Zoners

[tyro]

Let me summarize.
~Make the Jinkusu SRP only. -> majority agrees with this.

~Remove the Aquilon or give it to another faction. -> most of people said NO.

~Remove the Fearless -> again, people said NO

~Change the Corvo -> majority want to leave this as it is, maybe decrease its war capabilities to be more research vessel and less cruiser, and make it more open.

~ Zoner Border World Transport, Whale -> open it for GMG (or/and/maybe IMG).

~Quit adding in Zoner stations. -> YES. and do something with Zoners stations in Omega50.

~Gran Canaria needs to be addressed. -> most of people agreed. someone said bombard it, some said give it to Bretonians. Destruction of planet is radical and it would be biggest disaster in Sirius. Maybe just put one Bretonian BS on the orbit and rename it to Planet Sydney and let people decide, whether they want to stay there or leave in their colony ships into the unknown.

~Remove GMG as an ally. -> mostly NO. every guild in Sirius is more or less friendly with Zoners. It is even we call them "ally" or just friends.

~Allow Zoners to fuse what vanilla Zoners and disco Zoners are into one - this is we want to do, to clean the mess around Zoners RP, to define who are the present Zoners, and where they are going.
The neutrality is the axis of Zoners interests, but it is not something given by gods. To keep the neutrality are needed both sides: Zoners and the rest of people. Both sides have to accept zoners neutrality with their own good will. If it will be forced by rules it will cause problems always.

The compromise is needed, between Zoners leaders first, and then between them and community.

Personally I see three ways:
- everyone step back and define the limit of his concessions, then make a clear proposal and talk with one voice with the dev team - best way,
- or split the Zoners to the Canaria Zoners - quasi house independent system with own diplomacy (without fixed neutrality), war fleet, police force etc, and Freeport Zoners, who are vanilla kind of Zoners, (I saw somewhere here such proposals)
- or leave it as it is - the worst way, this matter will be going back like boomerang.

[Exsiled_one]

I don't get one thing Cam. If all those people dislike you, while Doc Holday and Burns simply are objective and not subjective, is the constant reason of "dislikings" in them or in you?

I do not know what to say, perhaps it is your desire to play big ships constantly, or it could be your desire to vote for everything that gets changed and it was used by you.

I do not know how don't you find Jinkusu to be intimidating.


let's paint a picture. Freeports are free ports for free people
Zoners declare NFZ

Zoners declare enforcing of NFZ

Zoners park an jinkusu in front of every NFZ

all cool right? No FUC KingEndmund the 2nd way.
Why the hell would houses that allow free ports allow you to have a capital vessel near every one of them. Zoners aren't so powerful.

Then again I'm for all indie caps to be SRP-ed.

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<span style="color:#33CC00">I AM GIVING AWAY MONEY TO CREATIVE MINDS*</span>

[Jinx]

lets turn the whole thing around - and look at it from the other factions:

- if zoners had no capital ships - is that a sufficient reason for other factions NOT to harrass them? - would other factions consider them neutral for a justified reason?

- if zoners had no planet - and were left being space nomads scattered all across sirius - flying around in ships up to eagles ( no bombers, cause bombers are purely military gear ) and dromedaries ( biggest vanilla transport used by zoners as the NPCs never used transports, large transports or equivalents ) ... would they be left alone?

the problem is...

people that wish to find a reason to harrass a faction will find a reason, no matter what. - will these people stop when zoners were vanilla? - would the argument "but we re true to vanilla - however illogical that is" justify being left alone ( by the rules, mind! )


if that is NOT the case - whats all the fuss about.

the main question i have about this thread is:


- "what is it you wish to achieve?" - and thats exactly what i d need an answer to.... cause there are almost as many definitions, views etc. about zoners as there are people playing them.

- backing it up with vanilla lore makes as much sense as backing up ... lets say.... the outcasts with vanilla lore ( it ll turn out that the disco outcasts are like totally out of bounds compared to vanilla - or the liberty rogues, the mollys, the corsairs, the nomads, the wild, the navy etc. )

so - what exactly do you want zoners to be like? AND how do you want others to consider zoners?



unless those questions are resolved and agreed on - a discussion about nerfing, buffing, altering the faction is rather pointless. - start from these questions upwards - and try to fix the faction the way that it works out fine.


maybe its really better to split the faction - one "vanilla zoner" faction and one "zoner faction"

but i predict! - that the "vanilla zoner" faction will be underused - cause people will fuel their "fun" in the faction mainly from the fact that they castrate themselves more than others - hence feeling "better" than the not-so-true zoners. ( <-- but that is me thinking the worst of any human )

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Shipdesigns made for DiscoveryGC

[Exsiled_one]

I still stand by my idea that freeports in separate locations across the Sirius should have their own governments. We're far from vanilla and things develop.

