The Black Hawks | Still Winning

[Harbinger of Gehenna]

I don't know if hunting down Delegacy streaks is the most exciting way to play R/D, but I suppose that's why I'm not TBH. To be sure, it's an achievement no doubt for the invaders, but especially in this case, it's basically a fairly simplistic trade-off (that one-off achievement vs annoying the natives/Del).

In the end, all regions will fall.

[Festavo2]

"Is it true, dad?" The native's hand was shaking ever so slightly as he brought his cup to his lips. He was one of several natives tasked with watching for invaders. It was cold and still dark. The sun had yet to rise. "Are they really invincible?"
"Of course not, Leonard." The older native grinned. "They bleed. I saw one bleed once."
"G-good. Have you ever killed one?" Leonard looked at his father with hope in his eyes.
"Well, one day I was out with your unc-" The native's head was pulled backwards and a blade was forced into his throat. Blood gushed out the native's throat and his son's eyes widen with fear. The son's mouth opened as he started to scream, but it was too late. The knife was thrown at the native's face, went through his mouth and embedded itself in the back of his head.
"It isn't true." Sergeant Festavo2 walked over to the dead native and pulled his knife from the native's mouth. "But your pussy of a father never killed one."
"The village is half a klick north, sir." Private First Class Panzer Vier racked the slide on his handgun.
"Alright. You and Kyorgia go around to the left and flank 'em. NSA and Chingis, you two go around to the right and flank 'em. I'll go straight up the middle and give them a free exam." The sergeant grinned and began walking in the direction of the village. "Move out."
After the town was clear, the valuables ransacked and the huts burnt, it was time to move on. The Black Hawks met in the center of the village, checked their ammo and weapons and began to move on.
"Die, you murderer!" a native screamed as she ran out of a hut and fired a shot at Private First Class ChingisHawk. The shot hit Chingis in the side, but the woman was quickly dispatched by a shot from Private First Class We Are Not The NSA.
"Where the hell did she come from?" Festavo asked angrily.
"That hut." Private First Class Kyorgia Vasentius pointed at the hut in question.
"Chingis, you said that hut was clear," Festavo barked.
"She must have been hiding under the bed or something, sir." Chingis was gripping his side. "I was hit!"
"Serves you right for being sloppy. At least she hit the one who fucked up." Festavo examined the wound. "You'll live. Panzer, patch him up and send him back. We'll hit a few more villages and meet you at the base."

Hits: 22

Again
Central Pacific
Die Freistaaten Georgia
Eahalea
Feudal Europe
Gladium Kingdom
Global Science Alliance
International Union of Nations
New Mediterranean
Paradiso
Rosarum
Society of the Defenders
Spanish Union
The Imperial Alliances
The Iron Korps
The Kia Islands
The PreWar Territories
The Sovereignty of Cyrodil
The True US Republic
Twixt Cabinet Utopia and Boudoir Arcadia
Uratowel
Wolfs Of Destiny

Delegates hit: 3

Feudal Europe 1 endorsements 1 days
The Kia Islands 2 endorsements 9 days
The Sovereignty of Cyrodil 1 endorsements 5 days

[ChingisOtchigin]

I'm sowwy senpai V-V

[Cora III]

Featured by Shadow Raider Crazy Cora. 4 pre-endo hits.

Accuracy excellent.
Switching speed bad.

Un-formal Dojo's instructions:

[8:13:18 PM] Cora: Do you guys know how nice it be The Raiderdom's fluffy mascot with barb wire crown upon head?
[8:13:56 PM] Cora: Try yourself, before any whining...

[8:18:48 PM] Cora: improve your switching speed!
[8:20:58 PM] Cora: It's ridiculous if I have time make nugut-VI-target-nugut maneuver before you guys get switched.
[8:22:00 PM] Cora: If I can do that, surely can BT's school disciples too.

[Revall Silverstorm]

Fest, this new style is great

[Jakker]

Official TBH Statement Regarding “Predator.”

