To Admins, TAZ, OSI, Phoenix, Zoners - Let's talk about caps

[Trogdor]

Note: Where the other thread was a discussion of Zoners in general, I'm hoping to have a discussion here mostly about the Zoner capital ships and their practical ingame purpose. Furthermore, I am concerned with the lack of official faction presence in the other thread, so I'm hoping this thread's title catches their attention. If not, it might be time to start pming faction leaders.
The admins have spoken - the ships aren't going away, and neither is the faction. Unless you have a constructive suggestion pertaining to this topic, I don't want to hear from you. Thank you.

The Zoners will not be losing their caps anytime soon. The Admins voted against the change. It may be pursued again sometime, however the idea has been shelved for now.

Can anyone provide any more information regarding the vote?

Specifically I'd like to know

1) A summary of what the official factions said in regards to why the caps should be kept, how they're being used, etc.

2) A summary of why the admins voted to preserve them.

If this is in a publicly visible place on the forum, I don't know where to look.


As you know, I'm one of, if not the biggest proponent of making the Zoners a bigger part of the mod. (I hope that in doing this I am not being a nuisance - I am only trying to make things better)
Yet, even I question our caps and their role.

I don't know why we need the aquilon when the neph is already a carrier, and I don't know why we would want a colony ship fighting. And so it would seem prudent to resolve these longstanding issues and put the issue to rest.

It would seem efficient, imo, to make the Aquilon the 'colony ship' - make it a transport with a few light battleship slots for flaks. The critics are right - a colony ship has no business getting into fights, it should flee. Further, this would allow for a future redesign that makes it look more like something intended to make landfall and start a colony.

Then, if I could wave a magic wand, I'd make the neph a full battleship, without any civilian pretense. Something large, visibly heavily armored, no biodomes or obvious structural weaknesses. A large profile suitable for shielding freeports from attack. This is what I think the Neph's role should be - a defensive weapons platform that protects freeports and colonies, possibly intended to fight to the side, like the Hessian BS. Not something that's intended to tool all over deep space and be self-sustaining.

The colony ship rp-ers would be happy because they'd have a colony ship without the baggage of being a battleship.
The battleship rp/pvp-ers would be happy because they still have a battleship, and now they don't have people criticizing them for using it as one.
And the critics would be happy(er) because we'd have one less capital ship.

Finally, I think we (we as in zoners) need to rethink our role in the game, and how we interact with our neighbors.
Conflict is activity. It may be the Zoner ideal to strive for peace, but actually having peace means that these ships, which we already established aren't going away, have little purpose.
We've created a situation where pirates don't want to attack us, because then they get FR5'd and can't dock on our bases anymore. What good does that do? We've denied ourselves interactions in the long-term in the name of short-term peaceful trading.
We need to put on the big boy pants and stop using FR5 to solve our problems for us. The Corsairs have been saying for some time now that their reliance on us for supplies is diminished, and so it's perfectly reasonable to expect that they'd start looking at us as prey - unofficially. Obviously I'm not suggesting outright war, but we should encourage pirates to pirate us oorp.
Furthermore, I got the impression from an earlier post that the GRN is going to start attacking us again at some point.

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[Vulkhard Muller]

If I may make a suggestion ( I know I will receive flak from the Zoner Crowds for this)

What if Instead of Big Shiny Capital ships, the Zoners got Bombers? a Zoner bomber I imagine it being a light bomber having a fast turn rate. and its info card reading something like:

Code:

After spending billions of credits at making capital ships to defend them selves from Nomadic Fleets, and unruly house guests in the Edge Worlds and beyond the Zoners quickly realized something, Bigger is not always better. In the deep edgeworlds were radiation clouds can span a system and the rocks can dwarf humanities numbers. the Zoners required something smaller and better fitted to slipping through Rocks. Contacting the GMG for their expertise in dodges volatile gas pockets as well as the IMG in their combat in the Asteroid fields of the more passive house spaces. The [Enter Bomber name here] was born. Sleek and fast, this ship is expected to be added to the majority of Zoner Patrols and Station Riot Police in the Omicrons and Omegas with in the coming months.

Now with this, (assuming that happened) they could revert the Osprey to its original VHF Status.

This is simply my 2 cents I do play Zoners but I am not part of a faction so. I invite zoner factions to give their thoughts on this.

Edit: Why a bomber? It has been seen many times over Bomber Swarms can take out Cap ships. and I see no reason it shouldn't happen with the Zoners. In fact in my opinion it makes more sense the Cap Ships for Zoners.

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Sent me (Nemesis/Junker Congress a Comm? haven't received a reply in a week or more? Sorry! Post here and I'll get back to you asap!

[Trogdor]

Edit: Why a bomber? It has been seen many times over Bomber Swarms can take out Cap ships. and I see no reason it shouldn't happen with the Zoners. In fact in my opinion it makes more sense the Cap Ships for Zoners.

You could say that about any faction that has caps, though. Bomber beats just about anything. It's more of a problem with cap balance than it is about Zoner caps, specifically.

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[Garrett Jax]

*sigh*

Another Zoner thread.

I can't speak for the other Admins on how they voted or what their comments were, but I can reveal that I voted against the new ship line. These were, in part, my comments at the time of the vote:

The devs should not have given Zoners cap ships in the first place, if the lore didn't allow for it. Now that they have been allowed to fly them, and for a good long time too, the lack of lore justification for removing them seems rather weak. If we start with removing caps from Zoners, then we need to start removing them from all factions that don't have lore justification for them. I don't think that's a road we want to go down, and if we do, then it should be all at once, not one faction at a time. I don't enjoy prolonging the pain.

When I tried to mediate for the Zoners, I told them that if the Zoners lose their caps based on lore justification, then all factions without lore justification should lose their caps.

1) A summary of what the official factions said in regards to why the caps should be kept, how they're being used, etc.

There is this link. I think the factions were quite clear concerning their feelings about keeping cap ships. Feel free to peruse all 68 pages of that thread.

I think you guys had your chance at the colony ships. As a group, you pissed all over Jinx's models and told him what he could do with them.

Also, I suggest you discuss your interest in Zoner cap changes with the official factions before suggesting changes on the forums. Good luck with that.

Lastly, practical ingame purpose for Zoner caps? Hmmm...Well...

I can't answer that.

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[Zen_Mechanics]

Gotta be honest with you, Had enough of talking about zoners. Just leave things as they are, despite what so many may say to you, theres nothing wrong with zoner caps - theres everything wrong with people picking a faction for no real reason but "wanting". Tell jinx to rewrite the infocard of the nephilim and the carrier, make the switch - because the aq seems to play better as a colony ship,.

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Were fools to make war on our brothers in arms.

[Lythrilux]

We just need an ID change. Once that is done everything will be fine.

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[Stoner_Steve]

We just need an ID change. Once that is done everything will be fine.

Your talking about the Omicron restriction? Doesn't BHG have the same restrictions?


Also I like the idea of pulling the battleship turrets off the colony ship but Jinx's ship was a far better replacement.

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[Sabru]

We just need an ID change. Once that is done everything will be fine.

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[Singularity]

Again the same thread. The more you dig up for reasons, the more "flamed" status this thread will earn.

Anyways, coming back to the post, yes, there might be a weak justification for giving Zoner's the capitals, but it already has and people have advanced with it.
ID change can be a balanced shift if needed as suggested by Lyth.

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[Highland Laddie]

What about this: As a sole exception due to to the nature of Freeports, Zoners do not have the right to FR5 anyone, but they MAY engage any non-transport ships (P-trans excluded) within 10k of one, provided there is RP justification.

Thoughts? Too abusable?