jerdge

Friend, you're not in range (although TBH you could, say, dump ~4k of your cheap infrastructure and drop just in). Unfortunately in my position I can't openly invite anyone to attack a nation under my AA's banner, nor it would be gentlemanly of me to be aggressive towards random others, while I am wearing the GPA uniform. (TPF non-transitional members are... let's say a temporary -?- exception to those rules.) BUT! Let's not give up all hope, who knows what the future entails for us? I think I might have a few bucks I could afford to spend on these, er, projects. Disclaimer: all of this joking is meant to be friendly and in jest. It's not neutrality, it's that pixel chest-thumping is - oh gawd! Disclaimer about the 1st disclaimer: "friendly" and "in jest" should not in any way be taken as "I didn't actually mean it".

I feel like I have the required characteristics to join this fine raiding project but there are no TPF nations in range, what are you going to do to fix that?

Whatever, I was just saying that attacking someone without provocation and hoping to get away with it, and then getting smashed, instead, while maybe funny etc has little to do with honour. Honour isn't incompatible with getting smashed but not any and every reason one gets smashed for qualifies for it. Raiding, i.e. choosing a target for plunder and with the idea of a short and profitable war at the expenses of a weaker and less prepared victim, is extremely far from being honourable - if words still have a meaning, at least. Don't get me wrong: I understand the risk associated with the practice and mine isn't a moralistic stance - to be frank I couldn't care less about what any of you does in their free time - but slapping a moral/honourable label on raiding is too incoherent and illogic - ultimately naively stupid - to let it pass. Just happily raid and call it for what it is, an opportunistic low-risk gamble that, if gone bad, makes you look silly, not pretty.

Getting flattened for raids gone wrong likely isn't what most people would consider earning honour.

Not to defend the DBDC, but Pacifica alone could and would flatten them and outside of Oculus there's basically no one that could pose a challenge. You may even blame the Doombirds for having done all they could to end up in this situation - they were warned, they didn't care and they tried to shoot the messengers, instead - but, now that they're into it, there's little they can do, other than polish and worship their own pixels.

Is it DBDC SOP to threaten raid targets of putting other attackers on them and/or of much more severe destruction if they fight back (or anything of that sort) - yes/no? I've heard it being stated many many times but I never had direct confirmation/denial from the source. why ask rhetorical questions? Wait a minute...

... (see below)

White knighting for WC is... well...

Something about being years late, dull, in such a position because of stuff, etc. But I'll recognize the micro sizes modicum of effort put into this and I'll concede what I consider to be an adequate reply. yawn

The worst at what?

Even you are getting old, at last.

Well I really am not involved into this thus I'll comment on Lucius's terms from a general point of view. Take this as a way to try elevate a bit the discussion - or divert it? - over the specifics and the personal grievances (which I actually respect but which I'm also little personally interested into), and not as taking a position for this or that party. When an alliance is threatened or damaged by an external party it does IMHO make sense to respond with force and, in order to subsequently transition to peace, to demand that the offender suffers consequences of some sort. An alliance which gave up deterring attacks would be more likely to then be attacked again. As the very point of being an alliance in the first place is protection, exposing itself to an higher chance of being damaged down the road would be absurd, even before and above being wrong. With that in mind, proposing terms which basically amount to treasury drainage makes sense. If it's done without dragging it for too long, even better. When I've had to devise terms for similar situations, in the past, I've proposed forced tech purchases (not through tech deals but via direct tech levels purchase) in order to have the offending party burn a substantial amount of their treasury - I'm talking of billion-sized buyings. I couldn't thus in good conscience point my finger against anyone doing (more or less) the same. Much better than long attrition wars, forced tech deals/reparations, forcing people out of peace mode to destroy their nations, or anything like that. O.M.G.

This is a pattern, you must really like that movie... I know that I do. 🙂

The game still has just as much life in it as it did a few years ago. Translation: yes it is.

Peace Works, congrats on it. The SDI+rounds of wars thing is confusing though, I don't get the rationale of it. If my curiosity has any importance for anyone that knows how and why it was decided, I'll thank them if they'll explain it.

Reminder that in CN*, and since circa 2006, the power to impose one's will has always been the only necessary condition to have any nation labeled as "rogue". (* not only in CN TBQH)

Hey you too do it. And for good reason! Nah, he's not even in that league, trust me. The evolution of dinosaurs, the reason kids love dinosaurs, or both? Great image.