From the desk of the Council of Hawks

To put it simply, The Black Hawks condemn the use of the tool known as “Predator.” However, we all know that the matter is in no way simple.

We, as an organization, hold a responsibility for the events that have occurred in recent weeks, and for months and years prior. One of our own, Kleo, was an avid user. We’ve allowed at least one other in the region to use the tool in order to increase activity to our benefit. Among us are several who, though we distrusted the tool, failed to stand firm on this belief – in effect, failing both our own region and the raider community as a whole by not speaking up when we could have, and should have said something more. We have, as a region, benefited at least some from the use of this tool, and are properly horrified at the realization that we have done so illegally. For this, we apologize – to our own members, to our counterparts on the battlefield, to any who assisted us on runs where Predator was used, to the natives who were raided under unfair and illegal practices, to the volunteer staff of this site, and to anyone else affected by our usage of this tool. It was wrong to profit by allowance from something so many of us did not trust. In the words of Edmund Burke, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing,” and nothing is exactly what we did for far too long.

Recently, even before this matter was taken up on the forums, there have been increased concerns within the council regarding the legality of Predator’s usage in regards to contact with a DoS player. One of our own, Ever-Wandering Souls, approached the moderators via GHR about a month ago with concerns as such. Since then, we have officially ordered all TBH members to “cease usage of the Predator tool if they currently use it, as per Sedge's recent post” ( 7:31 pm EDT, March 14th), and further ordered all members to both file a GHR detailing the full extent of their involvement with the tool and cooperate fully with moderation (11:19 pm EDT, March 15th). Both of these statements and associated times can be confirmed by any member of The Black Hawks in our general chat. You will notice that several members of this body have made their own posts regarding their feelings on the matter and their apologies as such, and we encourage these efforts to continue. We have done everything possible to cooperate with moderation on this matter and shed light on the illegalities of Predator as much as possible within the scope of our command.

Moving into the future, there are a number of actions we feel we must take. First and foremost, we will cease to work with any player or organization we hold to have intentionally violated site rules regarding this tool, distributed the tool regardless of that knowledge, and/or encouraged non-cooperation or non-compliance with Moderation regarding this matter. In the case of organizations, we will not consider resuming relations with them until such time as we are confident that they have removed the players involved. To be clear, the effects of this may not come into place until a ruling has been made on the matter, as a ruling is apt to reveal things beyond the scope of our own investigations. That said, we may deviate from that ruling to either direction in our own offsite policy based on evidence that Moderation cannot accept. We are also not nearly as concerned with those who acquired and used it without any intended malice or rule-breaking – we believe that whatever punishment those players receive on site will be enough to ensure that they put greater stock into who they trust to run software from, that they had no intention of breaking any rules, and that many are absolutely horrified to find that their accomplishments were fueled by an illegal program.

Further, we are now working on group development of our own, very legal tools, a process throughout which we will approach Moderation via GHR with any and all concerns on whether a coded process follows not just the letter, but the intention of the scripting rules. No member of the development group is banned from the site, and all the code is coming entirely from scratch. Finally, we’d like to note that we will accept whatever ruling is passed on our members as the fair result of what’s assuredly many days of Moderation discussion, encompassing facts many of us may never know. We hope that, going forward, these events serve as a lesson to us all, reminding to hold our trust close and speak up when we suspect something is wrong, not just when we are sure of it, and it is too late.

We, the Council of Hawks, hope that this message is accepted by our own members and other site users alike as conveying how deeply we regret the path that got us here and how determined we are to ensure it does not happen again. Thank you.

