Beowulf the Second

I'll reply to you + clarify my position: I don't think I expressed it clearly enough as you seem to have missed it. I indeed admit that I have never taken such a class and thus have no clue about what is taught inside them. If the principle of 'only for you' is indeed taught and followed, then I would be happy in dropping the subject-- --except that in your OWN successful examples of 'good guy with a gun', many of them involve this principle not being followed. In these cases, good guys with guns actively sought out the shooter, which led to a good result but will have inevitably risked the lives of everyone around them. So my point still stands: it seems that a 'good guy with gun' in any non-personal defense case still juggles all four issues when fighting the shooter (Just 'Avoid shooting innocents at all costs' puts you at a severe disadvantage anyways). I don't have to tell you that the good guys have been misidentified and shot before. Or you could stop insinuating things about my character, and we have a reasonable, topic-based discussion on this subject. I get that it's a polarizing subject, but at the very worst we can agree to disagree. Anyways, I only brought up Pulse because Solaire did, and I had specific knowledge of that incident. He argued that there'd be 'almost no deaths' in his scenario, and I was trying to refute that.

I'm going to ignore the scenario where EVERYONE in the nightclub has a concealed firearm and correct training. I find it slightly amusing that you even brought such a scenario up; as I'm sure you understand, many people have zero interest in gun ownership. The Second Amendment is great and all, but mandating that everyone has a gun + training is an almost satirically extremist way of twisting it. On to Pulse though. The thing about your argument: there WAS a guy besides the shooter with a gun at Pulse. An off-duty police officer was on the scene when the first shots were fired, and was able to do nothing. Why? A 'good guy with a gun' has to: Overcome the element of surprise and think on his feet Locate an active shooter, or sometimes multiple active shooters Sight/isolate a target, often in terrible conditions (such as the dim/distracting lighting found in a club like Pulse, or such as any crowd-panic situation caused by an active shooter) Avoid shooting civilians at all costs Meanwhile, the shooter has to: Shoot anything that movesThe active shooter is in a vastly advantageous situation and will be able to kill many people, every time. It's not surprising that even though there was a 'good guy with a gun' at Pulse, the death toll was 49; unacceptable, and shows the futility of such an approach to gun-related crime.

OH OOPS, I guess the first 9 pages of crying threw me off! So the other reasons: "BK was mean to us during talks, omg they need to be more humble when we attack them and lose" "i'd prefer my reps a little more proportional pls" NPO spirit-bond-community-togetherness inactivity "what's the point, if we play this game we'll lose anyways" BUT NO! The entire time we've been trying to convince you--now you're telling us that you just haven't been rolled for LONG ENOUGH. Why didn't you say this 10 pages earlier, would've saved us a lot of time! Don't worry, we will roll you with all haste

Probably confusing the matter is that you've referenced this program three times yet you haven't elaborated on it. Guess it's probably sekrit so I'll work with what I got xD Isn't the point of your alliance efficient use and allocation of income through 100% taxes? What would be the point of making money, if not to pay off your 'loans'? If you clarify that, I think I'll understand your point better

I dunno, if he requested to use "your alternate means of making money", wouldn't he be basically announcing his intentions of leaving NPO? I hadn't ever thought of how you would leave a 100% tax rate alliance; sounds like a crap situation if you ask me

I'll start by saying that there's nothing objectively wrong with this. Choose whatever you want, for whatever reason you want. But once you throw pragmatism out the window for "they weren't polite to us so let's not do what we think is actually best for us", you open the door to a bunch of other sht. You end up corrupting your process of rational decision making, and mostly hurt yourselves in the process. That's just my opinion though.

P much this. But it sounds like NPO's down to roll in the mud (and I know that Alpha's down for it haha); as long as you guys know and accept that there'll be a heavier cost, I don't mind let's go bb Also poor UPN, but its all to get pressure on NPO to peace sooo hope they're down too xD

Kaine's strategy seemed to have been to aggressively point out the divide between Pence and Trump, and it sort of worked: moderate Pence found himself unable to defend Trump's more extreme positions and instead dodged around many of his points. I've only ever done high-school debate, and even I could see that Pence was throwing a lot of points. However, on style I have to give it to Pence. Pence in his slow and measured delivery LOOKED like the moderate (read: adult) that could balance out a Trump ticket. Meanwhile, Kaine's aggressive strategy meant that he interrupted a bunch and pursued lines of argument that made Pence look more mature. tl;dr my opinion, Kaine probably won on substance, Pence probably won on style. Knowing the American public, I'll probably give the debate to Pence xD

I'll be the first to assure you that no one wants to be like you. They are merely pointing out your hypocritical argument. If you really believe that 'ransoming is unethical', at the very least we should give you karmic retribution for what you've done.

