Question for all Coalition leadership.

[Hodor]

10 hours ago, Cooper_ said:

snip

Cooper for prez. Goddamn boy. Hit the nail on the head.

Edited December 12, 2019 by Hodor

[Micchan]

I really feel like Roq just want someone to talk with and he noticed that being a terrible person leading the biggest alliance gives you a lot of replies to any obtuse contradictory paranoid bullshit you say

White peace now or no more replies for you

[Hodor]

9 hours ago, Roquentin said:

  snip

 

7 hours ago, Edward I said:

snip

My main takeaway here is that you entered to defend BK from a curbstomp that would've eliminated them as a competitor to a KETOG/CHAOS hegemony (which is unfounded, but I'll include anyways). That means you assume we intended to launch a war that was unlike any war before, where we fought well beyond what was necessary to cut them down to size, well beyond what could reasonably be forgiven, and absolutely incapacitate them. Like I said, this idea of total war was unprecedented in this game, so to assume we would pursue that route perhaps speaks to your motivations (and currently I think I am being proven correct).

The truth of the matter is, before your entry, this war was going to end in something pretty close to white peace for BK and Co. BK would not have been crippled. Maybe embarrassed, but we never would have even dreamed of driving them from the game or holding them under water indefinitely.

Edited December 12, 2019 by Hodor

[Leftbehind]

16 minutes ago, Edward I said:

If you think we're boring, that's fine. It's incumbent on you, not us, to make your own fun.

Only quoted this part because it's the only part that I care to point out how wrong you are and that thinking is part of the problem. 

Although you are correct that we create our own entertainment, it is the actions of the game leadership that effects the overall experience the most. When IQ decided to cuddle again it brought the game back into a stale place that groups such as Chaos and KETOGG wanted to move away from. To many players it was just more of the same nonsense that has been making this game dull. We don't have a choice to choose who we play with unlike in many other games so it is up to everyone to see more than what effects themselves. It is up to us all to make this game fun. 

[Tiberius]

48 minutes ago, Leftbehind said:

Only quoted this part because it's the only part that I care to point out how wrong you are and that thinking is part of the problem. 

Although you are correct that we create our own entertainment, it is the actions of the game leadership that effects the overall experience the most. When IQ decided to cuddle again it brought the game back into a stale place that groups such as Chaos and KETOGG wanted to move away from. To many players it was just more of the same nonsense that has been making this game dull. We don't have a choice to choose who we play with unlike in many other games so it is up to everyone to see more than what effects themselves. It is up to us all to make this game fun. 

Your play style being minispheres to remove major obstacles to being able to 2 on 1 beat down anyone you like. Gotcha.

[Pasky Darkfire]

4 minutes ago, Tiberius said:

Your play style being minispheres to remove major obstacles to being able to 2 on 1 beat down anyone you like. Gotcha.

This is a hilariously hypocritical statement by an NPO "member" But it's also bait. I believe the post called for actual discourse and not another circle-jerk of pointing fingers. You have plenty of other threads for that. Go back to them.  

[Edward I]

48 minutes ago, Hodor said:

My main takeaway here is that you entered to defend BK from a curbstomp that would've eliminated them as a competitor to a KETOG/CHAOS hegemony (which is unfounded, but I'll include anyways). That means you assume we intended to launch a war that was unlike any war before, where we fought well beyond what was necessary to cut them down to size, well beyond what could reasonably be forgiven, and absolutely incapacitate them. Like I said, this idea of total war was unprecedented in this game, so to assume we would pursue that route perhaps speaks to your motivations (and currently I think I am being proven correct).

The truth of the matter is, before your entry, this war was going to end in something pretty close to white peace for BK and Co. BK would not have been crippled. Maybe embarrassed, but we never would have even dreamed of driving them from the game or holding them under water indefinitely.

Perhaps I didn't make my point as well as I thought then. By "crippled" I meant two things: first that BK-sphere would be in no condition (or mind) to serve as a bulwark against potential future aggression against N$O by some or all of KERCHTOG in the nearer term, and second that BK-sphere might have collapsed entirely in the longer term. Alliances might have jumped ship to Farksphere or formed smaller "spheres" of their that were too weak or dependent to serve as much more than satellites in practice. (Whatever its intentions were, I think Rose fits the latter description pretty well.) You wouldn't have needed to wage a total war against BK-sphere to cause any of that to happen. It was a fragile grouping comprised in large part by fragile alliances.

