Zoner RP Solutions

[Lucend]

Juggernaughts invading Dublin? Please be serious. I suggest reading LeMaitre's earlier post about the absurdity of Zoners 'invading' or 'going to war' with anyone. They're a group of edgeworlders with a few big ships, but they are not a House, and they are not a military, and Juggernaughts aren't really very special, just big.

My point was that, if only one ship is lost, or one Bret pilot downed, then that is one ship/pilot that can't fight in the Taus. I didn't say the Zoners would even make a scratch on the House, but the SMART thing for Bretonia to do is at least make sure their entire force is concentrated on the Northern front. Because Kusari is knocking on the door, they have taken territory but not anything particularly lasting. If they invade/decimate Planet Leeds, well ...

TL;DR: You don't start fights when already bloodied from the last one.

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"The thirteen saloons that had lined the one street of Seney had not left a trace. The foundations of the Mansion House hotel stuck up above the ground. The stone was chipped and split by the fire. It was all that was left of the town of Seney. Even the surface had been burned off the ground.
Nick looked at the burned-over stretch of hillside, where he had expected to find the scattered houses of the town and then walked down the railroad track to the bridge over the river. The river was there."

Osaika Moto, the Fall and Rise of a Kusari Farmer

Juan Lucendez, √ Corsair

[pbrione]

I sometimes wonder why I bother to spend the time carefully thinking of well-reasoned arguments if people repeat the same counterpoints again on the very next page, but I'm a patient man and if it gets through in the end it is worthwhile so here goes again:

QCP are not the responsibility of BAF. They're not part of BAF. Them starting a fight in Omega49 =/= Bretonia starting a fight in Omega 49. You know what, maybe it would be more helpful for the Bretonian War effort to have QCP on the Tau front instead of fighting Zoners in Omega 49, but, as it happens, the QCP DON'T CARE, as they are NOT UNDER THE CONTROL OF THE BRETONIAN GOVERNMENT. Oh dear, it seems to not be optimally beneficial to our war effort. Well, clearly Andrew Stuart thinks otherwise, or just has some personal vendetta against zoners; frankly, it doesn't make much difference as to which.

Now, as the faction leader of the Bretonian Armed Forces and Foreign Secretary of Bretonia, I can officially announce that I do not require any more advice on how to either conduct the Bretonian war effort or Bretonian diplomacy, thank you so very much. If you want to go advise the privateers, I suggest you do so elsewhere, I don't take messages for them. If, as was the purpose of this thread, you wish to provide RP suggestions to the Zoners, then do go ahead. If you want my suggestions, refer back to my first post buried several pages back amid mountains of flames.

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Sir Stanley Nelson




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

[ugliestmoose]

I'd like to take this opportunity to get this thing back on topic:D
EDIT: Wait, this post got back on topic while I was typing. Ya!

The Zoners are the victims of two opposing ideas at work - the first, that the Discovery mod must grow bigger and so we must add in more stuff for each faction; the second, that we must stick to vanilla canon as closely as possible. It's easy to see the problem here - the Zoners keep getting new toys in the form of destroyers, battleships (colony ships my ass:)), carriers, and so on, yet they're expected to be these loosely affiliated frontiersmen who make a living through diplomacy and trade. I don't know, but it seems to me that when you've got a group producing warships then they're not so "loosely affiliated" anymore. The Houses, including Outcasts and Corsairs, would start to get suspicious as to why these seemingly peaceful folk are fortifying themselves with military-grade equipment.

I guess my point is, we're trying to act like time stopped after the events in vanilla and nothing changes. Well, that's not really possible as long as we keep adding new things into the mod, and the Zoners especially have been the beneficiaries of much new tech and bases.

Instead of everybody crying that zoners r neutral foo, why not take the opportunity to let things play out? It's perfectly reasonable to assume that the Zoners will make enemies at some point. Isn't it more fun that way?

[Janus]

I think the BAF can rightly claim they can't afford to divert resources from the war effort to go chasing after a bunch of renegade pirates.

