Heft

From what's been stated, if anyone is looking to get RL compensation for this attack it is one of the people who were attacked and who have absolutely no involvement or connection to this game other than hosting our forum. I'm not really sure they have any significant chance of getting any compensation, but from their perspective this is a simple attack on their property, and they really don't care about whatever issue someone may or may not have with IRON in some game that they've never played. In other words, for them, it's all "RL" (the horror). Unless you're going to elaborate on what those certain actions are and how in any way IRON opened itself up to having its forums host attacked, or how that's a justifiable response or even a response that rational people should be prepared to deal with in certain circumstances, then shah's later point about this, and how it could be used to say that any action someone doesn't like is grounds for something like this, still stands and is perfectly valid. Absolutely, but it hardly follows that we aren't allowed to make a public announcement informing everyone about what happened, as far as we know, and the extent of the attacks.

That is how the accepted definitions seem to run, but the reality is that none of those three situations ever translate that way to reality. ZI'ing a nation originally held all three of those definitions depending on the circumstance. As it is now, it's rarely as clear as "okay now you're at ZI everything is fine and dandy." The main difference between PZI and ZI tends to be a more general difference between "temporary" and "indefinitely." Sometimes "indefinitely" stretches across re-rolls, though it's not as common for it to stretch across genuinely different characters. All EZI does is take the meaning of PZI and chop into two parts. It's not necessary and only leads to a situation where people seem to think that these are more or less legal terms. They're just basic statements of intent, not contracts or treaties or anything. So it's not at all necessary to make fine cut distinctions in words that don't, in practice, accomodate fine cut distinctions.

Hey if you're going to try and argue with me about IRON's actions, couldn't it be done in one of the three IC threads related to Jarheads? There's the IRON Treaty Cancelation, the NPO DoW, and now the GGA DoW. Anyway, if you had read those, you would know that both IRON and NPO were fully aware that Jarheads were connected to Devil Dogs when the original treaty was signed, and that both had agreed that it was not necessary to condemn them because of that connection, and that recent events did not get set into motion until it became apparent that Jarheads weren't so much a clean break as a replay. And yes we only use PZI and ZI and PZI covers the situation you are trying to claim exists just as well as "EZI." I still maintain that EZI is a useless term someone made up to try and make an arbitrary distinction where none has ever existed.

Yea, the "spreading rumors and causing mistrust and doubts" tactic was starting to show some real promise, and it probably peaked at the Valhalla/Sparta incident. After that, especially since it did force Continuum leadership to come out and talk to each other very bluntly, things started to fall away and calm down. Is everything perfect and dandy? Well, probably not, no, and it wouldn't ever be perfect, but the chances of sparking a major war through all of these rumors has significantly decreased. This post probably generated some hostile responses because you insisted on using "RON" in what appears to be a serious context, which is just stupid, and can only be read as deliberately trying to draw hostile responses. That said, your analysis is at partially correct. IRON never abandoned its ideals, though. The means to achieve those ideals changed as the world changed, and so we adapted. There had been pressure within the alliance even before then to become more involved, but it wasn't until after GWIII and a few other incidents that there was enough of a consensus within the alliance to actually set a course and follow it. All Independence was about was IRON being able to do what IRON wanted to do. After GWIII it quickly became apparent that that was no longer the case, and if we wanted to return to that then we had to start getting involved and find ways to establish ourselves. Right now, IRON can do what we want to do to a much greater extent than we could have then, thus, our ideals are served. This post certainly keeps in line with the style of TWiP, in that it expertly uses misinterpretation and selective reasoning to present a conclusion as solid while ignoring other, much more obvious conclusions. In this case, more has happened, both good and bad, in Moo's reign as Emperor because his reign has been more than four times longer than either of the previous Emperor's.

IRON has its list on the public area of our forums, not sure how often it's updated, but it doesn't really change all that much. And "EZI" is a silly term and IRON only uses PZI and ZI.

Realistically, if everything sensitive was done in IRC, whether query or private channel, it wouldn't really matter, as it's more difficult to leak logs without exposing yourself than it is to leak screenshots. But I'm not in a position to deal with those issues, and I don't have much info to share.

