[A Treatise on the Current War]

6 hours ago, Sweeeeet Ronny D said:

From what I understand you guys almost fell apart a few months ago before a few guys from HM came in and saved tS. 

Your understanding is incorrect.

[A Treatise on the Current War]

1 hour ago, Sweeeeet Ronny D said:

Would you have to work for it? yes you would, but would you win after 3-4 rounds, assuming you have your shit together.

 

1 hour ago, Sweeeeet Ronny D said:

Now do I talk about being able to instantly rebuild after a war? Yes I do, but that has nothing to do with taking a lack of damage, and everything to do with being prepared to fight.

Right.

1 hour ago, Sweeeeet Ronny D said:

As for guys that dont want the hard fight, your entire alliance just proved you didn't want the hard fight, and you have proved it over and over again over the history of tS.  You want to come after me personally, that's fine but keep my members out of your mouth, you can take your passive aggressive shit and get out of here with that, every member in grumpy fights, and if they dont they find a new alliance after the war ends.  We are one of the only alliances in the game where ALL our guys declare wars.

The membership sticks through thick and thin, as it's actually proven by history. Same about the AA itself. The FA climate often dictates the wars to be fought, which is well beyond the control of most people. 

It's neither their fault, or problem, if you, as a leader, handled yourself in such a way contributed to this end result.

[A Treatise on the Current War]

2 minutes ago, Adrienne said:

This is an overestimation of my responsibilities. Orbis, please do not come to me regarding FA issues. I will just foist you on poor Cooper and Morf.

It being your responsibility? Nah. Which only makes it worse.

[A Treatise on the Current War]

28 minutes ago, BigMorf said:

We were communicative when asked by people in blackwater that we weren’t on the offensive. Ben approached you when he had the time (he has a lot of stuff going on irl), and you decided that we could be straight up lying to you because of your Grumpy paranoia, instead of trusting people that you had worked with for however long Quack existed.

It wasn't down to 'Grumpy paranoia', but simply established military procedure. Preempting is better than being preempted. Virtually always. It's something I'd expect you to do, provided you have the possibility to do so.

You have formal obligations to your allies, let alone the ones you have to your community. Likewise I expect them to take priority over older/past relationships.

As for Ben; I obviously won't fault him for being busied up. But you have two formal FA high govts, one being yourself. You also have Adri who more or less de facto handles FA stuff as well. The point of having several people to handle stuff is that people lower in the chain can take care of them, especially if it's pressing, which I would argue this was.

[There Is No IC/OOC Split, Change My Mind]

I guess anyone who played Hearts of Iron is now a NeolibNazbol.

[The First Snek on The Moon (No Whales Allowed)]

34 minutes ago, Sweeeeet Ronny D said:

But in comparison, if any two spheres hit Quack it would be a tossup at best for the aggressor to win, where as BW and Rose have completely slotted Hollywood, and you will completely stomp us. (trust me, I did the math back then when we were looking at what kind of a chance we would have had if we hit you, it didn't look good.) 

I recall checking myself on stuff towards the latter half of the sphere's existence (which is when I was checking more often because, obvious reasons), and I recall stuff such as Rose+HM having a pretty good lineup for such. I can see the argument of it being extremely large early on, but it quickly diminished as other spheres formed and consolidated (I don't say consolidation in the negative sense, but simply establishing themselves and growing) while Quack remained relatively stagnant in part because it was policy not to sign more stuff.
 

44 minutes ago, Sweeeeet Ronny D said:

Sorry, I forgot that TI left, but if i remember correctly TI left like 2-3 weeks after the war ended, possibly sooner?  But that still left you over 7 months where you made no efforts to deescalate yourselves. 

I'm not sure what you expected Partisan to do in the face pertaining to actors which had sprung far too quickly on the narrative, instead of chilling for a few weeks and perhaps using that energy to focus on rebuilding their communities. 

Granted, he had actually poured a fair amount of diplo effort on parties which were (or least were perceived as such) neutral at the time. The portrayal that nothing was done is inaccurate.

55 minutes ago, Sweeeeet Ronny D said:

You dont get a pat on the back because you didn't get involved in a war that didn't involve you.  You also know that you didn't do that because if you did, it would have painted an even larger target on your back than you already had as the by far dominate block in the game at the time.  Could you say that we made that error by attacking out of the gate as HW, yeah but we knew that when we did it, and we knew that by winning the war against rose, that we cemented the chance of us getting rolled in the next war, I mean its a main reason why 404 and Cotl left, they didn't want the heat.

