Zoner Bounty RP

[Drake]

I can't even read past page 1 of the whiners trying to justify undoing years of established RP in the name of "I wanna do it no matter what's been done before or how it upsets the balance."

First of all, I'll point out that I've not had a hand in these doings from either side. I wasn't in the server at the time. My views on this are not biased from a victim's point of view at all, simply pointing out obvious things that everyone should already know.

Game Mechanics:

• Bretonians don't go to Omega-49. Period. The Bounty thread tried claiming O-49 as a Bretonian system and it is not. Bretonians go to Dublin to fight Mollys and are too busy with them to explore further. They just don't have any other viable route they'd use. Poole? that's a Guard system that the buccaneers shouldn't have access to.
  
• Buccaneer ZOI is the Tau systems. O-49 is not in the Taus.
  
• Zoners are a LAWFUL faction and, therefore, any bounty placed on them is UNLAWFUL. (The bounty was claimed to be a lawful bounty.) This would be the same as if someone were to place a "lawful" bounty on, say, the LPI because "they have a history of taking bribes and being corrupt." (which they do)
  
• Zoners are not, as much, providing safe havens as they are keeping the peace in their little corner of space. By the way, did you also make a "lawful" bounty on IMG players? They own FP4 and there are missions for Liberty Rogues, among others, on that base.
  

This was nothing short of inventing a shameless reason to gun down defenseless Whales and wreck any semblance of role play for Zoners.

Privateers, not Buccaneers. Entirely different animals.

Zoners aren't lawful. Nor are they really unlawful. They exist somewhat outside the lawful/unlawful axis. They try to stay lawful enough while still associating with unlawfuls.

Whether the Zoners are trying to 'keep the peace' for themselves, if their 'peace' turns out to be detrimental to another major faction (such as a House), then they cannot expect to remain neutral to that faction. Just because you claim to be neutral doesn't mean everyone else has to consider you such.

The Bretonian government (and military) consider the Zoners neutral, and they don't bother the Zoners. The Privateers, however, are not controlled by the Bretonian government or military (neither in-character nor OOCly). They are a bunch of ruthless pirating bastards, just like so many other ruthless pirating bastards out there. They are pointedly ignored by Bretonia, though officially they're outlaws, because they're useful to the Crown in their ruthless pirating bastardness.

While the Bretonian government remains neutral to the Zoners for political and PR reasons, the Privateers are their own entity, which aren't required to stick to the party line, so to speak If they don't see neutrality with the Zoners as benefiting to them, then they ignore it. Seeing as the QCP aren't a canon faction, they don't have a 'canon' neutrality to the Zoners.

If the BAF decided to rule all Zoners as Enemies of the State, then you might have a reason to complain. But you don't have any reason to complain about a group of unusually patriotic pirates bothering you. It's not power-gaming, it's piracy and bounty hunting from a group whose ZoI can include the Omegas, and who don't make use of Zoner hospitality, but whose enemies do.

Two final notes: First, Omega-49 isn't a secret, hasn't been in quite some time, and it is very easy to access. Only about 1/3 to 1/2 of Dublin is Molly-controlled, and the O-49 JH is sitting out in the open, entirely unguarded and almost as close to Graves as it is to Arranmore.

Second, the original bounty was not placed by a Privateer. We honestly have no idea who that guy is, but any bounties we posted would have had a lot more text to go along with them, and we wouldn't have dropped it once it started to draw heat. Zeltak, the placer of the current bounty (for reasons unknown to all but himself), is also not a Privateer.

Edit: As a point of interest, you can't really consider me biased against the Zoners. My first character, Isaac Drake, became a Zoner. He (me) was the first Chairperson of the Council of Zoners (no idea how I got roped into that), before I took a Leave of Absence from Discovery for a time. Until all my characters got wiped a couple months back, he was still my primary trader, Zoner Guard in a Zoner BW Transport ('Zoner Whale'). I haven't bothered to remake him because I really just dislike trading.