Zoner vote regarding the actions of the Asgard Warriors

[Hyperwave22]

My grain of sand...

As this has developed into a flame fest, let's try to view both sides and make a decision on that.

AW is affiliated with the Zoners, and if it were me, I would try to keep that faction as neutral as possible. However, this is a game in which the military is key. There are no civilian duties for a faction member in the Freelancer universe. The key word here is affiliated. Affiliation by definition, means:

1. to bring into close association or connection: The research center is affiliated with the university.

- Dictionary.com

or

6. to associate oneself; be intimately united in action or interest.

- Dcitionary.com

What does this mean? It comes out being very similar, and yet contradictory at the same time. Bringing one in close association would mean that they can operate on their own free will, as long as there are close ties, and very similar things between AW and the Zoners.

To the second quote, you see that it uses "intimately united," essentially meaning that it is in such close affiliation, that it would mean AW has to operate almost exactly like the Zoners.

We all know that it is very hard to operate like this, the only exception being the house military or house police factions. These two types pretty much have set goals and expectations, which enforces upon them to act in a very similar manner. For less direct affiliations, such as AW, there is a need to create some of the expectations on their own. This may include keeping Zoner neutrality.

Neutrality is not easily kept for anyone. The Zoners, expectantly, would have to do something to maintain this. It may mean that if they are becoming too friendly to one faction, they will have to break some ties with them, and form new ones with others.

However, I think that the main problems here are stemming from the new ties AW has formed with illegals. AW is semi-unlawful as they are not completely affiliated with the Zoners. However, it seems as if in order to protect their interests, AW may have taken a step too far. This is not meant to be offensive, but to me, it seems that if the AW were not allied with forces such as HF (friendly with others), this may not have happened.

According to the above quotes, AW has a fine line to deal with. Personally, I believe that AW took a small step in the direction of not just protecting their interests, but obtaining new ones. This is not to say that AW is completely at fault.

SF remained steadfast in the prevention of HF traveling through Cambridge. As HF wanted to revert their position as time progressed, SF kept to this prevention. If it would have done any good for SF to reverse this, I don't know. Since HF was allied with AW at the time, there were tensions, but AW seemed to not mind much at the time. However, it was kind of pushed into the shadows with the arrival of SA. The SF began to support them while they were still budding, which, I'll take a guess here, angered AW. AW then attacked Bretonian targets until SF started to give support enough to SA to help against the HF. Because of the previous events in Cambridge, the SF assisted.

I'm not sure if this was found as a ripe opportunity to get back at SF for the prevention of HF in Cambridge, but AW soon joined the fight. With them, hence my "taking things a little bit too far quote," Helghast, Corsairs and others joined. It appears that its created a bold, dividing line between the parties flaming here. Honestly, it appears as if this problem was started by no one person, but a combination.

I think it's time that we stop the flaming, and move on from this problem. This may seem out of context, but the most common reason that is fed to the world for studying history is so that we don't repeat our same mistakes. This can be learned here, right now, and we can move on from the problem.

Personally, I think things can stay as they are for now, and will change as both the community as a whole and individuals see fit. There is no point in arguing over the past anymore, as it seems to have gotten nowhere.

Also, Ant, I hope you return soon:(

Hype

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Retired
A very big thanks to Dark Oddity who put my signature pic together