The PIAT

[Joe Kremlin]

I don't really see much point in anything below an MDP. If you want to open up relations with an alliance you don't need to have some meaningless treaty to signify it.

[Vinzent Zeppelin]

spelt "Failures" wrong.

cbfrt

I gave the OP the benefit of the doubt that it's a portmanteau of "features" and "failures".

I honestly don't see the point in "optional defense pacts" (where nothing more substantial than non-aggression and optional defense is stipulated) or tacking an optional aggression clause on a mutual defense pact. I imagine that once upon a time, some alliance was planning an offensive and asked for assistance from an MDP partner, only to hear the reply, "Honestly, we would love to, but it's not in our treaty so I'm afraid we can't help." My thoughts on the various "template treaties":

• Non-aggression: Only really useful if you want to avoid war with an alliance.
  
• Optional defense: Pointless, since every alliance always has the sovereign right to decide to defend another.
  
• Peace, intelligence, and aid: Not a bad idea if it played a larger part.
  
• Mutual defense: One of the few genuinely useful and meaningful treaties (provided there is the requisite concurrence in attitudes and policy; otherwise it's just so much paper which will be cancelled when convenient).
  
• Mutual defense, optional aggression: The entirely redundant sibling of the mutual defense treaty.
  
• Mutual defense and aggression: Useful, but a bad idea unless both alliances are almost entirely unified in direction and attitudes.
  

What I would really like to see, though, is entirely new treaties altogether and a move away from the practice of boiling the entirety of international relations down to a set of acronyms. Let's see more unilateral defense, team senate treaties, trading clauses, more interesting protectorate treaties (the first, NoR-ICON in 2006, actually created an integrated military structure and government), special liaisons/advisors, multilateral protector-protectorate pacts, etc.

Edited August 6, 2009 by Vinzent Zeppelin

[Appoliqize]

People need to make the PIAT into something. Value it for what it is, and share info which each other.

[cs1177]

SNAFU and OSA have a great friendship, and we uphold all aspects of our PIAT, it's great Of course, it was not made with some sort of template, either.

[Haflinger]

People need to make the PIAT into something. Value it for what it is, and share info which each other.

Actually, quite a few people do this.

PIATs normally contain a clause requiring alliances to transfer intelligence. This is quite honestly more important to me than mutual defense, most days. Yes, it's nice to get support during a war, but that support is always dependent on things like alliance statistics and the like.

Sometimes a PIAT with a 500K alliance can be worth more than an MDP with a 2M alliance, because the 500K alliance's FA staff is active and talks to people alot and is a useful source of intelligence. Which, let's face it, is how wars are won here.