Resurrecting the Unioners

[TheJarl]

The Unioners are the least ideological of the Rheinland unlawfuls (at least in Disco and I can recall something like that in vanilla lore as well), they are more than the other just pure pirates. The Bundschuh are ever since vanilla, the most ideological ones. In Disco this over the years has grown to affect the relations between the two significantly. The VWA's stance is that the Unioners are nothing but selfish bandits and brutal pirates. Also note that the Bundschuh are now also at war with the Corsairs due to a Sair npc base being placed in Frankfurt.

But yeah, Bundschuh - Unioner feud started long ago. I remember hostilities back in 2011 between VF and AGS-U already and honestly, I think it's a good thing. It's just one more thing to differentiate between the various unlawfuls.

---

[Sturmwind]

Good point. I was planning to play the brigand part of the Unioners instead of the political thing as well.

[SpaceTime]

There should be more lucrative trade runs between Rheinland - Liberty in order to attract embargo runners and give the Unioners a bigger reason for existence. (and LPI/RFP indirectly too)

Another idea would be for Unioners to get "can hunt Republican Shipping anywhere" in their ID line.

Angry miner or construction worker? Make a Hessian. Anti-government left-leaning political RP? Make a Hessian. Hatred of foreign corps like Synth? Make a Hessian. All of the above while pirating? Make a Hessian. They've slowly but surely absorbed all of the nuances and attributes that made each of the groups distinct, and that sucks.

+1 here

That's because the Red Hessian Army for years (and I mean since '08 at least) was changing the vanilla faction into a highly ideological, extremely organized, all-encompasing unlawful group. Then Hessians got bigger ZoI, caps, dedicated snub shipline, identical diplomacy with the rest of the Rhein unlawful factions and finally an active indy playerbase basically removing any reason in creating a different Rheinland unlawful.

[Blodo]

Well Unioners definitely need a resurrection, but I would say that instead of focusing on a war with Hessians, you should try and focus on Bundschuh instead, thus giving more opportunities to two smaller factions. The Hessians have enough gameplay enemies in their ZoI to be occupied and active, Bundschuh have it harder and could use more opportunities to pew. But also, the more important argument is that the Unioners double deal on the Corsairs and the Hessians by dealing in both Artifacts and Blood Diamonds to get money, and I think that's a good part of the Unioner RP that people often forget about. It's why open hostility against Hessians doesn't really make sense for them in RP, they lose out on the whole deal rather than gain by suddenly having a powerful enemy and also losing a stable avenue of income. The only reason I can think of that would make them consider this would be a full alliance with Corsairs, but I hate this kind of developments because they basically mean the smaller faction is just an extension of the bigger and is defined by their ally rather than by their own RP and diplomacy. It kills the differences between unlawfuls too much. It's exactly why I was glad to have Hessian-Outcast alliance removed in the past.

So what I'd suggest is that Unioners play a part of the opportunistic, pragmatic pirates who have no problems cooperating with pretty much anyone who will let them make a buck, while also paving the way for Corsairs in through the back door into Munich and Frankfurt as a result of their dealings. This naturally will annoy the Bundschuh who don't really want Corsairs in Rheinland due to idealistic reasons, so they will try to sabotage Corsair operations there which will make the Unioners angry, and everyone can take that line of RP from there. Hessian part in all this would be to try to keep good relations with Bundschuh while either not being aware of Unioner back channel deals, or pretending not to know because the Hessians would also have good interest in the Blood Diamond route into Liberty to stay secure. They would remain firmly neutral with Unioners though, wouldn't be surprising if Unioner went past Corsair and Hessian fighting and pretended not to see or hear anything, while Hessian seeing Bundschuh and Unioner fighting would do something like "run to get help" (e.g. go away to somewhere else to avoid annoying either the Bundschuh and the Unioners).

I totally agree Unioners should raid Texas some more though. A couple of years back I was in one attempt to remake the Unioner faction, we raided Texas a lot during RM invasions, picking off all kinds of lone ships who were trying to get to the battle, it was good stuff. The war killed any traders going through Bering, so we smuggled blood diamonds and artifacts to Rogues instead, sometimes in same convoy. Fun times.

Unioner vs Xeno feud is also incredibly under played, XA would probably be happy to have a turf war now that they hunt Junkers in Texas, etc. so the Unioners have two opportunities for interaction there.

[Swifty]

I'd totally be interested to join up if you did that. Unioners need a resurrection, Rheinland factions need more love. +1

---

[Sturmwind]

@Nik, you're right, but both of these ideas require a modification on the game itself. I'd rather brainstorm about ideas which do not require the attention of the devs and can be implemented by the playerbase itself.

@Blodo: I've been thinking a lot about how to implement the "deals with both Corsairs and Hessians" thing, but on the long term, it would be difficult to maintain neutrality / friendliness with both factions in a war with each other. Then again, you very well highlighted how both large factions could need the Unioners, it's just that I believe the diplomacy of the faction cannot remain static with the current circumstances.

I'd also love to see an opportunity to clash with the Xenos, I very much hope the hardship programme yields a result of activity for the faction. Then again, if I was the Xeno leader, I'd mostly play the faction in New York and Cali, seeing how it's almost guaranteed to get an interaction there, whereas Hudson and Bering are abandoned.

[Highland Laddie]

There should be more lucrative trade runs between Rheinland - Liberty in order to attract embargo runners and give the Unioners a bigger reason for existence. (and LPI/RFP indirectly too)

Another idea would be for Unioners to get "can hunt Republican Shipping anywhere" in their ID line.

I was going to say...isn't the main focus of the Unioners to hunt Republican Shipping? And there are plenty of lucrative runs between Rheinland and Bretonia, so the Omegas should be a natural hunting ground of activity for Unioners (as well as Hessians, Corsairs, etc.)

And yes, they should be able to hunt Republican anywhere, if they cannot already.

[Sturmwind]

Here's my shot at it: http://discoverygc.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=130352