Turetel and Grenval. Next time someone will mention Umbrae or Dark Mistress, or someone like that. Blanket NAPs were the way to go IMHO, no irony intended. Had going solos been more popular we'd have had much more interesting action in these last twelve+ years.

2,533 ~200 less than one year ago ~900 less than two years ago ~1,800 less than three years ago ~3,200 less than four years ago ( 1,400-900-700-200... Pleateau ~2,300 by ~2024? )

Having been an OWF propagandist myself in the past I can probably have a little clue about what works and what doesn't (it's not an understatement, really I don't claim to be an expert). Also, I have no horse in this race but these shows (see below) are good for anyone's heart, they deserve acknowledgement. With all of that in mind, this thread casts a very good light on Lucius and, by extension, TIE, also thanks to the responses this far. While many are helping openly and in rather apparent good faith, I feel that it also needs to be said that one stands tall above and beyond the others. I'm sure that his cunning way of making Lucius and TIE look good flew far over the heads of most. Really in hardships one can often find the most precious help where they would have never imagined to find any.

Double post.

I basically agree with everything else you said but I don't really get this part. Diplomacy can and has historically been used to deal with aggressive and/or offending leaders. This not to say that anyone has to try diplomacy in these circumstances, but definitely to say that anyone can do it, and it does make sense. Unless the intended outcome of an attack involves forcibly replacing the target's leadership, in fact - which is not unheard of, but still a very rare situation - eventually the attacker will sit down at the negotiation table with the leader(s) they had been offended by. In principle nothing prevents it to happen before the armed conflict takes place, too. This, again, not to say that whoever decided to go to war in this case should have made another decision, just to say that their decision has been a choice. About CBs in general, I'd like to point out that a CB is literally the reason for a war, nothing more than that. As long as the ones acting on it are fine with their choice, there can not be a bad/invalid CB. Decisions and actions may be bad/invalid, in which case the acting party may suffer consequences on their standing, but their CB is their rationale, a fact, it's up to them only to decide about its "validity". As for this conflict, I don't care. It's not neutrality, I simply don't give a damn about anything anymore. I just still like logic and discussing stuff, hence this post.

OK Starship Troopers and - children! - the novel rather than the movie (which last isn't that bad either, anyway). Talking of sci-fi war readings, I'd also recommend Haldeman's Forever War. But no movie for this one, only the novel (there were rumors of Ridley Scott working on it but AFAIK they're only rumors).

Thank you for this thread, Tankobite. For some reason it made me think of The Man Who Would Be King. I'd recommend it to Ms. Mormont, if she hasn't already seen it.

Steeldor had 60k tech levels erased, go ask him why. And that's only the part that was proven beyond any doubt, you can bet on it, considering that he didn't simply get the boot as it should have. Nothing personal against him BTW, according to the little I know about him and the extremely few interactions that date to several years ago, personally he's way more than decent and a nice person when you deal with him. It's definitely not the DBDC only. Pacifica and their QT tech stuff perfectly align with the same organization with the same people that in another game got banned for having exchanged "tech farm" activity for Korean comics, or something like that. In mass quantity. The game administrator has all the means to go after this stuff and deter people from doing it. I'm perfectly fine with him not doing it, in this very thread and just a couple of pages ago zog explained that it's probably a good business model, and this game is for free, I definitely don't complain with him. In fact I'm only grateful for the fun i had that many years ago by playing it. I'm also happy that others like you seem to still be able to enjoy playing the game as it should be, good for you. At the same time I occasionally casually enjoy pointing out how cheaters pat themselves on the back for "being the best" in the game, honestly it's funny. I have no time for the game itself because life is much better than this corrupt environment. Finally I agree that the GPA and me specifically would have no endurance in fighting, why should we put any effort in any fight considering that people that got away with everything put themselves in an unbeatable position? We're not that dense. Now I could recall that I charged against Matt Miller in the war that saw his fall from being number one, and he had twice my tech levels (also being way better than me at everything on this game), but most people don't know anything about that era. Or I could say that I let my nation fight in a war in which an attack from Cuba was guaranteed - in fact he blitzed a few bystanders just to knock them down the ladder and get in range, as I had the 254th nation by NS (IIRC). But in neither occasion it was a display of "courage", it's just numbers being changed in an overseas server, it would be pathetic to be attached to them and to go to any length to protect or increase them. Wouldn't it? (Sorry for typos or bad style etc, I typed in a hurry on my phone.)