A couple of people were already negatively predisposed against us. It had the risk of alienating a sphere, certainly, but it'd have secured another. Frankly, it'd have been probably a net neutral if not a win, and certainly better than the alternative which came to pass. Granted, easy to win the lotto with Monday's newspaper.

You're certainly right in that, in spite of what there was to be gained with the opportunity, the conflict itself didn't concern us. Which was a big reason why Quack didn't do anything about. Still something which contrasts with much of what would happen afterwards.

1 hour ago, Sweeeeet Ronny D said:

They do benefit us, they also benefit the entire game, because what is more fun, fighting for 2-3 months where the outcome is already determined after a week, or fighting for a few weeks doing your damage and calling it a day?  Look at how badly tS victimizes about the IQ war and you were only involved for a few months not the entire thing.

I tend to lean on one month being a good period of time for a war to last for. The wars I've fought on which dragged for longer than that did so because of political considerations not being met. 

1 hour ago, Sweeeeet Ronny D said:

There are all kinds of advantages to shorter wars, especially ones now where the entire world doesn't get involved.  You limit the time the noncombatants can grow while you are fighting.   Does grumpy take less damage as a whole? sure, generally after the first round or two assuming we did our job most of our guys are out of range and with the score changes everyone keeps crying about it's now next to impossible for us to sell down into range. (your upper tier is about to learn this)  That being said, I know the cheapest rebuild that I can remember besides the TCW war, was around 750 million.  So to act like we dont take any damage the 150 nukes I have eaten over the life of my nation tend to disagree with you.  And for tS to act like they dont have the resources to instantly rebuild after a war ends is laughable on your end.  But I am glade to know it also takes you 2+ months to save up enough to buy a city.

You mean the nukes that you just laugh off as being able to cover the expense of in a few days' lapse, while the guy launching them is making basically zero income of his own? You mean the rebuild I've seen people brag as being able to just build up during the duration of the war itself, because it usually takes that long for the drag-down to happen, if it does happen? 

Relative to other alliances; yes, the damage sustained is negligible. 

1 hour ago, Sweeeeet Ronny D said:

tS dragged out a war for another month because you wanted a 6 month nap.  From what I hear from my current allies that was a tS thing.  Your excuse was you needed 6 months to assess the world to make any changes, where really you just wanted to avoid another war and let everyone else fight it out while you profited, to say otherwise either means you are out of the loop or just lying.  The difference between you and TCW, is you are a major world player and TCW is not, if we give TCW a 3 month NAP it doesn't really make a difference because we accomplished what we wanted to do and had no desire to hit them again.  We offered you a 3 month one too, because that should have been plenty of time to do whatever FA moves you needed to do.  That wasn't tS's goal.

Much of the sphere was actually on board with a longer NAP. That said, I hope your ally did notify you that it was chiefly them the ones who wanted the NAP to be non blanket.

That argument doesn't make sense because if they're irrelevant, then no NAP for them would've been perfectly fine. They don't matter after all. The actual reason you gave them that sort of NAP was just to prevent them from tagging alongside us if such possibility were to happen, and it cost you nothing to have such guarantee in place.

As for your assertion, I'd say that the events which unfolded the past half a year put a big question mark on them.
 

[The First Snek on The Moon (No Whales Allowed)]

1 hour ago, Sweeeeet Ronny D said:

Can we touch on this a little bit here.  Comparing us to Quack is a little disingenuous. Quack was so much larger than everyone else that no one sphere could take them in a one on one, to the point that even a 2 on 1 would be tight.

I said that it was similar, not 1:1. The other spheres are also a bit smaller compared to some of the stuff we had back then, so it's not like one variable changed and the others remained constant.

1 hour ago, Sweeeeet Ronny D said:

Then to say that you stayed together because of post IQ stuff, sure that could have been the case for the first 2-3 months post war, but we had a 6 month NAP, in which you guys moved exactly 0, then the nap ended, and still you moved exactly 0.  You guys had 8-9 months to do something, and 0 movement from you before the quack war started, even then you wanted another 6 months.  How much time do you need to assess? You stayed together because you thought you were untouchable.  As for showing restraint, when even the slightest whispers came out that you may be hit, you mobilized at the drop of a hat, and 3 blocks had to come together to take you down. 

