Spaceman Thrax

:3 Honestly one of these days I should juxtapose me talking about political things all serious-like and annoyed on the forums with me just talking about butts or whatever nonsense on discord. I literally had a chat with Adrienne last night about her butt being an honourgland that entrances our sphere with mind control like a colony of ants. Wow, I hope that doesn't embarrass her more than the actual conversation did.

Oh, I'm quite disappointed. My intent is less to have a dialogue with NPO for my own sake: as I have indicated, I feel I've been lied to enough times personally for that well to be poisoned. My intent is similar in outlining a path forward without pitfalls of the first attempt, but more for other people who may be reading this than the people whose positions I already judge to be intransient. I also intend to drag you guys through the coals politically for my ally's sake, since they're the ones you keep attacking. Also I enjoy sizing you up (in particular, as opposed to Keshav or Roq) because our starting points are very different but I still don't perceive you as arguing in bad faith. ... that's the honest truth of it. Judge your use of your own time accordingly, no foul.

Then we're going in circles. I would call it a secret tie, yes. And it's certainly more of a secret tie than what your leaders accused others of, when it suited them. Your point about the contingency plan is a self fulfilling prophecy. There's your fallacy. The first multisphere coalition is the one BK made, which you then joined. You can't really justify your necessity of maintaining a secret tie on the fact that you were under a threat that did not happen. That proves nothing about the concept, but more about you, I'd wager.

You seem afraid. It would be a real shame if actual diplomacy happened and left you having to fight your own conflict without anyone to bail you out, wouldn't it. Edit: all of that happened after they attacked us for what we perceive to be a fake reason, by the by. I wouldn't be expecting much in the way of pleasantries.

I mean, yes. When you are the largest actor alliance the game and you decide you want to force bipolarity by maintaining ties to the second largest while purporting to buy into a new ally grouping that believes in multipolarity, I am going to say you were the "bad actors". Did you want to go back to the drawing board all along? NPO never expressed this... they just hit us again, after BK planned to. There's no inherent tendency towards one thing or another. We're all actors in a blank, ideological space. "When I said earlier that a doctrine of intervention against inter-sphere coalitions was the best way NPO knew how to maintain the system, I meant it." I am sure you can appreciate the irony here? Even the way that these "multisphere coalitions" was counted by your alliance seemed like a construct to justify you folding into BK against TKR. You always counted Covenant, Citadel, and BK as one sphere, for example. On the whole your alliance just.... doesn't seem to have problems with anything BK does, and I think that's by design. You may put stock in your own government's justifications there... I'm more cynical, and see them as fabricated. They start from the conclusion "we need to help bk!" and then work backwards, in my eyes. I don't really have much idea how much you expressed the inherent flaws in multi polarity to your current allies. I was working more from the intent of the deal brokered by Partisan, Pre, and Ripper, which in my eyes you completely and deliberately violated the intent of. But your current allies have certainly been acting fairly flabbergasted, so it's incredibly difficult for me to give you the benefit of the doubt... ...even, again, putting aside the fact that you declared this war based on a justification I believe to be a lie.

Here's a really quick note. I don't trust you, Roq. I think you're overly concerned with a kind of technical, semantic-based truth and never work on faith, so I find dealing with you tedious (that's where I come from calling you disingenuous. You seem to take it quite personally when I say you lie... I think you try very hard not to, but I do know that what you said about TKR plotting against you is flatly untrue, so that's where that was coming from). I also think our goals and ideologies don't align, because I think you are unable to conceive of anything other than bipolarity (and it seems like your idea of bipolarity always has the same people on the same sides), which is something which bores me. I find it frustrating, because it's hard to politic around a gigantic, stationary stone. And when you lie about my allies in the same narrative you're pretending you can't notice that BK and UPN are toxic, I kinda throw my hands up. There isn't much middle ground there. I've had logs thrown out at me by you out of context more times than I can count, so I do my speaking to NPO in public now, and the way I see it, you've reneged on your word enough times that it's just not particularly fruitful or wise to make deals with you. ...clear? Good. Deep breath. Because the next part is that it doesn't matter. I'm not the ring leader of my sphere; I'm someone who recognized a while ago that my own opinions and grudges, though I do think them legitimate, could be stifling to my alliance, for one, and the game as a whole. In recognizing that, I passed FA authority to a different player, and he's had his own agenda ever since: one aligned with many of my goals, but far fewer of my historical friends and enemies. In this respect I relate with you, and it's damned easy for me to get frustrated with you, because I have the same flaws. If you find a way to actually let go of some of this, you may be surprised. Don't talk to me: we have a lot of people on our side who can do a better job. While I've certainly been critical, I believe that you're disappointed with how this war turned out, actually. Start from there, perhaps, if you have a mind to.