There are some pretty easy and simple ways to communicate sensitive information within Continuum leadership without posting in Sanctum. IIRC, the name was noticed and was discussed, but at the time there was no further reason to think that Jarheads were being deceptive.

I'd hope we intended to wreck some nations. If we didn't, well that'd just be silly of us. Anyway, the point of most of those earlier posts, as I gather, was to point out that Sponge's big tell-all spoiler story was no longer accurate. Hence, "outdated." Then the thread moved into multiple half-arguments at once and there wasn't any discernible sense of dialogue or narrative to follow. Hence, "terrible."

Didn't Romeo make the advances in that story? Also, the random foaming mouth action is really strange and more than mildly unbecoming.

Right, so what are we all trying to have an argument about? This thread is terrible.

Well then it's a good thing they haven't actually accomplished anything in the "stirring up trouble" department either.

In the end, they won't get rolled because no one really cares.

This is an OOC forum, silly. And from an OOC perspective, the shape of the game encourages the sort of progression that has led us to where we are now, with a complicated web of blocs and one almost meta-bloc on top to keep things somewhat sort of passively regulated. There isn't any reason that the top group has to be centered around Continuum specifically, but if it weren't, it would just center around another group (whether a convenient corporeal entity a la continuum or a more abstract network of relationships). I don't necessarily think that there's anything inherently bad that needs to be "fixed" in there, and I find it unlikely that any fix would actually change that to any long-term, significant degree (but there are a few interesting ideas that would at least complicate things).

Two years? How could we have let it get this far? [We]'ve made a huge mistake.

To be fair, the forums were created after the agonizingly soul-crushing discussions about what to name the bloc and treaty, and after that experience I think we were all so numb to naming things that none of us cared anymore. I still have nightmares about those first conversations. :/ No, you have nothing to do with reality. Yes people with responsibilities have different expectations upon them than those without, and yes leaders have more responsibilities than others. Duh.

No, he wasn't top 3. That's irrelevant to what I said. Sam didn't post in Sanctum until MCXA (and Fresh) learned about what their plans. I'm not sure how MCXA and Fresh originally learned of their plans, or exactly when, but we do know that, somehow, it was before Sam posted in Sanctum. That Sam posted in Sanctum isn't exactly a big deal, as it would have been expected, and early warning of that sort of thing is appreciated. It is true that Fresh couldn't see what Sam posted (assuming sam didn't share that post anywhere else) until he got access a week later, but that does not mean that Fresh (or gopher) was being kept out of the loop, as there wasn't anything in that post that he didn't probably already know about or hadn't heard. edit- (also, I'm not Q Gov in an appreciable sense anymore)

I think his point is that immediately assuming that those involved were deliberately up to no good or had bad motivations is almost always a mistake, because the truth is that usually people just screw up. It's not a very satisfying answer, but it is a valid point that is very often overlooked, both in the OWF and even in higher, more private conversations. I don't think he was trying to belittle anyone, he was just trying to remind everyone about this little fact of life because he felt that a lot of people were jumping to conclusions. I would like to agree that it wasn't necessary to put in, except that another fact of life is that it is very often necessary to point it out, even when dealing with cogent, intelligent, rational people. So, again, it's rare that people act out of deliberate malice or ill-intent, and much more common for people to act out of ill-conceived motivations and based on incorrect judgments, or for people to just botch something and screw it up to the point where it looks like malice. Whether that was the case here or not isn't provable either way, but it is something that should be kept in mind in trying to assess why someone did something that, in retrospect, looks really bad.

Maybe, but we know that, one way or another, MCXA and Fresh knew about this plan by the time Sam posted. Perhaps, but that's not incredibly relevant to what the were discussing, I don't think. What it does mean is that Sam got a chance to give his version of events a week before Fresh did, but that doesn't seem to have been a deliberate thing so much as just a side-effect of how access to that forum is controlled.

