I'm not sure if anyone here knows me, but I hope at least a few people recognize me so I don't feel too left out. I used to play on Discovery GC (official server for Discovery mod) back in 4.85, I've been away for quite a while now and over nostalgia and whatnot I decided to download and install 4.87 (which, thanks to ModDB wasn't that hard to find, but doesn't really look like the same mod anymore) and drop by and see how things are going. That was, of course, to my disappointment to realize the site and server I used to play on is either down or moved to a new domain/IP. It's still a piece of luck to find another Freelancer-related forums and server running on the same domain/IP, but with no offense to you guys, I'm more interested in continuing on the same server I used to play on, so if anyone can point me in the right direction, it'd be much appreciated.
For the ref, the Disco community I was a part of in 4.85 used to be a server-based one, whereas you folk seem to be running a forum-based version of the same mod. It's all cool and dandy, but it's just not for me. On top of that, the community I'm from (or the majority of it, at least) played the game for the actual enjoyment and entertainment, people went out there to RP with complete strangers and if a fight broke out, it was until either side turned into a bluemsg, and long as the fight was nice, it didn't matter which end of the bluemsg each side ended on. You lovely folks, however, seem to be running a community with a much more serious approach, where people have formed "circles" and all the noteworthy roleplay happens between the "insiders" of each circle, and any outsider rarely gets more than a howdy, and when it comes to a fight, the outcome (i.e. which side of the bluemsg one ends up in) seems to either boost or degrade one's "reputation" through the community, which is why I've noticed a lot of people actually run and dock just to avoid becoming a blue. I'm not questioning the way you guys are playing the game, but fail to see the fun in that.
Strange thing was finding the forum account I had on the old forum in here when I tried registering and noticed the account already exists, which would hint this is the same community, but since I (re)joined your server about a couple of weeks ago and have been flying around for some time, based on what I've seen by the time of this post I'm almost certain this is not the same community. People around here seem to consume too much caffeine, cause they're always ragey and too hyped to actually log ingame, so they instead sit on the forums all day and insult eachother, admins, devs, neighbor's dog and dusty's grandma, with the last one being the most unforgivable of all (not her existence, I mean insulting her). The community I'm from generally consumed red wine, which is why they were far more laid back and relaxed, and with no disrespect to you guys, more civilized and decent too.
When a problem popped up, like a wrong decision from the dev team (Mind you, I've lived through a lot of those. Like bomber nerf. It was the bane of every bomberwhore out there, which was... technically every player out there back in the day, cause no 'ace' flew anything else) and 'final nail' was nothing but a mere joke. What I've noticed during the past couple of weeks I've been lurking around your forums though, is that from the very moment a change is announced hell breaks lose, people go nuts, and swear words fill the air, with no one actually suggesting anything useful. We sure had that in our community too, but there were always a few level headed players to outweigh the angry mob and help the devs fix their mistakes, or better yet, prevent it from happening, and after a while, the average people seemed to calm down and join the decent bunch as well, but you folk never seem to calm down. Let me tell you one thing, back in our server, developers didn't listen to community, but you seem to be lucky cause your developers are actually willing to listen, I completely understand their stance though - It's awfully hard to actually sit and listen to someone when nothing but swear words and insults is coming out of their mouth.
As I said, I don't have much interest in joining your community and playing alongside you and I'd rather find the server I'm from, but since I found your site by mistake and started reading through it thinking it's the same site I was hoping to find, figured I might as well weigh in on your current 'crisis' while I'm around:
If I understand the situation, developers are intending to remove Zoner caps and replace them with different grades of transports? Well, that's a hell of a Coin. Even back in my own server I remember people constantly complaining about how little sense an armada of Zoner capitals made, and at the same time, rest of them pointing out that Discovery Zoners are nothing like the vanilla Zoners and their access to the vastest capital line in the mod is more than well justified. I never took a side then, and am not intending to take a side now, as my opinion's always been mixed on the matter, but frankly, both groups are right and both points of view makes sense to an extent. How it's handled is what makes all the difference.