Whether or not the QCP's actions are justified, or in anyway beneficial to Bretonia is a point I think we're long past. The BAF have made a clear statement that the actions of the Privateers are not endorsed by the Crown. The QCP have made it equally clear they have no intention of stepping down their efforts in 049.

The CoZ is still on speaking terms with Bretonia's government, as represented by the BAF and hopefully that will remain so. Bretonia has also declared that any hunting of Zoners within Bretonia will be considered an act of murder.

The Zoners can, IMO, consider the QCP to be enemies of the Zoners, although perhaps not KoS. Shoot second, but makes sure you shoot last, that sort of thing. Zoner trader captains may have to start employing escorts, which might be something lacking amongst Zoner players, I'm not sure how many have light craft. That's a valid and likely required ingame response to the actions of the Privateers.

As to the whole Zoner warship issue, only one of the 4 Zoner capital vessels is actually described as a warship, the Fearless, which is a convoy escort.

Of the other 3, there's a deep space explorer, a colony ship and a bit of both. Yes, they're all combat capable but they are not "warships". My take on it is that weaponry is for defensive purposes, not to go picking fights with. You don't go looking for a fleet engagements with a pack of colony ships. You do want to be able to defend yourself if someone attacks you.

[globalplayer-svk]

sorry, maybe that looked as flaming or what from me, but it was serious question (i am all the day in work so not always i can catch changing of someones rp)

ok ,so QCP are rogues, then, where they have base? in rp.
they can not use any bretonia lawfull base, since they are rogue, and unlawfulls still hate them i think.

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[DAnvilFan]

LeMaitre's statement below is about the best summary and the most accurate description I have come across in this thread. I am surprised that someone who does not roleplay as a Zoner (not to my knowledge at least) is capable of describing that culture so well. This is beautifuly worded and percicely what everybody should keep in mind when addressing the topic.

Look, I'm reluctant to even set foot in this thread again, but one thing really needs to be set straight. All this talk of "War with Zoners" and trying to compare the military force of Zoners to Houses doesn't even make sense.

According to almost all RP, there is no such thing as "The Zoners" as a unified political body. There is no "Zoner Fleet" none at all - none exists. There are individuals, who consider themselves culturally to be Zoners. Many of them own ships. A few of them even own large, capital ships. They live in various places across Sirius, on Freeports, some on Gran Canaria, some just in space on colony ships. This is why the Zoners are considered peaceful and neutral, because they don't exist as a unified political force. Sure, there a few groups of Zoners, such as the TAZ or the (|c|) which are a little more organised, but these are almost exclusively trade based organisations, not military ones. The TAZ doesn't even have ranks. Most zoners do not have ranks. The concept is abhorrent to their sense of liberty and equality.

Now, however, we have a Council of Zoners, and some people have unfortunately interpreted this as meaning the Zoners are now a unifed body ready to "take on" the other Houses diplomatically. I would disagree with this fundamentally; the Concil is, as far as I know, a deliberately weak body (in keeping with Zoner principles of decentralisation) that was created more for OORP than inRP reasons. InRP, I can see it acting a lot like the 19th Century German Confederation - basically a forum for discussion whilst all important decisions are taken by the individual member states - in this case groups like the TAZ or simply independent Zoners.

What the Council of Zoners does NOT do, is command a huge wtfpwn Grand Zoner Fleet. They have some warships to enforce no fire zones - good, so they should have. A small peacekeeping force. Out there, somewhere, are quite a few Zoner warships. They aren't grouped into fleets (after all, they've never had anyone to fight), they don't take orders from anyone, they look after their own interests. If the Council of Zoners were to "declare war on Bretonia" (which would be extremely unlikely), how many of these warships would turn up? Some, to be sure. Probably many, particularly those based far from Gran Canaria, would simply ignore the announcement and look after themselves. Nobody is going to order them to attack, as they aren't under anyone's command. The Council of Zoners exists because it respects the Zoners individual autonomy - try to force Zoners into warfleets and its authority would collapse. That's not to say Bretonia can neccsarily spare the resources to capture Gran Canaria. Perhaps they do, perhaps they don't; that is besides the point - Bretonia has no intention of capturing Gran Canaria by force as it would by both politically and militarily wasteful - this is what the Port Jackson agreement is for, to avoid such a need. Privateers =/= Bretonia. As for the Zoners going out and actually invading another House's sovereign space, however, please, it is completely absurd inRP, however many players may own Juggernaughts OORP.