The way Sanctum works is that only three representatives from each alliance are allowed access at a time, and those three representatives are chosen by each alliance. They were MCXA top gov until they resigned, and until they resigned they had those three spots. So that's not really an issue. Also that part of neuromancers post you apparently can't take seriously was arguably the most obviously correct part of the entire thing. It's practically a truism.

The idea that TOP and other Continuum leaders would trust individuals that they had worked closely with for over a year is not indicative of a conspiracy, regardless of the attempts to try and paint this as something nefarious. From all available evidence those in Sanctum did not have the full picture until well after events had been set in motion. Obviously some of the people here think it is silly to take someone like Sam at his word, but there was no reason not to. This was largely an internal MCXA issue, and TOP and the rest of Q leadership seemed to be willing to give them their space to sort out whatever problems they had. That the method for sorting out those problems ended up being very poorly chosen and very poorly executed does not condemn their allies, nor does is it evidence that those allies had a hand in things. Because, honestly, if the rest of Q leadership (or even just TOP leadership) had been in on this, it would have been handled a lot better. All evidence so far points to TSO doing what they believed (quite wrongly) was necessary and in the process damaging their alliance and probably committing what most people would have to consider treason at this point, but I've yet to see any reason besides wishful thinking to suspect that TOP or anyone else committed any deliberate wrong doing. They handled a strange and uncomfortable issue as reasonably as they could, and the only "mistake" they may have made was taking people at their word and not trying to launch some full-blown investigation. Even then, they were still cautious with the one-month protectorate agreement. As was said earlier, they seem to have played this one pretty much by the book. The rest of Q leadership wished both parties well and gave their longtime friends and partners some well-wishes and expressed sympathy at their portrayal of events, but had no reason to investigate any deeper as it was basically an internal MCXA issue. You can make a strong argument that TSO acted wrongly, but the only way you can do that for the rest is to put blinders on and see only what you want.

Yes, this is the biggest issue with creating a scarce but attractive/necessary commodity. Inevitably the most organized and most powerful groups will monopolize it. In the meantime you would have a resurgence in conflict, but all of that conflict would be funneling towards an increasingly centralized power structure, as the room for top power brokers becomes less and less. Essentially, the opposite of what CN has done (where power has become increasingly decentralized over time). The logical end game in this scenario would be to eventually have one massive alliance and many smaller ones. This sort of change would also hurt all of the very many unaligned nations, who would be the quickest to be pushed out of the buffet line. Similarily, capping the amount of nations on each color sphere (which sounds to me like one of the more promising or at least more interesting options) would hurt unaligned nations as well, and discourage new nations from joining the game because they can't join the colors they want. It's possible we would soon unaligneds being chased off of spheres, as they would be easier targets than entire alliances. Capping how much an individual nation can grow wouldn't really accomplish a whole lot other than making people bored, and the reality is that there are already some de facto limits, since eventually you run out of things to buy or things become prohibitively expensive. The only thing that can realistically be bought forever is tech from smaller nations. Capping how much of a given thing can exist in the world at once could have interesting results, though, again it would most quickly harm unaligned and new nations. I don't immediately see a way to introduce scarcity on a level that will generate conflict without harming unaligned/newer players disproportionately. But, as Cortath said, people will adapt and the equilibrium will necessarily establish itself again. This may be true even with any scarcity-introducing changes, depending on how it's done, I'm not sure, but it is certainly true of any change that still allows for unlimited growth across the board. If you want to generate more conflict, then you have to provide real incentives for people to have conflicts. Changing the way wars are fought does not give people a reason to fight wars, it just changes the strategy of fighting them.