Anyway. Apologies; my intent was less to derail and more to advocate for an alliance I assumed could use an advocate. Good luck to DB. I trust this won't be a war of elimination so make a good showing and move forward.

Your ally was planning to hit your other ally, and your response to them asking your help was to change the treaty to an ODP.

Still appreciated! Congrats on your first post being you being more capable than someone who's used this forum for literal years.

I see. DB seems to think different. https://imgur.com/a/Sevipss Edit: someone who's better at embedding things on this dumb forum feel free to do a brother a solid here.

Oh that settles that then. No reason not to accept this at face value.

"If you are looking for a protectorate, be aware in order for it to get accepted you will have to abide by certain conditions in terms of game mechanics when it comes to econ, warring in general and fighting the right way when needed as we've had enough alliances not learn how to play the game properly. " I guess this means "don't get attacked by our allies"? Stay classy, Pacifica.

> I'm not allied to NPO > We were planning wars on precisely the same date, side with each other in every global conflict since over two years ago, they entered for fear of us losing a war that we instigated, and we apparently run a merged FA department where we answer questions directed at each other > We ran a multi-year whining narrative about other people's supposed secret ties > None of the above is contradictory and none of if constitutes proof we are lying > Orange man bad

Again: Last war, BK's leader laughed about making people quit the game. That was not a death match of survival for IQ, especially not in your tier. You had a numerical advantage, and that is what you elected to do with it. It clearly did not offend you then, and considering how far out of your way you went in this war to help BK again, well... Maybe that is informing people's decisions on this war more than anything Sketchy said? Since, you know, it was literally first. You're not being forced to be toxic and you're not being forced to try and drive people you don't like out of the game. It's a choice. It's one I think your alliance would be wise to back down from, because I think you'd pretty quickly find that people like Sketchy are being shouted down by the people on our side with sense, anyway (unless, of course, you're merely trying to trump up his comments to attempt to justify your own actions... but you wouldn't do that, Roq, would you?).

Hi. I'm the one that called your leaders deranged. I meant in game; you make deranged decisions. I also called you disingenuous. I have reasons for saying these things that are in character, so I do. For example: considering you disliked my post where I pointed out BK's head laughs about people being driven out of the game, I assume that you are only pretending to be concerned about these things when you can accuse other people of them for in game political points, and as such are full of it. You also recently referred to Quichwe as acting like a douchebag: there is really no consistent frame of reference that excuses that as okay, but sees your own leaders being called "deranged" as some totally unacceptable injustice. You revel in toxicity, as long as it's yours.

You guys had an agreement with BK. Please check with the rest of your gov, if they haven't told you already. Even without that though: no, there's no over-emphasis on appearances if you guys side with BK every war. That's just you being allied to BK. That's the substance. Bear in mind: considering you sold all your infra as part of your hit this war, I don't put much stock in your assertion it was about your own security. You literally made the worst-case scenario for NPO happen, yourselves, from a mechanical perspective. And uhhh... I'd posit that the political end isn't much better than other things you might have done, either. The only sensible reason for you to enter would be fear of BK losing the war. I could care less about if you guys have an ODP, a paperless treaty, a bloc, whatever. The substance is you continually siding with them. The rest is fluff.

This is pretty much exactly my point. Your "best way" to make them work was undermining them by maintaining a paperless tie to BK. Which goes against both your minisphere's stated goal, and is a pretty harsh about-face from how much your government caterwauled about other people's supposed paperless ties in the past. You tied the largest grouping to the second largest while purporting to "try" minispheres: surely you can posit where I might be getting the "disingenuous" thing, even if you're only working from what's out in public? Between that and the fact that you have continually lied about my ally, people are going to have a lot of trouble believing you. You can read that as hostility if you wish, but from my end it's quite reactionary: frankly, I would be quite content to ignore you guys if you ever did anything other than mess with my ally in your attempt to build a hegemony. You act as if you have no hand in things. That is very simply not the case. You had the luxury of doing virtually whatever you wanted when we were already engaged. You chose what you chose. Edit: I don't want to speak for Rose, but they had a post that outlined their reasoning. I'll ping @Mhearl here: sorry to drag you to this Hellhole of a thread but I don't want to speak for your alliance without you being aware.

