This truly could do with a threadlock. People will make up their own opinions based upon ingame encounters. @"Anton Okunev" - I appreciate what you're trying to do; those that have legitimate nonaggressive concerns have been given detailed responses. Those that delve in trollish conduct do so in an empty chamber. No sense reasoning with those who seek to win attention.
Edit:
@Reeves I suppose it could be called erosion of vanilla for a faction to evolve angle from one point of view or another. However twenty six years have passed in the discovery universe, and almost two decades in the real world timeline. What the Unioners have done is an attempt to build on Vanilla, not change it; but we also have to fit in with other factions within the universe - play for the discovery we find ourselves in. Syndicalism is implied by the faction name and the history - we built around the interpretations of every infocard we could scrounge up. We also tried to use the lore of pre-existing Unioner attempts with the consent of their respective members. Then we wanted to give our members creative freedom from there. Every faction has evolved from a vanilla standpoint, including Xenos; both in reputation and in presentation. Gallia is a massive modification to vanilla, along with the role of Zoners. Do we exist in the same universe as vanilla, or a different cannon entirely, as the mod is not a finished product created by Digital Anvil? It's an interesting set of questions with no particular answer. It helps that we're not trying to represent all Unioners, but a conglomerate of Unioner-aligned groups. Could another Unioner faction develop if a large group of players wanted to get together and shape the NPC group's direction? Certainly.
Ultimately factions try to do what they believe their players will enjoy, and people play in those groups because they want to build something with that vanilla idea as a baseline. Factions change according to their members; what IMG is doing right now would be one example. Or in Gallia, because of overall mod storytelling.
THE SYNDIC LEAGUES
(A co-operative of Rheinland's Shipping Unions, retired from a life of piracy.)
Alright, it's pretty clear this thread warrants development clarification, and I apologize for not getting to it sooner. Making this bit gold so it's gospel.
The Unioners and the Rheinland military do not possess a truce because they share the same faction members, or because the Union is more interested in piracy. They're presently ignoring each other as a result of the actions of the Hessians and Coalition during The Red Spring event. This event saw the diplomacy of the Unioners shift hard hostile to both the Hessians and Coalition, who betrayed them during the event. During the event, the Hessians and Coalition were able to not only conduct a prison break at one of the most secure House prisons in the sector, but were also able to cross the Hamburg system, largely unopposed, and destroy the Unioners' oldest base of Wedelburg.
With the realization that the Hessians and Coalition were able to project this amount of force within Rheinland's core systems, a truce was struck which allowed the Unioners to repressurize and fortify Vierlande as a bulwark against future revolutionary incursions through the Cologne system. Now, as to whether or not this status quo is still relevant? That depends largely upon the status of Rheinland itself. I'll present three possible scenarios below and what their outcomes would be. I want to note that at this time we haven't ended the war because if Rheinland does not go Imperial, they will need something to do, and there aren't plans to make that anything other than Rheinland continuing to gun for Saigon. This makes scenario 3 extremely unlikely.
1: Rheinland goes Imperial, the Kusari/Rheinland War ends, and Rheinland enters a period of civil war. In this scenario, it is likely that the truce would remain in place, given Unioner backing of a new Imperial government, and likely a Hessian/Coalition surge within Stuttgart and Cologne.
2: Rheinland stays Federal, the Kusari/Rheinland War continues. This effectively retains the status quo, with not enough Military forces on the home front to effectively defend their borders. It's likely the truce would remain in place (although it's worth noting that the RFP and BDM do not honor it)
3: Rheinland stays Federal, the Kusari/Rheinland war ends. In this case, it seems very likely to me that the truce would break down, and that the Military would be coming for Vierlande.
I think some of this confusion is coming from groups of people saying certain things to each other without verification.
The line is can ally, not should ally. The majority Rheinland lawful players and Unioner players will shoot each other. No group, official or unofficial is bound by any principle that they shouldn't shoot Unioners, official or unofficial.
If you have a Rheinland navy character and you want to shoot some Unioners, please do so. It'll be a fun encounter. The line just gives Rheinland lawful players a bit more flexibility in how they choose to approach a situation. If you want to shoot, you can. Nobody is going to punish you for doing that.
Also no Unioner is going to fly up to a Rheinland lawful ship and expect a free pass. The line gives Rheinland navy more choice. If you don't want to have the option to work with Unioners against the very narrow band of current common target IFFs - if that's your character direction - you can also fly any other Rheinland lawful ID.
No navy faction, official or unofficial, needs to do anything but shoot Unioners if they want to. This was a decision made by RM and UN OFLs for a very specific bit of official RP. Nobody else needs to abide by it if they don't want to. Even RM official and UN official individual characters don't need to abide by it if they don't want to.
This is an extra RP option made to diversify choice to fit a story direction, made in correspondence between OFLs and the devs. If you don't like it, you don't need to stick by it. Nobody will FR5 you or punish your gameplay experience for playing your characters how you want. Please, shoot us if you want to. It's an equally valid RP avenue.
I'll make a big Rules-of-Engagement post from the Unioner perspective tomorrow. That should put this controversy to rest. It'll be written InRp, but I'll link it here also.
One example would be Yber's own Rheinland Navy project. If they want to shoot the Unioners, they can. Let's do some PVP events.
THE SYNDIC LEAGUES
(A co-operative of Rheinland's Shipping Unions, retired from a life of piracy.)