Open question to all GM's

[Vladimirov]

Do you think that the pact as it is now works?

and why yes/no?

[abnormal soldier]

I'm not a GM but i can say that it is still pretty boring even with this pact in place.

I have seen only 1 hit over 1m and it was only 2m fleet....Pretty sure you all but two guilds have been in war for a week, and not one shot has been fired or big fleet derbed.

There should be some rule against that, cause if guilds are going to go to war and not do anything, why go to war?

[Wlerin]

Like a Stale War clause? e.g. If a war goes on for too long without "progress" (however that is defined), either it ends or outside guilds can take an option to liven things up.

[abnormal soldier]

Like a Stale War clause? e.g. If a war goes on for too long without "progress" (however that is defined), either it ends or outside guilds can take an option to liven things up.

Exactly . Cause if they won't fight each other, there are other guilds just waiting to fight.

[Mike Spilligan]

What I've seen so far is one guild blob in one galaxy set, while their opponent blobs in a different galaxy set.

Anyone in the galaxy set the opposing blob is in bunkers down with minimal base fleet and spends credits.

Both guilds rake up and down their blob galaxy set, making base hits to see if someone has credits stored. Sometimes they get lucky, sometimes they barely break even. The n00bs lose money on their poor hits (tech much? No.).

Excuse me, I have to go pick snails off the letterbox. That has more entertainment value.

Mike Spilligan,
GM [GOON]

[Kragen]

From a small guild point of view its better than nothing. But I think that just because one guild declares a war on another that should not remove their bases as a valid target IF ITS PROFITABLE. But keep in place the blob protections. This will stop bogus wars I think for the most part. Second I think the 5% increase per month in useable fleet against a blob rule needs to go as well. If you can't take the other blob with 120% over the fleet on the blob then tough. Lastly the total guild fleet size needs to come down. 7 billion is to much. I think 3 or 4 billion is enough until the server grows and recovers then by majority it can be adjusted. We need more guilds to keep competition up.

[mr deejay]

I'm not a GM but i can say that it is still pretty boring even with this pact in place.

I have seen only 1 hit over 1m and it was only 2m fleet....Pretty sure you all but two guilds have been in war for a week, and not one shot has been fired or big fleet derbed.

There should be some rule against that, cause if guilds are going to go to war and not do anything, why go to war?

you must play this game with your eyes closed then. On two separate occasions, I personally hosed over 3m XI fleet. Just because you didn't see it, doesn't mean it didn't happen.

[Reliance]

My view is the pact is totally f0cked but can hopefully be revised in a constructive way before it expires so everyone can have another try.

Two big problems:

1. Stale wars. As others have noted, the SL v. XI sham war and the Noise/Abyss v. SGC sham war are causing exactly the kind of server stagnation that the pact was meant to help alleviate (by preventing gangbanging) due in large part to #2 (the DNH problem) but also to the way the wars are being conducted. SL is still in the lower teens. It hasn't chased XI's blob at all. It hasn't really even made any hits -- not even base hits -- and is certainly not "raking up and down the cluster" as another poster put it, hitting bases, which would be at least something. Abyss has never left F19, nor hit an SGC player a single time. I can't fault the two defending guilds -- they don't have any obligation to engage. But in fact, XI has been hitting SL bases pretty consistently. So at least it's something. But the reason, in my view, for the war declaration mechanism is not to be able to go out and hit some bases. It is to be able to chase and crash an enemy blob without fear that some other guild is going to interfere. So, we need to do something about wars that go nowhere. In addition, the idea that SL and Noise are about to have another 3 weeks sim-fest during their "DNH" period post-war is pure comedy. From what, I ask, do they need to rebuild? So we need to fix that.