Like I said earlier, this might not have mattered if the environment had been different. If KETOG and Chaos hadn't aligned and given the appearance that it was plausible for that alignment to rematerialize in the future, we might not have been particularly concerned. If KETOG and Chaos were weaker, we also might not have cared much. (Imagine a scenario in which Rose came along for a couple of KETOG's wars. We likely would have ridiculed Rose for being a de facto satellite of KETOG, but we wouldn't have cared much about it beyond whatever upper tier strength Rose added to KETOG.)

Maybe we misjudged the situation. My point isn't that we're absolutely certain we were right 100% of the time, but that even in hindsight our decisions made sense under the prevailing circumstances.

26 minutes ago, Leftbehind said:

Only quoted this part because it's the only part that I care to point out how wrong you are and that thinking is part of the problem. 

Although you are correct that we create our own entertainment, it is the actions of the game leadership that effects the overall experience the most. When IQ decided to cuddle again it brought the game back into a stale place that groups such as Chaos and KETOGG wanted to move away from. To many players it was just more of the same nonsense that has been making this game dull. We don't have a choice to choose who we play with unlike in many other games so it is up to everyone to see more than what effects themselves. It is up to us all to make this game fun. 

NPO is not "many players," and what Chaos and KETOG want is of little to no intrinsic importance to us. We'll work with them if it makes sense; otherwise they're on their own. They had their chance to make their FA designs into something we might have felt more invested in and chose not to. That's fine. Their aspirations and actions are their own and they have no obligation to please NPO.

But NPO doesn't have an obligation to please them either. We don't think things have become particularly stale or dull, and we definitely aren't willing to accommodate the whims of others if they come at the direct expense of our own goals. (See Roq's comments on the effects of short wars as an example.) If we were a micro, this probably wouldn't matter, but we're not. We're as much of a stakeholder in the game as anyone and, whether or not you agree with us, that has consequences.

"The problem," as you put it, isn't that NPO didn't agree with the views of "many players"; it's that the many players who tried to make minispheres a functional reality didn't do enough to ensure all the major actors were sufficiently included as stakeholders in the end design.

Just now, Pasky Darkfire said:

This is a hilariously hypocritical statement by an NPO "member" But it's also bait. I believe the post called for actual discourse and not another circle-jerk of pointing fingers. You have plenty of other threads for that. Go back to them.  

Why did you put "member" in scare quotes there? I believe the post called for actual discourse and not another circle-jerk of shallow attempts to delegitimize the community and culture of a major alliance. You have plenty of other threads for that. Go back to them.

[Hodor]

9 minutes ago, Edward I said:

Maybe we misjudged the situation. My point isn't that we're absolutely certain we were right 100% of the time, but that even in hindsight our decisions made sense under the prevailing circumstances.

This is what we've been trying to indicate. If I thought it would change your mind, I would log dump our channels to prove KETOG and CHAOS worked together for one reason and one reason only, because of solid intel of BKsphere's intentions.
 

Additionally,

I don't deny Roq's assessment that there was bad blood between us and BK. I also don't deny that we were constantly plotting, because every alliance is, and if you're not, your're FARK. The point is you can absolutely become paranoid in a game like this, because evidence will sooner or later emerge to prove your narrative, but you can't let that paranoia guide your every move. I'm sure it isn't fun,  and I'm sure we would all have a lot more fun if we just acknowledged the realities of the game. I know Roq has told me that at least in some part, NPO's entry was to provide some fun and break up the monotony for their membership. I've told him that if you could boil down our grievances to one word it would be optics. I would love it if NPO leaned on the "we were bored" CB, but that's not what happened, and, as Cooper said, the timing of it was particularly soul crushing to a movement that had so much potential and that NPO had at least somewhat signed on to.

[Kastor]

19 minutes ago, Edward I said:

NPO is not "many players," and what Chaos and KETOG want is of little to no intrinsic importance to us. We'll work with them if it makes sense; otherwise they're on their own. They had their chance to make their FA designs into something we might have felt more invested in and chose not to. That's fine. Their aspirations and actions are their own and they have no obligation to please NPO.