Again, there are firebrands throughout Orbis. Some of them get put into gov, not only on our side but on both sides. I can agree with you when you say that a winning streak brings out more 'git gud skrub', but you seem to still cling to your conviction that ParaCov would be humble and gracious if our situations were switched. Neither of us can prove the other wrong, but I maintain that the belief that being on the t$ side is somehow related to being a worse person is ridiculous. Excuse me if ParaCov is full of saints, but until it's not just a story on the forums, I'll be inclined to look at Hans the same way :/

I have no special knowledge of the current peace dealings, but from what I'm getting out of this move, BK wants to avoid a guerilla situation similar to when tS was fighting Alpha in the mud for a month prior to the last war because they couldn't agree on peace terms. They made it a group deal instead of an individual alliance deal, because the more alliances tied down in fighting, the less chance that all the alliances together will be okay with rolling around in the mud like Alpha did. Makes sense to me, if anyone who actually knows about the deal wants to chime in that'd be nice

There is not in fact a basis for Eumir's troll personality being reflective of the tS side, but I'm sure he will be thrilled to hear that you think it. There are a lot of firebrands in alliances; t$ included. It's ridiculous to think that intrinsically shtty people = tS side. Perhaps you don't appreciate the gloating coming from certain people when we win, but don't make the mistake of thinking that your side is special and would be especially humble if our situations were switched. Hell, I've seen some of you guys gloat from your losing positions. As for the rest of your implications, I can't tell if you are talking about FA moves made by government, in which case you are complaining about simply the politics aspect of the game, or if you believe again that anyone on this side of Orbis is a horrible person.

Not sure if anti-tS plug or serious I will give you the benefit of the doubt, knowing that you've only been here for two wars and therefore the most horrible ones

Unfortunately Apeman, we have about every recent war in the history of Orbis to disprove this flimsy point

With all the nukes I've been taking out over the last couple of wars (nod to Alpha), I was thinking it kinda sucks how there's not a 'nukes taken out' counter. Along w/ a 'missiles taken out', and maybe even 'ships taken out', 'money spent on OPs' etc. I understand why there's not a leaderboard for spy stuff, but having the counters for your nation privately somewhere would be really awesome, would help me get that street cred ya know? I also don't know exactly why espionage reports aren't saved in notifications somewhere like regular military stuff and instead disappear as soon as you leave the page. Is it just supposed to make things feel more sekrit?

I vote TEst/Arrgh/Roz Wei for "Best Third Sphere" Jokes aside, that blitz was stupendous + Pantheon took it like a champ. GG to both sides

I thought we had established long before that you had been working REALLY hard to diplomatically sh!t on t$ and spread lies about us prior to that war: something about hiring Arrgh as secret mercenaries, something else about plotting to roll you as revenge for our treaty break (I forget, idrc about it lmao). When you overreacted on IRC, spilled it all over the forums, and was promptly beaten back by actual evidence, you earned the ire of our entire membership, who promptly rolled you--that was really kind of your fault. That was a huge mistake on your part tbh, and I think everything else was recoverable until you... well you made every regular t$ member dislike you with 1 move In fact, I'll go back and find the thread of you in essence begging to be spared lmao. I get that the military threat to t$ at that point was probably defused: that we had publically proven you wrong and you didn't have much of a chance at organizing a coalition against us at that point, but you can't expect to go on the POLITICAL offensive and then scream bloody murder when someone hits back I had no interest in that FA period though so feel free to modify sum'n

We stuck by SK for many conflicts DESPITE Gandalf. Would you ally an alliance who's FA hated you and had leaked your plans in the past? Dunno, but we liked SK enough to do it. Then SK left to do their third sphere thing, and we were dismayed because: we had lost an ally lol, which we obviously liked we weren't informed beforehand... so that was kinda rude but w/e dammit did Gandalf do this, that sneaky bastard But the above were mostly fine because of the payoff: they were promising to deliver a tripolar world, with a break from the monotony from the last six/seven? conflicts. This would have IMO been absolutely worth them leaving! but now that we've just come back together for Steve's War 2.0 there's actually zero payoff and so I think some of our members which were fine with points 1-3 before given that payoff are now like 'ffs' except Steve, that guy sucks ;D Nah, I understand where you're coming from. Talking to him one-on-one while fighting him? I think he's cool in that regard myself. The main concern we have is obvious though: electing Gandalf FA was clearly going to push you guys farther from t$/your allies on that side in some way, and so either your members seem to have either wanted to do that, or regarded that as secondary to other concerns (I would bet his seduction skills alone probably garnered 1/3 of his vote)

Gandalf's cool in person, if inappropriately flirtatious with underage boys also he's gotten some effing lucky nukes on my power plants EDIT: flag was enormous

probably puts us on a slippery slope, i agree with Callum about it being too close to multis for my liking for alliance wars i think legitimate player activity should be encouraged anyways, because otherwise the deciding factors in war devolve into 'who has more/better pixels'

is this a nuke buff? food debuff? either way i'm confused on why exactly it was added. cool nuke counter though

don't quit, you should join Alpha Kappa Gamma

i assume: be currently at max mil, max military improvements. change city template to one with no military improvements, retaining full mil and freeing slots for full econ normally if you destroy mil improvments one by one it checks to see if that puts ur max troop capacity below ur current troops, maybe using a city template it doesnt do that. someone pls confirm this bug btw or im talking out my butt

i suppose future cb: roll GPA because too quiet

i feel that GPA itself has not spoken much on this. there was one long post at the start?