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How long will this war go on for?


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1 hour ago, Ripper said:

why should the rest of the world believe you! You have only words to back this up. No actions.

You had one chance to prove that IQ really didn't exist and just blew it in this war. Maybe next time!

See, I can play your game too. Look at some nice "arguements". Please try to address them:
> IQ never split because NPO has always been talking positively about BK.
> NPO has worked in the past a lot of times with BK, so it's improbable they cut ties from one day to another.
> NPO signing t$ was just a way to further make "mid"-tier a safe place and for mid-tier alliances to not fight each other, thus establishing even greater mid-tier domination.

It's super easy to talk about hypothetical scenarios. And I can throw some logs in between if you want.

What a load of nonsense. I don't have to prove it to you IQ does or does not exist by having BK disbanded/sat on and completely neutered by your set of alliances for your pleasure. I see your attempts of twisting Roq's arguments here, so let me answer a few of your statements,

1) We ended our communications with CoS, because I honestly felt you were pushing an IQ split as your entire agenda of joining the war and felt entitled to be a part of deal, that was muddied at the moment. The interactions from the group DM's was pretty much you'd have us split but you're playing another game/being duplicitous since this split and the narratives you were pushing of a short 2month protection clause made us wonder if you had other stuff planned and if it's worth working with you. We didn't trust you, Kayser didn't trust you, we decided to cut communications and move on to a private DM excluding you. What is it that happened between 28/01 and 01/02? Not much, just the belief you weren't being truthful and that's how our interactions went with you. 

 

2) CoS also telling folks that anything with NPO could be short-term because we were too OP and other such interactions pointed to a general direction and we weren't interested in keeping you involved anywhere near our future FA given the fact that the information around was you were in it for you and CoS (which is fine) and those interests have nothing to do with ours, and possibly even were a threat for us. We continued with our discussions with tS nevertheless, given that it was quite intense over weeks to arrive at a mutual agreement which did not involve a hark back to "we were promised this! now do this!" rhetoric we originally got from you. 

 

3) 

1 hour ago, Ripper said:

You stopped working with me 2 months before the formation of Chaos. So, stop lying and saying that you didn't want to work with me on February because I would form Chaos on April. This is the third post you repeat yourself like this with a statement that makes zero sense. Unless you really are a prophet.

As I said, you didn't want to work with me, even in a short-term arrangement (although you were more than happy to do so pre-war). Thus, I was free to do whatever I wanted after February, with you having cut all communications.

This is the part of your argument that annoys me the most. Your interactions with us, led us to believe you were working on different projects (fine enough), but that meant that we didn't trust you and stopped working with you in February. We did believe you would most likely sign TKR post war, and that's something even Kayser mentioned was very likely, or go back to the old paperless agreements with TKR. That was our educated guess and its because of the lack of trust as I've stated in 1 and 2, we stopped working with you. Doesn't need to mean Roq's a prophet, but I love the hark to he's "crazy" narrative coming from your side, but it was an educated guess made by multiple people and hence why it was agreed to drop CoS from our discussions. 

The rest of your post, I'll leave for Roq to counter :)  

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11 hours ago, Cooper_ said:

It's not fair to include Nova, a protectorate, and then disregard the multitude of protectorates T$ has (CoA, Aurora, Typhon) and your smaller allies, ODN and USN.  TKR had to cut too as a precondition upon entering chaos.  

The formation of the bloc itself was against consolidation as each alliance would be allied to each other and have one external MDP to an untied alliance.  For its existence, SK and soup have not even used this option.  Also, a defining quality of the creation of chaos was that it was inherently risky.  You had alliances who had really been in contact with a diverse set of enemies and only a medium-sized bloc.  This in contrast to N$O where NPO maintained de facto relations with the largest bloc and could easily crush an attack by any other bloc due to sheer size.  I'd argue that a reason that we got to this point, war and all, is because not just NPO but many alliances refused to take risks and put themselves in new and potentially dangerous situations.  Unfortunately, multipolarity requires us all to take risks and not be protected through underhand relations or the blob, and maybe there is some blame to go around with chaos and KETOG too that we can discuss but at the moment the problem with consolidation can not be pinned on chaos.

Also, yeah we could talk about distributions all day, but averages are usually a good point to start that conversation statistically speaking.  I agree that CoS (high 20s avg city) and SK (mid 20s avg city) are upper tier, but post-KF TKR lost most of its upper tier and besides few exceptions, benfro and yir (who are literally the only two whales that sit offshore and account for only about 60 cities or a drop in the bucket of the bloc) are tiered in the 18-25 range.  TKR isn't low on its average because of just new members but because its truly a mid-tier alliance after losing a lot of members after knightfall.  Soup, on the other hand, is a lower and mid-tier alliance.  Put together, that makes chaos two upper tier alliances and two mid-tier alliances.  That seems somewhat reasonable and unconsolidated especially when due to your strategy (i'm not blaming you for this) whichever bloc NPO is in has nearly a third of that tier controlled by a single alliance.

I wouldn't have to include Nova. There's Valinor which was added and adds upper tier like Oberstein that wouldn't be counted.  Soup had people who were closer to 18/20 before the recent split. They weren't as recruitment heavy at the time and it was still reliant on them taking people from hobo express.

Some of the upper tier you count lost were only lost once Surf's Up Happened. Several 20-27s seem to have not checked in since then. 

7 hours ago, Ripper said:

 

hahahaha! Ok, ok, sorry for making you mad. I hadn't realized your entire politics and war decisions were based on how people treat TKR. An obsession indeed. At least it is clear now.

In any case, with that last statement you make:
1. Either you say you are not planning to fight anyone else except for TKR, so you will never work with people that have "positive relations with them"...
2. or you are stating you will never work with an alliance that has positive relations with alliances that you may fight in the future (which is anyone but BK/Polaris?)...

I see. Maybe that's why you cannot work with anyone, as you complain, no? The filters you got there are... quite strict.