But NPO doesn't have an obligation to please them either. We don't think things have become particularly stale or dull, and we definitely aren't willing to accommodate the whims of others if they come at the direct expense of our own goals. (See Roq's comments on the effects of short wars as an example.) If we were a micro, this probably wouldn't matter, but we're not. We're as much of a stakeholder in the game as anyone and, whether or not you agree with us, that has consequences.

 

This wasn't the tone when Syndisphere was on top of the game destroying everyone. You literally said the exact opposite(NPO did). You wanted to make the game more "fun" I remember these arguments because I was on your side when you were all saying this.

[Buorhann]

30 minutes ago, Tiberius said:

Your play style being minispheres to remove major obstacles to being able to 2 on 1 beat down anyone you like. Gotcha.

Maybe don’t plot to have multiple groups hit and have it leak????

(Just FYI - Those 2 spheres were happily fighting each other before that)

Edited December 12, 2019 by Buorhann

[Prefontaine]

52 minutes ago, Tiberius said:

Your play style being minispheres to remove major obstacles to being able to 2 on 1 beat down anyone you like. Gotcha.

 

44 minutes ago, Pasky Darkfire said:

This is a hilariously hypocritical statement by an NPO "member" But it's also bait. I believe the post called for actual discourse and not another circle-jerk of pointing fingers. You have plenty of other threads for that. Go back to them.  

Can we please keep comments like these out of this thread? There's actually some decent discussion going on in here. As I said in the OP there are other threads to troll each other in.

[Pasky Darkfire]

I had a post that had actual questions to gather information, but people beat me too the punch with their responses.

So but,

4 minutes ago, Prefontaine said:

Can we please keep comments like these out of this thread? There's actually some decent discussion going on in here. As I said in the OP there are other threads to troll each other in.

Apologies. Not trying to troll him, really. I will keep my opinions of Tibers and his posts in another thread. 

[Sweeeeet Ronny D]

20 hours ago, Roquentin said:

When the last war was ongoing, people raised the question of what would happen after. Would TKR/Guardian/GOB/etc. be more angry at the ex-EMC who had hit them or at Inquisition? The question was answered pretty quickly. It would be Inquisition. They coalesced with their brethren who had fought them and their brethren who had sat out the war to plot against the Inquisition. Their battlecry had always been that Inquisition was seemingly overpowered. Even though steps were being taken to fulfill the split, it became an uneasy affair when the knowledge became known the more rambunctious half would be likely targeted regardless. Thus, a stipulation was asked for to the FA head of tS that if the rest of the game ganged up on them, we would have the ability to enter. We knew their condition was relatively fragile. They had been targeted about a year before and largely heckled for their decision to stick with IQ before that and it did have an impact on the economies of all the alliances on that side.

 

Well Roq if you are going to speak for Grumpy, please dont.  My hit list post Knightfall, was CoS, BK, tS.  In that order.  The reason that list looked like it did was because of how CoS and BK acted in the peace talks for that war (and at the time I wanted to see tS lose a war).   I expected to be hit, TKR sphere had it coming.  I didn't even have an issue losing that war.  That said those peace talks were such bullshit, that it was no longer in my eyes a, "shake hands, hey good war guys you got us" it was a you are specifically trying to stick it to me, so I guess we are actual enemies.  BK and CoS became a future target in my eyes specifically because of the peace talks.  I actually thought NPO was smart not to be in those talks because Thanos was such a dick in there, it put a giant ole target on his alliance post war.

Maybe I am old school, but I miss the days when you fight a war, and post war you look at the people you fought and say those guys did a good job, we should see about getting closer to them.   The toxicity now is so bad, not only do I not want to fight with many of you, I would be happier never having to talk to or deal with many of you ever again.

[Edward I]

4 minutes ago, Hodor said:

This is what we've been trying to indicate. If I thought it would change your mind, I would log dump our channels to prove KETOG and CHAOS worked together for one reason and one reason only, because of solid intel of BKsphere's intentions.
 

