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Drogue
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Omnipresent conscience
Oct 2002
time: 05:21
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quote:
Originally posted by Googlie
Hmm - I see that Illuminatus tried to block our time extension
Very unfriendly |
Unfriendly possibly, but his concern was that the rules regarding the time limit was not adhered to. In response I said that in exceptional circumstances, when the 48 hours had been used but there was simply too much to do, I would grant an extension without penalty. I don't want to be anal and make everyone follow the exact rules to the letter, it removes the fun. However prompt turn playing is important so people don't get bored, so it will be done rarely, and quick playing in the past will make me look more favourably when a delay is needed.
Illuminatus was concerned that I was going to be soft on extensions, when I had said I would enforce them. This is not the case, though flexibility is important. It's also worth noting I looked over the forum before I granted it, to see how the 48 hours had been used and why an extension was needed. Please do not expect that an extension will be automatically granted, if I do not see a reason, it holds up the game needlessly, which none of us want.
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Googlie
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Commanding Officer, CRYPTEIA
Apr 1999
time: 21:21
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Major Maniac was furious.
He stormed into the Command Center where Lieutenant-Colonel Googlie was studying the latest situational holovids, and rapped his command baton sharply on the table, attracting the Lieutenant-Colonel's attention.
"What is the meaning of this ..... outrage" he demanded. "Demoted, given the ceremonial title of Curator of the Military Museum? Have you gone mad?"
Googlie looked up speculatively.
"Sauce for the Gander, eh? Major"
"What the hell's that supposed to mean?" demanded the Major.
"Ah, what a short memory we have, do we not?" Googlie murmured. "Remember, dear Major, that when my Morgan initiative was shot down by the Junta you were quick to force a demotion on me - to Staff Sergeant, even, as I recall. Be thankful, after the fiasco of your so-called Manifesto which your bedmates the Gaians shot down, that you are still a Major. Now, if you don't mind, I'm somewhat busy. Don't you have some manoeuvers that you are supposed to be on?"
Major Maniac looked frostily at the Lieutenant Colonel.
"Oh, yes," he replied. "I certainly do."
He turned on his heels and left.
*************************************************
"But, sir, isn't that tantamount to mutiny?" asked Raoul, the acknowleded prototypical Spartan Kel - that group of soldiers recruited largely from the Laconian province which comprised Santiago Citadel and Gythium Harbour. They were the under Major Maniac's direct command - and known as the Kel - Killer Elite Laconians - armed with the latest in impact weaponry.
"Not at all," replied the Major. "I'm still co-chair with Googlie, and rank really means nothing. It's power that counts. He's in the Command Center at Citadel, and I'm here - with you - at Sparta Command. Let's go."
The two guardsmen lounged at ease - yet still vigilant - by the doors of the Embassy, then snapped to attention as they saw the platoon approaching.
"Bloody hell," said one - "it's Maniac. And he's got a bodyguard of those friggin Kel's, too"
The Major stepped up to them.
"Fire the locks" he commanded.
"I can't do that, Sir," one replied. "Captain Rynn's orders."
"Oh, it's Captain now, is it? The Lieutenant Colonel wasted no time, did he?"
"Major...... Sir?" asked the trooper.
"Never mind - step aside. Raoul"
The hulking Kel unslung his weapon and levelled it at the lock on the Embassy door. One round was sufficient as the 10 mm caseless kinetic energy blast blew the lock like confetti in a breeze.
Major Manic reached for the notice and ripped it from the door, and turned to the two troopers:
"This Embassy is again open for business. And it's Lieutenant-Colonel to you, trooper. Raoul - secure the building"
*************************************************
The Junta met later that evening. Lieutenant-Colonel Googlie had arrived from Citadel, and Major Kassiopeia was back from his diplomatic mission. Captain Snoddasmannen sat with Googlie, but across the table sat Caoptain Zeiter and Kapitan KrysiasKrusader, both firmly in the Maniac camp. Captain Primus Pilus was present by holovid, and it looked for a time that his vote would be crucial.
But after discussion, matters reahced a conclusion.