The bolded part is simply a lie (I presume unintentional), by virtue of TI and associated parties leaving. Regardless of the rationale, it was a a not minor change.

That aside, there had been no change on the situation that spurred it. So yes, lack of reason to change caused things to remain the way they are. You're free to ask your now MDP partner pertaining how unassailable we actually deemed Quack to be. Or rather more simply, just check old conversations with them.

Given the fact we, quite frankly, not only had the chance to roll you, but also had potential to gain diplo wise from such when you hit tCW (by virtue of securing them as an ally), but didn't take it; yes, I'd say that plenty of restraint was shown. Those "whispers" were plenty credible enough and, as things aired, proven to be not only correct, but also run deeper than what we had initially thought.

1 hour ago, Sweeeeet Ronny D said:

HW is not nearly the powerhouse that Quack was, when we formed were we the strongest bloc in the game?  I would say yes, but it wasn't by an order of magnitude like quack was, we were like 25-30 percent stronger than Rose at the time, and about 10-15 percent stronger than tS.   Since then Rose has added a lot more strength, and HW has gotten weaker.  You guys might be about the same, your upper tier alliance hasn't really grown much.

Circle back to my first response. Also compounded by how your first maneuvers as a sphere were perceived.

1 hour ago, Sweeeeet Ronny D said:

As for how we are perceived, the goal was to fight more wars but have them be shorter.  You do this by fighting wars.   You will notice that the wars we have fought have all been relatively short with the exception of the quack war because tS dragged it out another month with wanting a 6 month nap.  I really dont have an issue with you hitting us, we knew it was coming.  I would say we are surprised that you brought Rose with you, considering how much chatter comes from tS about how bad dog piles are.  I dont begrudge Rose for attacking as we hit them 2 months ago.

Short wars benefit you (by you, I mean your alliance, not even sphere) because you're at the top of the pyramid and have such a massive edge that you just btfo whatever is there on a one-on-one match-up, and provided you got the hits in first, more than that. And once you do, it's up to your allies to pick up the pieces and deal with turreting or mil suiciding that the other party might do because, again, you're at the top of the pyramid. Good chance that your nations can't even be reached in the first place, especially as the other party loses their infra which is inflating their NS, and if they can, people won't send their suicide nations on them. They'll hit as low as possible in order to best leverage their military edge. So you come out relatively if not virtually unscathed and basically workaround what is an otherwise normal rebuild cycle that other alliances have to deal with in a semi constant basis. This fundamentally renders the argument that your grouping is ok because other people can grow faster moot (not mentioned here but I've seen been used, hence why I'm mentioning it here since I'm already elaborating on it), since those people are dealing with billions spent on widescale rebuild which you seldom have to engage in.

That's why I find your endorsement for short wars to be laughable at best, self serving at worst.

As for the six month thing; you pitch higher than what you're aiming to get to have leeway in negotiations. I didn't think that it need be explained, but apparently it does. Especially given how you deemed it to be perfectly fine to give tCW and friends a three month nap for a 10 day war, whatever was to be finally agreed on was nowhere near as outrageous as you make it out to be.

1 hour ago, Sweeeeet Ronny D said:

The reason we are in here arguing with you and not with Rose, is because rose doesn't engage in the forums which is no fun..  But at the same time they dont scream from the sidelines about dog piles and unfair wars, and then turn around and to do the exact same thing when they get the chance.  That is why we are here, your CB was horse shit, when you could have used an actual legitimate CB.  And the hypocrisy coming from BW is palpable.  

You already have my opinion on lopsided wars with credible reason to justify concern. 

 

[The First Snek on The Moon (No Whales Allowed)]

8 hours ago, Adrienne said:

I won't address the rest of the points as this wasn't addressed at me but I did want to talk about this bit. I do generally agree with your point here and you know my thoughts on the team up but I would also like to point out that you guys (several major actors in t$, not you specifically) did the exact same thing when we made Hollywood. We were cowards, we went against your beliefs regarding G/G (beliefs we didn't share but you were under the impression we did in acknowledging that they sucked to fight), we were hypocrites, etc. Cooper and I have differing beliefs on the current situation, as do you and the members of t$ that were saying that stuff (several of whom are liking your post, amusingly enough to me). So, just as the pragmatism goes both ways, it should be no surprise that the objections to it do too.

