Heinlander

Entering into trades with dangerous and self-destructive rogues isn't normal. But with Methrage it is. Methrage: Not Even Once.

FOK you rule

[quote name='Andre27' timestamp='1283522859' post='2440367'] With all due respect, VE has a far better reputation than GOONS and events of the past do not predict the future. [/quote]When the characters you are dealing with are inherently predictable, it's a pretty good barometer.

Where exactly is the notion that we were threatening Methrage before the war went down coming from? Eleven posts into the first page it comes out that Meth's buddy tech raided us. 13: [b]Beefspari:[/b] If you're going with "we're tech raiding GOONS" then we'll be defending ourselves against your alliance very shortly. I would recommend reconsidering it. 14: [b]Methrage:[/b]I think he was just bored when attacking. I'll tell him to accept if you send peace offers. 15: [b]Beefspari:[/b] Good. Once the peace offers clear we can discuss reps for your friend's boredom. 17: [b]Methrage:[/b] If you guys have any nations not already at war with him get involved or assist in anyway during the war I'll consider it you lose any potential claim to reps, as that would be an act of war against the alliance. ^^^[i]Note that Methrage said this before we expressed any intent to further this conflict. Beefspari even said we are willing to discuss peace.[/i] 19: [b]Beefspari:[/b] I'm wondering if your 4k NS nation can even pay the 9m+ reps we'll be asking for at this point. EDIT: Oh you're 6k NS now. 20: [b]Methrage:[/b] If they want reps paid they should try negotiating that before trying to inflict a greater amount of damage back in response and involve more nations. If they decide to do damage as the punishment they use for the attacks they can't expect reps later on as well. I don't think I would be in range to help him directly, but if he asks me to or needs it I'll do what I can to help. [i]See, actual discussion going on here. Everything was fine at this point.[/i] 21-28: [i]Assorted discussion and trashtalking from Goon and non-Goon alike.[/i] 29, 30: [b]Methrage:[/b] Yeah, seems GOONS want some action. Pounding them in is always a good cause. Already got one of your guys in anarchy with quad attacks at update, because I as well know from my history with you guys reps will not be paid and this will be go on for a while. You guys suck btw. [b]BAM.[/b] Right there. You can literally track Methrage's descent into madness terminating at that point. We weren't threatening him; if anything he was threatening us in Post 20 while we were still considering peace, and then 10 posts later without provocation he declares war on 3 of our guys without CB.

[url=http://forums.cybernations.net/index.php?showtopic=91673]You are the wings beneath my wings.[/url]

Methrage the Libertarian, imminently dead, Forgot the cry of trolls, and the forum's swell And the profit and loss. [indent][/indent]a current of humanity Striped his nation bare. As he bayed and ranted He passed the stages of his age and youth Poisoned by madness. [indent][/indent]Pubbie or GOON O you who pay the bills and raise your forces, Consider Methrage, who was once handsome and tall as you.

Oh man now it's a party Greatest thread

[quote name='Biazt' timestamp='1283493007' post='2440021'] Someone goldmine this piece of work right here. [/quote]Way ahead of you.

That's because we know that our very appearance in one of your announcements will spark your endless ire. You have vastly miscalculated the imbalance between you and us.

[quote name='Methrage' timestamp='1283478853' post='2439737'] If they want reps paid they should try negotiating that before trying to inflict a greater amount of damage back in response and involve more nations. If they decide to do damage as the punishment they use for the attacks they can't expect reps later on as well. I don't think I would be in range to help him directly, but if he asks me to or needs it I'll do what I can to help. [/quote] What part of [quote]Once the peace offers clear we can discuss reps for your friend's boredom.[/quote]is giving you difficulty?

Sure are a lot of ranks there to fill out.

[quote name='Don Chele' timestamp='1283405588' post='2438925']PS - The GPA do not "just collect taxes every day", that would be terribly inefficient as an economic strategy and economics is one thing that they do quite well by any alliance's standards. [/quote]Yes, we know that. Nobody collects taxes everyday. In fact it's even [i]less[/i] work. A monkey could run a sled for a decent sized nation. Its not a particularly impressive statement to make. [quote='CEverettKoop']I think there's more going on then any of us who aren't in the upper stages of government realize. There's no reason for an unaligned alliance to not find themselves staring down a nuclear arsenal from any reasonably sized alliance, because who is going to come to their defense? There have to be some kind of deals just to maintain their existence. As for the control over their members, I imagine the threat of EZI does pretty well. Once you fall under their spell, keep your mouth shut if you want to stay on this planet.[/quote]In the current political environment, any large scale offensive against a full fledged alliance would be met with huge backlash. The fact that GPA is unaligned is moot because they are the third strongest alliance in the game and because their stance has earned the sympathies of a lot of people who find their form of high minded pretense noble. Added to that, no nation will attack another without CB, and as the GPA will never attack and since they are about as active and interesting as snail crawling uphill, no nation will ever have CB against them. GPA effective leveraged the current anti-war sentiment pervading the high nations into becoming a powerhouse without needing to actually be interesting or exciting or proactive towards the community.

