Zoners

[DarthBindo]

Good day,

you're clearly forgetting the part where corsairs got their first ship. So please stop wave the "lore"-peen around while you're not into the topic yourself.

thanks in advance.

P.S. : http://discoverygc.com/wiki/Corsairs

Also I like the shipbuilding part, it's getting pulled out of the jacket quiet fast without understanding what's the story behind this "better shipbuilding". I'll throw a tip - better in what way?

I didn't forget jack crap, so get off that super high and haughty horse you're riding.
~400 a.s is when they first got their hands on the advanced technology required for effiecient interstellar travel, and even in vanilla, in the intravening 400 years they made damn good use of it. ILess than a hundred years later they were feared as the scourge of Bretonia and Rheinland, pirating their way to economic success, stealing technology, food, resources, economic methods, you name it.
But you would know that if you had read just a little bit further down the page, and not stopping once you found your ammo to sling at me.

As for how their ships are better, well, their "advanced ship designs are feared across Sirius".
TLR Corsair ships go toe-to-toe with everything out there and then some, and it's reflected in-game. Heaviest gunboat? check. heaviest battleship? Only the nephilim is larger.
Heaviest cruiser? check.
Great freaking guns? check. Tizzies, even post-nerf, still are the most desirable shield-busters out there.

Not quite the original topic, but Curios has a point. The official Microsoft site tells a story about the 4 Houses that realized their todays status not by any mythical project but by eventually finding each other in the sector and starting to rely heavily on interaction.

The recipe for their success has also been Ageira for sure, but the real basis of their success has been their teamwork. Each house has resources and needs and only together they pulled off becoming what they are today.

The hispanic factions have missed out on that part entirely, so they had no chance to exhange goods.

As each ship settled and colonies began to expand, they knew little about each other and their advancing development. Finally, little by little, the individual colonies found each other and began to set up trade routes to link their systems for commerce and solidarity.

Today, with each colony firmly rooted in its respective corner of the galaxy, the colonies rely heavily on each other for trade and industry but also compete for resources and new territories in the Border Worlds. The colonies mandate member governments in "The New Alliance" within the Sirius sector.

This is a quote from the official Microsoft Freelancer site.

The key is trade - and solidarity, not so much the lane system. I think we can assume that once they knew of each other, they could have conducted trade in a much less efficient way with jumpships.

The tradelanes are not enabling ships to travel long distances per se. Ships were able to do that before. The Lanes and Gates enable ships without jumpdrives to travel long distances.

With that said, it is arguable how much the more isolated factions prospered because they had no chance to benefit from the various spoils of the diversity of resources.

Irrelevant. Corsairs don't have to trade with the Houses, they pirate them for everything they want, and dealing with the Junkers and Samura and Hogosha picks up the slack.

Another point: When Corsairs were pirating, same with Outcasts, they would proable find something usefull from wrecks of ships.
Just think- parts, which haven't been affected by explosion, and survived attack. This can give great potential in science of materials, engineering and so on.
(off topic, sry, but guys, Corsairs are even cooler that Kushans from Homeworld!)

That's in the infocards. Corsairs pirate tech freely and vigourously, even today.

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gone four years, first day back: Zoners still getting shot in Theta :|

[Lonely_Ghost]

Dunno, Corsairs and Outcasts have those planets that's been settled for a long time (and aren't haphazard Disco add-ons) - obviously they aren't huge empires with tonnes of systems, near-infinite resources, super fast tradelane shipping, and several settled planets like the Houses do; yet they are more than just rabble or people living on the fringe. They each have their strengths lore-wise and have both survived for a very long time; most definitely on a different scale than Zoners power-wise if you look at vanilla.

So other houses has much greater military forces that both Hispanic sub-houses.
That why, even after long period of time, bother OCs and Sairs can afford only few of such ships to be build.

Zoners just have their battleships as safe haven for their people. That's the only idea I can have. Nephilim is greatly armed and armored only for ocassions, when he have to fight, because can't avoid it. So, you will maximize ship's defence capabilieties, to make sure, people inside will survive.

[Anaximander]

Yah ok, I don't agree that caps should be something you construct in-rp just because they are practical to have. In Vanilla they were truly rare, but there's been a boom in those 20 years passing and no real explanation why.

The only things we have to go on is that Outcasts are organized as a society with 700 or so years of history and planetside development, they are super-smart and very wealthy so they figured out how to build caps.

Corsairs, again with a long history and very strong unity - a full society complete with all that it entails, are superior shipbuilders, so they figured out a way as well.

Zoners, scattered and not united or organized as a full society - living on the fringe surviving on their neutrality, came across an alien ship(?) from which they found out how to build caps.