What each person thought of the situation is their prerog based on their own experiences and line of thinking. That said; you've rooted your FA rather heavily on stuff that you deem to be ideologically good, rather than be more of a ruthlessly pragmatic type. That has it's ups and downs. It certainly helps narratively on your end, both internally and externally, if there's consistency to it. That's the key part. I'd say that the common point was that people saw your prioritizing of security as an abandonment, partial of otherwise, of said ideological roots, and criticized such. 

It should go without saying that objections were expected going into this. I'd be far more surprised if they weren't there. So no issues there.

8 hours ago, Cooper_ said:

I think you're overemphasizing the cowardice rhetoric since it isn't the thrust of our argumentation.  I used the word because alliances being too zealous with security instead of taking risks contributes to imbalanced wars.  I assume this disagreement results from my political priorities being different than yours, which is to see more competitive and interesting wars instead of minimizing my own risk/damage.  

I saw it (or things meaning similar things) repeated like thrice on the same page, if not top half thereof. I'd not call it overemphasizing based on that.

Some people do like to throw even the kitchen sink with the plumbing still attached to it into the situation for the reasons you mentioned; I find that to be dumb by all metrics. That's also not what's happening here. Personally speaking, I'm not one to mind reasonable dice rolls all that much, and in fact rolled them a few times in the past. I wouldn't consider going head-on into a situation that you have a slim chance of success without having any reason for doing so (as opposed to, say, thinking you were going to be preempted and blitzing to have a slim chance at winning rather than no chance) to be sensible in any capacity which wasn't just "Well I'm bored, let's yolo for shits ang gigs" though. Especially if there are specific practical considerations to be met which wouldn't be fulfilled in such a manner.

[The First Snek on The Moon (No Whales Allowed)]

 

9 hours ago, Cooper_ said:

You shouldn't quote someone if you're going to ignore the point they were making and the context it was said in. I made a point that the alliances of T$ and Rose alone were likely enough to take down GG based on tiering.  It was an explanation that they're not some unstoppable force, but could be taken down by just two alliances' tiering alone.  In the grand scheme, GG, T$, and Rose (along with their affiliates) were all upper tier poles and that had a balancing effect in that any combination of two could take out the third.  That doesn't imply that it is necessary to have two to take out one rather it implies that they no single pole was too powerful.   

Obviously, GG barely sustained damage.  We were dogpiled just like you're doing to us right now, which is frankly more than a bit hypocritical.  You're not getting coverage.  You're guaranteeing a lopsided war because you were too afraid to fight us fairly.  

This is just a pure lie.  I've said on numerous occasions that I think BW v HW would be a fair matchup.  I've continually pointed out how BW alone is a decently larger sphere than HW to the tune of 10-20% larger, and how you guys outtier us in the upper tier too.  The only tier that we have an advantage in is the 20 or so nations that are C40+ in a war of 1000s of nations.  

I said BW v HW would be a competitive matchup where we'd probably have an advantage in the whale tier while you guys win everything else, and that was when we still had CoTL/E404.  With a good blitz, the current BW could've definitely won a war against HW.  It might've not been easy mode, but it would've been a fun and fairer war.  I think @hidude45454 has already said as much.  Bringing Rose in with you was a cowardly and unnecessary move.  

You and your government are intimately aware of the issues we had getting adequate coverage on the planning of GW16. It's a simple reality that when updeclaring any fairly meaningful amount (not like one or two cities apart from each other) you effectively need at least 50% more nations than the other guy does by virtue of assigning 3 on 2 to offset the fact they're smaller nations and the penalties accompanied with such (worse rolls, needing to rely on dogfights vs the other guy simply being able to ga you for higher effect, etc). This is the unfortunate change brought about by the rebalance Alex introduced the past year. Even if we were to take the 10-20% as being truthful (I'd say not, but for argument's sake let's pretend it is), and assume that said 10-20% actually represent nations in the upper-top and not people in the low tier, that's nowhere near sufficient.

