Rule clarification

[tfmachad]

lets put it very simple now why a lawful battleship CAN attack a trader and a pirate cannot.

in simple terms, a defender can use any force available to stop an aggressor.
an attacker however can only use limited power - which is not a roleplay issue, but a gamebalance one.

...

how comes a pirate cannot do that very same?
- the trader with legal goods ( and sadly for the pirate, it is upon the lawfuls to say whats legal and whats not, while its only upon the pirates to say what is needed and whats not ) approaching the border of the pirate is NOT attacking the pirates homelands. - and that is where its a bit unfair, cause the pirate is not supposed to have an equivalent law. that means, he cannot "defend" himself against a law, cause only houses have official laws. the pirates have laws of themselves which are upheld at least as much as house laws, but they are not "official". so the trader is not in violation of an "official" law.
if stopped by a pirate, the trader is considered the defender - instead of the attacker, and that means that the pirate in question is taking up the role of the attackers, which means - he cannot use anything bigger than a gunboat.
...

Well, Jinx. I strongly disagree with you on that one, unless I'm misinterpreting what you wrote.

From a rule standpoint I believe Laowai has got his answer. No destroying of traders by unlawfuls with anything bigger than a gunboat. Simple as that.

From an RP standpoint, though, his questioning makes sense and I agree with him. The groups we call unlawfuls can and make their own rules inside their zones of influence as they please and there's no telling those laws aren't 'official' as you put it as long as the so called lawfuls can't or won't go there to enforce otherwise. If those rulings are moral/imoral, good/evil is a different thing. Practically speaking, a rule or a law for that matter is valid if it's generally accepted and enforced. The House rules probably mean nothing in Crete or Malta and sure aren't enforced there. Not to mention even between the Houses there's no absolute law standardization.

It's a matter of perspective really. Remember both lawfuls and unlawfuls see friendlies and hostiles as green and red respectively.

The way I see it, the real strange and questionable thing is traders utterly disregarding the risk they'll be facing taking non-acceptable cargo to those regions. Considering that if they are caught there they won't be arrested and trialled, but simply killed. So, doing it must really compensate those risks, but if it does, it also makes no sense from an RP standpoint. Why would these people pay so much to go to a place where there's famine?

I can understand a Mexican paying a lot to be smuggled in to the US, but not the other way around. Unless they are considered criminals in the place they are and won't be seen as such in the place they are going to. But as far as the commodity goes, that's not the case.

Unfortunately, as far as the practicality of solving this goes, changing the established rules is a bad option, since it's certain that people would loophole this up and down. "Oh, this trader tried to enter Gamma with stuff we don't like and I followed him all the way to Alaska in my Osiris. I wanted to teach him a lesson and never again take that to Crete," and so on.

So they're down to enforcing their rules through RP. It's got to be a good exercise, really.

---

Meet the Kriegers - The story of a family and of two men that shared more than just a name
Fantasmas de la Nube Siniestra
I Mon'Star: The Strange Case of Elizabeth Wallace