Conceptually, if not technically, this is probably the best suggestion in this thread so far. People have been complaining about the war system from the very beginning of the game, and it has undergone extensive changes since then, multiple times. Wars are damaging to nations, and they do hurt, and it is easier for larger nations to rebuild (if not held down by others) since they already have improvements and wonders. Not that the war system is perfect, but changing it won't change the fundamental problems raised here. Similarily, the rate of growth of nations isn't really that slow (though this could just be my "back in my day" viewpoint). Nations can grow relatively quickly. Yes, it's a slower game than others, but it is a good pace for this game. The problem is the distance they have to grow. To let new nations grow fast enough (without using complicated or intensive aid and other schemes) to catch up to the highest ranking nations would require some ridiculous, game-breaking changes. Also, eventually you'd still have the same exact problems, except all of the bars would be raised higher (suddenly, 10K or even 20K NS is a small nation). The path that the game has been on since its beginning and is still on is natural and predictable. Things consolidate, things slow down, things calm down, things become more complicated and interwoven and interdependent, and major conflict decreases, and the game more or less stabilizes. People have more invested in the game than when it was young, in terms of personal relationships, donations, years of work, and a community that extends beyond the IC game, and so they aren't as willing to risk those things as they may have once been. Most of the people who are more or less in charge of the political landscape nowadays are people who think strategically and value long-term benefits. That's how they got to and have stayed in those positions. They are also capable of resolving almost any conflict or crisis diplomatically and politically. A simple fact of this game is that no war is ever necessary. Every war, and every conflict, is to at least a certain extent deliberately pushed and elevated, and the diplomatic resolution is simply not utilized. So we have a scenario where there is no need for conflict, where the people who would drive major conflicts are all skilled and competent enough to not create conflicts without a justifiable reason even as those reasons become harder to justify due to a wide array of factors. In other words, conflict is naturally and increasingly de-incentivized. The suggestion I quoted is the first one I've read in this thread that actually addresses that issue in any adequate way. Why do entities in real life conflict? Conflicting interests, right? Well, in CN everyone's interests (at least those interested in long-term success for their alliance, and those are inevitably the ones in power) over time naturally align themselves and conflict less and less. There are essentially unlimited resources in CN. No scarcity. So everybody can ignore each other and grow infinitely large. So nobody has any reason to conflict, and plenty of reason to not conflict. What this guy's suggestion would do is introduce scarcity and make resources limited. Eventually, that would force conflict, as two growing factions are both eating through the same resource and can't really share it. The closest thing we currently have to this is the tech market, where we have constantly increasing amounts of large nations who want to buy tech, but not a great enough influx of small nations selling tech to keep the ratio at a level where everyone gets an adequate share. If the universal tightening of the tech market continues, then it's a reasonable guess that eventually it will begin to spur conflict, though that would require a radical paradigm shift in some ways, and would also to some degree require the complicity of tech sellers. I suppose it's possible that we would eventually see the "conquest" of other alliances being forced into tech selling, though that would be a very extreme and inefficient response and so would require the tech market to almost completely dry up and probably some other factors too. Ultimately, it would be more effective if there were some sort of great big pile of Wonderflonium (for example) that everyone wanted a piece of. At first, there would be enough and everybody could share and not much would really change. But eventually, as more and more of it gets used and everyone becomes addicted to it and tries to keep up with everyone else, it would almost certainly spur conflict, either directly or indirectly. Or, as in the example above, if every color was capped at X nations, then.....well depending on the cap there could be lots of Wacky Hijinks Ensue going on there. Either way, scarcity incentivizes conflict. None of the other suggestions make conflict actually seem necessary, they just make some things easier and others harder in a series of ultimately futile band-aid attempts at jumpstarting a "stagnating" game.

Am I too late to make the "You collect taxes/pay bills every day?" joke?

Considering TSO was MCXA government and a large chunk of MCXA leadership, it certainly was their responsibility to make sure that everything about this secession/transition went as smoothly and amicably as possible. From everything we've seen so far, they either didn't try very hard or they just made quite a few mistakes. I do agree that it wasn't TOP's responsibility, and it does seem like TOP handled the situation on their end reasonably well and there really isn't anything wrong with what you guys did. Yes, for awhile this thread was going quite well. It seemed to head back downhill when people started spamming it up with the obnoxious "stop trolling!" or "omg you guys are pathetic for acting like this is important or something" posts, and then the random "let's go through TOP history and complain about everything they've ever done" multi-page tangent. Let's face it, regretting signing a treaty with Vanguard isn't exactly a shock, and seems to me like the sane response. But anyway....

Yea, that would just be outrageous! Have fun!