So we have the Zoners, going "zomg no one should be able to touch us, our entire concept is that of neutrality".
Then we have the piratical peeps, going "evolution of roleplay foos, I want to pirate you anyway".
Suppose that Liberty declares war on Kusari. One of two things is going to happen:
1) The admins go "shouldn't have happened, the events leading up to this are against the established peace between these groups" and retcon it.
2) Kusari declares war back, shooting begins to happen in Galileo and Kepler. Mod may eventually be altered to reflect this, as it has with the existing inter-house wars.
Everyone agree with that?
Suppose then that the Zoners did something like, say... provide the Corsairs with the nukes they need to launch a crippling attack on an Outcast base, and did not sufficiently cover it up/explain that they didn't know it was going to be used like that. By the same token as the above, I would expect the following two responses:
1) The admins go "shouldn't have happened, Zoners would never be so stupid as to break neutrality that badly" and retcon it.
2) The Outcasts go "well if you're going to play it like that..." and shoot every Zoner they see as an ally of the Corsairs. Mod may eventually be altered to reflect this, possibly changing over control of Freeport 10.
However, it seems to be the opinion of the Zoners that the following should happen instead:
1) The Outcasts should respect the canonity of Zoner neutrality, and not respond in kind to what is quite arguably an act of war in their eyes.
Some people at least think that it would be acceptable then for the Outcasts to demand stuff of the Zoners, but I wonder what they'd view as acceptable response should the Zoners turn down those demands.
I know a few people who pirate Zoners extra-hard if they claim "I r zoner u can't shoot me". I certainly did back in 4.84, when it seemed to be the most likely line a trader would tell you, second only to "no english". I had a lot of trouble reconciling the fact that I'm supposed to be both violently opposed to something the Zoners were doing (in that case, perpetuating Daumann's vice-grip over Rheinland by doing the diamond-niobium run) and yet allow the Zoners to be neutral by not shooting them. I could demand they drop their cargo, but if they refused, what did I do? Say "well you're a zoner so keep destroying my country" or what?
There's a problem here. It isn't that Zoners are neutral to everyone. That is neither accurate nor an inherent problem- a comparison might be made to how the Nomads were at one point hostile with everyone. That was not an inherent problem, and with player interaction it changed.
While I can't say that I approve of this faction idea, the responses to it have illustrated what the problem is.
If the Zoners do the bending over backwards to keep everyone happy, then they deserve to keep that. They've done the legwork, it'd be silly not to reward them for it. If, however, the Zoners manage to piss someone off (and not someone who was just looking for an OOC excuse to shoot Zoners, though an inRP Austria - Serbia 1914 style interaction would be perfectly legit) then they should not cry "but vanilla!", they should deal with it. Pay the people off or something, or accept that you've pissed someone off and that they are now, well, pissed off. The only logical alternative I see is for anything that would piss people off to be expunged via admin retcons in the name of preserving vanilla diplomacy.
Personally I'm a fan of not having server events wiped clean to make room for people to do whatever they want. Declaring an NFZ over West Point and then shooting the Navy either gets retconned with a "that never happened, move along" or Liberty responds in kind. Simple as.
Please note that I am not saying that all Zoners go "canon diplomacy, screw your RP developments" or that I hate Zoners. To the contrary, the Zoners are sometimes the people who play along when no one else will. Sometimes they're also the people who go "oh you were around FP1, the nearby players RP'd it as you trying to destroy the place, you played along, you weren't going to make anything of it but the innocent bystanders made a thread out of it trying to develop some minor RP out of the Freeport possibly taking some damage (not enough to shut it down or anything), which might have led to shipping events or inter-faction cooperation and possible RP expansion? Well, I wasn't there and other people were, but I declare that never happened, the Freeport has no damage, F*** OFF." It is that attitude that is problematic. So long as the former is more prevalent than the latter, there is no reason nor need for a faction to show up with the express purpose to show the Zoners that they are not untouchable. When that changes, however... well, let's not find out.
![[Image: SCRAgenderheuristics.png]](http://i530.photobucket.com/albums/dd343/sovfalcon/SCRAgenderheuristics.png)