The reality is that your sphere, owing the heavy top tier and the escalation of effectiveness thereof, can rather comfortably take on any other sphere solo and have a reasonable chance at victory. The same cannot be said on the inverse. In spirit, it's quite similar to Quack in that as a sphere it was meant to have a reasonable chance at deterring a 1v1 and in good conditions, withstanding a 2v1. The reason Quack retained such set up, though, is because there was a very credible reason for believing that such would happen owing to immediate post-NPOLT diplomatic and narrative developments; to put it in other words, people had jumped to conclusions and began narrative crafting before the people in Quack had any chance to reassess the dramatic FA landscape change that had occurred towards the end of NPOLT and properly adjust to such, instead being forced into the defensive from the get-go. Your sphere lack any such rationale justifying that sort of set-up because you put it together based on what you saw as being pragmatically beneficial for you, as opposed to having what was effectively a leftover infrastructure which was not allowed to be revised. Put in another way, you had a clean slate you could've worked with, and from the ground up went with this. The fact that Quack also showed considerable restraint throughout it's existence, owing exactly due to it's size and perceived threat, while you pretty much didn't care about the latter two as evidenced by the fact that you deemed it sensible to start right off with a war also didn't help matters on your end and how your sphere is perceived.

As for the "cowardliness" you mention. As far as I'm concerned, it's rather unreasonable to expect people that have shared interests/concerns which are rooted on credible reasons not work together. And it's certainly something that in the past was used to justify rather lop-sided match-ups, with the rest of the spheres going like "Well okay, your rationale is sound." and largely accepting it. Case in point, the war between tCW and Swamp and HM. Nobody denies that it was a lopsided conflict. People also agree that Swamp and HM had more than justifiable reasons which warranted such coalition. Now, if the concern is irrational or otherwise unfounded, then sure. But such isn't the case here. If I'm being frank, this whole "cowardice" whole line of thought comes across as lazy, unaccountable FA. Instead of acknowledging that your moves were such that alienated or otherwise caused concern among other spheres, you reduce people acting on said concerns in unison as doing so "unnecessarily and cowardly". That's not how it works. It's on you to do your due diligence by not providing said people cause for which to have concerns, or not give them a reason to act against you. This whole situation is essentially you failing to do so and blame shifting instead of acknowledging that you somehow positioned your sphere in such a manner that gardened zero sympathizers from anywhere.

I guess, if I have to summarize about HW. It's your prerogative how you decide to set up your sphere. I can understand and respect the pragmatic reasons you had for setting it up the way you did. That said, that goes both ways and people elsewhere are likewise going to find it necessary to act in ways which safeguard their pragmatic needs. Reducing those as "cowardice" does you no service as they neither will endear the other party and even obfuscates your failings which put you in the current predicament. Ultimately, I find the whole moralistic undertone to be empty and ultimately betrayed by said pragmatic needs, because said idealism invariably requires compromises to be made, and these compromises affect pragmatic considerations, which in this particular case were given clear precedence. 

[SYNDICATE, INC., ANNOUNCES CHANGES TO EXECUTIVE LINEUP]

7 hours ago, Leopold von Habsburg said:

Sorry I'm a bit late getting to this but as I have expressed internally I will proclaim for all of Orbis to see. 

Shiho I'm eternally grateful for all you've done in T$, a truly flawless run as an exec if I have ever seen one. You are one of the greats of this game and I'm glad that T$ could attract someone of your caliber when you were looking for a new place to settle down. Also obligatory thanks for actually sticking around T$ after stepping down, that is also a pretty exclusive club these days and we are happy to welcome you to the Exec Emeritus!

Back when I was being headhunted by several alliances, this one was the only one that hadn't tried to secure me with cheap trinkets such as city offers, tax exemptions, or the likes. That spoke volumes to me, since I don't think that an alliance that's confident on what it's got to offer needs to resort to such methods. I wish more alliances realized that there are plenty of people who aren't drawn it by those tactics, and that trying those on them will just have the opposite effect.

I'm thankful that the alliance, leadership and membership alike, welcomed me and my little group (one which was simply looking for a good place to land in) the way it did, with practically no favoritism or strings attached to it. I'm also grateful for the vote of confidence cast on me at the time, of which you were one of the main casters as acting COO, especially given the context. That meant infinitely more than, again, the things others attempted to pass for an offer.

I'm certainly looking forward to it, and hopefully helping with advice, much the same way me and certainly others were helped with.

