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Bourbon Street Travel Guide Jazz, drinks, food, and more! Active. Noisy. Laid back. Bourbon Street is many things. For some, the merger of IKEA and Ampersand came as quite a shock. What could two vastly different alliances possibly have in common that would lead them to this move? Bourbon Street embodies the life of each entity while supplementing each culture with an infusion of neon lights, music, and great food. HISTORY On January 31, 2022, IKEA and Ampersand formally merged into Bourbon Street. While maintaining their Cataclysm protectorate, the new alliance set out on a path to bring the wandering crowds of Orbis a place to relax, have some fun, and meet new faces. Bourbon Street is also pet friendly. (Meet Gypsy. She is helpful at making Bourbon Street artwork.) POINTS OF INTEREST Bourbon Street is known for a variety of colorful locations. How about some mouth watering beignets or a bowl of steaming gumbo from Cafe Beignet. Larry Flynn’s Hustler Club is sure to delight audiences with regaling acts. Maison Bourbon is one of the most popular jazz clubs in town which showcases hits from the biggest names in jazz. Need a quick bite to eat? Check out the Vending Machine. They are sure to have all of your favorite snacks. Don’t forget to visit Emrys Welsh Holidays & gifts for the best souvenirs before you leave. ICONIC MEMBERS Bourbon Street Gov Councilmen (Leaders) Public Relations (FA) - Mr. Kilo Security - Drakdödare Finance and Marketing- Matshaa Human Resources (IA) - 🧁HannaH🧁 Deputy Councilman (2ic) mutedfaith Chairman (High Gov) Public Relations - Arln Security - MR POTATOE / UTHER PENDRAGON Finance - Galerion Marketing -Fulc Human Resources - Comrade Josh Deputy Chairman (Low Gov) Public Relations - Labaw Security - Doom Squad (Reunited States), Labaw, The Ringer Finance - CaptainProudmoore, TheAnarchyGuy Marketing - Labaw, Samuel le Schnauzer Human Resources - Labaw, Samuel le Schnauzer, Academy - ハルカ CONSTANT CELEBRATIONS In Bourbon Street, there is always something to celebrate. Be sure to join our discord for the latest events. https://discord.gg/UaKrXSJEa4 Currently, we have a chess tournament happening, but keep an eye out for Mardi Gras. MORE TO EXPLORE Bourbon Street: https://politicsandwar.com/alliance/id=8777 Tour the real Bourbon Street: https://www.xplorit.com/new-orleans/bourbon-street/musical-legends-park