As I noticed, same applies to your community and while some people are strongly in favor of the removal, others are heavily against it. As an outsider-nobody I'm gonna risk my neck and jump into the discussion, but take a different approach - Instead of picking one solution, I'm gonna drop my take on both:
1. Removal of zoner capitals and the transports replacements:
Zoners are not an exclusive "trade faction", and their RP ranges from shipping to exploration to research to, well... Being what Junkers are supposed to be - sneaky and shady. Which is why I personally believe Zoners should retain one cruiser and one battleship, with the battleship being an "easily SRPable" ship like Barge for indies and open use for official factions, so only those with a level head and proper understanding of zoner lore and roleplay can get their hands on it. Additionally, such a drastic change would require a complete rework of borderworlds economy. All the good "triangle" routes I could find in 4.87 mainly have at least 1 stop in house space, and since Zoners can't dock there, it wouldn't matter how many varieties of transports they get.
The way I see it, with proper adjustments this idea could have some good impact on the server roleplay, gameplay and the mod lore, so I'd like to ask the dev team not to jump into this with both feet and get all the right bits in place and then toss the whole thing in at once. By changing the 'excessive' Zoner caps into transports, and giving border and edge worlds some top-notch trade routes, Zoners would become exactly what they were meant to be in vanilla, or to word it better, how I always perceived them as back when I used to play through the campaign over and over: A group of individuals who've retreated to the outer rim to build themselves from ground up, are not dependent on any house, group or allignment, and are - put into one word - selfsufficient. Zoners having access to 1 gunboat, 1 cruiser, 1 battleship (the standard 'slots' for most factions), and 4 transports with access to worthwhile routes would allow them to fulfill their every need, both in roleplay and in gameplay, I'd even go as far as suggesting the addition of a mineral exclusive to Omicrons, with Zoners receiving a mining bonus for it. That way, 'house zoners' would in terms of power and influence become as insignificant as they're supposed to be, while Omicron Zoners would be close to an empire, which is how both the official lore and the faction roleplay of the group has progressed.
2. Keeping everything as it currently is and finding an alternative to deal with "bad zoners":
From the looks of things, the main reason leading to the current situation is the widely misused big toys Zoners have access to. I have absolutely no idea what's happened to Zoners since 4.85 but based on what I've read on forums the main use of non-official Zoner capital ships nowadays seems to be 'leasing' jumpdrives and survey scanners to other factions so they can jump to other sectors and back even if they're hostile to said region or don't have a jump-capable ship of their own. Also it sounds like a group of overly-aggressive Zoners (which some people say have no regards or respects for the established Zoner lore, but I wouldn't know) have been stirring up the pot by staying on the very far borders of their allowances and still picking up fights with different groups, and causing a less than reasonable amount of headache for everyone else.
As little as my knowledge of the Zoner lore may be, I personally don't see anything wrong with letting them keep the armada of capitals they have, but correct me if I'm wrong - Their capitals (except for Fearless which is supposed to be the backbone of their convoys) are mainly for the purpose of colonization and expansion, so wouldn't it make more sense if rather than restricting their docking rights in house space, they're instead prohibited from going there at all (like Core capitals), and also their armaments reduced (or hell, they can even receive their own exclusively branded line of cap weapons) to act as more of a defensive line of capitals, rather than the extremely offensive-capable line of gigantic heaps of metal they appear to currently be? With this one, I would've even gone as far as suggesting the removal of their jumpdrive slots, but since that would effectively eliminate the roleplay chances of basically anyone who was using those equipment properly on their Zoner before (and everyone back in the community I'm from knew how much I was against that) I'm gonna leave that one out.
With that said, I'm going back to my original question: Can anyone point me in the right direction and tell me the new IP of the old Disco GC, or whether or not it even exists anymore?
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