I didn't say that. I said the timing was suspect coupled with the intra-coalition antagonism.

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You are right, it wasn't Malal. The first mentions in the coalition channel about a PoW where from...

FwqshJz.jpg

Oh, Thanos and Keshav. Totally not IQ. :P I hope I don't have to elaborate on this?

You can also see Revan's statement about "closing the gap between ourselves and TKR" specifically. As I said, TKR is your obsession, not mine. My "obsession" would be the whales, most of which were hardly in TKR.

So you just named who I was actually referring to and he wasn't IQ. You pushed back on the concern he raised.  You didn't say anything about getting whales, just that it wasn't your concern to close a gap. Before and during the war, Radoje and  Mitsuru  bragged about how rich they were and how the war wouldn't matter and that we had accomplished nothing whatsoever. See the problem here? 

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So, let me get this straight and don't even think about dodging this one.

Are you implying that Chaos formed with TKR keeping its ties with Guardian and/or GOB or CoS having ties to Guardian/GOB? Because that's the only way I can see cancelling upper tier domination/protection.

Yes. It was something you were specifically called out on at the time. It was the one month protection and admittance of a de facto tie between TKR and TCW existing in the screenshots that leaked. Your revisionist history simply because your fake sphere experiment with TCW ended up blowing up in your face doesn't change what actually happened.

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I won't focus on the "doesn't count part", because I am speechless on that one. xD

It's wonderful how you contradict yourself though. Here you state that "there wasn't enough buy-in to steam roll mid-tier alliances". Yet, your whole rhetoric is about Chaos combining forces with KETOG to "steam roll" poor mid-tier alliances (the BK-blob in this case). And, on the other hand, you state that NPO had to intervene because the war was not balanced, and BK-blob had a huge disadvantage!

 

So, which is it, Roq? Was there enough buy-in? There wasn't? If Chaos/KETOG were working together from the beginning and were keeping the high-tier safe, why didn't they attack the BK-blob at full force before... you know... blowing each other's military up?

Okay, I'll explain it then. People didn't have the confidence to go head on without additional support. Then Surf's Up happened and both sides lost infra in the ranges they needed to engage in and it actually benefited them vs BK when they would have otherwise had people too far out of range. The screenshot magically appears at an interesting juncture and they turn around at a fast pace to hit  Covenant BK without having much to lose. They had much to lose  by doing it when there were considerable amounts of infrastructure to lose and  less people they could downdec on. So yes, they initially tried to preach being afraid of the numbers but once they had nothing to lose, they went for the people they didn't think highly of in terms of military capability and the people they attacked were not winning the war and were at a disadvantage by the stage we entered.

Hope this helps.

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It's not 1/18. It's 1/28. War officially ended 3 days later, with the other side having accepted most terms already earlier than that (and the result of the war being obvious even earlier than that).

I meant your approach was on the 18th. Hope that's clarified. It literally says 1/18

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You stopped working with me 2 months before the formation of Chaos. So, stop lying and saying that you didn't want to work with me on February because I would form Chaos on April. This is the third post you repeat yourself like this with a statement that makes zero sense. Unless you really are a prophet.

As I said, you didn't want to work with me, even in a short-term arrangement (although you were more than happy to do so pre-war). Thus, I was free to do whatever I wanted after February, with you having cut all communications.

Chaos was in discussions before it was posted. The general trajectory CoS was more than predictable with the dissolution of Terminus Est and the open hostility shown to other coalition members.  When your gov member  who has access to all of the discussions says he will not work with certain alliances in the coalition again, what do you think the conclusion is going to be? Like this is some serious revisionist history. Not to mention an alliance that was openly critical and hostile based on differences on tactics merged into CoS shortly afer.

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Roq... The only old boy with power in this war is you. I have engaged in politics and alliances for less than a year. Adrienne is a young leader too. BK has changed 2-3 leaders during the 3 years I've been playing. If the problem is really old boys...

... maybe you should retire and get some new blood take over and open up new paths that are not based on strange obsessions about specific alliances.

What are you smoking man? You are in a coalition with Buorhann, Keegoz, Memph, and SRD. I don't even have to mention all the 2nd-in-commands and people who have done FA on their behalf, including Manthrax who as shown in the screenshots was still doing FA. I don't even have to go into how he has used the connections he has to present a more favorable view of his alliance's intent in this war. It should be more than obvious to you. The whole thing where someone has to have the position of leader to wield FA influence is a lie frequently repeated by your side and frequently disproven by its actions. I've been clashing with most of the veteran leaders for the past 3 years, so I am not part of any "network". While I have longevity I do not have the personal connections they possess between each other.

The problem isn't the people themselves. It's that there will be a relationship asymmetry in a system with less treaty ties because they do  not need treaty ties to make things happen and they will not get criticized for on and off cooperation based on those connections when it is easier for those connections to come together.  For the most part even though I have worked with some of them in the past, more often than not those connections are used against my interests.

I already explained it has nothing to do with strange obsessions or do I just obsess about a bunch of different people? I'm the mastermind who made anyone who wasn't BK/Cov have negative dispositions to KETOG? I'm not allowed to dislike SK because they justified half-assing a war, denounced us as hopelessly incompetent, and attacked people who criticized for them it with a coalition that claimed IQ was too big? I can't be concerned about TKR when their gov had said the war would do nothing to them?

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Then... why did TEst/CoS start Knightfall, Roq? Why didn't we sign them to stay safe and dominate the upper tier forever!? I cannot even fathom how you believe other people think like this.

I know what Prefontaine's intentions were but I recall you were dismissive about even having a defensive arrangement post-war against people who might seek retribution in the upper tier.

I think you just saw it as a one time thing due to the issues you had with people in Grumpy and then you'd go back to business as usual.

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In any case, the hard truth for you is that there have been two wars that prove the conflict between upper tier alliances. Knightfall and the Chaos/KETOG war.

These are actions.

