Zoner/Zoner Guard IDs

[Frey]

I have Zoner whale and would say that all changes could be problem for faction. A lot of people will go to interspace or any other trade company. Maybe you will see just a few zoner traders in space.

Well, if you change anything, its not problem for me, but as i said it could be problem for faction.

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[FraserTE]

I have to ask- where do we draw the line on what is an acceptable level of wiggle room for players? Should we crack down on Junker Guard smugglers next?

By squeezing the loltraders out of one place, they're simply going to move to another.

This proposal is simply too simplistic and, dare I say, lazy of an approach to actually fix the problems mentioned in the first post.

Teaching good roleplay to most and weeding out the few stubbornly awful players on an individual basis might not be the "easy" way out (like changing a few words on an ID is), but unlike the proposal of this thread, it will actually add to the RP experience on the server.

If you want to increase the number of traders flying for Corporations, simply add more profitable routes for those corporations. Traders win, house lawfuls have more people to interact with on a regular basis, and pirates have more potential stalking zones.

Now, instead of taking a dump on the wiggle room of legitimate players, you're enhancing the gameplay.
That wasn't so hard, was it?

I agree with this

I see alot of universal taking the route from newyork to britonia w/e it might be but quite frankly im getting tired of camping them More and More Zoners are switching over to the yukon > 47 route witch is all fine and dandy just means i can camp zoners and univeral at the same time they both past buy this 1 little place nobody thinks off.

Edit add more routes not just for the zoners but for everybody dont sit there and restrict rp.

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First: You've got a picture in there that's 800x286 pixels. The maximum signature size is 700x250.
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With an image that big, you can't fit any text below it. Please fix this.
-Zuke

A sane man must become insane to look sane
In an insane world.

[Benjamin]

In regards to restricting RP, and how it's good that there are millions of zoners and we shouldn't scare them away:

This goes both ways. And there is that 'you can't have your cake and eat it too' thing.
For goes both ways: zoners accounting for the huge bulk of traders 'restricts' pirate RP, for one. It hurts the legitimacy of corporation RP. Both of these (which accounts for the huge bulk of all factions, obviously) are based around corporations being the huge economic might, and omnipresent, and factions living off pirating them, often one specifically.
Corporation traders are now novelties against the backdrop of zoners. Pirates have to invent weird excuses for why they want to pirate zoners.
Pirates are supposed to be frequenters of freeports, right? But if you pirate a zoner and then land on a freeport, everybody gets all pissy. But if you don't pirate zoners, you basically don't pirate anybody. Restricts your rp.

And yeah, there are a lot of zoners. If this change scared some of them away, where would they go? They wouldn't vanish, they'd become other characters. Every single other faction has more enemies than zoners, more opportunity for pirate/trader RP that isn't weird convoluted contrived rubbish. Would improve the general feel of the server a lot, I think. Hell, one of them might even join the KSP, because apparently at the moment no one cares if that faction lives or dies. (because they're too busy smuggling cardamine to manhattan in zoner whales, I can only assume).

And for have your cake and eat it too:

If you think about it, zoner neutrality would not and should not last with the situation as it is. With them making up such a large proportion of all legitimate, smuggling and corporation traffic, basically everyone would hate them. I've caught zoners hauling goods off Stuttgart to be sold wherever many times on my LWB. If this was followed through, zoners would have another enemy. Ditto for all the zoner smugglers the police catch, all the diamond smugglers the hessians catch, all the cardamine smugglers the hogosha catch. Hell, gaians shouldn't even like the alien organism smuggling.
Zoner neutrality exists because zoners provided a service that benefits people (freeports) and don't do anything to annoy anyone. Right now, the trader conduct annoys a whole lot of people, and having the neutrality basically enforced on everyone when this is going on, is nonsense.

The have your cake thing isn't just restricted to zoners, it's actually a common thing that doesn't get called up on a lot. Like Gaians allying with Kusari but having strong support with Bretonian citizens right up to the government level. How? Or the Mollies still wanting Dublin when they have their megasystem, or half a dozen other things. If you change one aspect of your factions RP, you have to make sure everything adapts with it to stay consistent. And right now, Zoners are not ingratiating themselves to all factions or generally doing much busy-body work to preserve their neutrality. The 'don't judge us by a small number' line doesn't do much good when the good people are the small number.
Some revision to Zoner trading abilities (this or some other) would hopefully tip the balance so that bad zoners were back solidly in the minority.

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Join Cryer Pharmaceuticals

[SigCorps]

Now I know that the guard ID's were created to be able to plit out the capships for each faction, but honestly, look at how we have to get them...you have to be the most deidicated and friendly with that faction then your average person in that faction. SO the definition of that faction. Why would someone so dedicated run routs that pay out in favor of house factiions. Guard tagged traders would only trade with our factions allies and zoner facilities.