"Very well," Lieutenant=Colonel Googlie assented. "You have made your points. I agree with the re-opening of the Gaian Union Embassy. I agree with your re-instatement as Lieutenant-Colonel. I agree with the changes to the bases' build orders and worker reallocations. Now call off your hounds and let's get down to business".
Lieutenant-Colonel Maniac looked to the door, where Raoul stood impassively.
"You may stand your men down, Lieutenant," he said.
Lieutenant Raoul relaxed, and then barked the order:
"Spartan Kel, withdraw to barracks"
The platoon of Impact Infantrymen, who had been ringing the walls of the Junta council room, turned and filed out.
As the doors closed, Googlie was heard to murmer:
"Ah, yes. The Reichstag precedent."
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Googlie
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Commanding Officer, CRYPTEIA
Apr 1999
time: 21:21
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This, by Illuminatus, in the now re-opened Embassy:
quote:
Posted in the Embassy by Illuminatus
We are not amused by your RolePlay charade - you have only proven to be completely untrustworthy since you are willing to tamper with this forum without our consent in order to convince us there is a terrible struggle withing Sparta. Mindgames do not work on us.
You would do best to leave this forum alone - we will ask Drogue to create a private forum at Eventis where further negotiations will be conducted (if any), and history of message exchanges shall be transfered there as well, therefore do not tamper with this forums again if you have any honour left.
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To which I replied:
quote:
Posted by Googlie in he Embassy
Sheesh - lighten up, Illuminatus
Remember, I CMN'd the ACDG-2. I know how important it is to keep the integrity of these private fora intact and free from tampering. There was never any question that it'd be closed for, at most , a couple of days
But if we can't roleplay, what's the point of playing??
Googlie |
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Maniac
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Gent, Belgium
Jul 1999
time: 06:21
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Can I post this in the Gaian embassy? I doubt it will have any effect, but you never know. 
May I add my voice to this debate as supporter of Sparta-Gaian cooperation and writer of the Maniac Manifesto?
"This truly shows that you are interested only in your benefit."
But of course we are looking out for our own interest and benefit! Anything else would be utterly foolish. (This is a non-cooperative victory game after all.) There can only be one faction to dominate Planet. We are open and publically admit we hope it will be us. Don't you hope it will be you?
Other factions may pretend to act in the benefit of all Chiron, but surely that's just an ideological disguise. Instead we Spartans perform diplomacy out of a 'realpolitiker' point of view, and don't pretend to be someone else than we truly are.
"Sparta refused to trade Lal's or Morgan's frequencies"
With the above in mind, can you call us "uncooperative" for not wanting to give up our sole biggest advantage? I certainly don't think so. Unless you call cooperation "caving in to whatever desires the other has." We see cooperation in another light. We only make proposals or accept them when they are in our benefit. If the other party thinks they'll gain too, cooperation will arise. If the other party doesn't think they'll gain, no cooperation will arise. In other words, cooperation = mutual gain and interests. And not some idealistic unrealistic notion of "altruism". It's as simple as that.
So let's have a look at your other examples of our uncooperativeness:
"Sparta refused to trade us Ethical Calculus or Doctrine: Flexibility in past"
We are more than willing to trade you and the Angels Ethical Calculus and Doctrine: Flexibility, IF the price is right. Unfortunately you have not yet agreed to an offer the majority of the Junta found acceptable. IIRC you once offered us Biogenetics and a small sum of credits for DocFlex, but we consider Biogen practically useless. You might counter we received Biogenetics some time later anyway, but that was because we gave away a tech with an equally small trade value, namely Gene Splicing. As you cleverly made use of our forgetfulness to add our planned embargo to the Gene Splicing<->IndAut right away, you managed to negotiate a short embargo period. If the embargo period was longer, we would never have traded away gene splicing in return for such an unimportant technology as Biogenetics.
So surely you do not want to deny us the right to refuse a trade offer if we deem it not in our benefit? Just like you have the right to refuse the many Spartan trade offers if you don't like them, as you have done many times.
"Sparta introduced increase of prices, because of 'free flow of information' with Angels."
