I disagree looking purely from the Lore of Vanilla Freelancer which was then molded into the Lore of Discovery Freelancer as it is today, the whole nomad war started with scenes showing Freeport 7, a zoner base in Sigma 17 being destroyed by Nomad Battleships: http://discoverygc.com/wiki/Freeport_7 .
Thus given the state of zoner settlements all over sirius today and the sheer numbers of people and zoner bases there are to protect, there has never been a greater need for Zoners to have access to the kind of weaponry required to defend against such threats i.e. Battleships. Remember what the Nomads did to the Order in Omicron Minor and how they wiped out Toledo, well Freeport XV in Delta is sitting right on the nomads doorstep and whose to say inRP the nomads wont attack them again.
It is for that reason alone zoners need capital ships like the Zoner Juggy as a Dessy wont stand up to a Marduk!
