I think we all know what a tech deal is, and how it works and all that. However, I got thinking the other day, and does anyone actually know how tech dealing got started? Like, who actually first figured out that the system of tech deals would work so well? I'm curious, as who ever it was deserves a place in Planet Bob history, and I can't figure out how it was for the life of me.

Tech dealing wasn't really around when I was a new nation. We were just instructed to get enough tech for level 9 planes ASAP or get blown up.

I don't think we'll ever know. One of those mysteries of ancient times, like "who first harnessed fire"?

Interesting question. I'm not sure if they started before or after me now that I think about it. Ask bros or Jack.

This nonsense is because of my thread in our academy isn't it?! CURSE YOU NINTENDEREK FOR BEATING ME TO THE PUNCH OF ASKING CN WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR IT!

I hate you... I really do.

But I'd have no one else as my MoFA, that's for sure.

I believe it started with GATO, one of their members who is probably not ever around anymore come up with the idea one weekend and it spread like wild fire. As for who ever created the first tech department is lost in history, we could find the oldest if allainces compared their oldest tech dept stuff and saw which was oldest.

i hear gremlins invented Tech, period.

No that was the guy who bought 50 bajillion tech all at once back before there was a buying cap on single transactions for it.

I believe it was NSO that pioneered technology deals

Tech dealing was there when my nation was born over two years ago. Of course, back then, everyone used two middlemen who also got a cut of the earnings. Then one day, I think it was the diplomat from OBR, showed us the concept of 3x3's and we never looked back, aside from the occasional 1x1. Guess I'm just not old enough to know the true roots.

I have no idea but I do remember the 1st ZI, the creation of air forces and the creation of AA.

And the infamous LUEicide and the resulting !@#$fest caused by the NpO getting mad and dropping that nuke... So much infra gone.

But we did win.

Am I reading this wrong or do you mean back in the day you couldn't actually see who was in what alliance?

Cortath.

I believe it was Cortath who first came up with the concept, I had come up with something similar, and there was nothing else like it known to the NPO at the time. Cortath's idea was, I believe, the earliest tech corps or something very close to what we have now.

But for the NPO Cortath was first.

Maybe admin has like some huge record of aid transactions dating back to the beginning?

YO! BIG MAN! Any way to find the first aid transaction with "tech deal" in the reason?

Tech dealing has always been around for me but i do remember that in the distant past middlemen were used which in retrospect was rather silly.

Does anyone know when cortath was first doing tech deals? Can anyone cite tech dealing earlier. We could probably isolate it to the first alliance if we just start posting when we first started seeing tech deals. (Some one post something earlier than what is posted, until we can't go back any farther.)

It's not exactly a complicated concept to arrive at. I would be surprised if it hadn't been "invented" multiple times independently, like Improvement swapping and war chests.

^This

I've been around since Nov. '06 and remember the middleman concept but I have no clue how the 3x3 and similar concept was started.

Hate to speak for Admin here, but considering how many tech deals I've had with the reason as 'Financial assistance', that criterion may not be the best for searching.

We really can't know for certain (and it's likely that there are blurry lines between "I borrowed it from this alliance" and "we figured it out ourselves"). I would say that the FCC was doing 3x3's before a lot of people, from what I remember.

A+ would read again.

The GPA had a major role in popularising tech deals back in the day.
I remember that it was a certain GPA member whose name eludes me did a detailed analysis of tech deals that showed it was one of the most efficient ways of obtaining tech for large nation for various reasons.

As for who actually invented it, I do not know, but I suspect that it was more than one person.

I did.


You're welcome.

I remember that, wasn't it that El Bruce guy?

Gosh, I remember middle men!

What morons we were back then.

I would rather put my money on gamer42

This is correct. Admin intended for the teams to act as alliances - or so the story goes - meaning that there were no alliance functions in the game at all.

I can't remember when the AA field was implemented, but early on (pre GW1), the game was changed so that you could put a sanctioned alliance's acronym in your bio to be counted as an in game member.

As for tech deals, I know LUEN came up with the concept at one point, before the aid caps. Unfortunately, as with every innovative idea LUEN ever had, it didn't catch on and only a handful tried them out. Oh well.



Tech deals were around before aid reasons.

Indeed there was no AA drop down box previously so everyone put Alliance Affiliations in their bio. It was a hassle to monitor


I wouldn't be surprised if he did but I suspect the idea was independently invented in several alliances around the same time.


I can't get anything as far as cortath is concerned but I'll look through my old hard drive, and see if I can find any information about when it started coming about.