Additionally,

I don't deny Roq's assessment that there was bad blood between us and BK. I also don't deny that we were constantly plotting, because every alliance is, and if you're not, your're FARK. The point is you can absolutely become paranoid in a game like this, because evidence will sooner or later emerge to prove your narrative, but you can't let that paranoia guide your every move. I'm sure it isn't fun,  and I'm sure we would all have a lot more fun if we just acknowledged the realities of the game.  I know Roq has told me that at least in some part, NPO's entry was to provide some fun and break up the monotony for their membership. I've told him that if you could boil down our grievances to one word it would be optics. I would love it if NPO leaned on the "we were bored" CB, but that's not what happened, and, as Cooper said, the timing of it was particularly soul crushing to a movement that had so much potential and that NPO had at least somewhat signed on to.

I don't think it was paranoia. The simplest version of what happened, from our perspective, is that a bunch of people who'd historically been very comfortable dealing under the table via paperless treaties said they were done with all that after Knightfall. Then many of those people plotted to roll IQ for the umpteenth time in the immediate aftermath of the war, and many of them loudly declared that former-IQ hadn't done enough to dissolve itself and that it was still operant, by design or by accident. Then those people started a war with no apparent IC motivations and buddied up halfway through without, by outside appearance, much friction. So of course we were suspicious of the paperless-loving, IQ-opposing people who'd called us liars and game-breakers for years - sometimes hypocritically, and as recently as days before Surf's Up - who'd only had weeks to build a track record to the contrary and who already seemed to be reverting to form. Maybe that's not fair, but that's the environment in which we had to operate.

I'd probably be more sympathetic to the soul crushing bit if I'd seen more appreciation for N$O's (ill-fated) intention to act as a bulwark against collusion between power centers instead of the propagandistic spin that it had been a poison pill for the project from the start. To me that's always been an important bit of evidence pointing to the suspicion that minispheres with short wars, where BK and NPO hopefully fight each other, was in large part a repackaged version of the demands for IQ break up when its opponents realized they couldn't achieve a comprehensive military victory against it. I don't mean that as a grievance, just an example of a widespread tendency to attribute the flaws in the design to the actions of people who tried to compensate for them, or who were just caught up in them.

1 minute ago, Kastor said:

This wasn't the tone when Syndisphere was on top of the game destroying everyone. You literally said the exact opposite(NPO did). You wanted to make the game more "fun" I remember these arguments because I was on your side when you were all saying this.

Our complaints against Syndisphere were:

1) That there wasn't a strategic reason to hit us. Paracovenant imploded in mid to late 2016 and its remnants weren't a credible threat to Syndisphere. That left only two motivations to remain aligned against us with the vastly superior forces Syndisphere retained: some kind of grudge (which, at least in NPO's case, would almost certainly have had to be from another game since we'd only been around here for about six months) or the start of an "easy mode" mentality favoring short wars, low infra losses and easy victories.

2) That our preference for wars that weren't almost categorically curbstomps was in Syndisphere's interest as well.

In today's situation, what we're saying is definitely not the opposite of what we said back then. We're not on top of the game, at least not in the same way Syndisphere was, so it's not really a great comparison to begin with. The complaints about NPO now are categorically about a return to bipolarity rather than the near-unipolarity achieved by Syndisphere.

The wars that NPO has fought over the past few years also don't bear much resemblance to the wars we assumed we'd face for the foreseeable future then. IQ's wars were all exercises in asymmetric tier control, and the two major wars fought in the last year were both long, hard struggles to bring down upper tiers superior to those of NPO's coalitions. We've never swamped our opponents in all tiers in a matter of weeks, if not days, as Syndisphere did twice.

The last distinction between NPO in 2016 and its critics in 2019 is that we took it upon ourselves to do something about the situation rather than blaming our rivals for all our ills. We did as much as we could during Silent to make it clear that there would be a cost, both in material terms and in entertainment value, to casually fighting NPO whenever the urge struck. Coalition A is obviously dug in right now, but the notion that NPO has an obligation to accommodate their preferred mode of diplomacy is usually cited in reference to our reservations about minispheres and the actions we took earlier this year, which they claim destroyed minispheres.

