Zoner RP Solutions

[Benjamin]

Yeah not sure how this is petty. A couple of months ago I started thinking about zoner neutrality on my LWB, and realised the zoners offer the LWB literally nothing at all, whilst also making eating and selling synth paste. There is no reason why they'd be neutral. Then I went through my other characters, and none of them gain anything out of being with zoners. Junkers are a bit up-and-down. They're useful as trading depots, but they're also moving in on Junker trade. I wasn't in Hogosha at the time but they're a bit up-and-down with Zoners too. I now have an MM~ who is paid by Zoners and a certain other character who likes them. But like, Hessians, Bundschuh, BAF, none of these factions gain a single thing from the Zoners, and the extent of their relationships is basically Corsairs being closer to them because they base off a freeport.

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Join Cryer Pharmaceuticals

[Doc Holliday]

If you think about it, Benjamin, the Zoners wouldn't really know alot about the LWB as they Darmstadt is rather well hidden and not in a place a Zoner would know so how could they be useful without knowing? And not all of us carry that disgusting Synthe paste. You'll never see it in my hold. Oh, a recent transaction:
http://discoverygc.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=44561

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[MFE]Med Force One | Tales of Recovery|Med Force Enterprises

[Benjamin]

If you think about it, Benjamin, the Zoners wouldn't really know alot about the LWB as they Darmstadt is rather well hidden and not in a place a Zoner would know so how could they be useful without knowing? And not all of us carry that disgusting Synthe paste. You'll never see it in my hold. Oh, a recent transaction:
http://discoverygc.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=44561

That's what I mean about this whole thing though. The LWB and the Zoners, in vanilla, are neutral purely because they have no interaction. The only factions the Zoners really have neutrality with are the edgeworld groups - bounty hunters, corsairs, outcasts. And they had to work for all of that. Now in Disco you have zoner traders parading through the houses constantly, they're meeting a lot of groups who are by default hostile. Time to work for that neutrality all over again.

As for Synth Paste, forgive me for being sceptical, but synth paste is the sole reason places like Freeport 9 can exist, and if it wasn't such a turd commodity, it would be traded by zoners just like everything else. It's easy to avoid carrying it on your ship when it's a rubbish commodity, but you can't ignore the fundamental fact that every freeport with biodomes lives off the synth paste they grow in them.

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[Exsiled_one]

paste is awesome. pharma too. food as well. yeah, trading those in rp items wouldn't get zoners much cash... in omegas that is..

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<span style="color:#33CC00">I AM GIVING AWAY MONEY TO CREATIVE MINDS*</span>

[Spear]

You know, rather than using the Swiss/Al-Qaeda example, perhaps a more relevant example of neutrality is the events of the Battle of the River Plate.

The German pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee was forced after taking heavy damage into the neutral port of Montevideo in Uruguay. The Uruguayan Government told the Germans that they could stay no longer than 72 hours or face Internment. Although the Graf Spee was able to make repairs in that time it had depleted most of its ammunition and were deceived into thinking the British had a far larger force waiting for them. Rather than be destroyed by the British or have his ship impounded the Graf Spee Commanding Officer chose instead to scuttle his ship just outside the port.

OK an interesting RP solution to this whole fiasco is the Zoner's ban all war-ships from their bases, lawful & unlawful. A non-Zoner War-ship can only be permitted to dock for repairs under Zoner permission and their stay is time limited by the Zoner's. Free trade remains unmolested and the Zoner's continue to allow all trades ship regardless of faction entry. The Zoner's could in RP demand that not only their NFZ be enforced but that foreign war-ships not enter the NFZ unless given permission by the Zoner's to do so.

This would maintain Zoner neutrality and avoid any future attempts to drag the Zoner's into taking a side when they do not wish too. Let's face it, any House in Sirus at the moment could chose to RP being peeved at the Zoners for allowing safe harbour to enemies and any unlawful faction could also do the same. Why not nip this in the bud with a simple RP amendment to your NFZ policy that basically says "Zoner bases are for Zoner warships only, damaged ships may dock only under permission from the Zoner's and their stay shall be time limited" This has a basis in RL history and RL international historic law regarding belligerent war-ships in neutral ports.

Since this thread is about solutions, what are your thought's on this?

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=LSF=

[pbrione]

That would certainly be one workable solution - effectively genuine political neutrality. The problem with neutrality which many people seem to have failed to realise is that, as you rightly say, it is not simply a matter of doing nothing when conflicts arise. In practice a genuinely neutral position when there are wars raging around you is an extremely difficult position to maintain and requires constant work to balance various interests. Just saying, "alright, anyone can land on GC as long as they don't shoot each other, we don't care" is not an active way of maintaining neutrality and would deteriorate pretty quickly.

Also, if anything the zoner position is made more difficult by the fact that they are not simply trying to be neutral between lawful nations in conflict, they are trying to be neutral between lawful nations and groups who act to all extents as petty criminals and terrorists. Trying to conduct official diplomacy with House Governments as their equals whilst harbouring criminals openly is a hard gulf to bridge.

