166 replies to this topic

[Crockdaddy]

wanderer, on 18 February 2015 - 11:16 PM, said:

Namely:

http://mwomercs.com/...ack-on-athenry/

As it is most definitely NOT in Her Celestial Wisdom's pleasure that such things continue, I would politely ask that we give them someplace NOT in the Marik or Kurita discussion areas (which by natural positioning are anything but neutral ground) to work it out.

This doesn't mean we have to tolerate either side being disrespectful or simply going for cheap shots, but someplace to resolve this with at least the tacit authority of the Confederation overseeing it would be something I strongly advise. However, I would ask my fellow Capellans to put their two cents in before actually dropping a "Liao Diplomatic Center" topic here.

Marik and Kurita fighting each other can only lead to bad things for Liao, and we have a tradition of diplomacy (and cunning at same) that stretches clean back to Ares and beyond. When such a task falls before us, I would say it is our damn job to get the trains back on their respective rails.

I just want to say "Doumo arigatou gozaimasu" to Wanderer for so graciously hosting this thread.

I will tell a story you can choose to believe it or not.

1. HK had voted recently to seek a ceasefire agreement with Davion.
2. I was literally reaching out yesterday to get some time with AFFS Command on their TS to workout the details. The agreement was largely meant to setup the possibility for HK to fully focus on clan aggression. Part of the agreement had to do with what our LIAO partners might want (this was the touchy part we haven't had time to talk about yet).
3. Instead of meeting AFFS, I was instead at the ER with a loved one (things are fine).
4. I brought up the possibility internally on NS forums of moving to FRR on a short term contract to provide direct support to FRR and hopefully mending some hurt feelings and misunderstandings with IS MERC units. Not for them to come back to HK, but just in general to have a better relationship with them and focus on IS objectives while at the same time helping FRR expand their borders. We would have talked to HK Council about this of course but we never had the chance. NOTE: To our sister units, this was theoretical and something I had thought of just yesterday. I would have talked to you about it IF it had gotten serious.
5. HK was focused first on closing down the wormhole experiment which Marik leadership had agreed too so we would not have to worry about MERC units of uncertain loyalties.

Instead, I login at Midnight and madness ensues. Marik broke the ceasefire and attacked. We responded and the forum wars went crazy.

I'd prefer to simply close the border and I speak for the High Council on this and go back to what we had planned to do which is focus the clans, but if Marik wants a war they will certainly have it. We are not asking for it.

[Onmyoudo]

As always, our thoughts and hearts are with the Space Vikings; the true victims of this tragedy.

[Crockdaddy]

We can still have peace between us. Right now that is entirely up to Marik. House Kurita wants to close the wormhole. We close the wormhole and this can be done.

Marik, the ball is in your court. What happens today with the wormhole matters. You say you want the clans to get focused on, we have laid bare internal communications which we normally would not do to show our intentions.

[Catamount]

CrockdaddyAoD, there isn't necessarily a desire for war on our side, either. It's expensive for us, and those are resources we'd like elsewhere.

There are things Marik players have griped about, but none of it is necessarily beyond resolution. First, let me again apologize for the surprise attack. I can't speak for most of the leadership there, but for the moment: to hell with them. On behalf of most of the FWLM community, who's weighed input was not well-reflected in our actions last night, I sincerely apologize.

As far as Marik gripes, we'll never get past them if we don't list them, and feel free to object on any point. That's the point.

First, regarding Davion, it can perhaps be understood that only so much can be granted to them diplomatically when their only diplomatic claim to consideration is that they technically exist. They have no faction or fighting force at present to negotiate with. You're also not obligated to hold any given diplomatic position towards them. Fine, fair. Here's our concern, however. We feel as though during the nSL negotiations, Davion acted in good faith in holding up a ceasefire while you weighed joining. Your units seemed to take advantage of that, and your leadership dragged their feet, allowing said units to milk that. Attacking Davion is, itself, a minor point of contention, I think, but Marik felt as though efforts on our part were taken advantage of.