2. DNH during war. I agree with kragen and other posters that making guilds at war totally off-limits is problematic. For the last three weeks, Fate's only legitimate targets have been DMTNT and DOA (both now off limits), TE (with whom we have our one permissible NAP), ~UD~, and guilds outside the pact. Now we're basically down to ~UD~. In other words, the guilds the pact was most meant to protect have suffered the most. And with post-war DNH, it will be several more weeks before we can hit anyone else. That is stupid. Now, on the other hand, I hope everyone sees that a world with no protection for guilds in war just invites exactly the kind of server stagnation we had before -- what big guild would try to crash another's blob, or even go occupy every guild base in a galaxy (as we did to SL in F15 a while ago) if they thought some other big guild could come and interfere? None. So some protection is necessary. How to strike the right balance is tough.

The pact has other problems, mostly the kind of thing that occurs to people only after some issue has arisen. For example, the pact says guilds at war are DNH, but also allows guilds to perma-occ bases in the galaxy where their blob is. Some would say, when guild X declares war on guild Y, every other guild has to release the perma-occs because guild X is now DNH. I would say, if you had a permissible perma-occ on someone, the fact they declared war shouldn't suddenly force its release. But I can see the argument on the other side. Ultimately, this is just a question of drafting -- once there is agreement on which answer everyone wants to be the case, the drafting will easily follow. Not nearly as tricky as problems 1 and 2.

All this is to say, Fate is pretty unhappy where things stand, but hopefully we can work things through.

One procedural note -- some people have complained that they were unfairly kept out of the loop. By and large, these are either GMs from small guilds who did not respond to repeated invitations to comment on drafts of the agreement over the last few months (so I ask -- what did you want, a gold-plated invitation?) or players from larger guilds who don't like the pact and think they are smarter and better than the GMs who negotiated it (to whom I say -- I do not control the manner in which your particular GMs solicit input from membership on important decisions, and you should take that up with your GM).

-Reliance

[Kakarot]

My view is the pact is totally f0cked but can hopefully be revised in a constructive way before it expires so everyone can have another try.

Two big problems:

1. Stale wars. As others have noted, the SL v. XI sham war and the Noise/Abyss v. SGC sham war are causing exactly the kind of server stagnation that the pact was meant to help alleviate (by preventing gangbanging) due in large part to #2 (the DNH problem) but also to the way the wars are being conducted. SL is still in the lower teens. It hasn't chased XI's blob at all. It hasn't really even made any hits -- not even base hits -- and is certainly not "raking up and down the cluster" as another poster put it, hitting bases, which would be at least something. Abyss has never left F19, nor hit an SGC player a single time. I can't fault the two defending guilds -- they don't have any obligation to engage. But in fact, XI has been hitting SL bases pretty consistently. So at least it's something. But the reason, in my view, for the war declaration mechanism is not to be able to go out and hit some bases. It is to be able to chase and crash an enemy blob without fear that some other guild is going to interfere. So, we need to do something about wars that go nowhere. In addition, the idea that SL and Noise are about to have another 3 weeks sim-fest during their "DNH" period post-war is pure comedy. From what, I ask, do they need to rebuild? So we need to fix that.

2. DNH during war. I agree with kragen and other posters that making guilds at war totally off-limits is problematic. For the last three weeks, Fate's only legitimate targets have been DMTNT and DOA (both now off limits), TE (with whom we have our one permissible NAP), ~UD~, and guilds outside the pact. Now we're basically down to ~UD~. In other words, the guilds the pact was most meant to protect have suffered the most. And with post-war DNH, it will be several more weeks before we can hit anyone else. That is stupid. Now, on the other hand, I hope everyone sees that a world with no protection for guilds in war just invites exactly the kind of server stagnation we had before -- what big guild would try to crash another's blob, or even go occupy every guild base in a galaxy (as we did to SL in F15 a while ago) if they thought some other big guild could come and interfere? None. So some protection is necessary. How to strike the right balance is tough.

The pact has other problems, mostly the kind of thing that occurs to people only after some issue has arisen. For example, the pact says guilds at war are DNH, but also allows guilds to perma-occ bases in the galaxy where their blob is. Some would say, when guild X declares war on guild Y, every other guild has to release the perma-occs because guild X is now DNH. I would say, if you had a permissible perma-occ on someone, the fact they declared war shouldn't suddenly force its release. But I can see the argument on the other side. Ultimately, this is just a question of drafting -- once there is agreement on which answer everyone wants to be the case, the drafting will easily follow. Not nearly as tricky as problems 1 and 2.

