The Volksfront

[Blodo]

I find Vrabcek's ideas more appealing lore progression wise than SpaceTime's to be honest. Lets face it, a complete turn around would splinter the party if anything. It would be impossible and unrealistic to have the whole party unanimously switch from fairly libertarian to hard line nationalist, especially considering that they are meant to be the intelligentsia of Rheinland and not simply a group of "follow the leader" rabble. SpaceTime's idea would work for a sort of unique player faction, but it wouldn't work for the whole NPC faction.

Lets face it, this is a lore vs. gameplay argument again. In terms of lore it just makes little sense for the unlawfuls in Rheinland to fight each other. The Bundschuh prefer a united front so they can draw recruits from all the other unlawful groups. The Hessians fund the LWB, use the Unioners as security for their diamond shipments to Liberty and the Bundschuh as allies in arms dating all the way back to the Popular Revolution. The Unioners get well funded from the diamond trade through their territory, and can expand freely into Frankfurt because the Bundschuh don't shoot them and offer them their facilities. The LWB is as mentioned funded by the Hessians, and is otherwise not really cared for by the Unioners and only so so by the Bundschuh for the recruits. This is information that can be derived from vanilla rumours, even the diamond trade (it used to be regular diamonds in vanilla, for gameplay reasons it is now a unique commodity). The current Rheinland unlawful lore was built off of that.

Of course these extensive ties have the effect that most of the difference between these factions is just individual RP, as they cooperate quite closely so they tend to mix their equipment and ZoI a lot. That is I guess a gameplay downside because the Hessians seem to be the most universal there, and so are a first preference for most.

The only way there could be an unlawful faction in Rheinland that is hostile to all the rest of them is if a new NPC faction was made, or a unique player group based itself around one of the IDs and simply assumed its own diplomacy. A player group is an option, a new NPC faction... not for the short term and still wouldn't help the smaller factions gain much activity I think.

Instead for the Bundschuh I would say what Vrabcek wrote is good + further expansion into Sigma-13. The reason for hostilities with the GMG could be the fact that they currently are on good terms with the Rheinland government and supply them with their H-Fuel. Remove the H-Fuel = remove the government just like in the 80 years war. And then there's the ore traders going through there all the time. It could get good.