You can try to paint all of our leaders as evil plotters and talk about motives, relations, motivations, plans, you can look for and post logs all you want, you can talk about semantics, IFs, secret discussions, deals under the table, you can try to spin our declarations and analyse each and every word we use and paint it as you want, BUT...

but the hard truth for you is that these don't matter. Actions talk bigger than assumptions and conspiracy theories. And for our case, we have two wars to mention.

On the other hand...

why should the rest of the world believe you! You have only words to back this up. No actions.

You had one chance to prove that IQ really didn't exist and just blew it in this war. Maybe next time!

It doesn't really work given everyone from Knightfall is gone from your side that was involved except you.  The Chaos/KETOG war is a product of frustration and was not by design. 

The only way I could prove IQ doesn't exist is to let Cov and BK get rolled to dirt by your coalition with no buffer separating a composite group of alliances from a relatively small sphere that has not closely coordinated militarily in the past? lol. I acknowledged people had some gripes with them and I was patient for the week I let it at happen at great military expense. 

 

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See, I can play your game too. Look at some nice "arguements". Please try to address them:
> IQ never split because NPO has always been talking positively about BK.
> NPO has worked in the past a lot of times with BK, so it's improbable they cut ties from one day to another.
> NPO signing t$ was just a way to further make "mid"-tier a safe place and for mid-tier alliances to not fight each other, thus establishing even greater mid-tier domination.

It's super easy to talk about hypothetical scenarios. And I can throw some logs in between if you want.

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As such, I see no reason to further debate with you on whether Chaos/KETOG plotted, targeted you or whatever. We have actions and they are there. Your assumptions are cancelled by reality.

And I see no reason to further debate with you whether IQ broke or not, since I don't see you going for any actions. Our assumptions are not cancelled by reality.

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So, thanks for the debate. You could have used arguements that wouldn't be based on prophecies or time-travels, but still, it was entertaining and fun.

Good luck with your wars and relations. I wish you find new people that you can trust and work with. My apologies all my efforts failed on that.

 Just because I don't shit on them on here doesn't really mean I haven't been critical of some of the things BK has done. 

How would it make the mid tier a safe place if we are guaranteed to fight enough people where we will take damage in it while for the most part, the upper tier can do one or two rounds and then not have to fight?

So yeah, I agree we're back to square one and we should stop, but some of your arguments are hilariously wrong.

Edited by Roquentin
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19 minutes ago, Roquentin said:

The general trajectory CoS was more than predictable with the dissolution of Terminus Est and the open hostility shown to other coalition members.  When your gov member  who has access to all of the discussions says he will not work with certain alliances in the coalition again, what do you think the conclusion is going to be? Like this is some serious revisionist history. Not to mention an alliance that was openly critical and hostile based on differences on tactics merged into CoS shortly afer.

What are you smoking man? You are in a coalition with Buorhann, Keegoz, Memph, and SRD. I don't even have to mention all the 2nd-in-commands and people who have done FA on their behalf, including Manthrax who as shown in the screenshots was still doing FA. I don't even have to go into how he has used the connections he has to present a more favorable view of his alliance's intent in this war.

I'm just going to reply to the nonsense that specifically mentions me.

I already noted that I am not the FA head for my alliance. Your problems with CoS are borne of your own interactions with Ripper, sorry to say.

I did indeed say there were some people that I don't want to deal with. Me, personally. So I don't deal with them. I'm not in our coalition's channel currently, because there are people on our side of this war I prefer not to deal with as well. So that's a pregnant leap there, and one that would be easily dispelled if you have a mind to.

I will note again that you are citing old grudges. Most of these people are probably "biased" against you because of actually TRYING to deal with you though. Again, sorry dude, you're the common denominator there.

"I don't even have to go into how he has used the connections he has to present a more favorable view of his alliance's intent in this war. " This might actually be the funniest bit. This is literally you blaming me for countering the nonsense narratives you put out about me. Uhh yeah. Guilty. Burn me at the stake. If we're playing a political game, blaming me for this is tantamount to blaming me for playing/breathing. And actually, damn, if that's what you got on me after all this time, I must be a spiffy fella.

 

Anyway. If you want to move the conversation forward, actually, please start with the "intel" you had that showed my ally planned to attack you, because that's the most important thing, and that's what you keep dodging with these weird tangents.

 

Edited by Spaceman Thrax
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Slaughter the shits of the world. They poison the air you breathe.

 

~ William S. Burroughs

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8 hours ago, Ripper said:

 

hahahaha! Ok, ok, sorry for making you mad. I hadn't realized your entire politics and war decisions were based on how people treat TKR. An obsession indeed. At least it is clear now.

In any case, with that last statement you make:
1. Either you say you are not planning to fight anyone else except for TKR, so you will never work with people that have "positive relations with them"...
2. or you are stating you will never work with an alliance that has positive relations with alliances that you may fight in the future (which is anyone but BK/Polaris?)...

I see. Maybe that's why you cannot work with anyone, as you complain, no? The filters you got there are... quite strict.

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You are right, it wasn't Malal. The first mentions in the coalition channel about a PoW where from...

FwqshJz.jpg

Oh, Thanos and Keshav. Totally not IQ. :P I hope I don't have to elaborate on this?

You can also see Revan's statement about "closing the gap between ourselves and TKR" specifically. As I said, TKR is your obsession, not mine. My "obsession" would be the whales, most of which were hardly in TKR.

Hi Ripper!  I have missed talking to you, we should catch up sometime. :P  

Please refrain from bringing me into a thread I don't care about, thanks!

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19 hours ago, Shadowthrone said:

I wish we controlled a third of any tier, especially the mid, but thats categorically false. City averages do not point out the numbers in specific tiers, so unless you start specifically pointing out tier numbers, it's hard to believe that the ranges CoS/TKR/SK can effectively cover is somehow not consolidated. 

 

8 hours ago, Roquentin said:

I wouldn't have to include Nova. There's Valinor which was added and adds upper tier like Oberstein that wouldn't be counted.  Soup had people who were closer to 18/20 before the recent split. They weren't as recruitment heavy at the time and it was still reliant on them taking people from hobo express.