Then there's the tangled mess of the Clans and the nSL, and Davion vs Clan fronts, and however those things connect. It's clear that Kurita is putting some effort into repelling the Clans. They're not ghost dropping you; you have forces arrayed against them. To say you're not fighting them at all, as you've been accused of, is hyperbole on the part of our members. I've watched your worlds and it's not the case. However, your worlds are still slipping. Sakai and Paracale were yours just a few days ago. Just a few days before that, you held a not-insubstantial island on Krenice, Mannedon, Setubal, Eguilles, and Maule. That's all gone, just run over by the Clans. Our concern is that, fine, you're fighting the Clans, but any forces you have on Davion are forces not on the Clans. You did not put all-in on keeping those worlds, and chose to trade your northern worlds for Davion soft targets. That fundamentally represents an advance by the Clans on the Inner Sphere. When we sent merc units up to help, all we saw was a proportionate increase from the Clans to Davion, taking advantage of that help to attack the IS, rather than pushing the attack on the Clans with all that extra manpower. Now, our "wormhole experiment" was hoped to be a way to open a small "embassy" in your space to attack the Clans up north. We cap up, you cap behind us. We couldn't get the algorithm to work to that effect. However, in light of the ultimate unwillingness to engage the Clans sufficiently to stop bleeding worlds to them, we worry that you do not have the will or means to stop them from rolling up straight to Terra, certainly not on your own. So yes, of course we look at that and think a buffer is warranted. It's just what we see from where we sit.

Now, you've said you will fight and repel the Clans. Amidst the enormous shitstorm thread on our forums, you made the promise repeatedly, that you'll fight the Clans, that you'll repel the Clans, that it's only us who's now causing you to lose to the Clans, but Marik feels as though that's all we've ever gotten: a laundry list of Will Dos and Would Haves. The FRR promise is just the latest there. We feel like there's never been a point at which you stop talking about engaging the Clans, and actually engage the Clans. Then, suddenly, what felt like an instantaneous unilateral decision to close down the Wormhole came. Okay, it's yours and we recognize that, but in light of our concerns, we felt like maybe there should have been discussion on that point, some attempt at some kind of agreement, or at least in the form of some assurances that you will, in fact, put up some serious effort to protect that space from the Clans. That's Terra there, and up next, our main border. A full buffer around Terra, the proposed "Great Wall of Space Bacon" is expensive and time consuming to erect and even moreso to defend long term, especially compared to an alternative like simply maintaining some worlds beside yours so that if/when the Clans get that far we'd have our attack lane to jump in, but if all you do is cede world after world to their advance, can we trust that you'll put up any real defense effort, ultimately? Maybe we can, but some actual reasons to would help a lot.


Okay, so that's where Marik is coming from right now. We feel like any effort to assist the Clans has been taken advantage of, and we feel as though you're not going to stop the Clans because you just don't have a real interest in doing so.


Could that all be worked out? Absolutely. It seems like part of the problem is lack of communication, for starters. You said you were thinking of sending troops to the FRR. That alone would have allayed an enormous number of our concerns, but as far as I'm aware, and I have pretty constant communication with everyone in leadership, no one here was made aware of that at all. If that's still on the table, and other issues could be discussed, then I think we could have a productive cooperative relationship.


Now, again, I can't speak for most of the leadership, nor could I promise any participation. I'm effective second in command of a unit, nothing more. I am in a position to bring to attention a willingness to have a discussion and work these things out, to try to get someone here who could achieve something productive, quickly, including hearing out your side of these issues and any grievances you may have.


So, since the primary channels of diplomacy haven't worked, let me take the initiative and suggest the following, should you be amenable to it.


1.) Maintain a discussion here in Liao, not all discussion because some of it may be sensitive, open forum and all, but some measure of continued dialogue. These guys are good neutral moderators.

2.) Lay out short-term plans of action against the Clans, not vague promises of somedays and maybes and will get around tos, from either side, but specific plans to address the Clan threat. This will largely allay our concerns.