Do you think Sparta should trade away technologies we have a monopoly on, if the consequence was the technology quickly spread to all other factions, denying us profit we could get by trading the tech further ourselves? Would you do that?
"if Sparta truly intended to organize an anti- Morgan block, why would it oppose granting technologies to others, liberating our way to beelines?"
Did we not propose to give you technologies in my Maniac Manifesto?
"Nothing has shown you are truly interested in presenting an opposition to Morgan, but history of your actions shows you are primarly interested in only your gains."
Opposing Morgan - and the Hive - is in our gains. And we assume it is in your benefit too.
"Also Googlie, we have not seen much of this 'pro-Gaian wing' - we've just noticed you refused to trade technologies and increased prices, which clearly shows that if it existed, it had no effect on your foreign policy. It was surely seeming promising in begining, but Spartan refusal for cooperation has shown that pro-Gaian wing has been surpressed."
How can you say that? We've offered you a bunch of technologies. The Gaians just didn't like the price. As far as our latest DocLoy offer, I too found the Junta demands a bit too high.
But yours were in my opinion even more out of proportion.
Diplomacy is done with two, and involves both parties doing some water in their wine. As supporter of the pro-Gaian Wing, as far as I'm concerned I'm willing to do so. Are you?
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Googlie
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Commanding Officer, CRYPTEIA
Apr 1999
time: 21:21
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I see that Illuminatus has responded.
I'd like to reply:
Without further adding to the "you did - you didn't" debate, I'd like to share with the Gaian Union some of our initial internal strategy discussions that certainly shape our decisions re trade offers, etc.
The commlinks
Very early on we decided to pursue a Doctrine Flexibility >> Planetary Networks research path so that we could get our exploration frigates and probes out and about.
This was clearly at the expense of beelining for Ind Auto - usually considered an early "must have tech" in PBEMs (in fact, our first crawler just came off the production line this year, 2146)
As a result, we fell significantly behind the other factions in our ability to crawl minerals - or nuts - and even more significantly, to rush any of the SP's we want. This strategy, though, led us to meeting the University, Peacekeepers, Morgan, and the Gaian Union, and we were able to purchase, trade, and probe vital technologies from these meetings. (as well as buying the Angels commnlink from you - while you simulataneously sold ours to the Angels for Applied Physics - neat coup)
Now, when we are asked to trade those commlinks - that represent the investment we have made as a result of a strategic research choice, what might they be worth? Perhaps 5 crawlers each, delivered to our nearest base? That's probably how far we are behind in crawler production as a result of the choices we made. But clearly we'd be laughed at if we suggested that. And we never did receive anything offered that we felt would be commensurate recompense for the industrial losses we had sustained while going about our chosen research path.
The Special Projects
We have made no secret of our desire to build the Citizens Defense Force. When trading any techs that are on Intelletual Integrity's prerequisite path, we have made its build-denial a key component of such trades.
Doc Loyalty is on Int Int's path, and while we could extract that from Yang with probes, almost certainly it would spark vendetta, which we are not yet ready for as we share a fairly long border with the Hive. If you recall, until quite recently we believed that the Gaian Union was researching Doc Flex after we sent you Doc Mobility (based on your comments at the beginning of this decade that you could deliver both Flex and Social Psych to Sparta by decade's end.
A couple of turns ago you told Kassiopeia that you were not researching Flex. So by a process of elimination we deduced that you were researching Social Psych, and that sent us into internal discussions that eventually produced the Maniac Manifesto, whereby Sparta would give the Gaians 2 technologies in exchange for 1. A by-product was that the Hive could be beaten to the Command Nexus. I know that you will dismiss this out of hand, but intil that moment Sparta had never considered building the CN - it just wasn't one of the SP's we deemed essential to our faction.
Indeed, as we said to the Angels, if the Gaians or the Angels managed to build it, that's fine with us too, except - in the context of a deep, lenghty reserach and co-operation pact - it seemed to make more sense for Sparta, already with a faction morale bonus, to get boosted to Veteran or Commando than Gaians to move from Very Green to Disciplined or Angels from Green to Hardened.
General Technolgy Trading
Right now we have a fairly substantial technology lead over the Gaians, Angels and Morgan, derived through the strategic research and build choices we have made in the early game. But we are behind industrially.