Some of the upper tier you count lost were only lost once Surf's Up Happened. Several 20-27s seem to have not checked in since then. 

https://imgur.com/a/ri4SnHr

Credit to @Theodosius for originally creating this graphic.  My number were a little less liberal with who was included in the bloc, but nonetheless you can see N$O out tiers Chaos in everything besides a marginal advantage for Chaos in the 27-33 and a tie in the 10-12 tier.  We can talk about individual nations in a bloc for years, but the facts are still facts.  And this was before Nova was lost and the attrition in Surf's Up as well as the soup stuff.  Also, as for mid-tier consolidation, I do admit to taking a quick glance, but just visually N$O controls about 1/3 of the 17-23 mid-tier range.

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On 8/12/2019 at 9:15 PM, Roquentin said:

I just don't remember actually wanting to keep GOB out. Some people thought it was viable but I didn't think it would be viable to keep them due to knowing their ties to TKR/Guardian. Given it was conveyed to me by others that SRD had personal issues, I would have never had an interest in avoiding conflict with GOB.

What the hell does that mean?

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2 hours ago, Cooper_ said:

This is the exact problem with NPO's vision. Realpolitik will only get you so far, and in order to function properly in a political game faith is necessary.  There is literally no way deals or diplomacy cannot happen without faith nor trust unless you plan on warring every single person who doesn't follow your wishes.

Where have we said we'd do that? We've been willing to deal and cooperate where trust exists, and I don't think we've indicated that we'd go to war with anyone who doesn't follow our "wishes". Just because NPO doesn't trust TKR or most of Chaos and KETOG doesn't mean that we're warmongers incapable of productive discourse.

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Our goal in chaos is very simple: the creation of chaos and new dynamics in Orbis.  This isn't because this strategy is the best thing for "winning" the game or the safest option, but because it helps the meta and the entire community (including ours and your own member bases) simply due to faith.  I think it often gets forgotten that we, as leaders and gov, are here not to here to play with our personal fancies and grudges but to represent in the best way possible the members who have supported us in these positions.  So I damn well will sit here no matter how many hypocrisies or logical loopholes you try to trap me in and "lecture" you on what's best for the game because I don't know about you, but that's what I'm here for, a challenging and fun political dynamic.  But I digress, NPO despite the rhetoric just hasn't done the same.  Trading one top 5 alliance for another and keeping most of your allies doesn't exactly qualify as taking a risk.  I salute you guys for attempting to change things up, which is good, but changing things doesn't necessarily equate with taking a risk.

NPO has been quite clear that it wasn't interested in fighting BK for the time being due to the potential for creating a mid-tier-focused fight and the fact that it didn't want to leave BK in the lurch after KF.  I'm not here to debate those reasons even if I disagree with them, but in order to maintain these propositions its effectually necessary for NPO to maintain a de facto NAP or even ODOAP with BK.  And, yes you could argue that this was shown indirectly through polaris' connections to the blobs, but that isn't the point here.  The problem is that you two are the two largest blocs and comprise the supposedly broken up IQ.  These statements and connections just revive history which we already know to be toxic to Orbis on top of again creating deadlock.  Listen, whether its intentional or not your AA's actions are largely responsible for threatening the return of the bipolar world.

Try to look in our shoes for a second.  If you had been fighting full EMC in knightfall and lost, then after EMC broke up post-KF the one remnant bloc (say Syndisphere) gets preempted and TKR-sphere then declares on the attackers.  You would think that EMC never broke up and be at arms with us even if we suppose that wasn't true.  When Ripper is saying that your actions speak louder than words, he's saying that we've been told all of one thing and yet what we see is something else.  It takes a lot of idealism to just pin that to cognitive dissonance.  In reality we're just very frustrated that the new dynamic and fun we're trying to see in Orbis is being taken down.

Why is bipolarity so bad? I'm not saying it leaves nothing to be desired, but I strongly disagree that it's the greatest evil as far as gameplay goes. NPO's government is after the same things you are. We too want to build a better world. But the world you seem to envision is not a better one.

Wars for their own sake are senseless. Wars justified solely by the inherent entertainment of blowing up infrastructure are senseless. Politics and diplomacy conducted with the primary aim of orchestrating such wars, though, are worse than senseless; they are corrosive. We understand your frustrations because we understand that much - although far from all - of the work that went into bringing about political fragmentation was motivated by a desire to make the game better. There is value in novelty and in change. However, novelty cannot come at the expense of actual politicking.

As you said, good alliance governments try to do right by their memberships. Part of that mandate is looking after the security of your alliance members. That doesn't mean shielding every last bit of their infra from harm, but it does mean keeping your alliance in a viable strategic position. Another part of that mandate is building a world in which your alliance and its members can thrive. NPO is unlikely to embrace a contrived politics that substitutes "fun" for real competition and which dismisses genuine disputes when they're incompatible with its embedded notion of "fun". We're especially unlikely to embrace that vision if it also includes the potential to degrade our strategic position so far that we can't work to build and maintain the world we believe our members deserve.

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Bipolarity is bad, as I told mhearl, because "what even is FA when there's only two sides?"

At that rate, what even is PR, Milcom, IA, or even Econ. It all becomes a monotonous grind to optimize to the maximum level to destroy a single opponent, eventually resulting in one side slowly over time curbing a greater and greater advantage, at which time somebody either pulls a syndicate and starts pulling the plugs or the game is just kinda... Dead. 

 

Tis my outlook on it, anyway. Amusing at first as a glorious arms race that quickly loses its luster.

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17 minutes ago, Akuryo said:

Bipolarity is bad, as I told mhearl, because "what even is FA when there's only two sides?"

At that rate, what even is PR, Milcom, IA, or even Econ. It all becomes a monotonous grind to optimize to the maximum level to destroy a single opponent, eventually resulting in one side slowly over time curbing a greater and greater advantage, at which time somebody either pulls a syndicate and starts pulling the plugs or the game is just kinda... Dead. 