3.) At least attempt to discuss and resolve all remaining issues brought up here, any issues/grievances/whatever you would like to bring to the table, and reach agreements on how we might avoid such misunderstandings in the future, including discussions of how to open more active lines of communication so that we can actually remain on the same page.


If you're amenable to that, then I will at least attempt to get someone in here who's more empowered to start that process. Will anything happen? Will conflict end? Will we manage any product cooperative effort against anyone? I have no idea. But I'm willing to act within what little power and influence I do have try to start a process to do that on our side.

Edited by Catamount, 19 February 2015 - 11:48 AM.

[cranect]

I do know that while we were dropping for house Kurita they would attack the clans some. Then as soon as the world either went past 50% or looked to go past it they would all leave and go elsewhere. Our unit was told to fight the clans and that is what we did. I know I dropped with 12 mans for more hours than I would care to admit. The planets would still be lost at the end of the ceasefire even if we won about 3/4 of our matches because even though we had the numbers earlier as the day went on they all disappeared consistently. I do not have screenshots or anything but after a few days of this it starts to feel like there is no point to helping you against the clans if they are not your priority as well. I know on your own TS it said the priority was davion then the clans. Anyway that is just how it seemed to some of us. We would be with you guys and then an hour or two before ceasefire you would all go to the davion border to take that planet and the clans would have the numbers and keep their planet.

[wanderer]

Quote

I don't know who's fault that is, but the majority of Marik, regardless of some support for hostilities over this or that, did not support the manner in which it happened.

One should wonder, considering who benefits from such a jarring misalignment of interests, if such a sudden, unexpected result might have had a little outside push. Indeed, I would expect it.

In the Confederation, if you find a dead jiang-jun at the bottom of an elevator shaft, the first question is not whether it was an accident, but who dropped him there in the first place. It saves on ammunition if you don't shoot too many extra people figuring it out.

[PerfectDuck]

Kurita has been losing planets. This much is true. When Marik claim that they are so much better than us that it would be so drastically different if it was them in our place is something we take insult to. I would like this grievance addressed.

[PerfectDuck]

Catamount, on 19 February 2015 - 11:40 AM, said:

Our concern is that, fine, you're fighting the Clans, but any forces you have on Davion are forces not on the Clans.

This really stands out as double-standard or hypocrisy when Marik have been taking Davion worlds hand over foot but somehow it's okay for them to do it just because they don't have a clan border.

[Dawnstealer]

Slightly off-topic, but the RPer in me loves the fact that no alliance in this game can last forever. It's painfully similar to the Battletech storyline.

[Catamount]

For my part, I saw good fighting from Kurita last night. My unit lost no matches, but we also rolled no matches. We had half a unit and some pugs, new pilots, whatever, and that seemed to be about what we faced on your side, and every time, we were met with consistent, well-organized defenses that put up real challenges for us. I think the ending percent on Athenry was 40 against effectively whatever forces we had in total that night. If you can hold that then clearly you're more than worthy of respect.

PerfectDuck, on 19 February 2015 - 12:05 PM, said:

This really stands out as double-standard or hypocrisy when Marik have been taking Davion worlds hand over foot but somehow it's okay for them to do it just because they don't have a clan border.

In other words, if we're so worried about IS worlds staying defended, we should be dropping on the IS vs Clan defense queues instead of hitting soft targets in Davion ourselves.

That's perhaps a fair point. One thing I will note though is that you can attack the Clans whereas we cannot. We're stuck purely on defense queues because PGI has no system in place for the southern houses to actually take part in IS vs Clan combat. We can't get worlds of our own up there, we can't play on the attack for the most part. We're just stuck on defense queues on other peoples' worlds, over and over and over again.

That puts strain on our motivation to play. It's not your fault, to be sure, and PGI should have thought of it long ago, but it's why we drop against whatever we can find. We don't really have an real opponents down here. Why do you think we've soured from endless pug stomping? Had our northern embassy idea succeeded, we'd be pushing that, but it didn't, and that leaves us with limited gameplay options.

Clearly perspectives differ, and no surprise since we're on two sides of the map. The question is whether there are things we can do to work that out.