Yes, i know, nobody asked for my opinion but i honestly think what im about say is in line with what at least a good chunk of the community thinks and will affect gameplay positively overall. Im also aware this will infuriate another chunk of it, but thats only because it makes things a bit harder and brings back a lot of the 'inconveniences' that automation did away with. This is not about locutus alone, but bots at large and as a full disclaimer i dont know code or am very familiar with how bots work, except that they rely on api keys. I feel we are at a bit of a crossroads right now with locutus being removed from the pnw discord and alex trying to weight in on the whole borg situation, so im thinking its probably the best time for the community and game admins to consider doing away or at least changing the limits on what automation can do outside the game, who develops it and how it affects gameplay at large. I will go a bit into the different functionalities bots have, why a lot of them are harmful and how developing the game and its scope is the answer and not player controlled third party discord bots. Raid finder: I have been an enthusiastic new player in arrgh looking to make a name for myself and stack the bank before locutus was a thing. We had a 'raid finder bot' around for ages and none of us even went through the trouble of fixing/using because it was not needed. It wasnt what we wanted to do and didnt appeal to us at all. Because it was fun without one and because having a knack for finding good targets and keeping up the grind was what differentiated the good raiders from the bad. This is back when top loot was 4b, and pushing for the leaderboards meant something, because you knew the trouble everyone went through to get there, you knew it was out of the scope of what the average player or alliance was willing to do and thats what made it meaningful. Ask anyone involved and competent with raiding from before locutus and after, they will tell you bots and specifically locutus is what killed the whole experience overall, coupled with nerfs to piracy of course. Suddenly years and hundred of raids experience didnt count at all, you could type in a command and that would be better than what you would be able to piece together on your own. The total possible loot pool started to be shared with tons of those who were not willing to put any effort into finding targets, they would just type in a command and get targets fed to them. While this might not mean much on an individual basis, with a good raider being able to outperform a dude who only found targets through bot, if they both used the bot. But having a full alliance use it just means they constantly drain the total possible raid pool with zero effort. When borg started creating his long line of 'raiding alliances' that relied on locutus, he flooded the game with people who would otherwise not be willing to engage in the whole process. That heavily affected raiding and i feel was deeply unfair to all the people who did it manually, in the actual game for years. I feel like having the game hidden behind a fog of war, with the player simply being unable to poll together and specifically extract the information he is looking for with a bot is a good thing, and would make raiding meaningful again, not just something all alliances do by default because they have a bot. The entry level of player engagement and effort required to raid in this game right now is simply non existent. It is zero effort, and while one nation wouldnt be a problem, whole alliances doing it just drains everything to where its all meaningless. The game will be better without it. You will have less overall people raiding but more actual raiders who get heavily invested in it, precisely because its not as easy as using a bot command. If this raid finder thing is that important just add it to the game page, but honestly, it is not. Its arguably harmful and dilutes the whole experience. Arrgh does not use locutus for instance, and started using a bot out of necessity, with a good chunk of people not using it at all. Warfare: Pretty much all of those points made above echo in this category, with the distinction competence in this field is shared between membership and leadership, and setting up wars and helping people coordinate in them is what differentiates the good from the bad. Though in this section, there is no shared loot pool to drain so the effects are less apparent. What i would like to point out is that KT does not use bots and i think thats part of why they constantly out perform everyone else. What im willing to bet is they will outperform people even more if they didnt have the bots to bridge some of the gap. That gap should be bridged by competence and experience, and theres little incentive for it if you can more or less 'get there' through bots. If suddenly everyone is as good as their own actions and organisation, there will be an incentive to get good, or die. The bot currently only serves as a life raft for the lazy and incompetent and should more or less be done away with as well. Econ: I wont comment too much on this, econ bots have caused problems and issues time and time again and lead alex to situations where he cant know what happened because he has no oversight over 3rd party software and what commands they receive. Maybe some extra quality of life stuff is desperately needed but for the love of god, add it to the game, on the game page. Would also like to point out Yarr does no automation and is arguably the biggest or one of the biggest offshores and banking services in the game. Recruitment: only thing to say on this is IT IS CANCER. Every new player gets spammed 1000 ingame messages when they first join. Its pointless and an issue as its one of the first things you find out about this game. Bots are spamming you things you dont even understand and thats somehow fine. Now for my suggestion, blanket ban ALL automations and spam bots and remove any links between discord and the game page that affect the meta in any capacity. Develop your own benign inhouse discord bot you have full oversight over, with no purpose other than helping manage the community and providing some admitelly needed game to discord information, but always keep it aimed at things that do not affect gameplay or the meta at large. From may layman understanding this could be as easy as a hardcap on api requests. One big downside from all of this would be losing wartrackers, so making a pnw wartracker on the page would be very useful. Seriously analyze how the different functionalities of the bot affected gameplay and figure out what you want to add to the game and just add it to the game, on the game page, were the game should unfold for everyone. In any case, discuss.

I've got a life outside of this browser game. I'm not "lazy" for wanting my job of managing milcom for a roughly 140 member alliance (Serpentis and Aurora combined) to be made moderately easier through minor automation of menial tasks. Furthermore, the fact that I don't constantly go in-game to check incoming and outgoing wars (for example) doesn't make me any less competent. I could understand your argument if the bots actually gave war commands or violated rules by doing attacks for members, but that's simply not the case. As for the portion about raiding, finding targets via traditional means has become a moderately "lost art," but these alliances you're bemoaning at least have restrictions on who their members can and cannot raid (normally) while you, as a pirate, are free to raid whoever the hell you want—consequences aside. Regardless, I think "remove all automation and bots" is a naïve solution, at best. I will cede the point that the recruitment scripts are kinda cancer spam, but that's a minor point here.