So, please, just stop this discussion of Zoners vs Houses, because it is meaningless. Zoners are loosely-affiliated edge world traders with minimal organisation and central government, who should not, could not, be contemplating war with anyone.

[pbrione]

Well, I'm glad that people seem to agree with my description. No, I don't actually RP any zoner characters, at this stage I feel I would be accused of a conflict of interest if I did, though I maintain an interest in trying to understand all important RP so as to improve my gameplay when dealing with other people.

To address the question of where QCP base from : they use the semi-abandoned BMM gate construction site in Tau 23, beyond the practical control of the Bretonian Government or, for that matter, BMM itself. No real problems there in RP.

Now, back to the discussion of Zoners please.

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Sir Stanley Nelson




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

[reisiger_duke]

:yahoo::yahoo::yahoo::yahoo::yahoo::yahoo::yahoo::yahoo::yahoo::yahoo:

On a more serious note, I agree with LeMaitre's description of Zoners.

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[Magoo!]

They're a group of edgeworlders with a few big ships, but they are not a House, and they are not a military, and Juggernaughts aren't really very special, just big.

Not special?

And you've seen biodomes taped to.... Which other ships in Disco?

Anyways, my proposition, since some people seem to be missing various points provided by various people, that the Zoners outlaw the QCP from any system with a Zoner base in it. In that I mean that we find and gun them down if they mosey into one of our systems. Since, as has been established, they aren't under the Crown's control and are thus just a group of no-name pirates to anyone but themselves.

Make sense?

[Magoo!]

*cringe, double post*

LeMaitre:
"Use this thread for discussion of QCP, their RP and what they are / are not, should / should not be doing

And use this thread: http://discoverygc.com/forums/index.php?...630&st=230 for similar discussion of Zoners and anyone wishing to offer advice / critique on Zoner RP or interpretation of what role the zoners play in this, seeing as some measure of consensus was already reached in that thread.

That way we might at least prevent the current state of mudslinging back and forth between the QCP and the zoners and look for more positive solutions."

Though I am loathe to resurrect this thread...

At the request of LeMaitre (ooh, I spelled it right without looking):

All you are doing here is verbal profiteering of the situation. Nobody told you to bombard a nearby planet without a bloody reason. Get your acts in shape, and don't let the Corsairs take advantage of your bases and your so called NFZ in order to stage any sort of harmful activity against other groups, simple as that. Giving absurd examples, that serve no real purpose, won't change the facts.

You said the NFZ served no practical purpose. All I did was disagree. We don't want people shooting near us because it could hit us. Therefore, my 'absurd example that served no purpose' did indeed. In any case, if you'd listen, we don't condone Corsairs launching from our bases. A reiteration of past posts, we, if anything, punish it.

It partially does but they still have a chance to exercise their control by diplomatical means. Not the discussions without any results though, we need effective actions, those are being called us suggestions by various people already.

Those of us who can do something, are. Those of us who cannot, are stuck repeatedly proving our points to people who choose not to read. That, unfortunately, is me - since as is quite clear by this whole (Completely blown the deuce out of proportion) situation, nobody would listen to me if I tried. So I'm letting Drake and BlueSpawn sort it out. And besides all that, they said they were working on it prior to a gripe, thus if any of us were to start trying, mass confusion would ensue.

Might I make a humble suggestion to save this thread from further collapse;

This is getting outta hand >.>

Zeltak and I were having the least flamey, most civilized discussion that has been posted on this topic. I really don't think it was that bad. It certainly sucks being one of the .5% of the world with an infallible sense of logic. Sorry, see Zapp's thread. I'm feeling cocky, and people aren't doing themselves any favors for my attitude when such (seemingly angry [illogical]) posts are made.

But I digress (as if this could get more off topic).