ktarthan

I cannot speak for those you must be addressing, but I've been around for less than a month, so my impressions are only those I have gained in that time. I personally know nothing of the histories you speak of. If you were simply directing your reply near instead of at me, then all I can say is that people tend to be measured by their actions, but negative actions can be forgiven over time. However, maybe some do not believe that 6 months is enough to forgive the act of espionage.

Some good points, and one I'd like to add on. The fact that this splinter group was conceived of and put in motion shows the capacity to do such an action, whether or not it was successful. What reason does an alliance that has been the target of such actions have to believe the word of the perpetrator? The point of espionage and spy operations is that it is a secret. For all we know, mhawk has agents in every other alliance on Bob. His guilt in this incident means that his word is invalid, and thus diplomacy has little effect. Do you believe a man who says "Yeah, so I set in motion a spy operation on your alliance, but don't worry I won't do it again."?

Then do you condone mugging little young ladies? Large old ladies? Average-build teenage transgenders? As far as I know, there are few little old ladies playing this game, so I'm curious why you used that as a qualifier.

I said that I believe people have the right to action, but not the right to dicate the outcome. That's why I added the stipulation that one must accept the consequences of your actions; consequences being anything that results from your action, good or bad. This precludes expecting an outcome. Growing a nation is the culmunation of a many number of actions (buying infra, land, tech, collecting taxes, paying bills, etc.), with the expectation of increasing in NS (simplifying a bit). Raiding does nothing to impose upon which of these actions may be taken. You are a pragmatic anti-raider, at least, which I appreciate. I'm not sure if you were trying to specifically rebut anything in my post, or just share your alternate viewpoint, so I'll stop at saying that an arbitrary colour sphere limitation is fairly irrelevant to my point. If you are limiting any actions of even just one person for the wrong reasons it is still just as immoral. I'd like to offer my opinion on the bolded part. 1 works well with 2 (3 and 4 really being sub-sets of 2) as a system to determine consequences for actions, rather than its own system of morality. We may take some cues from society about how to act and what is moral, but in the end the real decision making process is done internally. There are also some "morals" that are hard-coded into our personalities, often in the form of survival instincts, that will generally supercede anything taught to us by society, and that we definitely have before we are introduced to society. What this all comes down to is that when their pre-defined internal morality lines up nicely with what society has determined to be "moral" or "immoral", they feel that they can be justified in calling it so without substantiation. Under the scrutiny of what morality truly is, it can often be found that what is thought to be "moral" or "immoral" to the masses is simply "popular" or "unpopular". Once this is discovered, unless they can find some non-moral reason for their cause, all they are left with is their own internal compass, which is hardly an objective thing to use in debate. (See: Vilien's final arguments) I would like to make note that all of what I say is from a completely OOC perspective. I think that IC anti-raiders add flavour to the game, and are welcome by me to take whatever actions they wish to quell the raiding horde.

I'd like to share my specific reasoning for why I believe that tech raiding isn't immoral, instead of just continuing to poke at the anti-raiders with pointy things. I believe that, all things being equal, people should be allowed to take whatever actions they wish to take, as long as in doing so you do not intend to deny this right to others. Now, those words have a bit deeper meaning than is readily apparent, so I'll paraphrase a bit and frame it within this discussion to help things along. I believe that all internal moralities are correct, as long as it recognizes all others' right to their own internal morality. This "freedom of action"/"moral freedom" must come with the stipulation that people must also be aware of the fact that their actions/morals will have consequences, and be willing to accept the consequences for their actions/morals. I am also willing to say that this is the best way to approach the concept of morality, and is in fact the natural order of things. When viewed this way, the raiders have as much (if not more) moral ground as the anti-raiders. It is not a raider's goal to drive people from the game, but it is absolutely the anti-raider's goal to not allow tech raiding. (disclaimer: written at about 4:30AM, so I will not vouch for any of this making sense.)

Tech raiding has been a semi-successful recruiting method for GOONS. No, we do not extort anyone. There are people who see what we do, and ask us to show them how to do it. As for our tech raid targets; GOONS nations are permitted to tech raid alliances that have no significant diplomatic ties.

Echoing this sentiment.

Though we have at least determined that to this community passive harm is okay, but active harm is for the most part not. So much for moralism!

I 100% agree with this. I don't know if anyone in this thread has even hinted that they disagree with this stance. However this isn't what we're discussing here; I'm sure it's more along the lines of "Should tech raiding be allowed at all?"

Those crickets are the sound of you doing absolutely nothing productive in this discussion. So do you, too, feel that the worth of a raiding nation is less than that of a non-raiding nation? I've encountered that opinion several times in this thread so far, but I have yet to understand how such a conclusion can be reached.

I actually meant that it exists as a means for a nation to avoid war completely. The way I see it is this: Nations are given a "bonus" in the game while in war mode because of the increased risk that they take. If you do not wish to partake in war and simply wish to build a nation while enjoying the community, you have means to do so and be at exactly no risk of being raided at any time. You will not be able to grow at the same rate as those who do take that risk, but in the end, there is still the exact same -potential- of growth. While your statement is true, what does that prove? You dislike GOONS and similar nations, thus they have less worth to the community? That is hardly empirical. GOONS does not exist in TE. I play because I get to be a part of GOONS. Yeah, TE sure is good for war practice. We actually encourage new GOONS to give it a shot if they accidentally sign up for TE. But I do not require tech raiding for war practice, and I still enjoy doing it. Also, I've never partaken in a 3:1 raid, and I would never voluntarily do so.

