Sir Scarfalot

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

...m8, owning a firearm isn't the problem, it's giving an idiot a firearm that's the problem. True masters of gunplay know exactly how dangerous an idiot with a firearm is, so they are desperate to ensure that only smart people even feel the need to own firearms. Which means that they're neglecting the smart people that don't feel the need to own firearms. Which means that the predatory monsters of the world have noticed that there are smart and rich people that don't own firearms. Which means, to them, that those rich people are not smart, and are therefore valid targets to be consumed, since they are obviously personally smarter than their targets, and they know what happens to stupid rich people. .... And everybody hates the word "gun", because it has always meant artillery and it should always mean artillery. Nobody's used it right for a hundred years tbqhwyl*. *to be quite honest with you ladies* *yes, ladies, you're bickering like a sewing circle, get your head in the game you shits

Well, you're not wrong... but I think they're also the kind o people who choose to go to scary movies and watch things explode as a hobby, too. I think they also enjoy depictions of nature, especially predators pouncing upon an animal for the purposes of eating it. which means they like those predators whcih means they understand those predators and they just dun wanna be prey. nmnl. do we have an understanding? Ofc we do. -scarfy

Wait what You're telling me that.... ...that wasn't an everyday thing in the medical world? That her boss really was just trying to keep my mother, my mother, her client, comfortable? I mean when she failed to vocally resonate with how my mother felt at the time? That... my grandmother... had people... that cared for her, even in her darkest hours? Do not dare lie to me. I would not like that. And my father is a lawyer, of sorts, as am I. Of sorts. Privately. ...Why am I telling you that? Stoppit I'm rambling again

SHIT so THAT is why my grandmother died.... ....well, it is *part* of it, at least. You see, my grandmother was very old, and needed 24/7 care... so the hospital financiers didn't care, either. She was gonna die no matter what, so hurry up and stop costing us money. Know what I mean? They had a young and lazy !@#$ nurse who didn't want to put in the effort of moving my grandmother to a different room, so she whined at her boss. In front of my own mother. In front of her patient's medically trained, if not professionally experienced, daughter. ...Yeah. She was corrected in an instant and ran the !@#$ away from my family. Good for her, if she'd doubled down....... mom would have been upset, and she is at the end of the day a human mind. Not that I blame them, mind you! At the end of the day, it is a business to the financiers, since they must present themselves as wolves in order to protect themselves, their investments, and their responsibilities as a whole from truly monstrous people that do exactly the same things. They are, after all, humans. -scarfy

I certainly haven't. ... ...Do you mean enunciating?

!@#$ mine are fake then I spent hundreds on a big box of... argh. I thought they were real because they had an "antimicrobial coating", and they suck in really deep when I breathe, but I liked them because I can still breathe ok when wearing them but I got sold snake oil I am a dumb ;-;

Oh so THAT'S why the cop that pulled me over had no mask. ....!@#$ sake, why didn't they just SAY that instead of "NO MASK $100 FINE" little stupid shits in city hall god damn ...Do your N95s have a special coating, by the way? Something, uh, coppery? Kinda smelly? Ish? I'm not describing this well Also, do you have strong opinions on the subject? Do you have a professional interest in the subject? Then that subject is, indeed, political, at least in terms of your own personal interests. It just doesn't have to be divisive

EXACTLY !@#$ SAKE I've been saying that from the START .... reeeee. -scurfy By the way, pretty sure it's not because the mask protects *you* from covid, it's because the mask keeps you from *spreading* the covid And therefore if two people wear a mask, two people are safe, but if one takes his mask off then two people are in grave and mortal peril @Aqua-Corpsman?

Haters gonna hate, indeed. I'm glad I helped you out with my stupid shitpost. And I'm sorry it was so stupid. I really do respect you. -scarfy That said, what you've got here is a standard-issue case of people in charge that plain don't know how to be in charge, so they want to do something, so they choose to do what they are familiar with in order to feel like they've 'done something'. In your case, you've gone and seen how leaders react when they don't know how to react to something that scares them. To be fair, they're not scared of the virus, they're scared of losing their loved ones and careers instead. So it's understandable they'll make rules that sound good *to them*, even when those rules are in no way shape or form helpful to their charges. They're not scared of doing their jobs badly, they know how to do that, but they're scared of losing what they truly care about in life, so they're scared of the symbol that Covid represents. A symbol on a very high pedestal, as you are of course professionally aware and have perfectly described. They hate you and your expertise, because they know painfully well how bad things can get if they aren't the one that are helpful to their charges. Like, really painfully. It physically hurts them to confront that fact, so they choose not to confront it and instead choose to believe a lie. ...I think. ...Am I wrong?

4:13 i c wut u did thar you told me masks werok but i cot govid u lied cos i maskd up see with my face in my arm my awesum nekkid arm but mom died I h8 u -scurfy ...For reference, no, my family is fine. I wear a full-scale N95 every time I leave my property and go into town, for any reason, and my dear old parents and their dear old friends are doing just fine for the most part. They don't leave, I do, because I am younger and healthier and therefore at less risk, nmnl* *No more, but certainly nothing less

Guys stop acting like idiots stop acting like wounded wolves and start acting like healthy wolves !@#$ sake it's just a game, you've earned the respect of the wolves already. y a don't gotta earn it again. jfc idiots... no offense -scurfy

Actually, these are pretty okay ideas if they're optional. Though bounties are meant to be completely confidential, so a retaliatory embargo wouldn't work since that'd give away the game. The rest are decent

Awright, fair enough then; still I had to point it out since lol

Or, looking at it another way, the 10th invalidates the first nine ^-^ Also, be fair: the US constitution is a surprisingly short document.

"keep this confidential", huh? 🤔

Well, it'd scale by city certainly, but I was thinking it might also scale a bit by infrastructure? Exponentiation sounds like it'd get out of hand real quick tbh.

Something like that, yep. At 30 cities, that'd be $300k per day, which comes around to ~109m after a full year. Since nobody's going for 100m bounties on nations of that scale, I think you might have actually hit on a winner for the number there.

That's what I mean by "escrow"; the game just kind of holds onto your bounties and pays them into your nation as soon as you're not blockaded ^-^

Idea to encourage active gameplay: All nations gain some amount of "natural" bounty based on their city count/average infra level. This bounty would work like any other bounty, but constantly increments every day (and ideally would be paired with the phantom escrow idea to permit bounty claims despite blockade). It shouldn't be so much as to be an abuseable source of real income, but would be sufficient to discourage stank pixelhuggery.

What you're describing (bounties being used to transfer cash to someone blockaded) was the reason that you restricted bounty payouts to wars that started after the bounties were posted, as I recall. (Which was fair, for exactly those reasons.) Besides, bounties are only about the 3rd best way to send cash across blockades, and one of the other two is credits. So, bruh. I've suggested it before, but I'll give it another shot here: Instead of being a binary "win while unblockaded to get bounty, otherwise no bounty at all", allow bounties to remain in their phantom escrow state but "claimed" by whoever first accomplishes the bounty criteria, payable as soon as they break their blockade. That way, people aren't frustrated by investing their resources into a bounty hunt, only to get shafted by a wholly undocumented mechanic. Thinking about it, perhaps you could also encourage warfare by implementing "natural bounties"... like, every nation gets a little bit of bounty added to them every day, based on their city count. It wouldn't be enough to warrant attacks often, but someone with 40 cities avoiding wars for 3 years straight would start to look really tasty... :3