[SYNDICATE, INC., ANNOUNCES CHANGES TO EXECUTIVE LINEUP]

 

Investor Contact:

Justin

Media Contact:

WANA

SYNDICATE, INC., ANNOUNCES CHANGES TO EXECUTIVE LINEUP

NASSAU, Bahamas, 2020-07-14: SYNDICATE, INC., (NYSE:SCC) is forwarding this public notice to all shareholders, current and future, on the condition of the position of Chief Security Officer. Effective immediately, Shiho Nishizumi will no longer be the acting CSO, with Gray taking over the position in his stead, and Golden Pope filling the position of Vice President of Security. Finally, Ghost will replace Golden Pope in the position of Director of Security. Both Gray and Golden Pope are internally trained officers, deemed by the former CSO to be more than capable to fulfill their new positions based on their performance in both day-to-day operations and past major endangerments of the company's assets. Ghost is an equally able officer with a similar in-house track record who acquired his training prior to investing in SYNDICATE, INC., but was able to seamlessly mesh with the current structure.

This decision is being made after much deliberation and planning with the Board of Executives and the Security department. As a thank you gesture to Shiho, the Board offered him an advisory position within it, which he gladly accepted. He'll still retain his equity within SYNDICATE, INC., since recent failed projects entrepreneured by former associates of his demonstrated to him that going with the old and reliable is the best course of action.

Both the Board and Shiho are optimistic with this new lineup, and confident that they'll be able to expand upon the foundation laid by their predecessor, and with it, the Corporation's projection and financial prospects.

We thank you for your time, and hope that this is enough to address any concerns.

Shiho Nishizumi
Former Chief Security Officer

About SYNDICATE, INC.,

SYNDICATE, Inc., based near Nassau, The Bahamas, is the world's leading gasoline, aluminum, steel and munitions distributor for a wide variety of peacekeeping and humanitarian activities. Wholly-owned SYNDICATE, Inc. subsidiary brand/s include ENTERPRISE, Corp., (NYSE: ESC), which provides opportunities for growth, development, and outreach for exceptional candidates throughout the globe, The Rohirrim, a rising equine research and breeding firm, and Prima Victoria, a corporation with extensive contacts and knowledge in former British-held colonies and dominions. For more information about SYNDICATE, Inc., and it's activities, contact WANA, Chief Global Strategist.

[Public Apology to the Whole of Orbis]

4 hours ago, namukara said:

It is very important that after time, we do our utmost to forgive. Enough time has now passed, and I don't feel that goons committed such a terrible crime their leader can never be forgiven for it. I hope you find an alliance willing to accept you.

That's up to each individual. As far as I'm concerned, IQ top brass gets 0 chances while more middle management people need to work for it. Time isn't enough of a rationale to let go of especially when you factor in their reaction after moderation.

[The Hollywood/Roasis War has concluded]

19 hours ago, James Ironwood said:

 

NPO and manwha induced ragequitting.

[United Socialist Nations Statement [Cancellation]]

 

 

[Do you remember around 13-14 months ago when all of the NPO/BK bots said this game was dead forever because they were leaving?]

4 hours ago, JadenStar10 said:

Lol we made a full recovery a month after em leaving.


Lets not forget they left for a good reason though after Alex doxxed one of them.

They didn't leave due to that; they were already in the process of packing up by the time Alex whacked their offshore for cheating their revenue. 

[Iron Dome Rework]

18 hours ago, Vice said:

     I agree. I also agree wtih Dryad. I dont think ID will change "dog piling" but my concern is more for the players who may quit because of a long drawn out war or feeling of losing such a great investment on either side but particularly the losing. I dont have the numbers but I would love to know if and how many players quit during GW16 because they were constantly zero'd out. People get pissed because they have a restart a level that took them 30 minutes of time in console games, let alone losing days/weeks/months worth of play time here.

 

     Personally, someone can come zero me and ill still find a way to have fun but not everyone is like me. I would love for there to be an incentive to make people build military no matter what round of the war they are in. For example, I recently had a war with someone in KT that came out of beige R2 with a full army and it was awesome. Constant infra from missiles is just "meh" from both sides. They do it because its the only option rather than what could be a fun alternative should it ever be thought of.

edited for sp and formatting

There's always a number of people who leave every war due to the shock value of that sort of loss. It's unfortunate, but unavoidable. I doubt there was much (or any) of a loss of long standing members due to the war, specifically considering what Dryad alluded to; NPOLT, if nothing else, tempered a bunch of people. 

It's awesome for the one padding. The one being padded on? Not so much. Important distinction to be made. Whilst it'd be nice to have them be of more use on these sorts of situations, the problem is that it's a bit difficult to balance conventional military which is being used in unconventional ways, and still have the conventional aspect be balanced. As a matter of fact, when conventional got "rebalanced", it is exactly the unconventional aspect thereof that arguably got shafted the most. Probably unintentionally at that.