Had fun playing this game with yall for nearly 2 years, gl to everyone moving forward. It's time to rest now. Goodbye guys

You're right, no one asked

this is dumb mars, I know you hate me, and have falsely reported me/my bot in the past, and have a feeling you went out of your way to get others to as well we never really hashed things out unfortunately, though I'm not sure what I could say. it's just a game, you dont need to cultivate a grudge against me? spanky, man, seriously? I know things have been hostile for weeks. I still gotta talk to riddler about this. You accused me of couping you a couple weeks ago in public, didn't happen. And threatening to try getting me banned if you didn't get what you wanted, which I totally ignored - apparently this is what you meant and now you've have been nonstop throwing wild accusations around in public to see what would stick... what's with all the theatrics? (rhetorical, i've said this already, i'm just venting on the forums) if you have to ask, no, I didn't try to frame NPO - it was bluster, in private for those that don't know since it never really caught on, one of the NPO revisionist narratives was alex & me framing them, doesn't have to make sense none of this can be substantiated so I dont see the point, I guess you tarnish my reputation, thanks.

This. And you have 30 experienced players as well. We have over 150 players of all skills and experience levels and, as demonstrated by the size of our gov, we do put people to work. It's still a lot. However, if we can automate some of the tedium and make the lives of our gov and our members easier so that we can spend more time teaching them or working with our protectorates or any number of other things instead of doing responsibilities that could be handled by a bot instead, that's a better use of our time. I downvoted your post @Mars because your "solution" is naive and because blanket banning third party bots is ridiculous. No one overarching bot can handle every alliance's individual needs and doing so discourages creativity and innovation. I also think it's likely a pipe dream that such a bot will ever exist. I do, however, agree it would be a good thing if there were a basic suite of tools available for any alliance to use. But alliances shouldn't be restricted to those if they have the skills, abilities, and desire to do more. I agree with the general sentiment about discouraging over reliance on bots. You should not need the bot to do basic tasks and should know how to do things without them. But ironically, for many alliances, bots are a crucial tool in that they allow you to actually have the time to be able to teach your new members so that they can be independent thinkers within this game and learn how to play. Not to mention, they help you have the time to actually be able to spend time with and enjoy your community. And furthermore, leveling the playing field for casual players isn't the worst thing. This game would be a whole lot smaller and more boring without them.

You cannot quit, there are monsters nearby

Gotta agree with Mars on this one. When I first joined the game there were no bots. I joined a micro and noticed straight from the off that the gov they had there were enthusiastic about the game and was happy to teach you everything you needed to know. You could also see them putting in multiple hours a day making sure the alliance ran properly. Then I decided to help out took a millcom role. Logging multiple times a day making sure we hadn't been declared on. Checking our members to see if they had enough mill, encouraging peeps to raid. Approving raids that fit our restrictions. It was time consuming yes but the game hasn't been that fun for a long time. And when irl got in the way a gov member would step down and be replaced by the dude he was training. Being gov actually meant something you were the few who were willing to put the time into the game. Then I started raiding and found the most fun part of the game. To be a good raider it was down to you to put in the time. I would then spend a few hours a day looking for targets or potential ones, save a certain link for next time. Check bank transactions and war activity of pretty much every nation in game. And felt a sense of achievement as I rose through the ranks as a early raider. The bots I feel have taken away the fun of the game plus the nerfs did't help, you succeeded on how much time you were willing to put in and you ahceived on your own merit. The bots have made the game lazy thats the real problem.

i think this at least warrants some attention from the game admin and some assurances for the community that this is at least unfounded or demonstrably false. the last major exploits in this game carried on for months with no action from @Alex, despite being informed about them by multiple people. the person to bring this information forward is a known long time borg associate and has his alliances discord server, the one he is leader of, being held hostage as we speak. theres more screenshots floating around, some hinting at some 'extra' functionalities the bot has. Feel free to post them in here. so, discuss

I just learned this war that bots can almost immediately identify improvement swaps and notify of militarization before anyone even purchases units. That struck me as incredible and stupid. Bots of that type make a lot of this game into the equivalent of playing a game on easy mode with cheats on. There are other bots, as others have said, that make running an alliance so much easier, but that don't dumb down the game to enormous degree. Those should be used and encouraged as they lower the barrier to entry for the game initially and help foster healthy communities. Also are we not going to talk about how Thalmor used a criticism of bots to segue into an anti-porn rant?

With the recent threads about a returning to the forums, nostalgia for how politics played out then and such... Perhaps bots contributing to laziness is the real enemy all along.

Bots basically penalise anyone trying to become good at the game because any ol average Joe can just input a few commands and achieve the same result. It helps manage an alliance without a doubt, but the competency of the alliance itself does suffer for it.