[Prefonteen]

44 minutes ago, Edward I said:

I don't think it was paranoia. The simplest version of what happened, from our perspective, is that a bunch of people who'd historically been very comfortable dealing under the table via paperless treaties said they were done with all that after Knightfall. Then many of those people plotted to roll IQ for the umpteenth time in the immediate aftermath of the war, and many of them loudly declared that former-IQ hadn't done enough to dissolve itself and that it was still operant, by design or by accident. Then those people started a war with no apparent IC motivations and buddied up halfway through without, by outside appearance, much friction. So of course we were suspicious of the paperless-loving, IQ-opposing people who'd called us liars and game-breakers for years - sometimes hypocritically, and as recently as days before Surf's Up - who'd only had weeks to build a track record to the contrary and who already seemed to be reverting to form. Maybe that's not fair, but that's the environment in which we had to operate.

I'd probably be more sympathetic to the soul crushing bit if I'd seen more appreciation for N$O's (ill-fated) intention to act as a bulwark against collusion between power centers instead of the propagandistic spin that it had been a poison pill for the project from the start. To me that's always been an important bit of evidence pointing to the suspicion that minispheres with short wars, where BK and NPO hopefully fight each other, was in large part a repackaged version of the demands for IQ break up when its opponents realized they couldn't achieve a comprehensive military victory against it. I don't mean that as a grievance, just an example of a widespread tendency to attribute the flaws in the design to the actions of people who tried to compensate for them, or who were just caught up in them.

Our complaints against Syndisphere were:

1) That there wasn't a strategic reason to hit us. Paracovenant imploded in mid to late 2016 and its remnants weren't a credible threat to Syndisphere. That left only two motivations to remain aligned against us with the vastly superior forces Syndisphere retained: some kind of grudge (which, at least in NPO's case, would almost certainly have had to be from another game since we'd only been around here for about six months) or the start of an "easy mode" mentality favoring short wars, low infra losses and easy victories.

2) That our preference for wars that weren't almost categorically curbstomps was in Syndisphere's interest as well.

In today's situation, what we're saying is definitely not the opposite of what we said back then. We're not on top of the game, at least not in the same way Syndisphere was, so it's not really a great comparison to begin with. The complaints about NPO now are categorically about a return to bipolarity rather than the near-unipolarity achieved by Syndisphere.

The wars that NPO has fought over the past few years also don't bear much resemblance to the wars we assumed we'd face for the foreseeable future then. IQ's wars were all exercises in asymmetric tier control, and the two major wars fought in the last year were both long, hard struggles to bring down upper tiers superior to those of NPO's coalitions. We've never swamped our opponents in all tiers in a matter of weeks, if not days, as Syndisphere did twice.

The last distinction between NPO in 2016 and its critics in 2019 is that we took it upon ourselves to do something about the situation rather than blaming our rivals for all our ills. We did as much as we could during Silent to make it clear that there would be a cost, both in material terms and in entertainment value, to casually fighting NPO whenever the urge struck. Coalition A is obviously dug in right now, but the notion that NPO has an obligation to accommodate their preferred mode of diplomacy is usually cited in reference to our reservations about minispheres and the actions we took earlier this year, which they claim destroyed minispheres.

Hi. 168 day war saw t$ and alpha have a nasty breakup. Alpha was one of the prime upper tier alliances at the time. UPN, VE an Rose were major powers at the time still. NPO was a young but rising power ( due to your numbers).

To t$, the 3 preceeding wars had been:
- Proxy war, where it was pre-empted following Mensas hit on Vanguard

- Oktoberfest, where it was pre-empted after an agreement had been made to decom.

- 168 day war, where Rose had hit Mensa

Each war had seen more consolidation of old rivals. 168 had been the first war where covenant and paragon completely combined, albeit shoddily and late. The balance of power was tilting toward paracov numerically.

Direct ties were made between these alliances. t$ had let NPO be for the first months of its existence, and NPO sat in the middle, with pretty much every option possible.

But, NPO signed/upgraded:
- VE

- UPN

- Alpha

That signalled to us that you were inching ever closer to being directly opposed to us. You also used a quote of chimaera, (who was prominent in CN but inactive in PW and had no influence whatsoever in PW) out of context as a rallying cry on offsite boards to bring pacificans to PW in order to "combat a threat" of people who wanted you out of the game. t$ had no such inclination but as chim was one of ours and thus the frame implicated t$, we had little choice but to consider you hostile (due to the combination of these factors).

