from my point of view - i think the concept of the AW is a successful ( well, not everything about the AW, but some of it ) - they have "stationed" themselves at one specific freeport, - and spun their roleplay all around it - without much claim for other freeports.
on topic, - it might be beneficial to do a similar thing. - form up a freeport group ( as opposed to a zoner faction ) - lets say... you form up a freeport-10 community of the zoners of tau-37. its a hotspot that might become a focus of attention more and more. that enables you to not only have a real "home" but also focus moch more precisely on local politics, zoner interests and station laws. - when you re roleplaying just "zoners" its nither here nor there, cause zoners are too different. - and when you have no "home" there is nothing you answer to and no one that would ask you.
but when you dedicate yourself to like freeport-10... those having issues with FP-10 would know that it is YOU who is in charge- and that is a beneficial thing. - being dedicated to a station does not mean your ZoI is limited, it just means that it is focussed. - you can still roleplay the interestes of the zoners as a strong and influencial part of the zoners. ( if you were a playerfaction of tau-37, you d be more influencial than for example the zoners of freeport-1.... who do NOT have a representative playerfaction )
furthermore it gives the faction justification to "do their own things" *within* the community of the zoners. - that means uniqueness while being part of a whole. - you may like to play with that idea when it comes to the faction creation.
in fact, no one is running any freeport - except the AW claimed freeport 15 and freeport 9 to be theirs. - but since the AW are done and the system is public again... the claim has vanished.
not all freeports are equally interesting from a RP point of view of course. FP-11 in delta is interesting, FP-10 in tau-37 is interesting, FP-9 in theta is now less interesting ever since the introduction of omicron-eta. gran canaria is interesting, but a bit on the remote side of systems. - omega-41 freeport (6?) might be interesting, but no one likes to hang around there, cause of the radiation.
about how to claim it.... - if the faction was official, they could prolly simply say that they "run the freeport" - like a mini guard system without the official status, but official enough to be respected. in omicron-delta its mostly about being present and sticking your nose into every affair that is going on there to become some sort of a referrence:). - but officially, there is little to say, as we have no precedence about that matter. the TAZ never claimed any freeport and the AW as the only other semi-zoner organization turned out to be no zoners anyway.... - so from that point of view... everything is down to whats reasonable and appropriate without looking at what has been done in the past, as there is no past.
Officially, Zoners rarely travel to one of the Houses, but if they do, they find taxing them by pirates outrageous, even if they use Sigma 13 to non-diamond/niobium runs and Dragons come to act like beggars. We (I) pay dragons if we (I) use Chugoku, their home system for trading. But if they come, when I'm not trading goods that insulted them in the late months, I simply refuse to pay. Of course, I run or they destroy my vessel. If the latter happens, a debt of 5million (if the Zoners cargo bay was empty, they have to pay more, because the lack of intentions) credits is written onto a currently non-existing list, that the committer or his faction must pay. In the case they refuse to pay, we send out some big guns to let them know we have rights to trade without paying tax. Pirates are pirates, I already heard this numerless times, but Zoners aren't simply traders, Zoners are hiding unlawfuls sometimes (=almost all time)... Hunters and Corairs are both reside on Freeport 9, but they're not allowed to attack each other onboard the station. So, we except the pirates to honour our rights meanwhile we honour that their home systems are only theirs only, so we pay them only in that case. I always ask around near the New berlin jumphole for of ONLY the Junkers to use the hole for trading. If they would ever ask for toll, I would pay (of course, Zoner discount exist - we support the Junkers' presence in the Yanagi field as one of our specialities). We are very serious about our privileges... Not long ago, Trek refused to pay tax to a representative of the GCs, so I apologised in his name. From now on, if one of us refuse to pay the GCs for using Hokkaido, the one should pay reparations, or one of us. I'm serious about honoring the GCs privileges in Hokkaido, because they never acted like the Dragons in Sigma 13. I asked for permission to trade and Saigo even offered discount. I would appreciate guys, that you pay for at least the GCs, because it's very looks like, that they have honour in even piracy... however, I would appreciate it if they wouldn't send anmore programmed machines nor cyborgs to the jumpholes for taxing... well, at least we would like an interaction program installed for dealing with Zoners.
Yeah, we really don't need an own base, I personally like to be everywhere out there, but we would like to be an official group of Zoners really. I even know the trick of the Zoner rep, so another thing why the starters should know a bit about us, to find the way out to be real Zoners easily.
by Serpentis (1) and Blackstarr (3)
and... ElDragonNegrodelaDonna, Dexter.Hovis, Syd.Montague... ah, and of course Dietrich.von.Claussen
So, is our faction acceptable to retransfer this thread to it's right place? We have a new name, did let other players in the game know about us, and got the 500mil.
(Sorry for the short post, but I've got serious problems with joining with a character of mine to the KNF, this progy everyone use for characters is a totally rubbish to me...)
by Serpentis (1) and Blackstarr (3)
and... ElDragonNegrodelaDonna, Dexter.Hovis, Syd.Montague... ah, and of course Dietrich.von.Claussen