Information about upcoming Zoner changes

[Jinx]

i am quite sure ppl do not remember it

but i have been fighting for - and tried to justify the use of the big ships for zoners for years. - i have tried to apply the lore to them - write the ID cards in a way that in fact the nephilim is a battleship that is just sometimes repurposed to ALSO be a colonyship etc.

BUT - with the last years discussion ( and for gods sake - yes - what you have is the outcome of a long process - and also yes - years old discussions and events do matter ) - especially the zoner factions either abstained from fighting at all against the flood of people who wanted to change the zoners - or even supported those.

how often have i heard zoners say "if you have to resort to pvp in your battleships - you have failed at diplomacy AND failed as a zoner"

and still people mock zoners who RP as paramilitaries or active guards - or hunters. - and i am not talking about non zoners - but actual zoner players who consider those who USE the battleships to its potentials as "bad"

so what am i to think of it?

it seems that the "good" zoners want the following:

- colonyships and ships that can be RPed as a moral highground platform ... BUT
- are able to dish out damage and tank the damage of the best battleship around ( what?! )
- being able to make a lot of money - but hell, please do not consider us a trading faction!! - we are so much more
- being neutral - anyone who has made an enemy MUST have done something wrong - it can never have been the other way round - or how the diplomatic ppl tend to say "it takes two" ( which is bull - cause in order to make a conflict it actually only takes one - and unless its a swift defeat or a submission it can take two to continue )

so from the last years threads it turned out that the good zoners claimed that their battleships were used as

- guard barges ( but you failed as a zoner if you had to shoot things - yay )
- medical ships
- colony ships
- exploration ships
- show off / e-peen ships
- ships to increase hours by idling afk in space
- ships whos entire ingame RP consist of a brief "s'up" when you approach them

and so - the conclusion was - lets give them what they want. while at the same time trimming the zoner design down to a be more freelancerish, cause you know - the current nephilim is still based on the CIS frigate. so they become smaller, more low tech - less fancy - more utility like.


so where was gytrashes rant last year standing up for all zoners? - sorry, when i researched the old threads i only see ppl like tyrzul quoting sentence after sentence of the "bad zoners" and disproving the use of the battleship as a battleship. or sabre demanding "capships for official factions only!"

thats where it comes from

personally i love the zoner caps - and i wished to keep them - but you guys have made it really lonely to fight for them for the last years. look up the past years threads - you ll see me trying to justify them and fight for them - look up who else fights for them - how many faction leaders put in their weight for ALL zoners and not trying to bash down those who by their interpretation "misinterpret zoners".



that personal thing aside ( which is only a minor decision making point btw. the bigger point is that at some point - we simply had to revise the faction )


lets be clear

the zoner faction ( among others maybe or maybe no - thats not the point here ) has been blown out of proportion. - zoner factions may have justified it - but they failed doing to - maybe because they were not aware they had to - or cause they felt comfortable where they were, who knows - who cares.

changing it has been on the table SINCE 4.85 development - but the will to actually change it was often just forgotten due to more pressing things. - the [A], the smokeones, the corsairs, the ZA thing have gradually increased the matter and escalated it.

these incidents have also drawn a picture of "what the zoner community is like - what they fight for - what they want"

and it is so easy to demand "lets take away the big toys from the bad zoners and the indies - let them SRP them - leave it to the official factions" ( what a pile of bs again )

what we looked at was "what are the zoners ( the actual zoners )" - what do they represent - how do they work - ... then what are the zoner factions - what do they want - how do they present themselves ingame. - and then to look at possible development of the zoners - again the parent faction.



my own conclusion is


the actual zoner faction has not evolved much - i can elaborate that - but not in that post. - the zoner movement is very very different from any other faction ( including IMG or so - since they are sometimes compared to them )

however the PLAYER factions may have evolved - they are based on the zoner faction - but what i have to wonder is - how much are they actually zoners anymore?

so i would not be opposed to the playerfactions saying "hell, we do need battleships - and we do need this and that" - but they d have to do what any other custom faction does ... make a petition for a faction only shipline - or an extend of a shipline.

the actual "zoners" however would not change that much

heavens i even emailed chris todd and harald belker designers of lore and shipdesign of digital anvil about assistance for what they considered the zoners to be - so the design would adhere to vanilla as well as disco.


the root of the decision is so much more complex than "cause jinx wants it" - but if you want to think of it like that - so be it... doesn t change my life at all - and it may give you absolution. so yes - at that time - i fully back up the changes - not so much cause i think "the zoners deserve it as a punishment" ( not at all - off of all factions on disco - the zoner factions HAVE been the most consistently proactive, but at the same time also the greatest drama queens ever ) - but because IT MAKES SENSE from a DEVELOPERS POINT OF VIEW WHERE THE FACTION IS SUPPOSED TO BE.

so yea - you can blame the devs of old ( which is me as well ) for blowing up the zoners out of proportion - that was wrong! - but justifying it fell on deaf ears - so now we correct mistakes of past times - and that is a good decision.



edit:

to elaborate a bit :

what would have changed the motivation to push forward with the changes? - if last year - when the drama arose the factions had united and stood up for their ships AND the ships usage - including the active defense of zoner assets and stations. if they had not shown the usual in-fighting and more conflict than you have between even hessians and corsairs.

if they had united and acknowleded "yes, those ships are battleships - and yes, there are groups, even if we disagree inRP, that are fully legit to put those weapons to use when attacked from the outside - even by so called allies"

if the zoner players had only disagreed inRP with each other - and not trolled each other ooc. - cause in a whole - and by the actual lore of what zoners CAN be ( if we put aside the illogical stuff about them having such a fleet in the first place ) - they CAN be as much hardcore military groups as well as pacifist hippies. cause the only actual requirement for "being a zoner" is "to be diverse and having left the core worlds for undefined reasons"

look at now - now the most zoners united and start to fight - why did they not do that the other times? - is it really just cause suddently it is not just "the others" and cause "remaining silent and abstaining and - lets not get involved" is not an option anymore? if that was a social experiment ( which it is not ) - it would already be a success - a sad one, cause it just shows that the players hardly stand up for each other unless they are ALL thrown into a pit indiscriminately.

edit2:

also do not mistake motivation with reason. - the motivation to go for the change is probably a personal matter of experience - but thats often the drive of change. - the REASON however is absolutely based on long time assessment of how zoners view themselves and are viewed by others over the passing time since around 4.85

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