Shiho Nishizumi

The point is that Under is a disliked and distrusted figure which automatically reduces the legitimacy/value of whatever he touches or is involved in. This isn't just because he was a jackass last war. This is also because he's inept and prone to trolling for the sake of it (this is simply overshadowed by the former). It's not for naught that his rep as a mod is far from stellar, and why the alliance he de-facto leads is a worthless husk. He has nothing worthwhile to contribute that only he could say, which is why people are even more baffled by you thinking that he'd make a good addition, especially in the face of criticism levied by people from virtually all the spheres which aren't tied to him. Once you have the time to do so, I'd suggest you sit down for a second, and reevaluate how much you think that you actually know about the game and the community which plays it. Because decisions like these, which are taken in spite of overwhelming opposition/disagreement from the community, come across as "I'm better informed than you lot, which is why I think that this is a good idea", which, to be blunt, you are not. And it's quite the arrogant position to think that you know better than the people who actually play the game and interact with the individuals you seemingly hold in high regard.

I have to genuinely wonder if this is him being his usual self, or is he actually taking the royal piss out of everyone.

The lack of proper direction and knowledge renders any seemingly noble intentions meaningless. This thread encapsulates the current SNAFU, if nothing else. Unpopular idea pushed by someone incapable of defending it from counterpoints seemingly gains the admin's attention/favor. With no clarification of what is to be about the previous suggestion, on top of that (and as Valk mentioned earlier). Then it's wondered why people can't be bothered to contribute.

Except the beige he's testing out is neutered in accordance to his priorities/considerations, which haven't changed. Expecting him not only to return to old beige (which he clearly doesn't intend to do), but implement one which, for his purposes/considerations, is even worse, is unrealistic. Before beige got removed, they could escape if they put the effort into it anyways. As for flaws, just to cite a few: People intentionally UF'ing (mind you, this was already happening to some degree last war), so to still kill units whilst not grinding resistance (so to deny beige to their foe). Thing is, there'd be a much higher incentive to do this now, since being just one res below the other guy would deny him the beige. Given that the infra/loot damage would also be fractioned, rather than the full value, taking this beige wouldn't be as punitive either. And no, the trade ratios wouldn't be that much of an issue with air, due to how dogfights work. It wouldn't just be a matter of people not wanting to win their wars (which seemingly bothers Alex); people wouldn't even want to win those individual battles. This is also a further nerf to aggression. Being the aggressor has it's own set of costs, which include political ones, if not properly justified (it doesn't matter that you're tired about that "old song and dance"; other people aren't, and it's a relevant matter for politics, and it'll continue to be a relevant matter for politics). It also takes genuine effort to put together a good offensive. These costs and efforts should come with a set of tangible benefits of their own. One of them being conventional control. This benefit has already been nerfed with the casualties reduction. Given that it's already harder to bring these nations down, they shouldn't just be able to rebound effortlessly. Else, there would be no incentive to be the aggressor, which would lead to no one wanting to be such, and with it, a staler (read:boring) game. And no, there isn't much disruption that'll happen, given that you'd be able to hold beige for 16 days. This is guaranteed two war cycles if all wars expires; else, it'd be more. It's simply too long for such to be possible, as you'd be all but guaranteed to get more than enough beige time for a comeback. I'd also suggest you actually try to address the point raised by them, rather than just smugly reduce them to one or two talking points and discard out of hand. You're the one trying to argue for this mechanic; make a proper defence for it.

If anything, it'd be worse in that regard. But yes, I fail to see the point in making a suggestion which so heavily runs counter to Alex's stance on the matter. Unless if Alex changed his mind (unlikely), it's just going to be rejected. That's nothing to say of the flaws already listed, and that others may list as well.

And again, if the concern is moderation, just rewrite the rule so that it only concerns itself with allies slot filling. What's defined as an ally? Direct ties and whoever is in their temporary coalition. It'd be easier to change (especially given the bugs that invariably follow an update), it'd net the same end result, and it'd avoid having another rather poor update be pushed out. It simply makes more sense as a whole.

It's evident they do not.

Again, I don't see what is preventing Alex from simply rewriting the rules to acknowledge the reality at hand. It'd be preferable as it's easier to modify that than it is to rewrite the code and have it not be bugged for weeks on end (on top of the initial time invested which is much more substantial).

Just have slot filling be limited to keeping allies from filling each other's slots, and call it a day. Maybe make an exception for some really obvious cases (example, guy in an AA at war declares on some people not at war, who would have the incentive to beige him ASAP to get rid of him) if you'd like. It definitely doesn't warrant making it nigh-impossible for someone downed to rebound.