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<span style="color:#33CC00">I AM GIVING AWAY MONEY TO CREATIVE MINDS*</span>

[Jinx]

we really cannot give each freeport its own ID - its d be a total mess - and i doubt that a FP10 zoner can really RP much differently ( ingame ) from a FP 6 zoner. - or for that matter.... only care for FP10 affairs ( or FP6 affairs )

after all - a corsair that is dedicated to his homedefense fleet will - if chance happens - fly to delta or eta, too. ... the more structured factions like militaries are also rarely system based, but patrol all through their houses. etc.

quite some IDs would be redundant if each FP had its own ID - and its about as practical as giving the liberty navy IDs like: zone21/junau ID, westpoint ID, Denver ID, California ID, Texas ID .... i wouldn t expect the players to really only stick to their own business - but they d still all fly to new york.

and what then - sanction them?



a character should be bound to a specific freeport, no doubt - ( unless the character is MEANT to be nomadic and travels homelessly between freeports, which is a serious RP, too ) - but it doesn t need to be put in the rules ( and putting it into the ID means ... .its put into the rules )


but my previous questions are still not answered.

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Shipdesigns made for DiscoveryGC

[ProwlerPC]

I'm just in full agreement to fix up some glaring inconsistancies. Not on some crusade. As defensive as some Zoners want to be, something like a Vanilla infocard dated 800AS saying they are looking for a home planet as well as all infocards showing a total Zoner population of some 4500 spread out throughout Sirius really clashes in an obvious way with Disco infocards of planets dating 20 years prior and with population numbers that no amount of sex and refugees can attain in such a short span of time. I'm more concerned with these kinda mistakes then I am about wanting to usurp the direction of the RP. To be honest I think some great progress is being made in this discussion concerning these mistakes and I hope the spirit of co-operation continues in order to resolves these in-game lore issues.

Edit: some of the more persceptive people may notice that fixing the example above will either require re-writing Disco RP or to begin re-writing Vanilla RP, it makes for an interesting predicament when either developing from Vanilla lore or replaceing it.

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[DAnvilFan]

the main question i have about this thread is:
- "what is it you wish to achieve?" - and thats exactly what i d need an answer to.... cause there are almost as many definitions, views etc. about zoners as there are people playing them.

Most of these views are misconceptions built upon other layers of misunderstanding and overall, general lack of the Zoner lore.

For the longest time half of the server preached that Zoners are not united, when there is not a shred of evidence in the lore suggesting this. Quite the opposite, the Zoners are increadibly unified and protective of each other.

What do we want out of this thread? To fix a number of development mistakes that were made when this mod was a ship expansion pack and people stuffed it with all kinds of junk because it was cool.

Why weren't the Gaians or the Junkers given battlestars? What makes them so much weaker than the Zoners, whose population in 800 AS is a little over four thousand?

I'm just in full agreement to fix up some glaring inconsistancies. Not on some crusade. As defensive as some Zoners want to be, something like a Vanilla infocard dated 800AS saying they are looking for a home planet as well as all infocards showing a total Zoner population of some 4500 spread out throughout Sirius really clashes in an obvious way with Disco infocards of planets dating 20 years prior and with population numbers that no amount of sex and refugees can attain in such a short span of time. I'm more concerned with these kinda mistakes then I am about wanting to usurp the direction of the RP. To be honest I think some great progress is being made in this discussion concerning these mistakes and I hope the spirit of co-operation continues in order to resolves these in-game lore issues.

[Unseelie]

An interesting point hangs on the rumors spat out by some Zoners, about how Zoners do or should stick together, which Cross has produced o many an occasion. One Zoner is ideally obligated to help another, because of a sense of Zoner cooperation. On the other hand, there is no evidence that there is a government, or even a great degree of cohesion between the actual organizations that maintain a station, the local or state governments, if you will, and governments are not organizations quite as willing to give aid as people. Aid is entangling, and drags a government into conflicts not its own.