@Mars I can see where you are coming from here. I find it hard to accept that in order for an alliance to be successful in this game they need a full time programmer to run a bot that does almost every task for their alliance. Unfortunately, this is because there a lot of menial tasks involved in this game. Such tasks are protecting your bank, auditing members, and recruitment. I believe the only way to stop this would be to reduce the games reliance on bots. More in-game tools need to be given to leaders. With the pace that Alex updates this game, I don't see this happening for a long while (if at all).

Yeah, guys, seriously, do a little reading. 150b is clearly an arbitrary figure and this seems pretty clearly a joke to anyone who was actually here at the time and paying attention to goings-on. In the announcement about NPO, they had 95b roughly in cash and resources removed from them and that was all traceable from production through the game from the new nations they brought in and the transactions they were making. If this is pertaining more to the second NPO thing, which seems like it would be more likely to be what was being referred to than the prior situation, even if still unlikely, was an even smaller amount and only impacted one NPO nation from memory. Which is hardly a framing of NPO as a whole. I think you should still naturally be smart about the decisions you make regarding tech and banks and your alliance's dependence on outside individuals and other alliances but taking this "claim" as anything other than the joke it was likely intended to be seems ridiculous. At least as far as the community is concerned. I can understand Alex wanting to do his due diligence but really, this seems a joke.

This is totally unfair and untrue. Automation has made the game more accessible and easier. If anything, it has leveled the playing field since now basically any alliance can access basic tools. And I think we’re at a point for the first time ever that competence refers to more than like the top 10 alliances. It’s also super disrespectful to the dozens of other coders who have given hours to their alliances to create native tech. Creating this stuff isn’t always easy nor is it quick. Shame on you tbh.

Bots that calculate spy odds to determine how many spies you have should be banned. Totally defeats the purpose of the spy game. I do miss the days when all bots did was put together a spreadsheet of your opponents, that was about it, and the rest of your war was determined by actual effort. At the same time, I run an alliance of 30, its much more manageable than running an alliance of say 130. That being said, if you do have 130 members you then have a pool of 130 people to put to work, which is what you should be doing, putting your people to work.

All bots that are endorsed by or partnered with PnW officially should be open-source. Besides that, bots bad and too many nubs who can't function without them (except for my bots which, of course, are the best 😉) Edit: if I had to give an actual take on this, bots that work WITH the player good, bots that work FOR the player bad

I support upto a certain extent. Will try to detail it later.

I have come to claim my portion of the bourbon Deca told me to be excited. Am i excited enough yet?

First note: -o0z0o- should get a nation strike for pretending to work for Sheepy. Unless he IS an Admin or Mod, in which case I guess that he's in the right alliance. Anyway, I was asked to counter -o0z0o-. I attacked -o0z0o- only to find that he was also attacking o00o, but immediately offered to peace out. As this is either a multi or two kids on the same network, it's slot-filling and a rule-breaking war. Which is why we're here today. https://politicsandwar.com/nation/id=400922 https://politicsandwar.com/nation/id=400919 https://politicsandwar.com/nation/id=403165 https://politicsandwar.com/nation/id=403139 https://politicsandwar.com/nation/id=400945 https://politicsandwar.com/nation/id=401099

the pro move is to have a handful of part-time programmers :serious:

Good luck, it was an honour 🙏

Take care & all the best.

Take care Leo and good luck.

Take care.

how do bots even help with any of those? Im just asking because funnily enough you mentioned 3 things i dont even know you could use bots to make them 'less menial' like protecting bank for sure only requires having an offshore and im not sure how bots are related to that. would like to mention though that the whole offshore system is broken as well, but at least it doesnt rely on bots to work. auditing members i assume the bot would just pull the nations build and different improvements and stuff? dont think thats even much of an issue, all of that information si already on their nation page. something that can easily be added to an alex bot im sure, though if it was me id remove it just so instead of typing out !audit 'nation id', you would go to pnw.com and simply have a look on their page. not gamebreaking at all though tbh recruitment, is that recruitment bots? because those are objectively cancerous and should be done away with 100%. Spam is spam As a side note, every game has tedious aspects people will do away with if given the chance, and i think if you let this process run its course it ends up with one guy one upping everyone by developing a button that does everything, and everyone else doing the same because doing any of the tedious tasks becomes meaningless since theres no stakes involved. Also i think im still being misunderstood, im all for making the unnecessary parts that end up being tedious just because of bad game design better through automation, im just against it being done on third party software and think more consideration needs to be given on how those affect the game at large. Im also saying there needs to be serious reconsideration on whats not making up for bad game design and just automates what should be actual gameplay, which in a text game is a lot of times. going through text and having that inform your future actions.

