircraft carriers to protect themselves?



"High fertility, high life expectancy, high migration"
Population doubles in 100 years.

It seems pretty safe to state that the Zoners would have to have a population in the millions, not the thousands, to even consider building/acquiring capital ships. The kind of population growth required to go from 5,000 people to 1,000,000 people (That's 200 times as many people) in 20 years is completely absurd and planted firmly outside the realm of logic.

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[Technogeist]

So much stupidity in this thread. Commenting would be pointless so I will just throw kudos at the person who devoted 8 hours of time to making it. Well done.

[lIceColon]

...for individual space exploration and travel...

In Nephilims and Aquilons?

You're taking what I wrote out of context.

I meant during the first generation of zoners, which you would know if you read the whole sentence.

...as long as you leave house space for the borderworlds, don't join any other faction, then you automatically become a zoner.
...

Freelancers? Mercenaries? Pirates operating on their own?

Of course not including these occupations, but I assumed it was obvious.

[Highland Laddie]

So, the roleplay of these Zoner factions relies so very much on capital ships that have no logical reason to exist that your entire roleplay background would become null and void should these ships cease to have capital-class weapons and armor?

This sums up the argument nicely, imo.

I'll try to put myself in the same sort of situation, so to speak.

Let's say the devs decided that Gateway Shipping, for whatever reason, no longer should have access to 5k transports.

Would this suck? Yes. Would this affect our ability to ship and transport goods? Yes. Would this affect our RP? A bit...as we'd have to be more careful about what kind of jobs we take. Would this completely ruin the year of work we've put into the faction and make it pointless for Gateway to even exist? NO! Not at all. We would adapt...and use different ships to suit our RP. Simple as that.

And those Zoner players keep complaining that they're going to be somehow helpless without a BS...you seem to keep forgetting that you DO have other warships, including 2 of the best Gunboats in the game, and a new light bomber by the sound of it.

So you know what happens when that oh so horrible Corsair BS or Marduk shows up? You break out the GBs and bombers and kill it. Easy as that. I'm sorry if you somehow will miss the satisfaction of just riding high on your Nephilim and laughing at the puny others who would dare to challenge you.

[lIceColon]

So you know what happens when that oh so horrible Corsair BS or Marduk shows up? You break out the GBs and bombers and kill it. Easy as that.

Then why should the devs balance the game at all if your solution for any superior enemy is to just get more players to overpower it with your weaker ships?

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No atmosphere? GTFO.
The propeller is the greatest invention of all time.

[Major_Mayhem]

By the way, from your own faction page, OSI guy:

Technology Use
Zoner technology (Excluding the Aquilon, Fearless, Corvo, & Nephilim)

If you don't use them, how exactly can their repurposing be so harmful for your faction?

You can even quote the OSI-ID, which too does not allow anything bigger than gunboats. Because I'm lazier than Gytrash I will restrict myself to an inRP and an OORP point.

• As ist stands now, OSI is occupying a niche in the Zoner way. The trading-Zoner. Which is but one of many aspect of Zoner life. With the upcoming changes, all Zoners will have to be traders as their shipline does not support anything else. Hence the uniqueness of OSI is, simply put, gone, wich makes OSI obsolete.
  
• OORPly the OSI-ID is designed to be a trade-off between hauling capacity and capships. If the capships are gone, so is the trade-off. Nerfing a whole NPC faction down to traders, when you already have a dedicated trader-faction of this NPC-faction, would make OSI the now-drawback, ultimate Zoner ID.
  Ooooof course, one could argue that in that case the Admins would need to restrict the trading-capability of OSI, to balance it out, effectively destroying what OSI stands for either way.
  

[Divine]

Because it's a multiplayer game and you're supposed to play with others in a team. That's why VHF/Bomber-squads are still so ridicilously successful, despite the fact your precious capital ships were made better.

So, for the sake of it, by what it reads now, you just can't face the fact not to idle around in your Nephilim anymore going "engaging red" at every Nomad you see, bc you know, they're the enemy.
Then you will ofc complain again about how overpowered their ships are, and how much your ship needs a buff once you've been scrapped again by the Nomads.

Now, here's your solution...

Buy a bomber and learn to fly it.
Get people to team up with you.

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[Haste]

With the upcoming changes, all Zoners will have to be traders as their shipline does not support anything else.

"Civilians" in the Freelancer universe don't have access to anything bigger than Gunboats. Are you trying to tell us that every single civilian in the Discovery Freelancer universe is a "truck driver"? No. They have all kinds of jobs, just like civilians do in the real world. Zoners are just like that. Their unique trait is where they live: as far from House Space as possible.

The only limit for what your Zoner characters can be is your own imagination. OSI can still be the most significant trading branch of the Zoner faction. TAZ can still be a faction of discordians. Phoenix can still be that group of Zoners who survive and thrive in the Edgeworlds. All without big guns.

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