Zoner RP Solutions

[pbrione]

Look, I'm reluctant to even set foot in this thread again, but one thing really needs to be set straight. All this talk of "War with Zoners" and trying to compare the military force of Zoners to Houses doesn't even make sense.

According to almost all RP, there is no such thing as "The Zoners" as a unified political body. There is no "Zoner Fleet" none at all - none exists. There are individuals, who consider themselves culturally to be Zoners. Many of them own ships. A few of them even own large, capital ships. They live in various places across Sirius, on Freeports, some on Gran Canaria, some just in space on colony ships. This is why the Zoners are considered peaceful and neutral, because they don't exist as a unified political force. Sure, there a few groups of Zoners, such as the TAZ or the (|c|) which are a little more organised, but these are almost exclusively trade based organisations, not military ones. The TAZ doesn't even have ranks. Most zoners do not have ranks. The concept is abhorrent to their sense of liberty and equality.

Now, however, we have a Council of Zoners, and some people have unfortunately interpreted this as meaning the Zoners are now a unifed body ready to "take on" the other Houses diplomatically. I would disagree with this fundamentally; the Concil is, as far as I know, a deliberately weak body (in keeping with Zoner principles of decentralisation) that was created more for OORP than inRP reasons. InRP, I can see it acting a lot like the 19th Century German Confederation - basically a forum for discussion whilst all important decisions are taken by the individual member states - in this case groups like the TAZ or simply independent Zoners.

What the Council of Zoners does NOT do, is command a huge wtfpwn Grand Zoner Fleet. They have some warships to enforce no fire zones - good, so they should have. A small peacekeeping force. Out there, somewhere, are quite a few Zoner warships. They aren't grouped into fleets (after all, they've never had anyone to fight), they don't take orders from anyone, they look after their own interests. If the Council of Zoners were to "declare war on Bretonia" (which would be extremely unlikely), how many of these warships would turn up? Some, to be sure. Probably many, particularly those based far from Gran Canaria, would simply ignore the announcement and look after themselves. Nobody is going to order them to attack, as they aren't under anyone's command. The Council of Zoners exists because it respects the Zoners individual autonomy - try to force Zoners into warfleets and its authority would collapse. That's not to say Bretonia can neccsarily spare the resources to capture Gran Canaria. Perhaps they do, perhaps they don't; that is besides the point - Bretonia has no intention of capturing Gran Canaria by force as it would by both politically and militarily wasteful - this is what the Port Jackson agreement is for, to avoid such a need. Privateers =/= Bretonia. As for the Zoners going out and actually invading another House's sovereign space, however, please, it is completely absurd inRP, however many players may own Juggernaughts OORP.

So, please, just stop this discussion of Zoners vs Houses, because it is meaningless. Zoners are loosely-affiliated edge world traders with minimal organisation and central government, who should not, could not, be contemplating war with anyone.

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Sir Stanley Nelson




<span style="color:#000066">Charles Canning </span><span style="color:#000066"> Foreign Secretary</span>