 

Tis my outlook on it, anyway. Amusing at first as a glorious arms race that quickly loses its luster.

You seem to assume that bipolarity implies the two sides are static, even though that's not necessarily true, and isn't in this case. I'm not trying to trivialize the problems with it, just point out that the proposed cure is likely worse than the disease here.

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Grand coalitions and blocs are the reason the game stagnates. It classifies other alliances as allies instead of rivals and given the high pressure and political ramifications of war, it's very difficult to change sides. Hell, the two current coalitions basically do whatever they can to avoid anyone flipping to the point of discrediting them IC and OOC. The only way to create meaningful politics would be to move to make alliances more isolationist, however ironic that may be.

The issues with this mainly stem from newer alliances, that need help establishing themselves. The solution to which, would be the proliferation of designers/coders/skills/tutorials, rather than military protection. ? in an ideal world, we'd have alliances fighting one another at every level, with clear super powers in each tier, that are balanced against by temporary coalitions and only in the worse case scenario, adjacent tiers.

To establish this though you'd need all the current 'great powers' to come to a consensus on the rules of this arrangement. But you all despise each other too much to do that, ik not a single one of you will operate in good faith. That's the curse of the ruthless efficiency you've brought to this game and taken you to where you are now.

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2 minutes ago, Edward I said:

You seem to assume that bipolarity implies the two sides are static, even though that's not necessarily true, and isn't in this case. I'm not trying to trivialize the problems with it, just point out that the proposed cure is likely worse than the disease here.

No, I assume they are relatively static and that change occuring will be minor and not ultimately affect much of what I described.

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38 minutes ago, Leftbehind said:

Long time fan, first time quoter here.

I'm flattered. ?

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The reason why bipolarity is so bad is that it leads to stagnation as "weaker" leaders line up with the "bigger" bloc. This allows them safety without actually having to play the FA portion of the game. When the world divides into various blocs, with various interests, it forces alliances to play the grand game instead of piggie backing on the hard work of alliances like BK, NPO, TKR and so on. The idea around it is that with there being so many self interests at play that it would lead to more drama, intrigue and conflict. Not necessarily war for the sake of war but actual politics. This would be the fun most of us are talking about. Something that this game truly lacks since you can basically tell how each war will play out long before it actually kicks off. (Sides wise)

Isn't that what we have now, though, even after some fragmentation? BK-sphere is named after BK; N$O is named after NPO and t$; Chaos would almost certainly be called TKR-sphere if it wasn't a bloc with its own name. The only major grouping that isn't named after 1-2 focal alliances is KETOG.

More generally, why are semi-hierarchical relationships among allies a bad thing? Can they really be avoided? Even if you think the status quo represents multipolarity in name only, or else is insufficiently fragmented, why would "weaker" alliances necessarily choose foreign policies independent of "stronger" alliances? It seems to me that if they wanted dissociation from the BKs, NPOs, and TKRs of the world they'd have opted for it already.

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The other big problem I have with a bipolar world is that it places the whole game on a few key figures instead of allowing even small alliance leaders the opportunity to create their own path. Too much of this game is decided by a too few people which hurts the entertainment level the average member gets from it. Look how quiet the forums were before this war as evidence to support my claim.

Similarly to what I said above, why would fragmentation mean small alliance leaders would have this opportunity? What's to stop bigger, more powerful groups from effectively determining a small alliance's path by the consequences of their actions?

Perhaps more controversially, do small alliance leaders deserve this chance? There's a perennial argument against the existence of protectorates in the first place, for example, because many people think they add no value to the game as a whole. Small alliances that didn't need protection or grew out of it are different only by degrees. They still typically lack the resources and activity that larger, more established alliances have, and the exceptions here are mostly elite alliances made up experienced players that prove the rule. In many cases, these groups are vestiges or splinters of previously top tier alliances, meaning they had a head start creating group cohesion as well.

I'm not saying there shouldn't be new alliances that are given the chance to succeed. But what can we reasonably expect success to look like? If we want to socialize newer alliances or younger leaders into the main metagame, do they need to be somewhat subordinate to established alliances? If new alliances are to survive at all, do they need protectors? And if so, should established alliances expect a reliable future ally that shares FA goals in return for their protection?

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What strategic position do you guys really have in an endless sandbox where entertainment is created solely by the player base? Wars are not that devastating since all you lose is some time and cheap infra. All you are doing is enabling stagnation with this illusion of protection.

I hope I explained my opinion well enough. 

A strategic position isn't solely about protecting infrastructure, though, and multipolarity is the perfect example of this. Lots of people have an almost ideological investment in multipolarity. Wars should be evenly balanced; short; small rather than global; and fought between constantly-shifting coalitions in their minds. They claim to be - and to an extent, have been - willing to fight for this, even at the expense of some infrastructure. The more moralistic arguments made against NPO in particular say that our involvement in the war is wrong because it weakens the strategic position of the people who are in the right.

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5 hours ago, Edward I said:

Lots of people have an almost ideological investment in multipolarity. Wars should be evenly balanced; short; small rather than global; and fought between constantly-shifting coalitions in their minds. They claim to be - and to an extent, have been - willing to fight for this, even at the expense of some infrastructure. The more moralistic arguments made against NPO in particular say that our involvement in the war is wrong because it weakens the strategic position of the people who are in the right.

They have an ideological investment because minispheres are a way of isolating those without long term connections and staying on top. For example Rose would only dare go alone if they knew they were safe, which turned out to be the case. Just another tool to try and perpetuate the current ruling class. 

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9 minutes ago, Aragorn, son of Arathorn said:

They have an ideological investment because minispheres are a way of isolating those without long term connections and staying on top. For example Rose would only dare go alone if they knew they were safe, which turned out to be the case. Just another tool to try and perpetuate the current ruling class.