I agree that the GPA subscribes to this cult of neutrality, but it is what it is. The more you try to cover over the inner workings of the organization, the more the cracks in the illusion begin to manifest. Its far more logical that the GPA members haven't spilt the beans because there are no beans to spill. Creating the cult might be an easy thing given the minimal work really required in logging in each day to pay your bills, but its an entirely different thing to use the cult as a cover for a greater conspiracy. In the case of the former, the GPA preys on pixel-hoarders and employs them to slowly build their NS without having to bother with the politics and warfare that other groups use to refine themselves. And we all know how many pixel hoarders there are, especially at the bottom. In the case of the latter, the GPA not only have to find people who are willing to blindly obey orders, but they have to amass membership dedicated to the illusion. It could be trivial to do the one, but nearly impossible to do the latter on the scale that the GPA have. The GPA strive to great achievements in mediocrity, and there's no reason why they can't pull it off. But the kind of smoke-filled-room dealings your talking about is magnitudes more complex and difficult to implement without [i]any[/i] security breaches. And the advantage of striving for mediocrity is that it's easy because no one is going to stop you. So congratulations GPA. You've filled the niche of Ultimate Mediocrity.

[quote name='CEverettKoop' timestamp='1283403046' post='2438892'] You're right in that we don't know how they do it. In fact there is a lot that we don't know about the GPA. I know that they won't let their members even post here for fear of breaking their precious neutrality. They have some kind of mind control that makes their membership happy to just collect taxes every day and wait for the nuclear apocalypse. I'm thinking they promise everyone who joins a spot in "government", it would explain why there is so much turnover. [/quote]You are describing a cult.

[quote name='CEverettKoop' timestamp='1283402050' post='2438877'] The endgame is that they win. They take out whoever is left standing and they've proven themselves above the rest of the world. No allies, no treaties, nothing. They can hold down anyone else from growing and establish a dark age of neutrality, where any kind of thought, positive or negative, is forbidden. That is what they are thinking. [/quote]You're talking about a level of control and organization that I strongly doubt is possible. The GPA has over 200 acting members. You don't think that a single nation would get tired of waiting for a conflict that cannot be predicted in an indeterminate point in the future for a chance to execute a convoluted powergrab and leave the alliance and spill the beans? We've had people in GOONS go rogue because they got tired of waiting. You think that the GPA, which has nothing to offer its members apart from a smug sense of self-righteousness, could succeed in that area? Its inconceivable.

[quote name='CEverettKoop' timestamp='1283401391' post='2438867'] No one can dispute that they are a bad and boring alliance. I'm saying that no one can completely dismiss them just based on the numbers they have. Maybe they couldn't beat anyone right now. But they could steamroll nations and alliances that are at 20-30% after a prolonged nuclear conflict. If you don't think that thought hasn't crossed their minds, you're being naive. I'm not saying be afraid. I'm saying be aware. Be very aware. [/quote]Whats the endgame to that? Okay the GPA rolls a couple depleted alliances in the tail end of a nuke war. Now they've made enemies of everyone who used to sympathize with them because they took a moral stand when in reality they were playing the rest of the world for jive suckers. If they're the masterminds you allege they are, surely they've thought through to that inevitable conclusion.

[quote name='CEverettKoop' timestamp='1283400237' post='2438849'] They could if they actually trained and prepared for war on an open basis. But then that blows their cover. So they'll just wait for the inevitable world-breaking throwdown, then come in and wipe out whoever wins. I'll give them credit, it's a brilliantly devious plan. They just need to hope that no one decided to take them out first. [/quote]If that's the case, then their daily regiment must consist of sitting around and imagining what full on combat is actually like and congratulating themselves on how superior they are. In which case they are still a boring and bad alliance. But I think you're being paranoid. I mean, just look at this announcement. It's literally nothing but a banner and a list of names that nobody cares about. That strikes me less as a ruse to distract us from their sinister machinations and more of a group who has nothing better to do than to advertise their housekeeping.

[quote name='CEverettKoop' timestamp='1283398347' post='2438828'] That's if you believe what they're saying. I don't. I think they're hiding in plain sight, waiting for their time to strike. They're the quiet ones we always hear about, the unassuming ones that no one ever expects, until they're on the news and everyone is horrified and can't fathom how they could do such a thing. It's always the quiet ones. It's always the silent kid at the back of the class. Don't ever trust them. [/quote]Who are they gonna attack? Are you positing some vast silent conspiracy? Because as big as they are, the GPA couldn't take out a full treaty network. It seems more likely that they're serious, and that they're just really really boring and are generally a bad alliance.