The Council of Hawks
-General Jakker - Council Chairman
-Major Ever-Wandering Souls - Field Marshal
-Major Marselesk - Field Marshal
-General Crushing Our Enemies - Foreign Affairs Director
-Colonel SevHawk - Intelligence Director

[Marselesk]

To add onto this statement, the benefit TBH had from the usage of the update tool known as Predator is minimal. All of my tag raids up until the July last year under the Black Hawks' flag were done using spreadsheets and manual triggering, and Predator only came into play for roughly 50% of my tag raids after that point, which were not many nor of grand size. Any occupation i may have triggered for TBH was also done via manual triggers or the using of a small guesstimation tool known as Oracle, of which i'm happy to share the code with the site Admins/Mods. Oracle makes a rought estimation of region update times based on how many nations there are and in what order they update, and it works by having update times for certain regions edited throughout the update in order to maintain accuracy. It is basically a helper for manual triggering.

That being said, i will not shy from the fact that i have used Predator several times on official TBH capacity, and many more times under the flag of TBR. Though i had not known it was illegal, i accept that it was my responsibility to confirm this, and am saddened both by the fact that defenders were fighting an unfair battle and that i have been cheating the system, regardless of my ignorance at the time.

[Festavo2]

I would like to make the public disclosure that the past five tag raids I have led in the name of TBH were triggered using Predator. I had not used predator before then. That means that I used Predator in an official TBH capacity from 2/23/16 until 3/8/16. I had not used it in any capacity before 2/23/16 and ceased use of and uninstalled Predator after it was banned by TBH. The times I have used predator altogether could be counted on two hands. All raids before 2/23/16 that I have led have been led through the use of manual triggering without the aide of Predator.

[ChingisOtchigin]

Since everyone else is making "TBH Official" posts, I shall put in my 20c and state that I have never used Predator for any of the 3-4 TBH raids that I have triggered.

[Ever-Wandering Souls]

Secretary General Elections?

As you may have noticed, a candidate that is definitely not a representative of The Black Hawks has been doing decently in the elections. We Are Not TBH has made it all the way to the final round, though he isn't doing as hot there. That, however is not the topic of this post!

Waitwhat? Yes, this post is about something else entirely. A raid, in fact! With all that is going on, tonight was a night for a bit of unity.

On the Major Update of April 3rd, 2016, The Black Hawks briefly occupied NS April Fools Day Jokes.

Raid Leader: Maj. Ever-Wandering Souls, Field Marshal, The Black Hawks
Trigger: Captain in Chief Zacherie, Danger Zone
Point: Raider Wolf Elysium Station, Lone Wolves United
Updater: PFC Siniarus, The Black Hawks
Updater: Lentulus, Currently Unaffiliated
Updater: Clearer, Currently Unaffiliated

Tonight was more than a night for teamwork. Tonight was a night for peace, rebuilding, history, fun in the face of stress, not a night for destruction. Only one change was made to the region. The line "2016: World Assembly Secretary-General Election" was added to the record. One defender interceptor was ejected. Other than that, the region remains unaltered. Happy April Fool's, everyone!



Stay Classy, Hawks.

[Deadeye Jack]

So is TBH going to be regularly using people punished for Predator usage to trigger or lead raids for the duration of the WA bans they are serving?

[Ever-Wandering Souls]

So is TBH going to be regularly using people punished for Predator usage to trigger or lead raids for the duration of the WA bans they are serving?

Clarification was asked for and received. Triggering raids is perfectly okay for those serving a WA-Ban. In addition, you'll find the full source code for the helper used tonight in the Technical forum, posted by Aurum.

A further statement regarding Predator will be made by The Council of Hawks, in this thread, as soon as it is finalized.

[Deadeye Jack]

So is TBH going to be regularly using people punished for Predator usage to trigger or lead raids for the duration of the WA bans they are serving?

Clarification was asked for and received. Triggering raids is perfectly okay for those serving a WA-Ban. In addition, you'll find the full source code for the helper used tonight in the Technical forum, posted by Aurum.

A further statement regarding Predator will be made by The Council of Hawks, in this thread, as soon as it is finalized.

Thanks for the clarification on where TBH stands and I'll be sure to read the future statement by the Council

[Red Back]

The Black Hawks full acknowledge and respect the finding and punishments the NationStates Administrators/ Moderation teams have handed down on the site over the Predator Script situation.