As someone who's only been here a few months and is learning a lot of history from all these drawn out posts. You being the leader of BK, one of the top 5 alliances since I've started playing, aren't you a member of this "ruling class"?

NPO also, from what I understand has never had a leader change and has been one of the top alliances for at least awhile. So isn't working with them also perpetuating a ruling class?

What constitutes the ruling class in your eyes? Whales? Older players? Do you have a definitive definition for what makes someone ruling class?

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18 minutes ago, Aragorn, son of Arathorn said:

They have an ideological investment because minispheres are a way of isolating those without long term connections and staying on top. For example Rose would only dare go alone if they knew they were safe, which turned out to be the case. Just another tool to try and perpetuate the current ruling class. 

In short NPO and BK are backpeddaling on minispheres now because it doesn't suit their realpolitik anymore. 

Edited by alyster
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7 hours ago, Edward I said:

Lots of people have an almost ideological investment in multipolarity. Wars should be evenly balanced; short; small rather than global; and fought between constantly-shifting coalitions in their minds. They claim to be - and to an extent, have been - willing to fight for this, even at the expense of some infrastructure. The more moralistic arguments made against NPO in particular say that our involvement in the war is wrong because it weakens the strategic position of the people who are in the right.

What Aragorn basically said tbh. There is an ideological acceptance of multipolarity since the only ones who can survive that are those who've the confidence of paperless/personal relationships to have the wars they want. 

1 hour ago, Pasky Darkfire said:

As someone who's only been here a few months and is learning a lot of history from all these drawn out posts. You being the leader of BK, one of the top 5 alliances since I've started playing, aren't you a member of this "ruling class"?

Here's what you've missed out, the NPO lost every war since its inception in 2016, till KF more or less. The ruling class Aragorn speaks about are those leaders from that era who seem to coincidentally have a penchant for coming together more often than not. Rose, especially when Abbas is around isn't really a "mini-sphere" but an extension of KETOGG, since they more or less always act in unison. CoS/TKR and their friendships around the same old crew. Roq pointed out the myriad of leaders stacked up, who've all worked together for many years and in comparison BK/NPO don't have such a pull, nor have we been given the opportunity to exist within such a scenario, given how we're always next on the chopping block thanks to the same folk pulling the same things over and over again. So here, the ruling class would be those who've ruled the politics of the game and have at past instituted a hegemony. 

2 hours ago, Pasky Darkfire said:

NPO also, from what I understand has never had a leader change and has been one of the top alliances for at least awhile. So isn't working with them also perpetuating a ruling class?

We have. Roquentin is the second Emperor of the Order. Nevertheless, we've had countless government changes and the majority of our high government, have been in their positions since the end of Knightfall. I mean, if Roq sticking around for years as a leader is a grouse, than basically the entirety of KETOGG's' leadership is a whole different beast. SRD's been heading GoB's FA since its inception and before that was gov in VE. Sketchy was the leader of Rose before becoming 2IC of TGH. Buorhann has been around in high gov spsots for years, Memph has been a leader of Guardian for years as well. So no, your argument fails to take into account an important facet of the FA architecture, that would inherently be that club of leaders, neither BK nor NPO has had a seat in, since the formation of IQ. 

It would be fair to say, that we have a great relationship with Aragorn but outside of that and possibly the NG/Malal/Polar, almost everyone else within Coalition B are working together for the first time  The only real shift within that network was attempting to work together with HS/tS who's leadership nominally has always been a part of the above mentioned group of leaders, until Partisan/Kayser nuked that and attempted something different, while HS cutting Guardian to try something different. In exchange we cut IQ and was attempting to fit three different groupings into one sphere, which isn't perpetuating the said class. 

2 hours ago, Pasky Darkfire said:

What constitutes the ruling class in your eyes? Whales? Older players? Do you have a definitive definition for what makes someone ruling class?

I think Roq put down a list of names earlier. But truly, I'd say the same faces who've been involved in perpetuating this minisphere mantra for a while. It works best for them since it's easy for them to coagulate into one sphere, given it suits them best. I mean a few former leaders from that school of FA, have pretty much told me, that the idea is to keep a navigable distance, not too far that relationships decay, but not too close for the optics of it. That's the basic argument we've fought against for years. If you have a relationship, sign a treaty and be done with it. 

The lack of trust/faith in the changing of their behaviour brings us to this specific point in time, where the NPO has little to no faith in their promises that this is a one war situation and hence brought us in. As Edward has mentioned, minispheres work only if there is a system of rules, trust and faith in the other main players to make it work. There is none, and here we are. 

2 hours ago, alyster said:

In short NPO and BK are backpeddaling on minispheres now because it doesn't suit their realpolitik anymore. 

I mean looking at your nation age, I'd give you the benefit of the doubt here. The NPO has always been skeptical of the minisphere game given the necessity for rules and a balance of sides. Which in essence means, two or more sides should never work together, unless there's complete trust among the remaining the non-actors that it is truly a one-time-thing. This has always been our problem with the idea, and was why Kayser/tS agreed to the notion of needing to act as a balance if that situation ever arose. It's really been discussed to death between us back in Feb, and our skepticism could be argued as self-fulfilling prophecy, but I mean that's how we read the situation. It's not a backpeddle, but a consistent criticism we've used against the idea over the years. 

I like how you throw around realpolitik as an idea to be disliked. TKR played realpolitik when they entered on the CB they did, so was their tie up with KETOGG. TKR's hit on NB last year, was realpolitik, so was their war on KETOGG. tS/NPO/BK/KETOGG/Rose almost every major player has acted to protect their interests, through armed action in a zero-sum fashion. There has never been a moral, ideological battle fought in this game. It has always come down to practicality. So arguing that any actions by any of the players in this game is solely realpolitik, fails when every action seen within the scope of this war has been realpolitik in nature. You state it was practical for KETOGG/Chaos to team up, that's literally the best case study for realpolitik in international relations. 