i dont think commands 'for finding raid targets' fall under that category, im sure both the war system and the raiding meta could be improved in a number of ways, or that you can develop a fun system that has all of those commands but expands the gameplay in some other direction. What i think is that it is not in a good place right now, and i pointed at what i think works against the current setup. To simplify, what im arguing is the relationship between third party bots and the game needs to be revisited, why i think moving from third party to inhouse developed tools would be better and what i have been able to identify as issues with the current system. I also believe development can go a million different good ways and a million bad ways. I think its a good moment to rethink the approach to development going forward and seriously consider the harder road of not outsourcing this development to third party code, but find ways to engage the community in the development of the actual game and an alex controlled universal and democratical bot that he can fully oversee. to answer your question specifically, if i had to give an all encompasing defition of 'commands that affect the meta', though i dont think i can deliver on a definition that would do it justice for ALL the issues out there, i would say it comes down to it providing an unfair advantage to those who dont use it or eliminating key steps needed to achieve a goal. Whats more important then the definition though are its effects, and i would more focus on that. If the effect is you can play the game by not playing the game, theres a problem. If the game involves you taking specific steps towards a goal and the software you are using enables you to skip those by having the bot compile large amounts of information and extract what you need i would say that falls under commands that affect the meta as well. Cant take it that seriously when otherwise respectable and long standing members of this community like adrienne downvote the post 5 seconds after me posting it. I doubt most of the initial downvotes had the time or will to comprehend and internalise what i typed out and thats fine, this post isnt directed at you. I understand the knee jerk reaction though, and with the attention and reading comprehension deficit going on in the world these days i cant even blame them. My hopes are after the initial fight or flight instinct wears off, they will calm down and really read what im saying, maybe we can have a meaningful discussion on it as a community, since i feel thats more important right now then however many downvotes i might or might not get in this thread. Main reason why i dont particularly care about downvotes and really wish i get 1000 of them but spark a discussion is because i feel its a good time for a hard reset on how alex handles the relationship between the game and discord, and i feel that with a little bit of inspiration and understanding and with the guts (of course to the extent his time/resources allow) to actually assume responsability over developing these tools under his own oversight, we could be in a better place 6months, year, two years down the line. The dev community would also have to change their approach from developing their own tools to helping with development of the game and alex controlled bot, which some might take more satisfaction in, others will not see the merits of working on something that benefits the game at large.

When the game notifies me of all new declarations against my alliance (which technically includes Aurora too) and has an easy way to set up war rooms for members to communicate about any given war they're involved in all in-game, then I wouldn't have much of a point for the bot's milcom functions. Nothing the bot does for milcom really affects gameplay, but rather communication. Wars are still fought in-game. And no, going in-game isn't that much of an inconvenience for me (given that I do it at least once every single day), but my point is that having to almost constantly monitor the war tabs of Aurora and Serpentis to see if any of our 140 members are getting into trouble would be an absolute pain in the neck. I know, because I used to do it for Borealis' roughly 34 cadets before Space Puppy had the added offensive war alerts feature. Now, I would not be opposed to an official PnW bot that has these functionalities to limit third-party intervention, but that would be a heavy burden on the already swamped dev team. As for misrepresenting what you were saying, well that was likely just the result of me misinterpreting parts of what you were saying. And if that was the case, then I do apologize. Because the last thing I want is to put words in people's mouths.

While this is true, it's kind of necessary isn't it? Otherwise new players would only join the top alliances, and the others wouldn't really have much of a chance. Of course people could go out manually messaging everyone, but that would still be spam.

taken Exact quote is 'remove all third party automation and bots' and develop the game and inhouse bots that are not player controlled. I would like to humbly point out there is a pretty big distinction between the two, since one keeps your quality of life changes, just makes it so they can only be handled by authorized, alex controlled discord bots, or incorporated into the actual website. Also would you please tell me if you would be against it just because the function you use would now be on the website or alex bot and why? And is going 'ingame' to play a game an actual inconvenience? If not, dont you think its important not to misrepresent what i say if youre gonna go through the trouble of typing a response?

