In a world where a film director has built a submarine capable of reaching the bottom of the Mariana Trench and is hoping to develop an asteroid-mining project, the question has been raised whether or not sometimes-black market mega-merchants operating outside of the law could raise the money? A world where a boxer bought his wife a $2 million bathtub? American Idol hosts give £6 million in cash and real estate as a gift to friends? We are all familiar with the same international culture of extravagance, yes?
Elon Musk alone is worth enough to build two aircraft carriers at $4.5 billion each.
As somebody who's played a Zoner for seven years, the fire in my heart has faded, so please don't interpret my post as fiery. I've seen the Zoners continually nerfed, nuked, altered, bent, face-lifted, and turned upside-down and we've always been under scrutiny because of misunderstood notions of neutrality. It's the same old song and dance it was years ago, and I'm happy to see Joe quite level-headedly offering up an idea that brings double-standards to light. Good on you, Joe.
My thoughts: If the Zoners are the hyper-capitalists that the devs say they are, yes - I think they would have the capital to produce colony ships. There's a long string of lore-related conjecture that I have to offer, but I doubt anybody is really interested and I'll leave it at simply offering my opinion.
On the line of compromise, I support the idea of nerfing the Zoner vessels' armament as described here:
Ryummel Wrote:Could've been easier removing the heavy battleship slots on both Nephi and Aquillon or at least keeping two on them rather than four. After all the main issue is the fact of these being used for military purposes rather than their actual role as colony ships.
PS: Well, correction, the Aquilon is meant to be a carrier, so as carrier should remain with an also nerfed firepower.
Because, as somebody who flies CSFs to pirate people with, I prefer RP over explosions; and sometimes it's freaking cool to be able to say you fly a city.
-Edit- Ah, but I didn't read the fourth page because it's 2:30 in the morning. I apologize for feeding the misdirection of this thread, Joe.