At the end of the day, we're all realpolitik actors. There exists no ideological or moral purity in terms of FA action within this game. The only alliance I'd say has any ideological purity in terms of FA here would be Fark, especially with kosmo refusing to work with anyone he believes enables white supremacist views. So to try and use realpolitik as some sort of insult, or narrative that NPO/BK solely are at fault for, is a misreading and misapplication of an external theory into the confines of a game that doesn't not have any other operative school of thought possible. The confines of Liberal IR theory does not really work within this game, especially given how the sole tools for liberalism, especially classical liberalism would be the Kantian triangle or portions of the same to exist. The fundamentals of almost every other IR theory fails within the confines of this game. 

I find it funny though that you keep dropping realpolitik as an insult, especially given your own alliance's track record. I'm yet to see TKR to launch an ideological or moral crusade defending an idea, rather than itself. This isn't throwing shade, but just pointing out the futility of trying to import a load term from OOC foreign policy, as an insult to a very simple FA architecture present in a video game, that does not have multiple layers/channels of operations like IRL. 

13 hours ago, Cooper_ said:

This is the exact problem with NPO's vision.  Realpolitik will only get you so far, and in order to function properly in a political game faith is necessary.  There is literally now way deals or diplomacy cannot happen without faith nor trust unless you plan on warring every single person who doesn't follow your wishes.   

Realpolitik as I've described above is the sole operating idea in this game, otherwise you would not be in this war, working with KETOGG. You realpolitik as much as anyone else in this game, so it is ideal to not try to import IRL FA theories into this simple enough game. Realpolitik also requires certain levels of trust, unless you're attempting to use Brezenziski or the like as the definition of realpolitik actors.

If you're trying to claim NPO's effectively trying to police the world, I'd say that would be false. We've never tried to the police word or lay standards for other alliances to follow or get hit. To try and tie specific narratives down with this term is quite hard to buy, given a complete lack of understanding of the basis of the terms itself. 

13 hours ago, Cooper_ said:

Our goal in chaos is very simple: the creation of chaos and new dynamics in Orbis.  This isn't because this strategy is the best thing for "winning" the game or the safest option, but because it helps the meta and the entire community (including ours and your own member bases) simply due to faith.  I think it often gets forgotten that we, as leaders and gov, are here not to here to play with our personal fancies and grudges but to represent in the best way possible the members who have supported us in these positions.  So I damn well will sit here no matter how many hypocrisies or logical loopholes you try to trap me in and "lecture" you on what's best for the game because I don't know about you, but that's what I'm here for, a challenging and fun political dynamic.  But I digress, NPO despite the rhetoric just hasn't done the same.  Trading one top 5 alliance for another and keeping most of your allies doesn't exactly qualify as taking a risk.  I salute you guys for attempting to change things up, which is good, but changing things doesn't necessarily equate with taking a risk.

You may have a goal, but it nevertheless involved you combining with other spheres at a more practical level. You see, throwing around heavily described/well defined FP terms, backfires when it is effectively applied to your actions. No one is here attempting to win the game. No one is here to even help the entire community. That's a simple retort that everyone simply has to buy, that falls short given your own actions and rhetoric. If bullying alliances with 1v1 wars and a threat of expansion if any of their allies step in, isn't making the game fun for the entire community, its making it fun for you. You are the sole community benefiting from such an action. The arrogance and temerity and patronizing tone to believe that is how everyone else should play is the problem here. No one have given you the right to decide what makes the game fun for everyone else, that's everyone else's job to do so. To find fun through their own goals and agency. By trying to claim that you have the sole manifest destiny to describe the meta/fun for the entire community, you have essentially argued for a TKR/Chaos based ideological hegemony, and that by your own definition is inherently problematic. 

It isn't forgotten what leaders represent. What you seem to presume, is that the leaders have some sort of overarching responsibility to everyone else, other than the communities they represent. By trying to shoehorn the idea of "grudges" and personal "fancies" as terrible, you are essentially robbing anyone else of the agency to decide to approach this game, their FA the way they believe is in best interests to their community, and then everyone else. I mean, I'm not arguing that folks should have a right to disband other alliances, so there are reasonable restrictions to individual agency under this norm I prefer to view Orbis as. So yes, go on lecture me on how I have to play the game you have decided is the best way to play, and I will continue telling you, I have no interest in jumping of the cliffedge, for your fun. Your position is inherently that of believing you are right and everyone else is wrong, and that to me is something far more insidious: giving you the right to decide how I or the NPO community at large should play this game. You don't own this game, and you sure as hell don't own the ideas that allow this game to function. So it'd be better if you'd come down from that fanciful ivory tower, and work with folks, and building consensus' regarding the community. Or else, feel free to continue perpetuating a hegemony of ideas, that I'll continue to disagree with :) 

Changing things up with historic enemies as everyone in Chaos so loves to argue is indeed taking a risk. tS/HS/NPO have been against one another for years, and it was a risk all three of us took to try to change things up and build any trust/faith. We did it for ourselves, to keep the game exciting for us, and albeit make things also interesting for everyone else. But please, you can't defend Chaos and making things interesting for yourselves, as some reason for joy and a standard mode of action for everyone else. There should never be a homogeneous hegemony of ideas, or else that'll end this game far faster than bi-polarity ever will. 

13 hours ago, Cooper_ said:

NPO has been quite clear that it wasn't interested in fighting BK for the time being due to the potential for creating a mid-tier-focused fight and the fact that it didn't want to leave BK in the lurch after KF.  I'm not here to debate those reasons even if I disagree with them, but in order to maintain these propositions its effectually necessary for NPO to maintain a de facto NAP or even ODOAP with BK.  And, yes you could argue that this was shown indirectly through polaris' connections to the blobs, but that isn't the point here.  The problem is that you two are the two largest blocs and comprise the supposedly broken up IQ.  These statements and connections just revive history which we already know to be toxic to Orbis on top of again creating deadlock.  Listen, whether its intentional or not your AA's actions are largely responsible for threatening the return of the bipolar world.  