We know why this is being brought up. Too many folks running about in zoner 5k transports being able to run any rout they want. While the house corporations have to stick to set routs. I do not see why Zoner Guard should not also have some form of restriction. You can still run all over with the regulat ID and a limit of 3800 cargo. Trust me I have run examples for OSI and there are routs that you can run that make a decent profit going only to Zoner bases. I did not even include the other base allowed in this proposal. Now these runs are not the best, nor the shortest runs, but they are there and they do make good cash. Then again we at OSI already operate under RP restrictions for our routs, by choice. All of OSI's routs start at a Zoner base and majority of them end at one. Actualy the only ones that do not are the supply runs we run to our neighbors bases and there are only a few of them.

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Formerly Sam Nichols, creator of OSI

[Quorg]

This won't solve the problem. It's a lazy answer and it will not work.

Period.

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ATTENTION SMUGGLERS
The Midnight Express: A Slaver <strike>who doesn't completely realize what he's doing.</strike> (video)

Quorg, you're officially a moron.

...mongs like Quorg being like a malignant little cancer...

Way to be useless, Quorg.

[Cellulanus]

Benjamin's post

/signed, I think he hit the nail right on the head here.

[ugliestmoose]

I've been thinking about this one for a little bit and though I still support it, I'm not so enthusiastic about it as I was at first. Reason being that the Zoner ID is bloated already as it is, and any more wording just adds to the ever expanding rules as jinx pointed out. However, until we can think of a better solution I'd say this one's worth a shot; if it improves Zoner roleplay at the cost of thirty extra seconds of reading the ID, I don't have a problem with that.

On a more general note, I don't think that this, or any, rule change will convince people to switch over to corporate trading. The reason being, corporations are restrictive by nature - they have established routes and commodities to deal with, and typically don't stray far from those - and so they require a certain amount of dedication from players who choose to be a 'company man.' On the flip side, the game is called Freelancer and promotes the freedom to go out and make a name for yourself however you choose. What's the sexier option - roleplaying a space cowboy or some ordinary schmoe?

People choose to be Zoners because they want to be freelancers and the Zoner ID grants them the best transports, I don't think it takes a lot of brainpower to figure that one out. But with this proposal, you're basically asking them, would they rather give up the ability to freelance in exchange for keeping their big fancy Whales, or would they just say 'screw it,' trade in their Guard ID for the regular one, hop in their Firefly and keep doing what they were doing? I think most would choose the latter option, personally. Either way, very few will be convinced by this rule to go join corporations (either joining a faction or just getting a corp ID) by this rule, IMHO. Corps are an acquired taste and I personally feel that their player base will always be smaller.

[Gemini893]

First off, there are 13 pages so I did not read the entire thread. Just the original post in it.

Part of the problem is that People really don't have any other choice for an all over trade ID. I thought I finally came up with a solution with GMG because they "supply all 4 major houses with H-Fuel" but, upon further investigation, found that they have some conflict with Rheinland in this mod. How Rheinland gets their H-Fuel now is beyond my comprehension.

I tried Universal but, at least on the USA server with their new "rep fixer" tool, Rheinland was hostile even though Universal has reps on several Rheinland bases.

I'm going to try a new character, without investing much into it, and equip it with the Interspace Commerce ID to see what happens. They, at least, have a base in Rheinland so they SHOULD be able to go there. While they're, technically, not a trading company, the wiki does say that IC will ship loads for an extra charge. Ergo, it is a possibility. At least within the 4 main houses.

I appreciate that many wanted to end the Zoner power traders but, seriously, there were NO other options left open for an alternative either. GMG, in my opinion. would have been the best option because of the fact that they are the supplier of H-Fuel to every house...until that little thing was added in with 4.85. If you seriously want the Zoner Guard trading to end, then there needs to be an alternative for people to use. Don't complain when it's the only option left for trading everywhere.

EDIT: Zoners running illegal cargo are OORP, it says right on the ID that zoners stay on the good side of the law. Those players should be sanctioned for OORP.

Another problem is the fact taht Zoners have a 5000 cargo cap whale but you can't fly it unless you have a Guard ID. In my opinion, Guard should be just that. Guard. Guard should mostly hang around Zoner bases with the exception of moving between them to enforce FP neutrality and what-not. When the new mod came out with zoner cargo ships that zoners can't use unless they go Guard, the MOD created the problem in the first place. The regular Zoner ID should allow for any size Transport AS LONG AS IT IS A ZONER SHIP. Fine, want to be a Zoner and have 5000 cargo? Fine, you're stuck with the Zoner Whale and only the Zoner Whale. This would still exclude Zoners from power trading in Adv Trains but still allow REGULAR Zoner ID users to have a 5k ship.