It's also not the only option. Unless if your foe is literally maxed on his 5553 (which is never the case), there are ways to go about in pretty much every war. It's mainly a matter of whether you know how to do it number one, and can be assed to do it number two. Though yes, turreting is obviously the most straightforward and foolproof of the options.

[Iron Dome Rework]

36 minutes ago, Vice said:

Also, for those of you in approval of the major change, this would prevent the quicker wars which some of you have asked for. When the losers run out of options, resolution is reached much quicker. I get you want losing side to be engaged but sitting back giving no incentive of resolution because you can just missile the winning side doesnt seem like an expedient means to an end. Please think about how you want the core game to work and feel rather how ID works by itself. Isolated the ID may seem dumb but how it affects the way wars play out is a bigger role. Do you want every war to destroy infra on both sides making who wins almost irrelevant? If so make the change.

Having the tools at hand doesn't mean that they'll be used. E.G. TCW during that 10 day skirmish. It mainly boils down to whether the leaderships deem it worthwhile and viable to continue. Of which the mechanical viability of it isn't the sole, and sometimes, even the main reason for such a decision.

Either way, deliberately crippling the tools so that a conclusion to a war is forced isn't the way to go. It's much better for said tools to be available and for the people that'd be resorting to them to decide whether it's worthwhile to go with, than just shaft them from them altogether.

[Game Development - February 2021]

9 hours ago, Roberts said:

Again, I don't think either of these should kill more improvements. I would love to see the ability to build more than one nuke a day as well.

It was floated at one point, though I presume it went nowhere.

I do agree that making imp killing isn't really the way to go. Lose your mil imps, and if you don't want to refit at the loss of your econ, and you're basically left as a turret which isn't the most engaging thing ever, and isn't something everyone is necessarily able to do either way.

[Iron Dome Rework]

2 minutes ago, Deborah Kobayashi said:

So guaranteed improvement sniped, and guaranteed resistance damage.

 

Yeah this makes iron dome completely worthless, if you implement this I want a refund.

Meh. It's a dirt cheap project, and unless if you literally just got it or it's always failed you since acquiring it, it's more than likely to have paid back and then some.

Also, one of the proposed changes is for missiles to destroy 2 imps and for ID to halve that, so there's that.
 

On 2/20/2021 at 1:35 PM, Ketya said:

I prefer the current method as it introduces some surprise elements to the game. Without a little of the surprise element, the game gets solely mechanical.

RNG (which is ultimately what 'surprise' is) is a fairly lazy method to add a variable, and such variable is more often than not just frustrating. 

It's also hardly a 'surprise' when every other shot is statistically set to not land.

[Game Development - February 2021]

59 minutes ago, MBaku said:

 

I think if it's tied to city count, folks can lose the ability to field 75% quickly with the ability to destroy improvements increasing. It also doesn't divide easily since there's only 3 drydocks per city. 66% should be the highest considered, or 2 drydocks per city. If you get knocked down below that, you'll need to rebuild something to get back the bombardment ability. 

I don't think the ability to destroy improvements don't need to be super expensive. The improvements themselves are super cheap to replace. And missiles don't cost nearly that much. That's why i'm more in favor of something more like 1/6 or even 1/3 of max ships based on city counts. 

People who are bombarding are very well capable of fielding such, because if you're spending MAP's bombarding you've already got it in the bag. Meaning, the ships aren't actually at risk of being sunk. 

I don't see a problem with it not being perfectly round, since it could just be rounded up or down. Much the same way how PB works (you aren't recruiting 1.1 ships, for example). It'd also be going off the value of 15 ships rather than 3 drydocks.

You'd be surprised at the value of having to reslot the improvements time and again (me knowing that because they make for good nuke cash in a pinch). And the response also doesn't address the loss of output in cases where you need to refit cities to something 800 infra spec or something of sorts. Which definitely ought to be factored in when balancing this since it's a long term productivity loss being incurred.

Missiles don't cost as much, but they also can be ID blocked, kill less imps given the same MAP's, can be spied to be removed, etc. It's nonetheless a massive increase w.r.t. imp killing compared to the previous value; especially at higher infra values.

[Game Development - February 2021]

10 minutes ago, MBaku said:

I think a minimum number of ships could work, but 50% is pretty big - I'd like to see something more like 1/6 or half your ships if you're running 1 drydock each city. But also, lots of folks just run no ships at all, especially last global. This would make ships important and necessary all the time and could make the meta shift towards aquiring naval superiority in globals - if that's the goal.