Your leader sat in a coalition channel last war laughing about making players quit. Far be it from me to suggest slursphere isn't toxic: they're slursphere. But you're in the same boat.

Uhm. Edit: let's also bear in mind that minispheres was not some contrived plot dreamed up by the rest of the game to try and pigeon-hole NPO. That's just paranoid and silly. What it was, was something that your allies in t$ pushed as their rationale for their FA moves. I can't tell you what the comms you had with t$ were; maybe you guys were very upfront about thinking their entire idea for signing them was stupid? But I'm sure I wasn't the only person who was assured NPO was ready to break from IQ, and I have trouble thinking of a better scenario for you guys to have done it if you really had a mind to. Ergo, I conclude you never really had that intent. That's my reasoning, and I think it's pretty sensible honestly. There's a pretty large amount of back channel stuff that does not look good for your alliance's intent as well. Far more than that cobbled together mess you guys tried to pull on TKR. If I send bitter on that point, well yes. I am. As someone who was actually bored with IQ vs not-IQ bipolarity, it sucks having your side parrot that intent only to fall back into it instantly and deliberately.

Helps when your reason for entering on my ally is a deranged lie. 1) Yes. 2) I didn't agree it was less valid: in fact, you characterized it as the whole reason for that war, which was already untrue. 3) Sure, but see 2). You're bringing up 3 year old CN stuff and calling me retarded. I think I'll just block you. I'll note here though. That whole thing was a mess, and it ended with, at least as I saw it, Roq really cooling it with the references to CN, and that was something I appreciated and gave him credit for. So even if you weren't way off base, I think it's counterproductive to bring up, since no one needs to think about that dumb game.

You feel free to deal with Partisan on this one. I'll just be over here baffled that you think bringing up some CN crap from like 3 years ago that has nothing to do with the present war and happened when I wasn't FA gov is a good idea, or at all a sensible thing to discuss. I mean I know you're you, but still, wow.

"Keshav's excellent post". hahaha. Good one. Getting a good chuckle out of Hodor assuming good faith, too. Poor guy. The war was pointless from the start: wasn't our side that wanted it. But it's nice to see you admitting you want to force terms instead of having a white peace, especially considering how much your alliance has leaned on your coalition to bail you out of your own leak and failed try at making a curbstomp. There's really no incentive for our side to take terms from you as far as I can see, because with how your coalition has behaved we stand more to gain from keeping all of you from making revenue: bear in mind, more of you than there are of us, and we have people who are still up economically and you do not. Forcing terms requires either leverage or faith, and you don't really have either.

Uhhh if you're talking about what I think you're talking about, you're wrong. But that doesn't surprise me, since you're you. Edit: But I guess the fact that all you can think of is some crap from multiple years ago (about CN of all of things?) that is still wrong is a compliment, so thanks.

Yawn. I mean. You clearly read the actual response people had to your "very credible threat" when you posted that DoW, since you quoted Sketchy's comment from it to try and whine more. So when you try to pretend anyone outside of the people who failed to plot a war against a smaller sphere (and thus have every incentive to tell you what you want to hear about how much of a "threat" you were under) think your narrative makes sense, well no. There's plenty of people within your sphere, and even alliance, who think it was massively overblown, actually. Which puts aside my own opinion, which is that you guys are just a bad mixture of malign and deranged. The amusing thing is that you actually had no horse in this war. You just picked one because your government is paranoid about age-old grudges, and sold off all your infra to try and get a crack at two smaller spheres who already had nothing worth destroying. Hell, they way you did it actually delayed t$ chewing through Grumpy, so if anything it was negatively effective. The logical thing to do, even if you thought the threat was credible (which it wasn't, obviously, but whatever) would have been to try and sucker-punch one or both of our spheres after we rebuilt, so that, you know, there would actually be some cost to us. Instead you piled on when we had nothing to lose, which goes back to the whole "deranged" thing, imo.