The main reason people choose Zoner for traders is because of a total lack of other options. When options open up then you'll see more corporate traders. But the new MOD has just about every house at war with someone. Liberty and Rheinland can't trade. Kusari and Bretonia can't trade. and now even GMG can't trade with Rheinland, even though that seems oorp due to Rheinland's need for H-Fuel.

As Jinx said, the complexity of every ID is extremely convoluted. This rule and that "special RP" has been Discovery's own undoing as far as trade ship role play.

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[Walker]

The official LSF response to the post above mine is...

In .84 We did Alien Orgs and VIP's, and thats all we did... Your complaining because you cant go to this house or that house? Xoria worked his buttocks off to the bone marrow, he looks even more scantly then Moriarty's cheekbones, to have an economy that is well-balanced and that EVERY Trader ID or such has a profitable route...

Universal has profitable routes, Interspace, Kishiro, etc etc... They all have similar profitable routes - The main crud with all of this is that people think Zoners are neutral, its one of the few factions lolwutters know something about since they spend so much time at FP9 wtf-incoming missile and nomadz any ship they see... So ontop of the fact that you technically 'could' trade anywhere, even though thats utterly stupid since in .84 we all stuck to one route and we did great; People just think that Zoners cant be pirated and/etc...

Its like Dusty Len's screenshots, 99 Junkers dead on the wall, 99 Junkers dead! Don't shoot me I'm neutral Mr. Xenos! Now there's 100 Junkers dead on the wall!

'Nuff said.

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Tiberius Walker, putting flames out and being awesome since Apr 13 2008 ™
[8/17/2008 5:56:46 PM] Aaron (Boss/Jurgen) says: Can't bring myself to say it... Looks like you get the LABC, I've seen what you can do in one
Walker (Albert Wint): I can has win? --- Epyon the Bored: You can haz win. --- [1:18:00 PM] Chris (Niezck) says: I love you &lt;3
[5:55:53 PM] Raisu says: Walker pwned both Battleships(LNS-Texas LNS-Arizona) - [5:55:57 PM] Raisu says: in a cruiser
Tiberius Walker, spreading mayhem, destruction, and Spamming Flood since Oct 22 2008 ™
[9:08:25 AM] Gurjiv (Frozen) says: I hope someone gives you AIDs.
[7:15:17 PM] Dylan (Ximen) says: Walker... you have no idea how much fail you bring into this world...
[8:05:08 AM] Ross (SevereTrinity) says: Screw you for making me install FL again
[10:51IE AM] Epyon the Bored says: My god if I ever meet you I am going to strangle you.
Tiberius Walker, being better then you since April 30, 2009 ™
We will remember - We do not Forget - We do not Forgive

[Jinx]

@Rogue charlie:

dunno if i just mentioned it in skype or here, too...

the term "guard" is just a term chosen aeons ago. - guard does NOT mean guard in terms of guarding something. - you can think of it as "elite" - of if you like as "dedicated". - while it might make sense for some factions - for others it doesn t make sense. - for some it has already been changed due to RP demands ( BHG guard = core )

do not stick to the term - this term can be changed very easily. - maybe next update we can call it "blue faced" - then every zoner guard becomes a "zoner blue faced" - what would you do about that. - its really just a term to describe the "next level of trust" in the zoner community. - and a "guard" system isn t necessarily a "guard system" in terms of guarding something either. some factions bend their RP about guarding something and being guards - others don t.... really its only a term.

the zoner whale was made, cause zoners are traders covering a vast amount of edge space - a space almost as demanding and large as the whole core house space put together. - zoners are traders... they control and pull their strings with political influence which they mainly gain through economical dependencies.

modern warfare can be faught two ways. - you can have your weapons speak - ruining your own country and the enemy financially. OR you can make them dependent on you - so that you dictate every move they do - and the best thing is .... they re not even really aware that they lost their independence to you.

zoners are fighting this kind of war in a space that prefers the first option more - and thats why zoners are so strong - not in military terms, but in interdependencies.

and this is the reason zoners still have a 5k transport. to express their dedication to that kind of RP. - they interlink factions, they forge ties... and you should be VERY grateful that we don t have a playerbased and dynamic economy - or zoners could REALLY ruin other factions existence, not by taking them over and bombarding their planets - but by ruining their trademarket - but to do so, they need a vast tradefleet.

hardly any planet in sirius is really able to survive on its very own without any imports. - i daresay goverments fear to be utterly isolated from trade by an embargo as much as a large mlitary invasion.


as a result, zoners are not immune to piracy, harrassment or threats. - but players must be aware ( and grateful ) that the most powerful instrument of the zoners to act and react to threats can NOT be executed in our game. - stopping all trade has no effect on a faction. - but if one is a serious RPer, one should have it in mind what consequences it can have.

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