Edited by Catamount, 19 February 2015 - 12:23 PM.

[Scoops Kerensky]

Regarding Davion fights and the nsl:

The Kurita/Davion border has consistently had ~36 people from each side both attacking and defending in the NA timezone nightly for over a month now. During negotiations our pace of conquest neither slowed not accelerated, and I can state as one of our six council members there was never any attempt to stall negotiations in order to eat more dav planets.

Sometimes Davion would strike first each night, sometimes we would. I think it's habit practically for both sides and there was no sinister intent there I believe on either side. The choice for joining the nsl really was that contentious internally for us.

Many of us felt bewildered and imposed upon when Marik mercs joined as if our joining was assured. It wasn't helped when certain merc groups that claimed nominal star league allegiance (*not* BWC or seraphim) barged into our drop channels and demanded all house units drop on the clans with them without introducing who they were of explaining what was going on. This ended up souring many rank and file on the Star League and gave it the image in HK internally of an outside force trying to take command of us and usurp the authority of all the loyalists within.

It's from those events you saw some of the unwillingness to cooperate, along with being distracted by dav and the ms/wormhole drama. Still, several of us did drop on clan worlds when we were told seraphim and BWC were active but Comms were spotty and for whatever reason they got the impression they were abandoned. I know 4 nights in a row NKVA dropped nonstop on clans trying to assist BWC in fighting the ghost bears, and more embittered feelings were placed when BWC felt alone and we felt as though (and still do) that our contributions weren't acknowledged.

I agree with your assessment. Most of this is the result of bad assumptions from a severe lack of clear communication between everyone.

[Koshirou]

Catamount, on 19 February 2015 - 11:40 AM, said:

However, in light of the ultimate unwillingness to engage the Clans sufficiently to stop bleeding worlds to them, we worry that you do not have the will or means to stop them from rolling up straight to Terra, certainly not on your own. So yes, of course we look at that and think a buffer is warranted. It's just what we see from where we sit.

Okay, just to say it one more time: Whether you call it a "great wall", a "buffer around Terra" or whatever...

IT DOES NOT MAKE A LICK OF SENSE!

Any IS player can defend any IS world from any Clan attack. Unless and until PGI fundamentally changes the way CW works, you do not need to hold worlds in order to defend them against the Clans. Quite frankly, the whole "defend Terra by surrounding it with Marik worlds" smacks of an excuse to grab some planets and little else.

[Dawnstealer]

Catamount, on 19 February 2015 - 12:20 PM, said:

That puts strain on our motivation to play. It's not your fault, to be sure, and PGI should have thought of it long ago, but it's why we drop against whatever we can find. We don't really have an real opponents down here. Why do you think we've soured from endless pug stomping? Had our northern embassy idea succeeded, we'd be pushing that, but it didn't, and that leaves us with limited gameplay options.

You realize you border THREE powers, correct? Liao doesn't seem to have much to do other than take undefended Davion worlds. Maaaaaaaybe start dropping on that border and make things a little more lively down south?

[Roadbeer]

Dawnstealer, on 19 February 2015 - 12:37 PM, said:

You realize you border THREE powers, correct? Liao doesn't seem to have much to do other than take undefended Davion worlds. Maaaaaaaybe start dropping on that border and make things a little more lively down south?

Why, Liao has always acted as a great partner in peace, without terms.

[cranect]

Socop, on 19 February 2015 - 12:21 PM, said:

Regarding Davion fights and the nsl:

The Kurita/Davion border has consistently had ~36 people from each side both attacking and defending in the NA timezone nightly for over a month now. During negotiations our pace of conquest neither slowed not accelerated, and I can state as one of our six council members there was never any attempt to stall negotiations in order to eat more dav planets.

Sometimes Davion would strike first each night, sometimes we would. I think it's habit practically for both sides and there was no sinister intent there I believe on either side. The choice for joining the nsl really was that contentious internally for us.

