I don't believe the corporate factions are wealthier than the houses. LPI may run Liberty, but that makes them the house.
Bowex and BMM are nationalized, so their wealth=Bretonia Wealth.
Moreover, considering things like IC or Samura to be separate entities from a house..well, they are part of the house.
Wealth of the organizations, I'd organize like this:
If you break down Liberty, Kusari, Bretonia and Rheinland to the individual factions than I would say that GMG is the richest hands down. It's a mini house that wraps the trade, police, and military defence all in one organized package in their own controlled space with their own lanes and gates.
' Wrote:Unsillie, the question was about factions, in Liberty the lawful factions are LSF, LN, and LPI, not one "Liberty" faction.
Factions can refer to player or NPC ones.. Thats why we call player groups 'Player Factions,' not just 'Factions.'
I'd say Unselie's list is best out of those I've seen here.. Except for 2 things. Hogosha would be above GC, due to the black market and the fact that they dabble in Kusari's politics. They have quite a bit of power and wealth available.
And the IC, Interspace Commerce, I disagree with. It is far from a nationalized corporation. IC originates from Liberty, but it isn't Liberty's company. Liberty's own government stops them from having nationalized corporations like Bretonia. In fact, the ONLY nationalized corporations are BowEx and BMM. IC is active, and has bases in every single house, even Kusari. Samura isn't nationalized, but they basically control the majority of the Kusari government, so I wouldn't count them anywhere.
Also Zelot, I believe both Junyo and Kyushu are Kusari State Police planets. That is, owned by the government. Samura only has Kurile, which consists of nothing but a small ocean platform. It'd be counted as a base, at best. Planets aren't always these great big things of power.. Sometimes they are small things with only a single base/settlement or two. Such as Kurile.
GMG has; Naha, Ogishawa, whatever the one in Honshu is called (1 TL from Sig-19 JG), and the new Fujisawa. 3 of the are Gas miners, the other is a large base. So GMG isn't quite that small..
However, GMG isn't more wealthy than Rheinland.. They beat them in the 80-years-war, but not until after they had already lost Naha.. The only reason Rheinland lost is because it couldn't attack their base in Honshu because KNF wouldn't allow it. Then GMG used nebula tactics to beat the RM. They were never stronger or wealthier than the Rheinland Government. If they were, they'd also be able to afford to build capital ships.. Rheinland has the biggest number of battleships of any NPC faction. GMG doesn't even have a gunboat of their own. They even buy their fighters off the Zoners. So to fix the list;
Liberty
Kusari
Bretonia
Rheinland
Zoners
IC
Outcasts
GMG
Corsairs
Hessians
Hogosha
Mollies
GC
BD
Rogues
LBW
Unioners
Gaians
And the rest of them.
I just felt it was due to the nature of GMG's product and their stranglehold on it's market.
The political and economical power of GMG with it's H-fuel is akin to the Oil Tycoons in the Middle-East.
The possibilities of being cut off H-fuel or having their quota lowered is very similar to here in RL if American cars no longer got fuel. Sure the large warships use Mox with their large reactor engines but the small ships and trade ships depend on that H-fuel.
The only 2 companies that got involved in the H-fuel business was Kruger which didn't have enough to fuel Rheinland war machine and now recently Samura who is in the current process of spending their money to develop Hokkaido while having those specific operations under constant attack by BD's.
GMG also doesn't have to deal with the expences other houses or even a fair chunk of the trader factions have to deal with. We don't have as much mouths to feed or as much maintenance to do, even in the ships used in their past conflicts, GMG had minimal expences. Samura is currently maintaining their governments warmachine on top of their own expences.
Of course my logic could be flawed but the subject interests me :)
Edit: Actually as I think of it, if my "oil tycoon" logic fits, I'd like to point out that United Arab Emirate is tiny yet the richest GDP in the world because of it's oil and they also don't field large warships are any large military force for that matter.