Kudos, sir. I respect your noble endeavor. However I am pained to say that I doubt it will ever come to fruition, as I don't feel that the majority of the "growth elite" will see eye to eye.

So your only justification is one of the very things that you accuse tech raiders of being guilty of? Or maybe you just weren't answering my question. It could also be said that outlawing tech raiding is not receptive to increasing new players, as I know that as much as I can see myself enjoying the political aspect of the game, I wouldn't stick around if I couldn't raid. Despite how absolutely terrible of an option some people seem to consider it, Peace Mode exists for a reason. People are not inherently evil, they are incentive driven. It just so happens that self indulgence (or preservation) is, for most people, a fairly constant positive incentive. It is easy to view, in our society, this selfishness as being "evil" when applied in certain directions.

Actually I don't think Elyat has addressed the point sufficiently. They have yet to respond to my most recent comments on the subject. Perhaps you would like to participate on that end of the discussion? I'd like to hear your thoughts on how tech raiding is detrimental to the community.

From a lot of the objections to raiding that I have heard here, GOONS seems to actually be relatively civil when it comes to how we treat our raided, and our policies are fairly progressive. I think we get a bad rap because we not only allow tech raiding, we pretty well endorse it, and we make no bones about aggressively defending our principles. Our charter states that we will not aid raiders that bite off more than they can chew. We also don't have an official size limit to the alliances our nations are "permitted" to raid, so long as they don't have significant political ties. This reflects GOONS's love of war in general, and shows that we are not just "cowards" that limit ourselves to curbstomping the little guy. And our "Mercy board"? That allows lone nations to come and make their case when they have no political clout to get themselves out of a tough spot. If any raided nations gain a protectorate (or have one we were unaware of), our government is always willing to talk about the situation. Alright, I'll say that of the three points you made, your first one does have the most merit. If there is zero tolerance for tech raiding in the game, and nations that tech raid are essentially put into EZI, then yes tech raiding will be pretty much non-existant. I would like to ask, though: How do you justify putting the enjoyment of those who do not tech raid above those who do? You are advocating forcefully preventing players from performing something that the game itself fully well allows.

Then I'll wait for someone else to debate with. Once it gets to the "It's this way because I say so" argument, it's no fun. If you'll excuse me I have some muggings to attend to.

See: below

I was trying to point out that you were being kind of silly. But I'll reform my response in the form of an actual question: What gives you the authority to give yourself authority over everyone in moral decisions?

Too late, I declared myself high adjudicator of high arbiters last thursday, and I overrule your decision. It's totally okay to attack people without provocation now.

Who declared you high arbiter of moral decisions? If you ask any given person they could come up with an entirely different answer.

I wonder, though, how such a standard is concieved, other than arbitrarily?

Putting the kibosh on tech raiding absolutely has broader implications for the community as well. Provide empirical data that shows that the net community "worth" would go up without tech raiding, considering that while more tech-raidable nations would stick around, many tech raiders would also leave the game. Then I will accept this argument. Otherwise, you must assume that nations that do not tech raid are intrinsically worth so much more than nations that do, that the retention of one non-tech-raiding nation is worth more than the loss of any number of tech raiders. Actually, WoW is an example of where you can find true griefing. Ganking lowbies doesn't even net any gain, but people will do it regardless. As we can see, WoW's player base is certainly suffering because of this. (It's a bad analogy anyways; comparing the games really doesn't work. The differences are innumerable.) I still see peace mode as a viable alternative for people who want to play Nation Builder. Your nation doesn't grow as quickly, but you've got all the time in the world, right? Absolutely! Well, okay I have to qualify that a bit. Only if there were no negative consequences. If there were no consequences whatsoever, including positive, then I wouldn't be able to gain any money from robbing a dude, which is the whole point. With no negative consequences, give me a good reason I shouldn't.

Firstly, is it unheard of for an unaligned to tech raid another unaligned? I'm sure it is the minority, but thinking about these things help us avoid making broad generalizations like "tech raiding is always bad". I know you did not specifically say that, but that is the vein of this thread. Second, this is a game. There is a war mechanic in this game. There is also a clear way to opt out of this war mechanic. No one is forced to participate in war.

These are very much the points I wish to make, but I like to try and ask the right questions to get my opposition to figure it out themselves. Probably more roundabout than I need to be, but it brings me enjoyment. Edit: Not that I see you as the opposition; was referring to others.

Sorry, based on your reply I wasn't sure if you were in agreement or not with Näktergal's post. The portion that you quoted (which I assume is what you are referring to, not the whole post) does not actually say anything about tech raiding harming the community. The first two pararaphs talk about gameplay so they are irrelevant, and the third talks about issues that are definitely not specific to the pro-raiding side.