the Zoners

[sovereign]

Also, I don't really get where people are thinking that the Golden Chrysanthemums are a military power.

Really? What about the gorram planet you're giving them that can grow cardamine? Or was that canned?

They're about on a par with the Blood Dragons, only they have considerably more funding from selling cardamine, which I don't think is unreasonable to consider.

Recall also how much money people enter the GC with as opposed to the BD. Women in Kusari have no money. Not 'dirt poor', they actually have *no* money. BD have at least pocket change on them, which Kusari women, err, don't. Also, the GMG fund the BD heavily... I know IC funds the GC a bit, but they also fund the Bundschuh, the Xenos (or was that Universal Shipping?) and quite possibly the Mollies... and they aren't all that rich considering how much the houses screwed them. Plus, cardamine addiction in Kusari, as I understood it, is not nearly as prevalent as it is in even Rheinland- and where it is, a fair number of those are in the GC. Kusari propaganda is very effective and enforced by convenient accidents. They are by no means rich. Neither are the other underdog factions. Possibly, because they're supposed to be underdogs.

Also recall that they don't generate it (unless that planet was serious) and have to buy it from the Outcasts- it isn't free profit by any means. Profit, but not exorbitant profit; that's the Outcasts.

They also don't really use anything above the level of fighters/bombers (I think at present the official [GC] group owns a single gunboat, which isn't even active). Anyway, I won't go into that further here, but since others had kept mentioning it I thought i'd make a mention of it.

Perhaps you should all, as others have said, just wait and see what 4.85 brings (although I still think it should be called version 5 XD). All groups are evolving from their original ideas, such is the passage of time. To be honest, I would say no pirate groups should have anything bigger than a gunboat, and most pirate groups shouldn't even have access to even gunboats. On the same token, if we were to do that, Zoners shouldn't get any battleships or cruisers or gunboats, although I would make a couple of Zoner Juggernauts dockable bases and stick them outside Gran Canaria and other key Zoner locations maybe. Junkers shouldn't have battleships. They shouldn't even have cruisers. But how boring would it be, if nothing ever changed at all.

But times change. People get richer and more powerful. More space gets opened up for exploration and exploitation. The tech levels and manufacturing capabilities of groups increase. Just the way it goes.

There's a difference between "evolving from their original ideas" and the game equivalent of this. Specifically, 'evolve' does not mean 'everyone doubles their cash every year, despite how before the sequels/patches began this took something like 50 years.

I am in no way advocating the Zoners being nerfed into oblivion, but giving any faction some of the crazy stuff that has been projected is equally outlandish. Underdogs lose their appeal when they get frikken planets. I like Mal's comparison to bankers; they rely on others for defense because they can't possibly defend themselves, but even still fall to a serious assault; said assault never comes because even though they are rich for the plundering, the diplomatic or civil backlash of doing it outweighs the monetary benefit. They are also loved by the little men because they basically are a-okay with giving loans without checking their criminal record. Not strong, and not even supremely important when things hit the fan, but present, distinct, and quietly counting their ever-growing pile of cash. In other words, a realistically normal faction as opposed to Yet Another Crazy Superpower (YACS).

TL;DR

RP does not mean that everyone gets their hands on big guns.

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