Kiss Goodbye

So awesome. As soon as I saw this one I knew it was going to be ours.

I'll always be here. And Nitemarebforcrismas will always be hilarious. It almost makes up for the smell. Almost. We should talk sometime and catch up again. It's great to see you on the OWF. You can find me on IRC quite a bit these days.

Wow, Moth no longer gov? Shocking to me. He's been at the center of RIA activities as long as I can remember. As an aside: I've fought alongside C-zom and worked with him in RIA military ops in the past. The man will kick your $@!. With him back in charge of RIA milops, they're a force to be reckoned with. RIA is many times stronger than their stats will tell you. Very, very glad to see you back in charge of their mil, my friend. Good luck to ya.

Good to hear. I hope you'll consider my point regarding the mathematics if you're just trying to get them to fight. $3m and 100 tech per day will not make the NPO banks come out. A greater threat to their alliance's well-being--such as further delay of the offering of terms--might.

Right, but with the choice you gave them, they took the path that numerically is better for them, and psychologically is worse for you. Their morale is very strangely high, and I'll never understand that about the NPO. I see some folks who fought for karma getting all whiny in this topic and calling the war ugly due to these terms--I don't see it that way, but I'm sure you realized many people would. As for the fact that the merits of those two choices are arguable, I agree, I've been arguing it with you after all. However I was suggesting a synthesis of the two, rather than just this one. In any case, if your aim in the terms is to damage NPO in comparable measure to if those nations had fought, then these terms will be successful. If your aim is simply to get them to fight, these terms alone will fail. The math doesn't lie, and I'm sure they have calculators.

I have no problem with you guys giving them a taste of their own medicine. I just think that if you really want their top tier to come out and aren't just using this as a method of making sure that those nations do take a hit regardless of whether they fight(which is, of course, a completely understandable outlook as well, one that was used previously) --you may want to include in these terms a note of further delaying whatever terms are granted by a given amount of time so long as they're in peacemode. For example, if for every 50 NPO nations over 5k in peacemode you held off eventual terms for an extra day, I bet you'd see a lot more of them engage. That really would drive them out. Post-war penalizing terms are just to be analyzed mathematically, and the per-day, per-nation costs of these terms are less damaging than being nuked one time by a nation with a WRC. As such I can't say it's going to achieve the former goal, although it'll certainly achieve the latter. Of course. I do understand that. I'm just posting my thoughts on this strategy. If these terms are just to make sure damage is done, that's fine.

Let me be direct with you: do you think that if NPO keeps these nations in peacemode (as they inevitably will), the war will be extended for reasons separate from them reaching acceptable damage levels? If your answer is yes--and I don't demand that you actually give me an answer here--I hope you will consider including that in these preterms. That would likely make them more effective, and would secure a lower Global Radiation Level for us all. That's something I think we can all agree is a good thing. You have a point there. I do think it's going to be difficult to get them to do anything when left in the dark as to when they're actually getting these terms presented, though. They haven't been given yet, and with the information currently available, them changing anything would probably not be a good decision. As I said, that would change if certain details were included in these terms.

I--and I speak only for myself--don't give a damn when they get peace. I do not care on any level whatsoever. I am simply providing my view of the effectiveness of what Karma has put forth. It's a poor system for achieving their goals, as it does not provide NPO with a sufficient motive to leave peacemode. \ Not in terms of morale, not even mathematically.

You're more correct than you realize. But not for those reasons. Currently NPO is losing strength at a rate of 200,000 per day. They'll be below 5m NS in less than 2 weeks. If Revanche is being honest when he claims they'll be looking to give peace when NPO drops below 5,000,000 NS, the logical thing for those nations to do is stay put and wait it out. The difference between paying 30,000 tech and ~200,000 tech (my estimate for what will eventually be reached when peace is actually offered) is not so great if you have hundreds of nations who have functional economies freed of the ravages of war. Ten days of 150 nations getting nuked could be as much as 1,000 tech damage to each of those nations (if they're fighting WRC-armed foes, more like 600 otherwise), plus the infra losses and cash losses inherent in this. In short, at the rate these reps are driven up, their per-member cost to NPO is less than if the folks in PM came out of it. Increasing their intensity is unlikely to effect this either, as that's not the problem--it's the manner in which they're applied. I'll explain. Now, if the reparations clock were set up so as to add two days to the providing of terms, rather than their duration, there would be a clear motivation for NPO to leave peacemode and fight since they wouldn't get any peace until then, meaning everyone but those protected nations would be dead. Alternately if the reparations being added were tagged exclusively against those nations remaining in peacemode, they'd also be highly effective. As these reps are now, they're largely going to be ineffective in luring NPO to fight. And the NPO is big enough to face these reps. At their absolute worst, what we'll see is the equivalent of maybe 4 times what Mushroom Kingdom paid, with similar numbers of members and vastly less damaged economies. Not that hard to pay off at all, and certainly less of a threat than the damage inherent in fighting this war. That's my 2 cents. Not quite: the terms have not been offered yet. According to Revanche, they will be offered when NPO hits 5m NS. As I said, it's to their benefit to wait it out, hit 5m NS in about 10 days, and take the terms as they are, taking full advantage of the fact that even as those terms will be quite large, they'll be completely manageable for the nations who stayed out of the war.

Heh, yeah. Whoops.

Significant numbers of blocs are tied together. For example, almost every member of Citadel is MDP'd to FOK and hence LEO, and RnR is in both SF and LEO. Strictly speaking, SF and Citadel are indirectly tied together due to FOK and RnR.

There may have been past differences, but I think everyone is looking to conduct themselves with honor. Way too many blocs organized as Continuum did, and served mainly as alliances of convenience. It's obvious that the bond between these alliances is incredibly strong, so no matter the past, it's deserving of respect from everyone.

Some interesting thoughts in this topic. Good read. Except for the attempt to downplay Grämlins contribution to Karma.

To answer in a serious fashion, most likely Syzygy.

What in your view would constitute closure?

(DAC)Syzygy deserves another nod. He's been quite influential in a different manner from the people getting the most attention here.

In addition to the fact that I am glad to see TSO branching out and starting its new lease on life--hopefully one that will be free of their past actions--I'd like to thank Penguin in particular for making what appeared to have been the most heartfelt effort at diffusing the angry sentiment in this topic. I'm disappointed to see that he got one of the most vitriolic responses out of anyone here.

Whenever you post on the OWF, your actions reflect on your alliance as a whole. Even when that is not what you want.

I'm glad to see this war ending.

While I find the challenge hilarious, you guys may have been better off keeping quiet and just kicking his $@! as you were. This draws a lot of attention, and really attention isn't something you want at this stage. I have no problem with you but you know there's plenty of folks waiting to see you make a mistake, and they are likely to use this as such.

Congratulations to Blacky and Yawoo.

I'm in the minority among my alliance on that subject, but I agree with you. HoI3 is going to be AMAZING.

The fact that so many nations wound up in peacemode indicates the difficulties involved in a multi-alliance strike against a large power. It seems to me that it'd benefit future coalitions to have such details worked out in advance. It takes a lot of effort to choose targets for people and I don't envy those whose job it is to coordinate. LiquidMercury's girlfriend must be really pissed at him by now.

Very much uncalled for.

180m is what, 60 aid slots? That's not too bad, their top 12 could do that in one cycle.