Many of us felt bewildered and imposed upon when Marik mercs joined as if our joining was assured. It wasn't helped when certain merc groups that claimed nominal star league allegiance (*not* BWC or seraphim) barged into our drop channels and demanded all house units drop on the clans with them without introducing who they were of explaining what was going on. This ended up souring many rank and file on the Star League and gave it the image in HK internally of an outside force trying to take command of us and usurp the authority of all the loyalists within.

It's from those events you saw some of the unwillingness to cooperate, along with being distracted by dav and the ms/wormhole drama. Still, several of us did drop on clan worlds when we were told seraphim and BWC were active but Comms were spotty and for whatever reason they got the impression they were abandoned. I know 4 nights in a row NKVA dropped nonstop on clans trying to assist BWC in fighting the ghost bears, and more embittered feelings were placed when BWC felt alone and we felt as though (and still do) that our contributions weren't acknowledged.

I agree with your assessment. Most of this is the result of bad assumptions from a severe lack of clear communication between everyone.

Ah well that clarifies a few things there. Ya I can see that being an issue. I think we were on the smoke jag border for the most part. Ya more communication may have helped as well. Ya I know we had random pilots from different companies and were able to keep about 1 full 12 man going for almost 8 hours a day. We could definitely see people helping and the planet would turn in our favor but then it would "seem" like everyone switched to the Davion border. This may not have actually been the case but it was frustrating none the less.

[Harathan]

Dawnstealer, on 19 February 2015 - 12:37 PM, said:

You realize you border THREE powers, correct? Liao doesn't seem to have much to do other than take undefended Davion worlds. Maaaaaaaybe start dropping on that border and make things a little more lively down south?

Marik and Liao are like conjoined twins at this point, that's not going to happen.

[Dawnstealer]

Roadbeer, on 19 February 2015 - 12:40 PM, said:

Why, Liao has always acted as a great partner in peace, without terms.

Ironically, the same is true for us (Steiner) with Kurita; once the Clans got rolling, we didn't have time to fight with each other.

I was just pointing out that if you guys are bored of Ghost/PUG Drops on the Steiner and Davion borders, Liao is pretty active and in the same position. Even more so since they only have one option for attack if Marik is off the table.

Edited by Dawnstealer, 19 February 2015 - 12:44 PM.

[Catamount]

Dawnstealer, on 19 February 2015 - 12:37 PM, said:

You realize you border THREE powers, correct? Liao doesn't seem to have much to do other than take undefended Davion worlds. Maaaaaaaybe start dropping on that border and make things a little more lively down south?

We are not interested in starting fights with our Liao allies. They have done nothing but act in good faith towards us at every step of the way. Davion is fundamentally incapable of offering any resistance to our forces at this point, making conflict moot except to planet-grab and have also acted in good faith which makes it hard to desire conflict with them. Steiner is on defense against the Clans, so that serves no long-term purpose and ties you up too much anyways.
Yeah, sure, we could organize fights with Liao here and there, but it's not a long-term avenue of gameplay, let alone one we could continuously go all in on because that's full-blown war that we don't want. We have pilots we can drop against, sure, but there's no one we have to go to war with, certainly no one that wouldn't undermine long-term goals, and since the Clans are our ultimate shared enemy here, and the biggest long-term threat, they're the only ones we'd care to go to war with.

Edited by Catamount, 19 February 2015 - 12:48 PM.

[Dawnstealer]

Right, but what I'm saying is that if you don't want to fight with anyone in an online war game because of fictional alliances, you can't really complain that there's no one to fight with, dig?

[wanderer]

Quote

You realize you border THREE powers, correct? Liao doesn't seem to have much to do other than take undefended Davion worlds. Maaaaaaaybe start dropping on that border and make things a little more lively down south?

We'll cheerfully drop on your defended worlds, too. It's a bit reduced with our significantly smaller population also sending units to the FRR (including merc units that are in good standing with the Confederation), which means more Liao advances happen off-NA cycle than on.

The factions that don't attack us owe simply to being polite and diplomatic, having picked our allies and stuck with them.

Life is simple, but men insist on making it complicated.