Why do (or don't) you fly a Zoner? Serious question.

[Pancakes]

So tell me. How come they were able to rise to a position as strong as that in two decades that took all four houses 800 years to do so?

Not remotely as strong. But when nobody is making your capitals explode, you get to keep them. Let's say that there are 10 zoner capital ships around inrp. Let's say that there are 100 liberty capships around inrp. But, while the zoners only ever produced 10 and managed to keep them due to the neutrality, liberty had probably produced hundreds more, losing many in the various conflicts such as the rheinland liberty war, others dealing with the random ranseur that decided to pop in NY. So historically, liberty might have had 500 capships, just that 400 of them exploded during conflicts which boring peaceful inrp zoner capital ships rarely (supposed to) have, therefore zoners aren't nearly possibly to the level of any house military, and rightly so.

On the topic of why zoner's supposed colony ships are more powerful than house battleships, but when you think about it, the house capship thing is pretty much an industry, and militaries not only have to produce the most devastating warships, they also have to produce them as efficiently as possible and sometimes that means cutting down on the raw firepower or survivability (which would be made up for by the much superior military training) in order to drastically lower the cost of their warships. Meanwhile, Zoner capitals weren't built to take part in a military conflict, but rather to survive, and therefore more resources might have been spared for each capital, because firepower is a diplomacy that all lesser armed threats would respect. At the same time, the houses know that Zoners aren't a threat because they simply do not have the training nor the industry to attack the houses, so suppose the aforementioned 10 zoner capships banded together to attack liberty, liberty would respond with their own 100 capships, and instantly crank out 50 more because they have such efficient warship factories, and ultimately due to liberty navy's military training they may not even lose a single warship in the hypothetical zoner invasion.

As a zoner trader a while back, I have encountered both pirates that accepted zoner neutrality and allowed zoners (and junkers) to pass freely, as well as pirates who gave supposed discounts to zoners, as well as pirates who didn't give a crap who you were. Personally I have never complained much about it, because neutrality isn't the same as being allied, and doesn't exempt anyone from piracy. However, it seems that people who hate zoner players hate them because they whine when they get pirated, but why can't they whine? They're getting pirated, whining is a pretty reasonable reaction! And if these whining zoners report you on the forums, has any of them actually successfully caused a sanction? If so, then you probably did more than breach Zoner neutrality.

This is an argument that would easily get dismissed. During the building of 10 dreadnoughts those around Zoners would attack them.

It's called armaments racing, and the moment someone joins it, whatever his political agenda is - he loses his supposed neutrality.

You can't raise an army in the name of "peace" and expect it to be ignored, because nothing guarantees that this army will stay peaceful and not turn its edge on on you one day. And dreadnoughts are quite an army, they can lay waste to planets, and 10 of them is a threat, and not even just a "minor" one. Not to mention that how Zoners managed to scrap that much resources is still evading me, since I am yet still trying to find the justification for that.

1 battleship? 2? Plausible, I would still want to see the reasoning of "why" and "how" (both in terms of how they actually do it, and in terms of how they keep them from so-called neutral parties).

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