Sir Scarfalot

Right, and hitting your opponent directly after they rebuild and decom, in direct contravention of peace agreements, is far and away the most effective way to help your allies and ensure your security. Which is something that no alliance can rebuild from again afterwards, since there would therefore never be any possible time to do so without immediately getting hit afterwards. Which means that NAPs are 100% contraindicated by any alliance that is by your definition "well run", and there's no time wherein you shouldn't be at war. Which contradicts your point that alliances should be "well run" enough to have billions for post-war rebuilds at all times. tl;dr: The only alliances that are even remotely close to your idea of "well-run" are Arrgh, KT and Mythic, and the ones furthest from "well-run" are Grumpy, T$, e404 and basically everyone that isn't a dedicated raiding AA.

You can totally beat the market, just join e$

That's actually a darn good idea on its own. I'd be happy to see something like that, maybe it could provide some sort of benefit to baseball teams while it's at it?

Sun Tzu I'm pretty dang sure that's either a mistranslation or else just kind of derp. Mostly because I'm 87.5% certain that was Lao that said that one

I'm pretty sure that the main source of micro-hatery is that when micros post properly in the same place as huge alliances do, they're diluting the impact that the huge alliances are so greedy for. Also nobody hails anyone like they're Christ, wishing someone crucified is rather against the rules I'm pretty sure Grats on the boolying boolies, it's my favorite pastime too, but bruh. Clean yourself up before you stink-shame, I can literally* SEE how stank you are rn 🤢 *"literally" used here for literary and rhetorical effect as opposed to unironic factual effect, though the difference is negligible outside of an academic context

Naw, it's because someone that doesn't want to war should join literally anywhere except raiding alliances, such as Arrgh.

Au contraire mon frere, if you're seen as an alliance-hopper then you're far less able to build up trust with the alliance that you choose to stay in for longer than the others you've checked out. Even if that's only a few. Much the same as leaving citizenship in one country and making a new life in another one, in fact: all countries that I'm aware of insist that there is a major legal and ethical difference between "natural-born citizen" and "immigrant citizen", USA and Britain most of all. This extends to other types of communities too, like the Diaspora and such. So, why should P&W alliances act any differently? It takes less time to fully assimilate into a new P&W culture, but that's mainly because we're all quite immortal as leaders of browser-game objects. The risks of bringing a new soldier into an army on Orbis is only as great as the loans/grants/counters that could potentially be wasted if they choose to bail prematurely/without leave. OTOH, bringing in a new officer into an alliance's command hierarchy is a big logistical and financial risk, so that sort of responsibility is only extended to the elder members who are both competent and intrinsically trustworthy. Which is nearly none, hence the limited number of officers anywhere outside of Grumpy (and they've got their own unique and successful way of mitigating risks). Now, I do realize that you're basing your statement on your own history, and I definitely respect the way you handled your emigration from... wherever it was, but I would like you to still be mindful that your exodus was only as smooth as it was because IQ had been defeated and driven away. If you had in ignorance chosen to join an IQ bloc "vassal" state, then you would not have been 'allowed' to leave at any price. Sure you'd have had the mechanical ability, but there would have been dire consequences. They would have beaten you with a carrot and force-fed you a stick, and unless you gathered up more than the average amount of courage (not to mention war-chest), you would have I suspect honestly allowed yourself to believe your slavery was a happy one. It always just killed me to see those promising smol alliances suffer under the IQ 'protection' racket. This is because while some alliances work on the loyalty model and afford their personnel trust in the expectation of mutual benefits, benefits that are very real and very profitable, others misinterpret P&W entirely. Keshav notably assumed that "what is good for my rival and potential enemy is by definition bad for me", and thus IQ deliberately inhibited the growth of their "vassals" out of a paranoid insistence that they were playing a zero-sum game... which was just plain not the case, and destroyed them in the end. IMO, it wasn't the scandal nor our military efforts that annihilated the IQ monster, but their own flawed... nay, damaged way of thinking about the game. Sad bit is, I've only ever seen one game even survive such behaviors, and it's this one. ...I'm not entirely sure any of what I just pointed out applies to real-life, but I certainly hope it doesn't since what I just described is ww3, and we all know what weapons ww4 will be waged with... 😕

What, automate memery? Nope, nope nope, I might be a transhumanist and futurist but that's a bridge too far even for me. Some stoofs just have to be hand-made... even if there's good tools that the human mind can use to make it better or quicker, there's still got to be an originating human mind for properly creative efforts. I wrote a poem on the subject actually: It took a human to build it. It took a human to break it. It took a human to fix it. -scarfy, 2/15/2021 (specifically about a cool incident where a vending machine broke in Chicago. Fun times, I should revisit that city one day... see if that old stall is still there...)

I'm just imagining that KT were the primary voting bloc for KT being in 'disband' tier Nobody hates KT like KT

Heh, I just google an appropriate meme when needs be. If I can't find a meme after a quick search or two, time to boot up Paint and get shit done. That's just the way I roll, even though it does take a good hour or so to post anything truly worth the investment.