They are maybe all a bit of a stretch of the imagination, but the Zoner one is just ridiculous (no offense to whoever made it up). I mean their key asset is their "fluidity" and ability to fill a niche which is in stark contrast to organized society. I mean that was their whole point, they wanted to leave all that behind and be truly free - which also comes at a price. And organized society is what you need for major large-scale developments. On top of that comes the fact that more or less everyone in Sirius would have an interest in Zoners not arming themselves; Zoners would be sawing over the branch they're sitting on by changing status from "unarmed" to "armed to the teeth". Outcasts and Corsairs really couldn't care less about the diplomatic consequences of arming themselves extensively, everybody else are already shooting at them.

The Zoner story simply can't contain that many mutually exclusive elements and still work, which in my view is a shame for all Discovery Zoners past, present and future.


Off-topic: I read the entire 2010 "Zoners vs. Corsair" thread the other day, great stuff. It's a shame this same discussion keeps going on and on, rather than somebody in a position to do so start to fix things.

[Curios]

Powerlorers, powerlorers everywhere. We can replace any mentions of the word "zoner" in this thread with <insert any faction> and it will fit perfectly. Get real.

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[Anaximander]

You know, that's really not true.

By that reasoning any and all faction might as well have caps.

[DarthBindo]

Powerlorers, powerlorers everywhere. We can replace any mentions of the word "zoner" in this thread with <insert any faction> and it will fit perfectly. Get real.

Yes, it's very easy to dismiss everyone's understanding of the lore as ignorant, since clearly you are the one sane thinker among us.
You can call me a "powerlorer" (oookey kk), but I learned the lore as it was then and as it is now, from the primary sources of infocards, wiki pages, and rumours, and from the veteran Corsair players that came before me.
And that lore, says, exactly what it says. Just beacuse that doesn't jive with your personal opinion does not make it wrong or the rest of us idiots, it merely makes you an egocentric fool.
If you'd like, I can go get the Council and half a dozen players who've helped found what the Corsairs on Disco are, to pile onto your complete wrongness, but I really don't think that's necessary or polite.

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gone four years, first day back: Zoners still getting shot in Theta :|

[Linkus]

Only arguments that accept the current states of power of the respective groups based on current ingame lore and the canonical storyline are valid.

Some ships have been created and put in place purely for balance reasons but their presence, and power, has to be respected when it comes to looking at the lore and establishing power of factions.
Why? Because they are there, not going anywhere and ignoring such a large chunk of the mod compartmentalises your argument.

Of course, that's not to say the Corsairs have the same number of capital, or otherwise, ships that the Houses have.

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Facilitating the rise of robotics since 0 A.D.

[DarthBindo]

Of course, that's not to say the Corsairs have the same number of capital, or otherwise, ships that the Houses have.

I don't think anyone here has said that. Compared to the other Edge factions we're on par or stronger, but the full force of a House military would kick us all the way back to Gamma.
Course, Both rheinland and Bretonia are in the middle of getting their own rears beat, soooooo yeah.

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gone four years, first day back: Zoners still getting shot in Theta :|

[Trail]

Powerlorers, powerlorers everywhere. We can replace any mentions of the word "zoner" in this thread with <insert any faction> and it will fit perfectly. Get real.

The local inhabitants, sensing a historic opportunity, attacked the landing party en masse, killing all save Schulman whom they took hostage to gain control of the mother ship "Schiller" in orbit above the planet.

So the schiller is somehow the reason the corsairs got powerful? I find that hard to believe. They might have used the technology on the ship to upgrade their fleet but to say that the schiller is the reason they got great ships is asinine

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[Daedric]

I am unaware of any formally recognised lore explanation for Zoner capital ships. Players are welcome to make any roleplay assertions but that does not indicate defined credibility. A lot of these loopholes exist due to the extremely shaky (non-existent?) explanations when the ships were introduced by the Devs back in... a long time ago.

That is wonderful to hear, glad Jinx's crapstory wasn't made official and put in game.

EDIT: To be a bit pro-active; why don't all Zoner faction heads have a round table discussion and include Order, Corsair, Rheinland and LSF/Liberty leadership to make a story that balances the political aspects of Zoners arming themselves, retcon that alien story into something a bit more realistic and credible (it could be anything, as I said I wouldn't mind if Trent was a Zoner and his God-like status brought money and know-how to the Zoners, or whatever else non-alien and non-magic you could come up with to make Zoners either A) The power-house they are in-game or B) The niche faction they are in Vanilla lore) and make Zoners fun to play and encounter? I think die-hard Zoners would have more fun playing them too.

Doesn't matter what the Zoner faction heads do. We've done it a number of times in the past four or five years. What matters is what the dev team wants and is willing/has time to do. Fixing the crap story for Zoners was rather low priority last time I was working on the info card team.

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