He mentioned in Thalmor's Radio Show that all he gets from this, is being able to list it on his CV.

Meh. It's a largely superfluous (if not detrimental, mainly for raiders) mechanic, as implemented in that set of test changes (assuming that glaring flaw does get patched).

Whilst I appreciate the intent, this is worthless. For the simple reason that people can have one of the D slots rush a beige, and the other two peace out before that beige time ends (while pinning in between), thus resulting in no meaningful beige time for the defender. This doesn't even include the other problems present (no beige for off wars, 5 days of beige not actually being enough to rebuild to max [due to staggering], among other things).

Oh, he's using the community alright. Albeit just the unpaid labor and a middleman to take the heat for him. Understatement of the month. I mean; as was said above, it's getting implemented regardless. The reason being that Alex has an explicit, vested interest in *not* having a beige-like mechanic (because he cbf to properly moderate or hire someone to do it for him), so he's going to pick the more flawed, untested alternative to it simply due to that. And yes, it's unsurprising that people likewise cbf to provide more feedback when the heaps of pre-existing ones were rejected out of hand (due to the aforementioned interest, among over things). Especially in the manner in which it happened.

The latter, for the simple reason that he's also getting paid whilst behaving in this manner.

Tbh, adjusting it for naval is warranted, as atm there's no incentive to use ships to remove ships due to their pathetic killing power, alongside them guzzling through gas/muns and losing you ships in the process (it's true that air results you in losing air, but at good enough odds you also kill more/similar amounts of planes while killing ships, and planes are cheaper to boot alongside doing a better job at killing said ships).

Alex can grow a spine and come propose these himself, instead of cowering behind you.

There's no point in assuming a non-debuffed variant, as this mechanic is being bundled with the removal of offensive slots. One wouldn't go without the other, and as such, both are discussed in tandem. But yes, make the debuff too weak, and it can turn out to be overpowered (especially beyond the initial blitz, given that blitzes often are high traffic peaks which lead to a slow response, and therefore have led to people even missing buys or a second declare in the past). Which is why, alongside the entire reason for Alex making the casualty changes being to avoid nations dying instantly, I think that he'd go ham with it, and therefore cripple offensive. I also don't think that a person who just knee jerk removed an essential mechanic is capable of of the fine tuning required for this sort of debuff to hit the proper sweetspot it'd require.

And you would attrition yourself to death, simply because you'd be far depleted even by like the 6th guy. Not to mention, this would discourage declaring upwards, as you would not only have to deal with a larger military than you own, but also a negative modifier to add on top of it. Aggression is what moves things around; discouraging it leads to stagnation and a boring game.

All beige is probably easier to re-code (which let's be honest, is a valid concern given the bugs from the last update). Also, I'd assume that if a building is destroyed, the amount of units which die from both polls would be proportional (say, if you have a third of your airforce deployed, and two thirds in reserve, 10 of the reserve planes would die, while 5 of your front line ones would die).

They'll just get defeated and re-slotted. One thing contributing to such tankiness was exactly beige deterring people from further action, which would give some respite to those nations to partially rebuild. But obviously that's gone without beige. Your actual thinking is that you fricked up a moderation decision because you were too lazy to properly look into it the first time around, and are too prideful to admit that you fricked up. So you're killing an essential mechanic due to your pathetic vanity.

ITT: "I'm too lazy/incompetent to properly moderate (and too cheap to hire someone else to do the job for me), so I'm knee jerk removing a fundamental war mechanic without bringing an alternative replacement in it's stead.".

Plus review bombing and falsely accusing the admin of protecting a ring of pedophiles, fascists etc in an effort to directly damage the game itself, once they couldn't "win" it. But yes. "Befehl ist befehl" doesn't fly at that point.