That was when you were hit. and when you were hit, you were given a relatively quick peace without punitive terms. There was a strategic reason and you are vastly understating the numerical advantage paracov retained (due to the addition of you and alpha). I recall planning the war with Manthrax, going over the numbers and saying "shit, we're fricked". Turned out not to be the case due to a strategic gambit of all-out focusing you and UPN while banking on certain alliances failing their blitz, but the numbers were there to beat us.

The very next war, I was out of the picture and thrax was far more conciliatory than I was. You took the initiative and hit us yourselves. The very next war boiled down to the IQ split and ToT.

[Charles Bolivar]

2 hours ago, Prefontaine said:

 

Can we please keep comments like these out of this thread? There's actually some decent discussion going on in here. As I said in the OP there are other threads to troll each other in.

Make it a rule that if your response isn't a wall of text or at least 3 paragraphs long, it should not be posted and/or be responded to ?

Edited December 12, 2019 by Charles the Tyrant

[Edward I]

24 minutes ago, Prefonteen said:

Snip

I was talking exclusively about the leadup to and aftermath of Silent (since I guess that wasn't obvious), and only about NPO's perceptions and criticism of Syndisphere. From where we were sitting, it was obvious that Silent was a desperate gambit and that Syndisphere's consolidation afterwards was unnecessary strategically. That's when our loudest criticism of Syndisphere happened and that's what Kastor seemed to be referencing when he said I was a hypocrite.

[Charles Bolivar]

2 hours ago, Edward I said:

 

Our complaints against Syndisphere were:

1) That there wasn't a strategic reason to hit us. Paracovenant imploded in mid to late 2016 and its remnants weren't a credible threat to Syndisphere. That left only two motivations to remain aligned against us with the vastly superior forces Syndisphere retained: some kind of grudge (which, at least in NPO's case, would almost certainly have had to be from another game since we'd only been around here for about six months) or the start of an "easy mode" mentality favoring short wars, low infra losses and easy victories.

 

 

I can help clear up this part since I was still pretty prominent in tS back then. Most of the original founders of tS do hail from an alliance which had historical issues in the other game with NPO. The context you are missing though is majority of tS founders were nations who had come here to escape the toxicity both in that other game and within MI6 since it was well known we had serious internal divisions of our own when it came to certain behaviour. So basically, most of us came here for a fresh start which is pretty apparent in that syndicate was formed as an opposite to MI6. I know this because between myself, Partisan and Cynic made sure of it when we initially founded the alliance with regards to its structure and ethos. It's also proven by the fact that a few of our well, more fundamentalist members were never granted any role in syndicate's gov.

Was there a grudge against NPO when the first members of NPO came over here? No, assuredly not. Was there a sense of concern and caution? Yes, I can confirm that and I don't think I'm being unreasonable when I say these concerns were justified given the toxicity of the relationship back in the other game. Infact, I believe it would be reasonable to presume NPO members at that time felt the same and that's perfectly understandable. I distinctly remember us sending a few people over to talk to the NPO members who had come over to help resolve any issues which might have come over from the other game but i cannot recall if these overtures were successful. I think they ultimately weren't.

The issues in my opinion which led to the the bad blood were the circumstances behind cynic's removal from government and departure from syndicate which became conflated with underlying tensions with NPO members since you were all in the same alliance with cynic after he left tS, Guerilla something , I can't recall. I distinctly remember us having to tell NPO members ( I keep saying NPO members but it's a bit of a misnomer because NPO wasn't even around then, more of a proto NPO) that our issues were with cynic's erratic behaviour and we had finally had enough. The other issue and I believe this was the major one was the relationship between Mensa and Vanguard which tS was dragged into. We all know how that ended up so I won't go into it other than that I opposed syndicate's support of Mensa and that my opposition was the start of a rift between myself and syndi which never fully healed. Old time syndi members along with Abbas can confirm this much.

For me personally and I believe I can speak for a lot of the older syndi members around back then, the major issue for us when it came to NPO was NPO's alignment with our traditional enemies in paracov. There used to be a phrase we said which went something like " signs with our enemies, talks like an enemy, calls us an enemy, must be an enemy" when it came to NPO. I'm not blaming NPO for aligning with paracov, in hindsight I can agree it was probably natural that NPO did so because neither of us could escape the underlying issues and concerns from the other world. But at the same time, I think to solely blame tS for these historic issues is an easy generalisation lacking much of the context when the truth is, both sides had a part to blame in not making a serious attempt to address the underlying fears and concerns at that moment in time.