If he spams literal garbage, though, then he'll get b& before 1k updoots. ...Not to mention the lack of actual updoots from the effort would hamper progress somewhat too

DMs really don't work sometimes. ...But they work well enough for your dirty laundry, so kindly keep that shit there fam. k? k. gud.

Much like literally any human community, then?

I voted no change, because I already did the math and missiles are still a very workable thing at 50% blocking. However, having a true 50% roll every time can get frustrating, so maybe it would be better to weigh and scale the odds to favor the same relative number of landings but a distribution that feels less random. A tough ask, but there are certainly ways to do it.

Y'know, 'voting with your feet' is way too simple of a political argument to hold any water, since reciprocity and golden handcuffs are both things. It's easy enough to hold someone on a hook as long as they're not too miserable about it, which undermines if not invalidates the whole "you are totally allowed to leave whenever" train of logic.

Like this: "I do not like you. Now, please do not misunderstand. I do not want to give offense, nor insult, nor intrude upon your personal bounds of comfort. I most certainly do not wish to imply that you are any less than the wonderful, smart, strong, capable human that you can choose to be. What I do want to do is simply to ensure that we are both cognizant of the fact that we are strangers to each other. We do not truly like each other. We do not truly hate each other. We both have our strengths, and our weaknessses. We both have our interests, we both have our cares, and each of those unique only to us. We do not have any objective interests in each other. We have literally never met. ...But I would like to see just who you could become, all the same." -scarfy, 2/17/2021

Fuk you for not posting snek I loke snekgirl ....I jus do ......pls no booly. 😕 fite fite fite fite :3

True but they wanna be wofly anyway. dox they wanna. after all they wolf down their happy meal, so why not wolf down their prey too? nmnl. go sleep foo

(Dune, thought you knew that already. I was trying to... ah forget it. And if I use parenthetical text, I am being sincere in the most literal sense that I know, which means not joking around. Same as if I message you privately, but in that case you'll be much, much more aware of the boundary between my jokes and my advice.) ......sorry just had a random thought -scarfy

Oh for SHITS sake don't patronize me, that really did insult me on a very deep and personal level. The book is LITERALLY on my desk. RIGHT NOW. A copy is LITERALLY on my nightstand. Like, right now. I've wanted to read it for a bit, but... well, frankly, you're distracting me right now. And that's okay. I want to talk to you. I just don't want to be reminded of what I stand to lose by choosing to do so. I would ask you to respect that. ...and I think I understand. I'm glad that you are finally becoming comfortable enough to admit these things so publicly, that took balls. sheer fricking BALLS. Read back what you just wrote and tell me it didn't haha prankt gottem no but seriously you should be a writer. Professionally. LIKE RIGHT NOW GO CALL A PUBLISHER (Also please don't take me seriously, this is a persona you jackass)

...lol gottem -scurfy

Eyy, so you've kept up with it. Awesome. ....I'm pretty you are not the "best marksman", though, not out of braggadocio (I'm awful) but out of simply trying to manage your expectations... you don't know any of us here, we are strangers, and frankly we don't care. Not out of personal disinterest mind you, your stories are really interesting, but as a matter of objective interest. We're all a persona, here. If you choose to present yourself as a marksman here, then Aqua-Corpsman is a marksman. If you choose to present yourself as the son of a humble farmer, then Aqua-Corpsman is the son of a humble farmer... not you. Now don't misunderstand, I mean not *YOU*. And frankly, video games are an escape, not a job. That means we come here to relax, and that means if... and I do mean *if* the World Champion of Olympic Marksmanship is indeed on this forum, he has just been deeply personally and professionally insulted by your bragging. (Though he may be willing to test you and see if you're really as good as you have just claimed. I don't know, I'm not him and I don't care what he does, objectively, as long as he doesn't deliberately choose to harm you.) Thankfully for this theoretical marksman and you, he has only been so insulted by Aqua-Corpsman, which means that you are in no way in danger of getting shot right now... only raided -scarfy

You've been to a firing range? I would not have guessed. When was this? And where? Because they did the right thing, you were learning from true masters of gunplay right there. I've been trained in firearms myself, albeit not to a degree of actual... competitive accuracy.

!@#$ why you remind me of a book I wanna read but haven't yet I wanted to but my job is getting in the way I don't like that, and you reminded me of that, so !@#$ you !@#$ you. I hate you. Go away and... yeah, !@#$ you, no offense. You little shit -scarfy ...Hol up, I don't wnat to die at all. So should I just cloister myself away from the world forever? Should I build a wall? Should I build a box for myself that protects me up to my own personal standards of genuine comfort? ...Because I will do literally anything to be comfortable, even sell my soul, to get that wall. I don't want to die, and I want to be comfortable. ...Is that so much to ask? If so, how much do I have to pay to get it? ...Asking for a friend -scarfy