revision of the ZONERS faction - to avoid yearly discussions

[Lythrilux]

Drobe the drunkard Mcmoderator put good reasons describeing zoner cap roles.

However there is one thins in RP toward zoners that irritates me and thats

1. umm, Give us dock or we pew
2. umm, No Dock for our enemies or we pew

And those same who say that like to dock on npc zoner bases ...

That kind of RP is idiotic , nothing less. Against such type of poor exploited RP , zoners need protection. That is i suppose only argument that all stays as it was. But i am for changes nevtherless, just wanted to note this RP behaviour toward zoners.

Well zoners aren't meant to be able to make such decision on their own, they're guests in the space of both their allies and enemies.

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[Mímir]

So, why make a change that will still result in QQ?

You have to break a few eggs to make an omelet, I am sure the Zoner players will settle in fine to a new and more coherent/less nonsensical lore and have fun with that, and if not other players that wouldn't go anywhere near Zoners before might be interested. I know I would be excited, even if I lost my Nephilim, Corvo and Fearless in the process. A fix is needed if you ask me, once and for all.

Seriously, a question for Devs/Jinx ONLY: Give me a good reason why NOT to do that?

Personally for me the issue is that the Zoner caps have little to no lore, no proper story regarding their origin, and no diplomatic consequences in spite of the drastic Zoner militarization - those things are the same regardless of whether or not the ship in question is officially tagged.

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That kind of RP is idiotic , nothing less. Against such type of poor exploited RP , zoners need protection.

Corsairs pushing you around? Well go make friends with Hessians, take their Blood Diamond deal in return for protection, and make those Corsairs cry bitter tears. Or investigate what other groups hold an interest in the system your base is in. Could you make friends with Order and give them a safe haven to lauch from? How about Rheinland Military, maybe they could have an interest in the region and could be swayed to deploy ships there. THAT is Zoner protection - wit, tongue and diplomatic skills. Besides Zoners can use GMG tech - the 80 year war and all that, beating caps by using snubs.

Whenever I see Zoner players calling for guns to solve scenarios that could be solved with words I get more confident that removing those caps is the right thing to do, also to aid Zoner players in their roleplay.

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[tyro]

Personally for me the issue is that the Zoner caps have little to no lore, no proper story regarding their origin, and no diplomatic consequences in spite of the drastic Zoner militarization - those things are the same regardless of whether or not the ship in question is officially tagged.

true.

[Pancakes]

I agree but only partially (referring to OP here).

The fearless by LORE is a battletransport, having it as Cruiser is stupid IMO, especially since the right role for it does exist.

I would do a similar changes like you proposed but in a little bit different fashion:
Turn the Fearless into a battletrasnport with 4200 cargo. Like its lore fashions and also is a needed role that Zoners might utilize in their shipline.

The gunboat into either a really armored freighter, or an equilivant to the pelican. Pelican is a special ship, that those who got to fight it know how nasty it can be, so Zoners could use it as either RP platform or to defend their convoys while not "wasting" an escort, and giving it somewhat capability to also carry goods.

Corvo is re-scaled a bit, and turned into an explorer's Gunboat. I never understood why it needed to be any bigger than one.

Nephilim is redone/re-scaled and made a Cruiser. Zoners need heavy defense vessels, but not a dreadnaught that many bigger and more militarized factions can't muster. Also the fact that I don't understand why a colony ship is bigger than a whole freeport, otherwise all freeports would be made such.

Aquillon - Turn it into either a special Liner (thus maintaining the carrying ability) with 3 DM slots, or a 5k supertransport that is big and more armed, contrary to the sleek and small Whale.

That's my idea, I believe it will remove the huge QQQQ while also give Zoners a great RP platform that might also let them get along with all their neighbors far better.

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BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD

[Lythrilux]

Whenever I see Zoner players calling for guns to solve scenarios that could be solved with words I get more confident that removing those caps is the right thing to do, also to Zoner players in their roleplay.

CW| Were really good at using RP to worm out of situations, an example of zoners who can RP zoners without the need of caps. A shame they didn't get official .

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[RedEclipse]

Personally for me the issue is that the Zoner caps have little to no lore, no proper story regarding their origin, and no diplomatic consequences in spite of the drastic Zoner militarization - those things are the same regardless of whether or not the ship in question is officially tagged.

This already taking care of. In process.

Whenever I see Zoner players calling for guns to solve scenarios that could be solved with words I get more confident that removing those caps is the right thing to do, also to Zoner players in their roleplay.

CW| Were really good at using RP to worm out of situations, an example of zoners who can RP zoners without the need of caps. A shame they didn't get official .