Yeah


I don't recall anything specifically being made for AAs in bios except maybe making bios searchable. There wasn't really any particular function for searching specifically for alliance members other than searching for "iron" or whatever. Unfortunately this would turn up a lot of false positives as well when people put in stuff that was similar to an AA (which was a bit of a problem for iron). This is also the reason why some nations (such as myself) have their alliance seniority the same as their age, even if they weren't necessarily in that alliance that entire time (although in my case I was in the alliance that whole time). When AAs were introduced, it defaulted to the nation age for everyone.

The old aid system was pretty cool, from memory you could send up to a third of your cash (or other goods). You could have sent out a billion if you had 3billion on hand. It was kind of annoying how it would only let you select from pre-determined amounts to send (ie you might have to send 1mill for reps but would have to send the closest at like 1.1mil or something).

I was personally doing tech deals back as far as Oct/Nov '06. Most of that tech was bought from Gramlins (Syz (his first nation) and Brutkreiger if I recall correctly). I'm not sure of the actual date when I started doing it, but I'm sure there were others before me.

I wasn't there, but I've heard stories about the Paradise that was CN. Long time ago (before Toto pissed off Admin, during the era when OBM was known as the Deuce) tech was a dollar each and you could sell it back to Admin for a dollar and 5 cents after 2 days. That was a long time ago, things were different then. Simpler. Kindlier everyone was getting rich and taking afternoons off. It was a long time ago, things were different then.

It was Tautology in GOONS.

I heard Admin invented them.

I should totally investigate with that time machine I stole from Bubbler Nation.

Don't think I forgot about that, Jack. I have an IOU signed in crayon!

I'm pretty sure Gramlins didn't invent it; they were just one of the first to really capitalize on it. (I remember doing tech deals with Steelrat who was also Gramlins at the time but they certainly weren't the only ones doing it)

I'm not sure on the exact date. We had some records lost very early on. I founded it in Spring 2007, with help from Sir Paul on some of the politics and Bakunin's Dream, and a guy from GOONS (name escapes me) on some numbers. We did tech deals then, in increments of 50, 100, and 150 tech. *chuckles* Tech was less important then. We used a "star" method for the 150 deals, and a "distributor"/middleman method for lesser amounts. I don't know of any other alliance who had a state-sponsored system of technology redistribution. I know that some encouraged people to do tech deals, but it was all free market, even if they provided guides and help to get started.

There was a vibrant debate, within the NPO, and the OWF as I recall, over the comparative benefits of free market and state-run tech distributions system. I think that's what kept a lot of alliances from going down the route we chose - people like the free market. The free market is more efficient, but you'll always have less volume, alliance-wide.

[edit to clarify]I'm talking about state-run tech systems. The NPO was doing tech deals within the free market long before I founded the Technology Corps, which as far as I know, as I said above, was the first state-run tech system.[/edit]

Do you know who actually came up with just the idea for a tech deal in general?

I know that I (being one of the top 5-10% nations since I was nuke capable) did a tech deal with Egore (the Lord of the VE who was like the #10 nation), though we did not call it that. I think it was something like 3m for 50 tech. I believe this was sometime in 2006, before Egore left office/WUT came about. It was far from institutionalized, however.

I guess that explains someone's medals

Frankly, beats me. Even in early 2007, it wasn't done a lot. Tech's benefits weren't really all that great, so there wasn't a lot of political impetus to spend time and capital on developing these types of ideas. Really, a common soldier needed it for planes, back then. It helped increase nuke attacks, but that's really it. No tech based wonders, no navies, no spies, etc., ec. When those things starting being phased in, nations realized they needed tech more and more. As demand increased, wise alliance leaders realized they needed to satisfy the demand.

But yeah, no idea who came up with the original idea. From a brief perusal of our forums, I can find tech deals as early as April 2006 by an old, old Comrade, Carintan. They were for laughably small amounts of tech, but still, it was tech deals. He called it "laundering" at the time. *chuckles*

In terms of the real "primordial" tech deals, I know we had a program called "Big Brother" back in 2006. Part of the program was mentoring, but the big brother would also aid the little brother money, tech and sometimes even soldiers. I know that I heard that sometimes, the big brother would send money, and the little brother would send tech, because *gasp* it was cheaper. I have no idea when that happened or with what frequency. We also had a kind of tech aiding program called the "Department of Tech" back in 2006, similar to what a Bank might do.

And for chuckles, I found a thread from April 2006, entitled with the thread topic "Is there any additional benefit to buying tech beyond the nuke-level of 10?"

