Zoners - why they do exist?

[jammi]

Interesting thing to note that a lot of people miss - Zoners aren't itinerant. They barely qualify as traders, so far as the portrayal of the original NPC faction goes. They form enclaves - incredibly tight knit communities - on Freeports outside House space, some of which being centuries old. People come to them to trade - they don't trade with others.

Why don't the Houses shut them down? Many reasons. Firstly it's difficult to prove conclusively what's happening onboard because of Freeport's legal positioning outside House borders. Law enforcement has to be proportionate and specific - in this case it means the Houses would have to identify who specifically is trading with pirates, not just which station is.

Beyond that, it's actually advantageous to have neutral figures that can act as go-betweens for unlawfuls and House authorities. For starters, if groups like Corsairs can be weaned onto a mercantile economy instead of a raider one, they cease to be a predatory threat to the Houses. The Zoners are an interim step that assists in that long term manipulation.

Secondly, when transports are hijacked, crew are taken hostage and cargo is stolen. Usually long distance freight cargo is specific and of no use whatsoever to whoever manages to randomly intercept it. Zoner Freeports offer corporations a platform to negotiate the return of their assets, as well as giving intelligence agencies a window to intercept information or insert agents.

Plenty of reasons the Zoners still exist. The better your imagination, the more reasons there are.

Don't quite get how is Gallia dependant on IMG any more.

They're not and never were? The reason the IMG weren't exterminated is because Gallia isn't a 2D villain out for the evulz. They have to collaborate with Sirians as the governors of occupied territories, and the IMG happens to be one of the factions that is actually willing to collaborate. The moment they overstep a legal line they'll be treated as criminals and expelled. Until then, wantonly wiping the IMG out is a great way to have accusation of genocide and ethnic cleansing thrown their way, which in turn would capsize any cooperation from Rheinland and Kusari.

Then why exactly all fully justified attempts of GRN to take control over Java and Holman, at least on the stage of docking check iRP, are not yet happening? Not because you refused to do it for your own reasons?

Except they absolutely are, and the IMG refuses to let factions hostile to the GRN stage off or use said stations for precisely the reason that the GRN is watching. The IMG willingly handed over FP4 to the LN because they were being placed in a diplomatically impossible position - if they hadn't done so themselves, Liberty would simply have annexed the station instead. The positioning was simply too strategically important for civilians to be allowed to jeopardise its security situation and potentially cede the installation to the enemy. No such scenario exists in the Taus.