L take

This is will be even more unpopular then i thought haha, guess people really love bots. I am wondering though, why does the time and effort that go to making bots not go to making the actual game better. And why not have an Alex owned discord bot he can get different people to help with.

Borg skilled player but that is not normally, This very very insane....They need to check him bot and code.....Maybe he not cheating but maybe he using the game deficit ...and this cant seem on bot API screen..He needs to check-up....Roquentin FPL Cheater with Streaming.....I think Roquentin still cheating... Borg using game deficit on PRO scene ,ON BIG Events.Maybe everyone dont knows him trick.He incredible....I want to ask his where is the comming of your skill's

This post continues to age well. (unlike you)

Maybe my memory fails me but. Whaling Corp + some NPO higherups were banned becuase of weird mangha distribution and tax farming bots. NPO was dealt aniother blot after they managed to set their tax rates to like over 100% by avoiding the front end of the tax menu. The first thing would not spawn in 150B, nor frame anyone. The second thing could spawn in 150B but the glitch had to happen trough someone with NPO tax manage perms, which borg did not have if i recall correctly. Unless he hacked into the PNW servers after a months long war to change NPO's tax rate after NPO was virtually dead already; to really kill them off one last time. But I have serious doubts about that. It feels very implausible. All the other accusations are dishonorable at worst (if they are true which i dont know) and don't warrant moderator action. About the morality of bots: That certainly is a discussion to have but that should happen in a diffrent thread.

I find it interesting that none have put up the 8 month log that spanky uploaded to RON. Attached is the log that he provided, if opened in a browser will show the logs in standard discord formatting. Take what's in it how you will, I am just the messenger. Direct_Messages_-_Group_-_SpAnKy_MinesomeMC_TheRiddler_Canyon_borg_Codename_V_899276733436555304.html

Over the long course of PnW history Arrgh has been the terror of the seas and haven for the wretched scum of Orbis (Underlord). We've spent our time here shilling for a philosophy that has never caught on and it's time we recognized that fact. Paperless is dead, treaties are the only way to conduct diplomacy in a world so tied to its traditions. With this in mind, Arrgh is teaming up with a familiar face to terrorize the treaty web instead of your war slots. Announcing the TKArrgh Accords That's right,baby. It's an Arrgh-TKR MDoAP. That optional aggression clause is going to be used, a lot.

Disclaimer : OP is unapologetically biased towards Arrgh and this post is intended to be a rant and not a fair assessment of the state of piracy on Orbis. I have been hearing opinions and takes from a lot of people about “what is wrong with Arrgh” and the answer is not much different from the answer of “what is wrong with Orbis”. But first let me address the guesswork the community has been doing so far Bots :- imo bots are more suited for Econ jobs and to some extent IA, when it comes to raiding and warfare, it's not entirely maths like econ and hence cannot give you a definite piece of information that you can act upon. They can still process data and I like them for that fact but raiding and fighting requires some presence of mind that no bot is going to teach you. The point here is to not completely reject bots but to point out the extent some people can rely on them. To put it bluntly, if you think your (or any) AA can't function without locutus then you probably shouldn't be running an AA. Arrgh doesn't make money :- Anyone who thinks making money by raiding is an achievement in this game is not aware of how ridiculously easy it actually is, just the money making part, if you are in the right tier, you can easily pull few hundred million a week. But does it really mean you are achieving anything higher an Arrgh pirate that just got himself into 3 days of blockade just to drop one nuke on some 3k infra guy? Look at Apophis folks, they probably have printed most cash (net) than any other group of raiders, what impact does it have on the game? literally none, they'd be making more than your entire alliance and you would not notice their existence until someone mentions or you randomly bump into one. -------- Now what exactly is wrong with Arrgh, and again the answer to this question is exactly same as the answer of "Why Mythic had to go", "Why KT kept switching to farming", "Why whales are leaving raiding", "Why profit (for raiders) means avoiding conflict", "Why Apophis stays in their city range", and in a greater sense ; "Why warfare in this game is literally just making sure your enemy doesn't have planes." Sure you can have a Dryad, Key, Murtaza (and his alt) and RJ every once in a while who may be capable of consistently making profits in 20+ range but exceptions don't make rules, profitable piracy is a dead business for anyone who isn't willing to invest the tiring amount of efforts for the same returns a whale can get while being inactive for 2 days. And ironically enough the people who say "Arrgh isn't same anymore" are also equally affected by these negative characteristics of this game, the only difference is that since they only fight once in 6 months, they can get away with it and can afford the ignorance to still speculate on "why Arrgh isn't same anymore". So the summary here is that for a raiding alliance, the best bet towards survival here is to sail low and avoid conflict in order to make profits, be it SI, Apophis, Defcon, or Moonlit Sakura. Those who didn't follow that and went to conflicts or just built up to a range where conflicts were inevitable, quickly found out that they need to go, wrap themselves in paper and farm instead if they want any consistent low effort profits. Arrgh refuses to do either and thus pays a much higher price than both, to a great extent stagnating its growth as an alliance. So what's the point of Arrgh? To be a place for people who don't give a damn about what the 'point' is. To exist as a giant middle finger to the conventions, the unwritten rules this game has developed and so dearly adheres to. I am hoping for this to be my definite post answering all questions, post below if you have any, next time I get a question, I'll just send them a link for this.