I never said it wasn't a thing. I said that changes like these would make that the go-to strategy. And why that would be a bad idea. The latter is counter intuitive yes, but there's no better alternative if we're to be frank. Changing it would either require removing beige so to incentivize defeating foes, which leads to a far worse situation (nigh impossibility to rebound), which would be a case of the cure being worse than the disease; the alternative is some convoluted system (such as the one where winning led to having a higher army cap but lower recruitment rate, and vice versa), which I don't trust Alex to be able to implement without inadvertently adding a ton of bugs, and which I don't trust him to know how to tweak properly (especially if the last update is anything to go by). Your proposal about nukes is less so a step in the right direction (which it isn't, due to reasons I elaborated in two different posts, and you largely ignored), and more so going from 0 to 100. No. They'd make for a better strategy than conventional because they'd be able to inflict far more damage (and more importantly, damage which can't be inflicted by them [that being disabling cities]) than conventional military would be able to, and would therefore make the latter obsolete. It'd require an absurd increase in the cost of the nukes for it to keep them from being mass utilized. As for the argument that knocking out cities would drop them to hit smaller people; for one thing, NRF would be a highly desirable project under such a context, and it'd lead to it being acquired a lot more throughout the tiers. Secondly, city count is irrelevant for the purposes of nuke turreting. Thirdly, if both sides are turreting, they'd be dragging each other down. As Hime elaborated, nukes have a valid role under the current meta. It's mainly a matter of people not realizing those other uses. Other than perhaps killing some extra improvements, they're in a fine position balance-wise, and don't really need any adjusting. Especially not to the extent you're suggesting.

After (or rather, during) the interview with Alex last Sunday.

Yea, no surprise you can't nuke a low infra city and walk away with a profit. Do you want to be able to naval 1000 infra with 300 ships and walk out with a positive too? All attacks have a threshold where if you dip below it, the economic damage you inflict upon a foe is lesser than what it cost you to do that attack in the first place. This isn't a bad thing (given proper balance, and not some stuff you see going on currently. E.G: Naval casualties). And if it were to be an issue (which it's not, for reasons I'll elaborate below), the sensible approach would be to simply reduce the cost of nukes, and not make them doomsday devices as OP suggested. It's also a good thing that they're a bit on the pricier end. For one thing, it makes it so that they don't completely render missiles obsolete, given that most people view them (and do indeed treat them) as a step up from missiles. Especially given that ID's are often built due to their inexpensiveness and good enough reliability at what they do. This is in contrast with VDS', which are substantially more expensive and less reliable at what they do, and thus aren't built as often as ID's. Secondly; yes, nukes (and to a lesser extent, missiles), should be more expensive to use relative to conventional attacks, in regards to value destroyed in contrast to resources spent. For one thing, conventional attacks require you to have said unit to inflict damage with, which is a higher upfront cost compared to that of one-off weapons. Secondly, that military often has to face off other military in order to do their attacks, incurring further losses on themselves, and mitigating the damage they do in turn. Missiles/Nukes have none of these considerations when you're using them. The only ones they have is whether the other guy has an ID or VDS, and whether the infra you're killing is valued more than the ordnance you're using. Given all the above (plus guaranteed improvement killing, and radiation for nukes, and selective improvement killing for missiles), it is a fair trade off that you have to consider whether using one is economically viable or not. Especially since, again, this is a consideration for all attacks. And as a final note regarding that, as it's worth mentioning; the threshold is relatively high at the moment due to the inflated nature of the current market. Usually, it'd be at least a couple hundred infra lower. That threshold is also not that big of a problem given the current situation, since a lot of people stacked infra higher than they otherwise would, due to the duration of the NAP. So it really balances itself out in that regard. I know exactly how and when nukes are used. To the point where I elaborated exactly on how and when to use them on internal guides (which I reckon is more than what 95% of the alliances out there write about them, which would be "don't use unless you're losing and want to shred some infra"). In fact, and just as an example, you can use nukes as a way to get rid of a would-be pinner, and allow yourself to use your beige time to build stuff (either conventional military, or nukes/missiles to turret more). I've myself used nukes for that exact purpose, and to do either or of the listed (usually both at the same time) several times last war. It wouldn't be done overnight. Obviously not. But wars aren't over overnight either. They go on for weeks, if not for a month or two. Which is ample enough time to get the volume necessary for what I mentioned. Never mind if you already have a stockpile built up prior to a war. And because I think you didn't actually realize it; that snippet you quoted was elaborating based on the the functionality OP suggested they should have, rather than the functionality they currently have. I wouldn't mind them killing more improvements, as was suggested above. But the focus of my text was why the OP's suggestion was a bad suggestion, rather than a comment on how to rebalance nukes. Resources are, in fact, finite; even for top 50 alliances. Furthermore, the overwhelming majority of those AA's don't tax their members 100/100 (which is what you seem to be alluding to) constantly (if at all), or necessarily even have a high tax rate to begin with. So those AA's are neither gathering the amount of revenue you seemingly think the do, nor do they have the amount of resources to sustain those PLUS all of the stuff that's been added. There's a reason why you, for example, don't see those AA's spamming Spy Satellites, Advanced/City Planning, or cities outright, in spite of the desirability of all of those.