OSI is doing good for very long without caps too. So what? The thing is, for some factions caps are involved in faction process(just for example for Phoenix - we role play them as homeships). Some not.

Anyway, I would love to hear stance of some dev - why nerf regular Zoner ID cannot be made in real.

[Jinx]

a currently reasonable compromise is the following

- turn the juggernaut into a super-transport/liner type craft [example: unique, large, high HP, plenty of transport weapons, very large cargo, prohibited from going into house space as it is now]
- turn the fearless into a Q-ship/medium sized AT [example: maybe something like a junker salvager or based on that idea (lots of hitpoints, good cargo capacity, limited self defense capabilities, good survivability)]
- turn the corvo into a small liner type or leave it as it is [example: maybe raba like or based on that (sturdy, fast, well armed for a transport of the size, lower/medium cargohold, good scanners)]
- turn the aquillon into a BT [example: normal BT - or like the old 4.83 lux liner ( which had 2 GB turrets among its transport turrets)]


it was said multiple times by players ( discussion about zoners last year ) that zoners do not really require their own fully fletched defense force - but should instead call in allies.

zoners would keep combat ships of equal value up to the cruiser class and swap their battleships for transport types as it seems that it is more the really big ships that cause some disharmony.

alernativly - we could apply option 2 to the cruises and option 3 to the battleship classes.

zoners also have access to a good selection of snubs. among them one of the best bombers ( gmg bomber - yea, personal taste - but i think it is one of the best - most well rounded bombers ), a SHF with tremendous firepower (osprey), a wide variety of VHF and depending on their allies, some of the best HF ( karasu or marauder ) as well as a tiny LF ( onuris if thats available ) the gunboat remains slightly below average but good enough to fend off occasional NPCs or the more random pirate encounter.

* now why make a change?

simply - cause it was asked for year after year after year - and it is time to actually put it to action

* why not make the big ships SRP?

SRPs are affected by double standards and also do not really improve the actual RP ( ingame ) by a significant margin. ( that is not meant to offend SRPed stuff atm. but SRPs are - for the casual encounter - not much more beneficial for the most part - even worse - they often stretch the boundaries of the core RP of a faction a little, hence SRP ) - they just make an item rarer; which admittedly is satisfactory for most ppl. - but by turning ships into something more fitting we can go beyond that.

we do not really want less ships - we want ships that have a good lore and are RPed according to the lore. if the result is less ships - thats fine, if the result is even more ships - thats fine, too.

it also begs the question about ships that already exist. - precidents suggest we could ask players to get rid of them during a period of grace ( like 3 months ) - and afterwards the remaining ships without SRP would simply get deleted.

or players would need to re-apply for the ship vis SRP - which would cause a huge workload to process those requests.

or of course every existing ship could be auto-approved. but that doesn t fix much.


* what about removing the sale point?

yes, the idea of so called "legacy ships" - doesn t really remove the number of ships we have, nor does it affect the roleplay much other than making the ships that are there even more precious and valuable because they cannot be obtained the normal way anymore. - while basically not a bad idea, it is also not too helpful for the problems that were pointed out in the last years zoner drama.


* what about official-faction-only?

aside from being a poor precidence it further creates a community of equal players and more equal players ( aka animal farm ). we d also run into the same problems that we get with changing to SRPs. - what to do with the indie capital ships - force them to remove them? force only them to file a SRP - while automatically approving the faction ones, no matter what background story they have?

*why do you refer to LAST years discussion or earlier?

well, cause the zoner debatte has gone on for - i think at least 5 years - and whenever it broke out to a fully fletched drama - we wondered "yea, its time to do something" - then it died down ... and we forgot about it, just to have it smashed into our faces the next year.
also - those suggestions were worked out after the last zoner debatte in early summer last year ( i think it was summer? )


after all that it also comes down to what most zoner players actually do.

- they do forum RP
- they trade
- they do ingame chatting/diplomacy

come to think of it....

when they start to assemble their juggernauts/aquilons to defend or attack ... it is usually not regarded as "the smart move" ( as pointed out in the last years and before discussions )

as a matter of fact, players from various factions usually point out that zoners - in desperate need of defense - should rather call for their more militant allies.

so what would those changes do?