The Maniac Manifesto essentially would have closed that gap over the period to 2160 where the only advantage we then might have had would have been through probe actions against the AI (such as getting Environmental Economics from the University and High Energy Chemistry from the Peacekeepers) - and these would have been passed on to both the Gaian Union and Data Angels for an appropriate payment that would have reflected that we had made a substantial investment in our covert operations activities.
Would Sparta be that much stronger in 2160? Absolutely. Would the Gaian Uniion and the Data Angels likewise be that much stronger in 2160? Equally absolutely. Might Sparta still have a research edge and a military edge by 2160? Very probably - but no different than we have now, where we have impact weapons and synthmetal armor.
So everyone would gain through the Manifesto.
It's unfortunate that it wasn't pursued.
Last edited by Googlie on 12-11-2004 at 22:55
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Kassiopeia
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Jyväskylä, Finland
Jul 2001
time: 07:21
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quote:
Originally posted by Maniac
Over one third.  How many days have you still left? |
We must send the thing in for a word count, and the deadline for that is November 30th (EST, probably, so I have 'til December technically). So I have ~18 days. 50000/30 = ~1667, and I've tried to write AT LEAST 1700 per day, so I'm pretty optimistic.
It's looking like it'll be longer than 50 000, but it's not a problem if the novel isn't finished by Nov 30, as long as you have 50 000 words. I've found myself implementing thriller-like elements out of sheer necessity, I've just written a few action scenes where a guy who avoids killing people like the plague has to negotiate through a dragnet organized by a military-like organization which wouldn't mind killing him should the need arise. Calls for a lot of creativity from the character, and thus from me as well.
I'll start to consider the English translation too (something to do while suffering writer's block); however the thing is, I think I'd rather do a preliminary edit of the Finnish one, fiddle around a bit with it for some weeks, and then start translating it when the Finnish version is starting to look good/better.
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Maniac
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Gent, Belgium
Jul 1999
time: 06:21
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quote:
Originally posted by Googlie
Trouble is, it's hemmed in by the Hive base to the NW, the hive scout to the south and the Gaian mindworm to the east |
I see.  Let's hope the Hive scout moves away then. 
quote:
(I figured that if we just sit on the monolith, denying Yang its use, he'll eventually demand its withdrawal) |
Whenever I play a simulation, Yang always asks a withdrawal. So I've started wondering, would it be possible Yang still hasn't threatened us with "retreat or you'll have vendetta" because we have a loan we still have to pay him back?
quote:
Originally posted by Kassiopeia
It's looking like it'll be longer than 50 000, but it's not a problem if the novel isn't finished by Nov 30, as long as you have 50 000 words. I've found myself implementing thriller-like elements out of sheer necessity, I've just written a few action scenes where a guy who avoids killing people like the plague has to negotiate through a dragnet organized by a military-like organization which wouldn't mind killing him should the need arise. Calls for a lot of creativity from the character, and thus from me as well. |
Sounds interesting. 
quote:
military-like organization |
Influenced by Sparta by any chance? 
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Snoddasmannen
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Relations with the Gaians seem to be breaking down rapidly. I don't recall seeing any ideal scenarios described which feature us at war with the Gaians this early. So if the Gaians are considering declaring war with us, this sounds like a bad thing to me. I think we need to call for a high level summit between top leaders of our factions. We don't want a war breaking out because of misunderstandings.
If I were at the summit I would call for a new ambassadeur to us appointed from Gaia. I am not sure that Mr. Illuminatis is ideally suited to deal with such a rough faction as ourselves.
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Snoddasmannen
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I think we should suggest either an IRC or an Embassy Chat Room summit, and let them choose the arena. We should also suggest a time when at least 2 senior members of the Junta can be present. I also think we should suggest it as soon as possible.
What is standard procedure btw, will we know if they have declared war before we open the turn? Will we get reports from the Gaians about any attacks they have performed on us?
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10-11-2004 07:24
Wouldn't it be better to write it as an article in the Spartan datasheet?
Such animosity from the hippies. 
G
IE
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