My suggestion would be to adopt a more isolationist stance; this, after all, is supposedly what the Zoners were founded on - they wanted to escape from the Houses more than be neutral to them. So, yes, banning warships from their bases would be one option. More interestingly, I might suggest allowing various Zoner holdings more autonomy (as this is in keeping with the Zoner principle of decentralisation) - have different Freeports adopt different positions. Perhaps appoint governors to each Freeport and Gran Canaria who can arbitrate local conflicts without the imposition of central rules, and do so in the interests of the regional powers. So, Freeport 1 might be more friendly towards the Bretonians than the corsairs, whilst Freeports closer to the corsair home systems might adopt more openly pro-corsair policies. Whilst none would neccessarily go so far as banning anyone from using the Freeports altogether, they could try to prevent anyone using the Freeports, or Gran Canaria, to base attacks from against whichever was the nearest major power.

Switzerland is a poor example, not least because the Swiss are in practice not all that neutral, especially between other nations and criminals and terrorists. The real world offers no examples of perfect neutrality in this manner, becuase perfect neutrality does not exist. It is an impossibility and the Zoners would do well to learn this. Instead, they should try to prevent any major power becoming too influential over them and also prevent any major power becoming too hostile to them, by taking pragmatic steps in individual circumstances. Do whatever neccssary to prevent any war from breaking out or any group from forming alliances with you. If that requires that you occasionally favour one group a bit more than another, or arrest and sacrifice a few individuals from a minor group in a gesture of goodwill to a more powerful neighbour then so be it. And remember, always, that political neutrality by your government does NOT in any way correspond to diplomatic immunity for your individual citizens. They can be pirated and they can be arrested in the same way as anyone else. Neutrality =/= special treatment for traders. Swiss citizens don't have get out of jail free cards for use in other countries.

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Sir Stanley Nelson




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

[dead_shot]

You gotta be kidding me with this new example? Let's concentrate on the issue at hand please and stop drawing analogies that make no sense...

Nobody says Zoners are neutral but they try to be neutral to all.

Same as governments and states are legal institutions which sometimes use illegal means for their goals. Nobody's perfect...

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the path to hell is paved with good intentions!

[Zeltak]

Isn't that suggestion basically just 'Everyone shut up and deal with it in-game'? Hasn't it already been suggested? Because, that seems kinda obvious to me. Deal with in-game stuff where it belongs, in-game

I didn't want to enter this whole Zoner issue, too much energy wasted on my part... but I must comment on this.

You say Magoo this:

XTriton's suggestion added.

Much better overall, please continue along this line.

So you basically support the line of thinking that we should be quiet and deal with it in-game? Hmm, well you see I tried to do that. Kinda failed, pretty badly.

[Derkylos]

Leaving the insanity that is Omega-49 aside, this is a prime example of how the "integration" and "expansion of RP" creates unforeseeable complications in faction diplomacy. Factions that, in vanilla, have never had the slightest reason to encounter each other are now mingling freely and having tea together.

In the original game, Zoners would only interact with a relatively small number of factions (Outcasts, Corsairs, Hunters, houses, corporations, Hessians, Xenos, Rogues, Hackers and Unioners. Due to Discovery's tendency to "shrink" the Freelancer universe, however, they end up in contact with several other entities, whose outlook remains undefined. Hence, one cannot simply refer to "vanilla relationships", but must make up something entirely new.

Comparisons to real-world politics also fall down when one considers the vastness of space, the impracticality of any organisation patrolling all of it's "claimed" territory at all times (then again, claiming open space is as laughable as claiming vast swathes of desert. You cannot do anything with it. And there is nothing there. One only needs to look at the African campaign in the 1940s to see how much of a liability such territory is), and the sheer distances over which information has to travel (Texas contains communications relays, running alongside trade lanes, implying that even communication funneled through the lanes is inefficient).

It is quite conceivable that a ship could dock on a base completely unnoticed by any faction save for the base's owner. This is especially true with regards to a Freeport, considering their locations in areas that are not claimed by any faction, due either to their distance from that faction's bases of operations, or the lack of anything worth patrolling in the immediate vicinity.

Perhaps the Zoner relations need a cleanup, either via infocard editing, or by inserting more rumors into bases of both them and factions that are not covered by the original game. Saying "they're neutral" is simply too vague to roll with. There needs to be a reason for it, and it needs to be a reason that everyone can adapt into their "story", not just a "we're neutral 'coz we're Zoners", or a "they're hostile 'coz we dun' like 'em".

Since this thread is about solutions, what are your thought's on this?

Great theory, shame that, in practice, people, with no idea what "RP" is, and a big ship will dock and log, anyway.

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[Spear]

You gotta be kidding me with this new example? Let's concentrate on the issue at hand please and stop drawing analogies that make no sense...

Nobody says Zoners are neutral but they try to be neutral to all.

Same as governments and states are legal institutions which sometimes use illegal means for their goals. Nobody's perfect...

Perhaps that made no sense to you, but that's just your opinion amigo and one I find quite absurd. The issue at hand is what we are discussing, so far you contribute nothing but a stubborn inability to grasp what others say.

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=LSF=