Why do zoners have cap ships?

[Trail]

For the past ten or so posts valid purposes have been raised but in reality I think we're missing a pretty important point.

Take the zoner faction today:

They've somewhat evolved from a nomadic people because the density in civilian population of their space has increased, although they've maintained the sparsity of their occupied territories. It's what can only be described as the beginnings of an empire. With any empire in history the key to stability has been maintaining the loyalty of distant territories, a problem that has been treated with measures of military garrisoning all throughout history. Their neutrality does raise questions as to why they would need a strong military, but then zoners have more of a need of possessing a fleet capable of intimidating a restless civilian population.

Neutrality can also be a reason in itself to possess so much fire power. Remember pirates, terrorists and revolutionaries are frequent visitors to their freeports, what's to stop them from taking over if there isn't a large enough risk to discourage them.

The zoners are staying ahead of the curb by having such a large military, I think they are pre-empting the future possibilities of revolt or hostile takeover which is even more important given the regions that they reside in.

this below is fitting to your scenario

Hi, let me first apologize for me brothers behaviour , you wont see him in this account because it is my account. Now, to the issue: Zone lore is complicated and hard to grasp, but certain elements are clear, for one zoners dictate there own attitude, not all of them are bound to be friendly because values are different.

Not true. Zoner lore is simple. They are civilian settlers who for various reasons have left the authorative grasp of the house governments and scratch out a living in the border and edge worlds. Zoners are not nation builders. Zoners are not soldiers. Zoners are not pirates.

Every attempt to make Zoners into one of the above has led to a lot of crying. But most essentially, every attempt to make the Zoners into one of the above is essentially a cessation of playing Zoner. If you want to try and do that, fine, use a player ID. But don't claim to be a Zoner when you're not roleplaying anything anywhere near one.

As for the capship issue. Take away the Fearless and the Zoner Juggie, and those militant Zoner groups lose the ability to go toe to toe with actual powers in their regions. The Aquilion and Corvo are not suitable as frontline combat ships, but are good enough to RP a mobile freeport and/or research ship. Shrinking that cap line also solves some issues with their sale points. I will continue to push for this for future updates, since this Zonery stuff is going to continue to recur periodically until those ships are gone.

---