(08-21-2016, 06:19 PM)Erinyes Wrote: It's like the game was written with Hitler's better known work in one hand and the advice of the KKK in the other.
The same have been done to the Pot-o'-gold-top-of-the-mornin'-to-yer-terrorist-Space-Irish you see in the FL universe.
Don't you go and think Germany as Rheinland got off any better. Especially considering the "intended story line that was never put into the game because of budget problems: Liberty beats down Rheinland to end the Nomad war".
I always considered the Outcasts to not really be "Hispanics" (as in, from the ship, not from the region) anymore. Why? Due to the constant exposure to Cardamine their reproductivity is reduced and they are known to be slavers, taking slaves both for their cardamine farms as well as to bolster their population. Through that they became less "Hispanics" (from the ship...) over time, including "people and genetics" from all houses.
Corsairs on the other hand ... yes, it's always been a little weird to have space-mexicans there. I'd also consider Mexico a possibility for the Coalition, though I don't know whether or not they were in it in lore. (I'd consider Brazil as a possible Coalition country as well...)
Somehow the ... let's not call them Mexicans ... the space-central-Americans do feel like they make sense though. Maybe just because they are also from a hispanic (-> language) country. Overall, do you rather want to go with the stereotype and make LR be the main Mexican "faction" on the server? They are clearly the unlawfuls here. With Corsairs it can be debatable ...
Because, are they all criminals?
In Disco I feel like the population numbers of some factions are way exagerated. Outcasts and Corsairs do count to these. The population of the "Hispania" has suffered a lot in regards to population. Many will likely have died before they ever reached either of the two planets (lifesupport failures, pod failures, etc pp.), but many many more will have died because of where they landed. Crete is a rock, little grows there, the people there will have been struggling from start on, with only very limited population growth possible. They were limited by that for a long time.
They felt betrayed, thinking that another house had sabotaged the Hispania to ensure that they didn't take away a good landing spot from them. And they lacked food and ressources. I would call the state they are in rather a kind of "war" than straight everyone-for-themselves piracy. Could it have been solves better? Probably. Tell that to a starving people with century old hate and anger though, one with nothing to trade with, one which's first contact was not the most friendly encounter.
Outcasts on the other hand only started to suffer from reduced population in the course of their colonization of Malta. Though I would guess that the main part of people had left the Hispania for Crete in fear of leaving Sirius without finding another planet to settle - remember, space is vast, I'm not sure of the "conisdered real" make up of "the Sirius sector", but I would guess it is considered a cloud of stars - so at some point they'd have left that cloud and drifted through a whole lot of "not much at all" or "nothing", void. The state of the Hispania was not good to begin with, drifting into void would likely have been a death sentence. Just an assumption though.
Anyway, the Outcast's population had chance to grow, the planet was lush, though unknowingly "toxic". Over time that population growth would have started to slow down, as the Cardamine's genetic changes started to take effect and fertility dropped due to it. Probably not enough to be clearly noticeable and spark concern, since, if I remember lore right, the need for Cardamine to survive was only discovered when they first tried leaving Malta. Thoooough...that might have been attempted rather early, they already knew how to build spaceships, the "only development needed" was building spaceships (that's quite a feat, going from "nothing to spaceship", probably more than a single generation can manage). So...again, we are not talking about a big-house-sized population.
Being restricted to one planet which has little arable land to offer (Crete) or having their fertility (significantly?) reduced are quite major factors. Still a bit sad that they are reduced to criminals only. Freelancer is build a lot on stereotypes.
No idea why a sleeper ship called "Hispania" would end up spawning Malta, Crete and the Corsairs, but from a audience kind of view, it makes sense to have the big houses as they are. How many French players have you seen around for example? (Btw - for those still believing in Gallia: Rheinland already had French (and Dutch?) named pilots around, there was already the possibility there to add French focussed things into the game without adding a new house.)
Overall, I don't think vanilla said much about where the people from the Hispania were actually from. I would guess from the countries around the Mediterranean as well as maybe other Hispanic countries. One could assume that the population of these countries had been decimated by the war - maybe - and therefore there were fewer...It's all assumptions though.
While there's "a lot of written down stuff" in Freelancer, the story is pretty much like the universe. There's some bright spots and a lot of space inbetween. Especially start and end are very open. This both gives good oppurtunity to put in your own thoughts as well as to question whether things make any sense whatsoever.
