Gytrash's rant.

[Trogdor]

Because it was a mistake. Zoners were never meant to have militaristic battleships, only things that were relevant to the Zoner RP and lore. The Neph and Aquillion were only added to the zoner shipline because devs though "lol, caps are cool, lets give them to zoners too".

And finally, the devs have come to their senses and are purging the zoner shipline of it's capitals, in favor of more lore relevant transports.

And that still isn't a valid argument as to why zoners can't use bombers and gunboats for defense instead using battleships.

It was not a mistake. Their presence is justified by changes in lore. The same changes in lore that made it okay for a half dozen other factions to start building capital ships. Their ability to do it funds the Zoner's ability to do it, because the Zoners bring in the materials.

The problem is that the devs didn't think it through all the way. They didn't finish the job. The faction needs more territory, more stations, more population, and more story written if it's to become the politically significant faction the presence of capital ships implies.

Furthermore, the presence of pirate battleships necessitates them. Regardless of ingame pvp balance, inRP a few gunboats or bombers can't take down a battleship. No one would put the resources into building one if that was the case. If the Zoners weren't capable of deterring the Corsairs and Outcasts from taking their stations with naval force, they would have captured those Freeports long ago.


This whole fiasco boils down to 3 choices that the Dev team and Community are going to have to choose from.

1) Nerf the Zoners into something more closely resembling what they were in vanilla. The Zoners basically become less interesting Junkers, feelings will be hurt, activity will suffer (conflict = activity), and IMO, the entire community will be the poorer for it. But hey, this is what some members of the community want. Apparently forcing the Zoners back into that vanilla mold is worth it.

2) Uplift the Zoners so that they look less like cooperating Freelancers, and more like the Hutt Cartel. Expand their territory, which will undoubtedly bring them into conflict with formerly neutral neighbors, whom may feel threatened/jealous/whatever of their newfound economic and military power. Give them new commodities to haul that establish new connections with underpopulated factions... commodities that will be coveted, reviled, outlawed. Give the Zoners turf to defend and a reason to defend it.

This would be my preferred solution, but I am admittedly biased since my nephilim is my primary character and almost all of my other characters are Zoners, too. But someone has to be their advocate here, keep a cool head, and keep the discussion constructive.

3) Drop the issue and go back to tolerating the imperfect but relatively stable status quo. Nothing gets fixed, but we stave off community armageddon another day.

Those are really the only 3 options. In order to change anything, the community and dev team must decide on exactly what the Zoners are supposed to be. Politically significant proto-nation, or edge-world UPS?


Don't we have enough trading factions, Disco? Isn't option 2 more interesting? Why do people want them go back to what they were before?

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