NPO wasn't interested to help roll BK straight out of the block no. That does not mean we have an agreement signed with BK. An agreement requires the consent and acceptance of two parties. BK was not involved here, and we never stated the same to BK. If we did, you'd have an agreement, and a fair point. As there was none, there was nothing de-facto. 

What did exist, was a firm belief that two or more spheres combining is bad for us, and we reserve the right to take action against that. That was an agreement between tS and NPO. That is the only agreement in operation over here, and painting anything else as an agreement is false.  Polaris' connections to everyone else is their own. The NPO has no real say on whom they treaty, especially at an MD level, given we are now no more than OD allies. The fact is, and the reason this exists is actually quite simple. The OoO goes back a decade or more, and there's a historical tie across worlds that exist and as different Orders' we will always reserve the right to defend one another. This tie is mutually exclusive to the rest of our FA, and simply put, we are recognising that with paper, rather than keeping it "paperless". We recognise the existence of such a tie and ensure everyone knows the same, unlike folks who keep paperless agreements in place. So to use Polar as an example, showcases your ignorance of the Polaris-NPO relationship. It is a different relationship/partnership that doesn't' exist for political reasons. If we wanted to use the OD to enter this war though, we could have. We chose not to, which once again people seem to forget. 

I'm sorry what history was toxic to Orbis? Statements like that, deserve a proper explanation, and I'm awaiting yours! :D Listen, whether its intentional or not, your AA's actions are largely responsible for threatening the return of the bipolar world. 

13 hours ago, Cooper_ said:

Try to look in our shoes for a second.  If you had been fighting full EMC in knightfall and lost, then after EMC broke up post-KF the one remnant bloc (say Syndisphere) gets preempted and TKR-sphere then declares on the attackers.  You would think that EMC never broke up and be at arms with us even if we suppose that wasn't true.  When Ripper is saying that your actions speak louder than words, he's saying that we've been told all of one thing and yet what we see is something else.  It takes a lot of idealism to just pin that to cognitive dissonance.  In reality we're just very frustrated that the new dynamic and fun we're trying to see in Orbis is being taken down.

  Here's my problem with this. Actually I've just bolded the problematic idea underpinning the length of your post. I've explained why its problematic above and why I do not subscribe to the TKR school of standards and world FA outlook. Now secondly, our actions have been explained in detail. Your good faith engagement here, requires a good faith response and I've given one here, so that you see where the difference lies. We did not say one thing and do another.  There exists a far better narrative if I so wish to describe here, of the NPO doing exactly what it said it would do, protect it's interests and defend folks from multiple spheres getting the confidence of combining for hits. But that's a longer argument that I'll post a bit later. 

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3 hours ago, Aragorn, son of Arathorn said:

Just another tool to try and perpetuate the current ruling class. 

Glad you admit that we rule you and we own you. Who is the real slaaaaayve now? :v

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8 minutes ago, Shadowthrone said:

I mean looking at your nation age, I'd give you the benefit of the doubt here. The NPO has always been skeptical of the minisphere game given the necessity for rules and a balance of sides. Which in essence means, two or more sides should never work together, unless there's complete trust among the remaining the non-actors that it is truly a one-time-thing. This has always been our problem with the idea, and was why Kayser/tS agreed to the notion of needing to act as a balance if that situation ever arose. It's really been discussed to death between us back in Feb, and our skepticism could be argued as self-fulfilling prophecy, but I mean that's how we read the situation. It's not a backpeddle, but a consistent criticism we've used against the idea over the years. 

I like how you throw around realpolitik as an idea to be disliked. TKR played realpolitik when they entered on the CB they did, so was their tie up with KETOGG. TKR's hit on NB last year, was realpolitik, so was their war on KETOGG. tS/NPO/BK/KETOGG/Rose almost every major player has acted to protect their interests, through armed action in a zero-sum fashion. There has never been a moral, ideological battle fought in this game. It has always come down to practicality. So arguing that any actions by any of the players in this game is solely realpolitik, fails when every action seen within the scope of this war has been realpolitik in nature. You state it was practical for KETOGG/Chaos to team up, that's literally the best case study for realpolitik in international relations. 

At the end of the day, we're all realpolitik actors. There exists no ideological or moral purity in terms of FA action within this game. The only alliance I'd say has any ideological purity in terms of FA here would be Fark, especially with kosmo refusing to work with anyone he believes enables white supremacist views. So to try and use realpolitik as some sort of insult, or narrative that NPO/BK solely are at fault for, is a misreading and misapplication of an external theory into the confines of a game that doesn't not have any other operative school of thought possible. The confines of Liberal IR theory does not really work within this game, especially given how the sole tools for liberalism, especially classical liberalism would be the Kantian triangle or portions of the same to exist. The fundamentals of almost every other IR theory fails within the confines of this game. 

I find it funny though that you keep dropping realpolitik as an insult, especially given your own alliance's track record. I'm yet to see TKR to launch an ideological or moral crusade defending an idea, rather than itself. This isn't throwing shade, but just pointing out the futility of trying to import a load term from OOC foreign policy, as an insult to a very simple FA architecture present in a video game, that does not have multiple layers/channels of operations like IRL. 

I don't hate realpolitik. A day ago I told Roq to man up and admit NPO's BSing on OWF about their involvement and say the real reasons. For example I like how KETOG didn't bullshit anyone in Surf's Up. They just said it's war time now. But realpolitik was just shortest way to describe what's seems to be happening

"Yeah lets do minispehere."

"Yeah!"

..... 6 1/2 hours later ......

"Yeah we didn't feel like it. IQ's back on."

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5 minutes ago, Shadowthrone said:

-Snip-

I thank you for your input @Shadowthrone

@Aragorn, son of Arathorn, is this about how you feel it is or do you have anything to add, or your own explanation?

I originally quoted you and would like the BK take on this seeing as you said it. Not just the NPO take because they chose to speak up.

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