It's old news now, but yeah, I thought I should clear that up for you.

 

Edited December 12, 2019 by Charles the Tyrant

[Hodor]

2 hours ago, Edward I said:

I don't think it was paranoia. The simplest version of what happened, from our perspective, is that a bunch of people who'd historically been very comfortable dealing under the table via paperless treaties said they were done with all that after Knightfall. Then many of those people plotted to roll IQ for the umpteenth time in the immediate aftermath of the war, and many of them loudly declared that former-IQ hadn't done enough to dissolve itself and that it was still operant, by design or by accident. Then those people started a war with no apparent IC motivations and buddied up halfway through without, by outside appearance, much friction. So of course we were suspicious of the paperless-loving, IQ-opposing people who'd called us liars and game-breakers for years - sometimes hypocritically, and as recently as days before Surf's Up - who'd only had weeks to build a track record to the contrary and who already seemed to be reverting to form. Maybe that's not fair, but that's the environment in which we had to operate.

I'd probably be more sympathetic to the soul crushing bit if I'd seen more appreciation for N$O's (ill-fated) intention to act as a bulwark against collusion between power centers instead of the propagandistic spin that it had been a poison pill for the project from the start. To me that's always been an important bit of evidence pointing to the suspicion that minispheres with short wars, where BK and NPO hopefully fight each other, was in large part a repackaged version of the demands for IQ break up when its opponents realized they couldn't achieve a comprehensive military victory against it. I don't mean that as a grievance, just an example of a widespread tendency to attribute the flaws in the design to the actions of people who tried to compensate for them, or who were just caught up in them.

I can see this point of view. The only comment I might make is that during this same time, diplomatic relations between all spheres (except BK because of Leo's general demeanor as hinted to by SRD) were relatively open. NPO had a partner in t$ who could navigate these fears having been a partner with many of the KETOG/CHAOS alliances in years past. Likewise, conversations were happening on many different and new channels given all the shake-ups in treaties. It was in this environment of relative uncertainty that we had a lot of interesting ideas floating and much less consideration was given to whether future partners were enemies past. 

Additionally, t$ didn't even know that N$O was a bulwark. That agreement was made between Kayser and Roq. If that were public knowledge, I'm inclined to think that would've been a factor in our actions. For instance, had we known that a bid for BK hegemony via an aggressive war on CHAOS would've been countered by an N$O entry against BK, well that would've been amazing.

 

All that being said, I do genuinely see where you're coming from with this, and if one sorts through the paranoid vocabulary of Roq, one can see a solid line of thinking there as well. I honestly don't think I've had much of a problem with NPO (Keshav has his moments) though, so I think even a fruitful discussion here between us would do little to wash away the bad taste of Leo in anyone's mouth.

 

EDIT: GrAmMaR

Edited December 12, 2019 by Hodor

[Astryl]

On 12/11/2019 at 3:05 PM, Prefonteen said:

3. The combination of the import of an NPO-centric GPWC and the invasion of a war-centric GOONS has not just impacted the battlefield;

it has shifted the balance of power within coalition B to a degree where the succesful occupation of coal A alliances is no longer contingent on the more moderate fringes. This allows for the more radical elements within coalition B to force their objectives (which involve maximizing damage by delaying the war) without having to concern themselves with the fringes. Fringes in turn are pressured to follow for the ride for fear of retalliation (see: OWR/CTO).  Where normally war weariness among moderates would begin factoring in, forcing the conclusion of a war before total annihilation has been reached, this is mitigated.

Thank you for this amazing compliment.

 

You aren't a part of either coalition and will not be present in any form during any peace talks.

Edited December 12, 2019 by AppealDenied

[Edward I]

1 hour ago, Charles the Tyrant said:

Was there a grudge against NPO when the first members of NPO came over here? No, assuredly not. Was there a sense of concern and caution? Yes, I can confirm that and I don't think I'm being unreasonable when I say these concerns were justified given the toxicity of the relationship back in the other game. Infact, I believe it would be reasonable to presume NPO members at that time felt the same and that's perfectly understandable. I distinctly remember us sending a few people over to talk to the NPO members who had come over to help resolve any issues which might have come over from the other game but i cannot recall if these overtures were successful. I think they ultimately weren't.

