My view of the Harvester thingie is clear, and has been stated before:
As a rp story, it was fun for a while.
As a faction, it fundamentally changes what it is to be a Zoner, and I dislike it.
The Zoner ID had a couple of problems. Bacause of the lack of enemies, it was interpreted as a free pass, and a lot of traders got it to powertrade under the 'protection' of that ID.
In the olden discussions about the Harvesters this was brought up as a good thing about the Harvesters - make an enemy for the Zoners to make the ID less attractive!
That's like friggin introducing foxes to Australia to combat the rabbit problem. It's ineffective, and it destroys other aspects instead. Ineffective - well, look around you. Lots and lots of 'Zoner' powertraders, although I hope .85 will fix that.
It destroys other aspects - the harvesters were unique, once. I could deliver food to Crete, I could run the line between the outer house systems and the edge. Sure I was robbed once in a while, but that's to be expected. Now, some of the Corsairs are allied to the Harvesters (and no, that's no secret. Seb was told of it in rp, by corsaris, and he reported it to the council and the Zoner Defence Comms), and the opt-out card seems to be taken away in .85
Misunderstand me correctly - I'm all for limiting the Zoners. BW transport should be the biggest trading craft in my opinion, and Zoners have little reason to run around in House core space except for passing to and from Freeports and other Zoner installations. However, taking away one of the defining factors of an entire NPC faction by dreaming up an enemy that has no grounding in the backstory and making it canon, no, I don't like that. Of course, y'all already knew what I think.
John Johnson - Master of Synth.Foods-Convoy|049
Hans Adler - Synth Foods escort wing
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