Besides, Steiner /did/ shoot at the RM before, granted; with an RHA affiliation and vessel.
Ye.
In regards to the situation in general, I do believe the saying "nagyobb a füstje mint a lángja" (has a bigger smoke than fire) applies accurately, I too am simply trying to clean the name of the RM from being any sort of scapegoat in the case.
Then we dont need talking about this more *pulling the trigger*.
I wish these rules were in place when the Hellfire Legion formed. Then they wouldn't have at all.
Two sides that I can see of this:
One side saying - It's totally reasonable for an -entire military division- to all have the same idea at the same time to betray the country and people that they chose to fight and if neccessary, die for. Let's be honest, the WRF are as far as I know, anywhere from a single brigade to an army group. Is it really reasonable for defection on that scale to happen as often as it does on this server? I think not. And then, what are the reasons for these defections? I don't really know about this case, but in Liberty it's often because some independent captain looking for an excuse to defect with his big ship got slapped on the wrist by David Hale for being stupid. I'm not saying that the reasons here are anywhere that bad, but it gets tiresome for defections to stream through when there's nothing you can do about it, even though their roleplay basis is farfetched the vast majority of the time.
The other side saying - I'm trying to make this make sense in RP and according to the rules of the server, when RP and the rules are contradicting each other like they usually do in order to make the playing atmosphere more friendly than purely RP. Is it reasonable to use the rules as a crowbar to stop people playing the roles that they want to play? In the dawning days of a defection, the constituents don't just go out straight away and buy freely available stuff to prepare for the fact that the stuff they're currently using will wear out in a few years. Claiming that it's roleplay to force that is a bit of a cop-out, but it adheres to the rules as they're written, which are what they are to prevent abuse of, in this example, tech by people who 'defect' every day.
In principle, I'm with Voelkel. I'd like to see these defections go from commonplace and everyday occurences to actions with serious, wide-ranging and undesputably negative consequences for the defector(s). But how far do you go between RP and freedoms afforded by a game with free in the name?
As for Corsairs, since I saw them mentioned here:
Civil war between Benitez and TBH back in the day were two equal forces clashing politically (only once militarily, since the Benitez withdrew to Omicron Delta before any serious confrontations could happen) and ending in a stalemate, or more precisely, Gentle making the most of his situation as the king-maker and making the OPG the dominant Corsair force by numbers during that time period.
Civil war between OPG and HAF later on was, from my perspective, where TBH and Benitez stayed generally neutral in that war, which was not really a civil war, but more like a turf war. This example turned sour and the admins intervened, as someone pointed out earlier.
Both are not valid comparisons for the RM and WRF, as the RM are alone in officialdom within their NPC faction, whereas the Corsairs are not. The political landscape is completely different.