[quote name='CEverettKoop' timestamp='1283397000' post='2438802'] You are giving them far too much credit. They are completely petrified at the thought of any harm coming to their precious little nations. By pledging complete neutrality, they're desperately trying to keep anyone from knocking at their doors. [/quote]But that's obviously not going to work, because the second a big war rolls along they're gonna get swept up in it by the one of the more bloodthirsty parties, because why not? Either they're going to have to pick a side to survive or they're gonna get obliterated just from the shockwaves. Or they might possibly survive, which further begs the question why they even exist if they're not going to get involved in wars and not going to get involved in politics, which are literally the driving forces of this world. Whatever their prevailing philosophy is, it's utterly bizarre.

They aren't cowards. They're do-nothings. They entered a community with the express purpose of disavowing involvement with said community, then they lay claim to that position as the moral high ground. Its not cowardice, it's dissonance.

What makes a man go neutral? Is money? Lust for glory? Or was he just born with a heart full of neutrality...

The sky over the great ocean is a flat pewter as far as the eye can see. The nation is within a wasteland; her waters, long irradiated, offer to her harvesters poisoned corpses and pale, eyeless freaks with genetic codes more closely resembling cargo netting than the helical precision normal to the world. Squat trawlers plunge these murky depths and haul what they can, only to release their bounty as the waste that it is. From coast to coast, Xodidox is a perfect desert, flat and unmarred by so much as a saguaro or peregrine tumbleweed. Atomic assault has glassed acres of wasteland into smooth and lifeless basins, [i]playas sin vidas[/i]. From above, the island seems bubonic, poxed incendiary by long dispersed mushroom clouds. There are no mountains; no rivers; no lakes; no forests; no savanna; no highlands; no lowlands, save for the sterile ballistic craters long cooled. All is desolation. Casual flyover would miss it at first. Amidst the homogeneous ruin, a round slab of concrete juts from the rough sand like a monolith. Its surface is charred black and windworried, but the structure as a whole remains firmly defiant, rooted deep into the island's subterranean firmament. A heavy bulkhead adorns one side; emblazoned upon it is the sole icon of the island, its lonely sigil; the grenade, the GOONish symbol. The bulkhead's weighty wheel turns from internal control. There is a resounding clank of heavy bolts slamming into the shelter's reinforced foundation in retreat from the gateway which they secure; each in sequence, almost twenty in all. The wheel continues to turn. Finally, the last lock is released and the bulkhead slowly swings open. The Xodiaen steps from the shelter. His frame is human, but none of the race's features show. His hands are shielded in thick mittens; his figure is obscured by heavy protection. His face is masked by a breathing apparatus and thick, black goggles like lumps of coal. The instant he breaches the safety of the shelter, radiation patches across his suit begin to darken like fruit rapidly spoiling. He gazes across the topside landscape through those obsidian lenses, across the grayish sameness of the desert and towards the bleak coastline, to the faint meridian where the great ocean meets the boarder of the Grand Poobah's domain; then skyward towards those swirling clouds of gray and black. He looks down to the regolith in which his boots are planted. Though the sun is high, the leaden overcast denies his shadow. The Xodiaen sighs into his mask, then turns back to the shelter mouth which leads into the far vaster warrens which the nation calls its home. Six more months of nuclear winter.

[quote name='White Chocolate' timestamp='1283229348' post='2436631'] I'm not a fan of reps as far as big wars go. By "stakes" - I mean the reason for the war. [/quote]The two are not the same. Stakes are what are risked in the game; in war, the stakes are the very existence of the parties in contest. Reason is original spark. But in this sodden climate, that spark finds little onus to ignite, because nations have suffocated the drive to war with mutual pacifism. See what happened when the Sith fell. Their spirit was so feeble that they preferred to snuff out the spark with their own corpses rather than offer it kindling. War, to them and to many, is ignoble. In fact, it is the ultimate nobility.

[quote name='nutkase' timestamp='1283181730' post='2435815'] If you are in a 1v1 alliance war and you call in a ally, it would seem that you cannot defend yourself thus making you weak and should not exist. The size or number of the opposite alliance does not matter, considering the blanket theory by your fellow member. [/quote]Treaties are resources, not admissions of weakness. Political wrangling is just as much a skill as building an army. Why shouldn't a nation make use of those resources for the greatest possible gain?

War is the imperative of man. Do you think that your self-deluded nobility can somehow overturn this reality?