I think the problem is that it's too hard to get naval superiority if you're losing because whoever can keep air superiority can also dominate navy. It's pretty much impossible to win in the air if you're dogpiled. Losing 16 improvements per war or 42 per cycle will speed up large conflicts a lot. 

 

Also, how guaranteed are the improvement destruction for non-IT hits? I think a moderate success could be one improvement and the rest should be none. 

Eh, the 75% he mentioned tied to city count is good enough. Make it too cheap and it's just overpowered due to the value of the improvements being destroyed. Especially considering that currently, best case scenario is a 60% chance if you have tactician and the other guy has pirate.

Considering that the loss of military improvements would force a beat down nation to respec to something lower and lose it's economic improvements, it's only fair that it costs the winning party a fair bit to cause such destruction in the first place. Especially since I suspect a bunch of it would be done as nations go down and are in the process of losing their infra either way. And you already would have an avenue to maximize imps destroyed while minimizing infra damage dealt right there if the requirement was any lower.

[Game Development - February 2021]

13 minutes ago, Prefontaine said:

The attack can have the restriction that you have to use at least 75% of the max navy your nation can field. If you could have 100 ships in a nation with the number of cities you have, then you must use at east 75 ships in the attack.

It certainly should, if it is to go through. And yes, it should be pinned to city count rather than navy possessed or drydocks possessed at hand because otherwise it'd be easily gamed.

[Game Development - February 2021]

Uh. 50% less or more rss usage and less infra killed is meaningless if one ship can destroy those two improvements just fine. It'd completely !@#$ over raiders and people fighting uphill since hundreds of improvements could be destroyed at the cost of pennies.

 

[SYNDICATE, INC., ANNOUNCES CHANGES TO EXECUTIVE BOARD]

 

Investor Contact:

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SYNDICATE, INC., ANNOUNCES CHANGES TO EXECUTIVE BOARD

 

NASSAU, Bahamas, 2020-01-19: SYNDICATE, INC., (NYSE:SCC) is forwarding this public notice to all shareholders, current and future, on the condition of the office of Chief Global Strategist. It is with deep regret that we have to inform about Partisan's resignation from the position, one which he held for fourteen months. His fifth tenure saw him begin with combatting an existential threat to all entities in this realm, and following the pacification of said threat, continue to oversee the foreign direction of SYNDICATE, INC., alongside monitoring/facilitating the internal restructuring to ensure the retention of the Corporation's competitiveness. Both efforts have proven to generate results, as proven by unmatched quarterly growths, public recognitions, and the Corporation's ability to swiftly rebound higher after some substantial lows during Q4 of 2020, spawned by an illegal Trust arranged by competing firms.

Following a conversation with close confidants and with the board, Partisan deemed it to be most optimal for a new person to oversee future developments. He was subsequently seen vacating his office, with the security camera recording him carrying recently awarded trophies under each arm, which seemed miniscule relative to his broad shoulders and overall stature. The rest of his belongings were packaged and shipped shortly afterwards, bar a few alcoholic beverages retained to compensate for unauthorized consumption of the Corporation's stocks. As a recognition for his contributions, coupled with the fact that he retains equity within SYNDICATE, INC., the board has decided to retain him as an Advisor deprived only of the privilege of making general notifications to the shareholders, both moves which were received with unanimous approval by the latter.

The board has decided to appoint Dionysus as the new Chief Global Strategist (CGS). A well-proven performer following his displays in ENTERPRISE, Corp., (NYSE: ESC) and SYNDICATE, INC., (NYSE: SCC), he is responsible for a good portion of the reforms and restructuring which led to the aforementioned record quarterly growths. As he will fully dedicate himself to his new role as SYNDICATE, INC.'s CGS, he will be replaced in the office of Chief Operations Officer by Lucas. As part of Dionysus' staff, he is also a part in the aforementioned record growth, one which is projected to be maintained for the foreseeable future. Finally, in order to fill the vacancy left in the position of Vice President of Operations, Vero is set to take over said office. A long-time manager in the SYNDICATE, INC. subsidiary, ENTERPRISE, Corp., Vero is also part of the same staff arranged by Dionysus, and a big reason for the continued increase of shareholders who opt to invest with SYNDICATE, INC. for reliable and strong returns on their investment.

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About SYNDICATE, INC.

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