Theirin lies the dichotomy between the Zoners as a group, and Stations as governments discussion.

Are we to expect the Zoners to act as a federated goverment, as we are seeing now, with each station maintaining the organizational structure of the whole, or as a loose collection of states with a common ideology and a fairly mobile portion of the population?

With what shallow but longstanding understanding as I have of Zoner structure, I feel this is a less than delved into point on the Zoner discussion, as it is in many parts of Sirius, and I feel its an important point to discuss, and perhaps flesh out.

While any one Zoner might be willing to grab a ship and go fight for Freeport 10, I find it less likely that the government of Freeport 9 has an interest, or would be willing to grant more than humanitarian or economic aid. Lend lease, quite likely. Dispatch their own security force, however?

This is the point that Ivan and others have been attempting to make, that the zoner stations, and any zoner military force, is necessarily a function of governments, and that stations lend themselves to independent governments, which have a vested interest in distancing themselves from one another.

I don't want to say that players are not attempting this. I don't want to appear to make the point that the people playing Zoners are ignorant, as they are not. I do not want to do anything more than make my case for the argument that Zoner stations be treated as separate governments, with the understanding that aid between governments is a lot more complicated than a mercenary or volunteer taking his ship to where he's needed. This is not meant to be an assault on the way things are done, or the system in place, simply a take on part of the grand question facing the zoners, and indeed the whole community, as to what the zoners are.

EDIT: Bluespan, see skype, I think your point about population is invalid, on grounds of population specific retconning done in the past.

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[DAnvilFan]

We are talking about a multiplayer environment here.

There is no way that TAZ and ZTC would have stood idle while OSI got pounded on Freeport 10. Some people miss a fundamental fact that a Zoner installation is Zoner for a reason.

Freeports have senior councils -- so we know that each Freeport is governed in some manner. Freeports are also economically connected and as for military unification -- you have to understand that the destruction of Freeport 7 probably stirred things in a particular direction.

EDIT: I agree with the basic principle that there exists a division between Freeports. They are, for the most part, self governed. However, the FL lore indicates that Zoners are more than friends -- they are like brothers. Sending military aid would be paramount. In the case of the server, the factions have already started to roleplay the self governing of Freeports. A recent NFZ violation at FP6 was given to TAZ, a FP1 violation to ZoE, and so forth.

[Unseelie]

Can I make the point that the ZTC and the TAZ both started not as based factions, but as nomadic ones, and are, as far as their gameplay goes, still nomadic, in as much as they are traders?

Yes, while there's little in the way of any zoner individual, company, club, merc group, or ship going to the aid of a specific freeport, there's a great deal separating what we're calling the Freeports and other stations from one another, and there's reason for them to want to be independent.

I am of course extrapolating a great deal from what I know of zoners and what I know of international politics, finance, and macro-economics, because there is not enough information given about what the zoner government is. There isn't, whatever you wish to put forward, a great deal of discussion of social quality or governmental organization, international politics, or station governance given in freelancer. Some things require invention, and I'm proposing what I consider most likely.

My point is thus: Would Doc Holiday (Or, insert Zoner individual here) care if Freeport 10 got pummeled? Damn straight. The Doc, for one, is a humanitarian, and would care very much about the loss of life if the Outcasts were to take the base. The Zoners there would be at risk of enslavement, and the feeling would be that people should do something.

Would the TAZ, or the ZTC, care if Freeport 10 got pummeled by the Outcasts? Reasonably likely, people are being oppressed, and that is unhelpful. Additionally, they've lost a port of call and likely a source of income.

Would the organized governance of the other freeports care? Likely, but they'd have to risk lessening their own defenses to aid them, and they'd have to spend public revenue to do so, as well as possibly pissing off outcasts, or outcast friends, in the area.

So, then, there are varying levels to what the Zoners are. A Zoner is expected to help other zoners. A base government has at its heart the interest of itself, or, if it is very enlightened, its people.



Furthermore, I posit that Zoner installations are Zoner because they fled the houses, and that's what you call a freeport, rather than any sort of formalized agreement to aid one another. But I'm trying to apply my knowledge of how the real world works to a fantasy, and quite willing to assault what the original devs built if it doesn't fit with the best explanation (not that I have the best explanation. If you think you've a better explanation, please do convince me. Or ignore me, this is the internet, and I am just talking).

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