All this is to say, Fate is pretty unhappy where things stand, but hopefully we can work things through.

One procedural note -- some people have complained that they were unfairly kept out of the loop. By and large, these are either GMs from small guilds who did not respond to repeated invitations to comment on drafts of the agreement over the last few months (so I ask -- what did you want, a gold-plated invitation?) or players from larger guilds who don't like the pact and think they are smarter and better than the GMs who negotiated it (to whom I say -- I do not control the manner in which your particular GMs solicit input from membership on important decisions, and you should take that up with your GM).

-Reliance

Note. I am not a member of leadership and this represents my own view and not the guild's.

The particular issues that you have posted about was foreseeable and were likely to occur. Hell, I posted about them on our boards minutes after the pact was posted in the forum. This is why you need hypothetical situations outlined in the pact itself as it would solve any potential issue over precedent. Also, scrutinising particular clauses and seeing what could happen and how to prevent exploitation. That would happen with people who deal with stuff like this in every day life.

I would like to see your information about the SL and XI base hits as we have probably done more hits on them and taken more fleet out. To me a war is a war and there shouldn't be any onus on the declarer to force the crash. Should just do whatever it takes to win that war. I notice you aren't complaining about XI and SGC getting the free sim time though. Nice to see how the politics are still working.

The current occupations of a player, whose guild is at war with a different guild to the occupier, could just go back to the previous occupation state which says no more than a HC. Seems to be the middle ground in that particular issue.

My issue is with the people involved in the writing of the pact. Get a person that is the most suitable to represent each guild that signed the pact. Call it a council or whatever and those people will only deal with the pact. You guys can agree on a criteria for those representatives.

[TheRick]

I think there are issues, but I haven't seen anything extremely horrible. I think that revisions made to it after the first term could solve any of the issues we have seen.

Main issues I see.

DOA never made a second guild to go after DMTNT's blob as warfare is defined by:


Warfare

Warfare is described as a significant amount of guild (x)’s fleet attempting to attack a significant amount of guild (y)’s fleet - and is not to be confused with the act of attacking a few accounts out on “OP’s” (which is considered normal game play). Warfare is against Fleet Blobs. (see Fleet Blobs)

---

I haven't seen noise hit SGC's blob with their new tag. I haven't seen XI or SL hit more then 15 million fleet mostly base hits and 3m fleets and under.

Now I think we need to rexamine the rebuild time for only those who actually lose fleet. If you don't lose fleet in a war, lets say 10-15% your guild fleet. Then you don't need to rebuild IMO.


For the most part I believe these are minor issues and can be easily solved with a quick vote or talks and negotiations I don't think it is outright not working. I think every guild is growing.

[Drekoffs]

I have a better pact in mind.

1. 64 player max per guild.
2. No DNH pacts.
3. No signatures required. Start the mayhem please.

[Cannon_Fodder]

At this late stage of the game the only agreement worth bothering with is one that will make it very difficult for the large guilds to war and make it easy for small guilds to create as much mayhem as they like - thus encouraging the active players naturally migrating to form smaller guilds. I don't know if such an agreement is possible but that was what Noise tried to achieve prior to the breakdown and subsequent XD/XI war.

It remains to be seen if the current agreement will achieve this but my gut feeling is it wont. It is a little hard to evaluate though when two of the larger guild's that are at full strength are pacted with each other and the remaining four larger guilds are still trying to rebuild their accounts. :/

[mr deejay]

I loved Reliance's bawwing about the XI vs SL war. Maybe if you were in either of the guilds mentioned, you'd realize what you typed should have been saved for another day.

I also like how the talk about pact abuses are "politically motivated." Then the toadies chime in with the "yeah he's right!" statements.

TheRick, you wouldn't know if anything was wrong. You aren't entirely bright! Declaring on SL? LOL!


no one wants to send a representative to a "council" Kakarot. There are whole guilds where smart people don't exist. It's gonna be tough to fill a quorum.