Yeah. I don't think most of the rambunctious acrimony was NPO specifically in CN, at least not by then, but the OOC nonsense that came out of those wars was still pretty dumb. We were annoyed with it at the time too and tried not to bring it here.

1 hour ago, Charles the Tyrant said:

The issues in my opinion which led to the the bad blood were the circumstances behind cynic's removal from government and departure from syndicate which became conflated with underlying tensions with NPO members since you were all in the same alliance with cynic after he left tS, Guerilla something

Guerrilla Republik. I'd forgotten about that.

1 hour ago, Charles the Tyrant said:

For me personally and I believe I can speak for a lot of the older syndi members around back then, the major issue for us when it came to NPO was NPO's alignment with our traditional enemies in paracov. There used to be a phrase we said which went something like " signs with our enemies, talks like an enemy, calls us an enemy, must be an enemy" when it came to NPO. I'm not blaming NPO for aligning with paracov, in hindsight I can agree it was probably natural that NPO did so because neither of us could escape the underlying issues and concerns from the other world. But at the same time, I think to solely blame tS for these historic issues is an easy generalisation lacking much of the context when the truth is, both sides had a part to blame in not making a serious attempt to address the underlying fears and concerns at that moment in time.

It's old news now, but yeah, I thought I should clear that up for you.

Again, I was only talking about the weeks/months surrounding Silent. Early 2016 was a bit of a clusterf*ck and no one alliance can be blamed for (credited with?) all of it.

[Prefonteen]

2 hours ago, AppealDenied said:

Thank you for this amazing compliment.

 

You aren't a part of either coalition and will not be present in any form during any peace talks.

It was a an observation, genuinely no negative connotation intended.

[ComradeMilton]

On 12/11/2019 at 2:48 PM, Harry Flashman said:

If the governments won’t walk away from the war, perhaps alliance members should walk away from the governments.  It’s all just a bit embarrassing now.

They've been free to do so all this time.  It hasn't really been a noticeable thing.

20 hours ago, Charles the Tyrant said:

You won,  now it's time to end this charade.

Waiting on Coalition A.

12 hours ago, James II said:

In regards to deletions in disbandment discussions within IQ vs other groups is, Roq, TheNG, Under, and a number of other coalition leaders, discussed deletions and disbandment as a pre-requisite for peace as opposed to people saying "I hope they delete." I don't think in any of the previous wars it was discussed as a pre-requisite to begin a peace process.

Having brainstorming sessions is hardly committal or decisive. "Hope to delete" is not "Have to delete."  It's not a prerequisite to peace.  You surrender, form your negotiation team, and negotiate with our team on the peace server in Discord term-by-term, each negotiated on its own merits and then opening the next term.  This has been the format Coalition B will accept since before Partisan decided to have this meaningless and unproductive pause by trying to do it publicly.

[Charles Bolivar]

1 hour ago, ComradeMilton said:

They've been free to do so all this time.  It hasn't really been a noticeable thing.

Waiting on Coalition A.

Having brainstorming sessions is hardly committal or decisive. "Hope to delete" is not "Have to delete."  It's not a prerequisite to peace.  You surrender, form your negotiation team, and negotiate with our team on the peace server in Discord term-by-term, each negotiated on its own merits and then opening the next term.  This has been the format Coalition B will accept since before Partisan decided to have this meaningless and unproductive pause by trying to do it publicly.

Can you take this sort of post elsewhere please?

Thank you.

[Prefonteen]

1 hour ago, ComradeMilton said:

They've been free to do so all this time.  It hasn't really been a noticeable thing.

Waiting on Coalition A.

Having brainstorming sessions is hardly committal or decisive. "Hope to delete" is not "Have to delete."  It's not a prerequisite to peace.  You surrender, form your negotiation team, and negotiate with our team on the peace server in Discord term-by-term, each negotiated on its own merits and then opening the next term.  This has been the format Coalition B will accept since before Partisan decided to have this meaningless and unproductive pause by trying to do it publicly.

Go away.