- they strengthen what zoners actually do by:

- elaborating on the lore of the ships based on the actual needs of the zoner faction ( which if simplified comes down to : independence, self sufficiency, economical and diplomatical prowess and profit )
- giving them ships with more "character" that fulfil the needs more without being cut-out replicas of other warships.
- strengthen their actual needs ( moving cargo through sometimes hostile terrain ) by giving them top-of-the-line transport vessels
- allowing them moderate, yet non threatening escort vessels ( like Q-ships etc. )


to sum it up....


zoners are for the very most part moving stuff around. opposed to core traders - they move most stuff around for themselves to survive - and use excess goods as leverage for diplomatic causes. in some cases this leverage becomes greater than the self sufficiency ( probably fp10 and fp9 ) to maintain local non-aggression.

the current capline does not reflect those needs well - and the general consensus has been that it should.

but thats why it is a poll - in the end - it comes down to the numbers - and it is also non zoner players voting, because there are more than just zoners involved that care for their immersion.


ps.: lets not get into "vanilla zoners" - i had a correspondence with one of the leaad designers of the freelancer factions - and he replied with a rather unsatisfactory reason about "what zoners are" - which doesn t need to be posted here - cause it is not helpful.

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Shipdesigns made for DiscoveryGC

[Sabru]

i have to echo the rest of the zoner faction players here.

And having learned that the ideas jinx presented ORIGINATED from the admin/dev team, yes originated as in jinx is the messenger so everyone hates him instead, it peeves me off greatly that they jump straight to "screw over every zoner player because of a few lolwuts actions" rather than consult the factions who have the biggest stakes in the matter.
You do not see the devs planning everything about all of the other other lolfleets that pop up in game. (LNS-, RNC-, RNS- etc etc. not saying all indie caps are bad, but there are bad ones in the mix)

I only know of one admin/dev who actively plays as a zoner, and that is Doc Holliday. I'll bet you he wouldnt be happy about this.

So, admins and devs, care to explain? (also, am i to assume you all need to grow a pair and not have jinx do your dirty work?)

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[NonSequitor]

Let the Zoner shipline remain as is.

The reasons being:

1. Nearly every vanilla factions' shipline has been expanded. If the Zoners get their big toys taken away, then an awkward question arises: what is the rationale behind the other non-house factions having capital ships? Then players with their own agendas will attempt to "objectively" argue why there faction needs and deserves big caps. More drama ensues.

2. Not everyone wants to RP a house pilot (with all the goofy nationalistic stereotypes that often includes), a BHG Core pilot, an Order pilot, or a pirate house pilot (more goofy stereotypes). Zoner RP is dynamic and less restrictive. Less shackles on creativity.

3. Bombers kill everything anyway, so what's the fuss.

4. Zoner caps are not sapping joy from this server. The reasons lie elsewhere.

[Jinx]

the point is, sabre

we do not get the hessian drama, LN drama, BAF drama or so much. but we do get the zoner drama.

that does not mean that ppl fully agree with others. - we had a lot of complaints about hessians getting so much love ( battleship ) compared to others - but the unique thing about it is....

zoners popped up for over 5 years repeatedly - if you want to gain more insight, i suggest you just go back year after year and read about the zoner drama. - a hint... even what originated from long long ago ( which started with the [A] was by no means the first incidence )

but i fear you ppl think of it as a nerf - much more than an opportunity to re-shape the faction into something that fits its role better.



edit:

also - to be a bit more aggressive, cause i grow tired of it...

- if you all think that the realization of "how zoners are done in the game" is so satisfactory, i suggest next time we get the zoner drama, you start to defend your point with just as much passion - and not hang out lazily on the back bench.

off of all the ppl who really defended how zoners are right now - i have really only seen Trogdor and yes - doc h .. up to a point, although he seems not to like to get involved in discussions about zoners if avoidable. especially you, sabre - you have advocated a restrictive stance vs. indies with your past concepts ( official faction only etc. ) which is a huge change for the indies, too - the only difference is ... you d not be affected by it, cause you are TAZ (or so i suspect). so good for you.

but instead we are looking into concepts that are both fairer for ALL while at the same time beneficial.

we want to take the initiative to fix some past mistakes. - so the ships do not fit just as well ( no surprise there - they are based off of the freaking CIS star frigate of star wars and its original implemented size ) - are zoners the only faction that suffers from that? - hell no, but they are the most prominent faction that is pointed out. and thats why i d like to start there.

back in the days - igiss pushed ships with little to no history to the zoners, cause surprise, zoners concept of diversity justified almost any crap. and it just gets annoying when year after year the "devs" are accused for having expanded the zoners so much.

yea - we ended up with a planet, a system, 2 battleships, 2 cruisers, 1 gunboat for a faction that can hardly justify flying anything more powerful than a dromedary ( as pointed out by a few players ) - as a matter of fact, there were players demanding zoners to get "back to those roots" of flying just snub crap.

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Shipdesigns made for DiscoveryGC