You're reading it right. As I recall, Alliance Affiliation was merely listed in your nation bio. This is one reason why gain/loss records from the early days are so difficult to come by. People were also very excited when tanks were invented and bugs involving tanks were found.

One from a long time back was to deploy all of your tanks but one when attacking. After attacks, delete your one tank, and all of your deployed tanks would return home automatically.



I don't doubt that Cortath was instrumental in the creation of organized tech deals, but I think that they probably predate him.

One of the old-timer tech-dealers was Borman Empire (who had a legal mutli up through the Unjust War and used it in sometimes nefarious activities). Old time tech dealing was pretty exploitative with rates of exchange that are simply unheard of now.

Also, before tech became super-important and tech totals became inflated, some nations (The Eric and Land of Jesus come to mind) would voluntarily keep their tech at 0 and just build the hell out of their infra. These nations were tech-factories, and would ship out full slots (3M + 50 tech) to anyone in their alliance that they felt deserved it. When war rolled around, they could easily buy enough tech to make them competitive, and then give it all away again at the end of the war.

When I started in 2007, the main reason why people were buying tech was for NS inflation so they could make the top 5% and buy nukes.

That was before the tech cap came off. At the time, there was no military benefit to having a tech over 300. So most of the serious hardcore military alliances had piles of 300-tech nations with lots and lots of infra, so they could win their ground attacks. Nations only started teching up in order to get the 10% infrabill discount, and then to go nuclear.

Then admin cut the NS bonus from tech by 75%, and huge amounts of paper NS disappeared from the game. At the time people claimed that this was going to stop demand for tech buying, as people would switch from tech to infra to increase NS and get to the top 5%. However infra stayed expensive, and this didn't happen. And then admin took the cap off, and we now have the situation today where tech is INCREDIBLY in demand.

In the summer of 2007, the main free-market deals were all one-day middleman deals of one sort or another. These were getting replaced by 30-day 1x1 deals and 3x3 deals by the Unjust War. Grämlins were still buying tech on a 4x4 basis with a back-end bonus payment, but they were having a hard time finding sellers, and by the fall they were on 3x3 deals too.

i remember the NS bonus being cut, that was a pretty hilarious time.

I remember there being some form of tech dealing in Legion when i was there, but i wasn't very active at all back then so my memory of those days is hazy. It was mentioned somewhere int his thread that it was probably developed around the same time by several alliances independent of each other, which is probably what happened.

i still remember when a 200k harbor grant was a HUGE deal, now if someone sent 200k in aid, they would probably get laughed at for wasting an aid slot

In August 2007 as a new nation I got offered 30,000 for a one month trade.

At that point it had inflated though, in GPA small members were regularly given 1-3 million in war aid against rogues and ghosts.

Yeah, I remember that 600,000 acceptance gift with the aid chain. That was big money back then.

Golan 1st started the ODN Tech Purchase Program^TM in early August 2006.

Edit: Exact date it was opened to ODN members: August 12th 2006.

I remember that.

I also remember joining a GPA trade circle, asking for like $200,000 to buy a harbor, and was really grateful to someone who gave me $1 million instead and offered to pass the surplus on.

Some alliances still use that as a banking strategy.

Wasn't alliance seniority a much later development after AAs?
I joined late sept '06, and I believe that at that point AA's had been instituted, as I don't remember anything otherwise, but I do recall receiving a message stating to switch from using the acronym to the full name, so I believe I had joined within a couple of days of after the switch.
Someone should look up the introduction of AAs in the game update log.

On the topic of tech deals, money was worth so much more back then. Although, as I recall, the price i've always used is $1.5mil/50, with $200k or $300k for the middleman. Good times.
What does the history of the tech deals page on the wiki say?

The AA menu was added, I think, sometime shortly after GWI, because I recall GWI still had people cramming their bio full of "NPO Legion ODN GATO GPA IRON ICP LUE" etc and inflating allies stats or somesuch, and by the time GWII rolled around we already had issues with alliances getting inflated stats from ghosts just picking an alliance in the dropdown menu. And I think Seniority was added in Winter/early Spring 07 (not really sure though) and when it was added everyone's seniority defaulted to their nation age for some reason or another.

As for tech dealing, I seem to remember it happening in late Fall 06, though I wasn't really paying attention. At the time, as has been said, tech really wasn't very important and past 300 it had no purpose other than artificially boosting your NS, so it wasn't as big a deal. The most accurate guess is that it was "invented" in various forms and with various names by many people often, and began to be formalized probably shortly after GWI in a few places and then knowledge of it began to spread and it became a commonly known thing.