Tkr has always had a larger than average gov though, it's a tradition carried over and retained from the other game 👍 Sorry, I still remember the days when you were low level gov in TKR learning how to manage effectively so you will always be a young pup to me 😂

I 100% support the idea of an offical, endorsed-by-the-game bot. If we had some sort of standardization like that, it would at the very least level the playing field of alliances who have competent coders vs those who do not. As things stand, micros and generally small scale alliances without coding departments are disadvantaged by the major alliances being able to do wacky stuff. And believe me, they are absolutely amazing tools out there, with debatable legality. Unfortunately, this would not happen in this decade. Alex has very limited time for pnw as it is, seeing as how it takes an entire year to implement the smallest feature and/or push changes live to the api v3, even the notion of Alex putting together a team to have them make a bot sounds overly optimistic at best and downright unfeasable at worst, given his preoccupation with other things. That raises another question. What features would you @Mars want such an "official" bot to have? There are already some great open-source bots out there, like Rift (despite it being written in Python 🤮), that cover all the basic functions already, such that anyone with a little bit of coding knowledge can yoink the code and put together something functional. On that note, i would like to point out the unfeasability of enforcing your blanket ban proposal. Even though Alex can take down the api(s), scraping a webpage or submitting a login form is like 5-10 lines of code at max. There is no way for Alex to prevent others from finding a way around, assuming the coder knows what he's doing. At most, you will make it (somewhat/much depending on the situation) harder for people to gather data for graphs and etc. Even if you somehow found a way to ban all such third party automation, what then? As someone else pointed out earlier, there is a big portion of the game who don't want to spend more time than the absolute bare minimum in the game. You might have 5-6 hours a day free to spend on finding targets or doing other stuff, but there are people who don't have that luxury. Alex would run the risk of losing them from his already shrinking/stagnating playerbase, which from his point of view woud be shooting himself in the foot.

sorry, i realize i came off as a bit of an !@#$ in the last part and went on a tangent, i dont want to be unfair and i look at this as a common effort, even if it is in a sense a battle of ideas. i think we actually might agree on more things than we disagree on, just would have different ideas on where to draw the line, and thats just fine. I dont want bots completely gone, just very critical about the need for them in a lot of instances and how they affect gameplay, and youre not the bot advocate my last post seemed to be directed at but do appreciate when bots make up for poor game design decisions. i will ask this on the leveling the playing field comment though, can we use tkr bot?

This one is gonna hurt. You were an amazing member and have been a great friend. You better check in regularly and just long VM and not delete.

have a good retirement and good luck on your future endeavors.

ive stated that one individual nation using the bot or not using it is not the issue, or at least it doesnt hint to a larger problem on its own. but once you have full alliances using the raid bot, the situation is different. why i talked about the meta at large and how it is affected overall. main idea is that theres a limited pool of potential targets that gets shared between everyone. once you artifically raise the succes rate and ease of access of a large group, competency is less rewarding overall as theres less incentive for it.

This is why having a good protector that teaches you how to play the game matters.

I just think that if you want to make the game 'easier' and more 'accessible', you do it in the actual game, not some 3rd party bot some player charges people ingame cash to use. Nice touch on the shame thing, but i dont think i have anything to be ashamed of, its my opinion and ill stick to it if you dont mind.

They'd counter as much as a counter could counter if a counter could counter a counter.

All 3 of those flags are atrocious.