The Council of Hawks are currently reviewing all aspects of these finding and punishments, a further statement will be provided from the Council of Hawks when this is completed.

On a personal note I feel very relieved and humble that The Black Hawks have not been wiped but angry that it finds itself in this situation.
As the controller of the founder nation I take full responsibility for this situation.

The Council of Hawks have my full support working through this situation and we will continue in making The Black Hawks "The Most Feared Military Organisation in NationStates!"

Red Back
Commander in Chief of The Black Hawks

[The Candy Lane]

Thank you TBH for stepping up and acknowledging the wrongs that occurred. As an avid defender I'm certainly not fond of you guys, but you've earned my respect.

[Crushing Our Enemies]

How did we get here? It's the question that so many asked themselves when it was discovered that an illegal script had been in prolific use for over a year, and raiders had been unwittingly breaking the rules by using it. It's an understandable impulse to try to reason out the path that led to such unfortunate and bitter circumstances - yet we cannot remain mired in the past forever. Now that the blame has been assigned and the dust has settled, we must ask ourselves the truly important question: "where do we go from here?"

---

Pursuant to that important question, The Council of Hawks has conducted its own internal investigation. We have implemented the following above and beyond the punishments passed by NationStates moderation. Any members of The Black Hawks implicated in the Predator incident but not named below have been reviewed by the Council with the conclusion that the punishment given by NationStates moderation is sufficient, and no further action is required.

Plagentine (formerly Marselesk) has resigned his position as Field Marshal and been appointed to the position of Head of Training.

Chingis Otchigin has been demoted to Private and will not be allowed to participate in anything raid-related for the duration of his World Assembly ban.

Knot has been stripped of rank and banned from The Black Hawks.

Gest and Lord Nuke have had their ambassador privileges to The Black Hawks revoked.

The Black Hawks will not work with any region known to us to hold Knot, Gest, Lord Nuke, Vaculatestar, and/or Feuer Ritter in a position of leadership.

All of the actions above were taken by The Council of Hawks based on concrete evidence. Members of the Council will field questions regarding the reasoning and specific execution of these matters via private channels, because some of the answers may run afoul of the NationStates’ defamation policy if posted here. We spent quite some time investigating and deliberating this before posting our statement, and we thank you all for your patience.

---

Additionally, The Black Hawks being linked to an illegal script has been a wake-up call to our current lack of policy in regards to script usage. As such, we are implemented the following script procedures. These rules apply to all members of The Black Hawks, anytime they use a script to raid, regardless of what region they are representing.

Members of the The Black Hawks may only use scripts that have been officially approved by the Council of the Hawks. For a script to be approved, (1) the source code must be made publicly available, and (2) it must be reviewed for illegalities, under the supervision of the Council, by at least two players who are proficient in the code language it is written in.

If any member of The Black Hawks is found to be using an unapproved script, they will be stood down immediately and a full internal inquiry will take place. Naturally, if the script is found to break the NationStates rules, the member will be banned from The Black Hawks and reported to NationStates moderation.

In joint raids that are led by The Black Hawks, we will disclose what tools we are using to all participants ahead of time. Per rule one, their source code will be publicly available, so our allies may examine it themselves at any time.

Any operation that The Black Hawks are invited to participate in will require the disclosure of the scripts being used and their source code so we can verify its legality before member of The Black Hawks are approved to participate.

We are aware that these rules are unprecedented. In the past, raiding technology has been kept very close to the chest, and treated as valuable intel. Access to scripts has been limited, so as to retain a competitive advantage. Recent events have proven beyond a doubt that this approach has not served us well, and we are in need of a new paradigm in our attitude towards these tools. We would like to invite our friends and allies to a discuss how best to regulate script use for the good of Raider Unity.

The Council of Hawks

Commander Red Back – Commander in Chief
General Jakker - Council Chairman
General Crushing Our Enemies - Foreign Affairs Director
Colonel SevHawk - Intelligence Director
Major Ever-Wandering Souls - Field Marshal
Major Plagentine - Head of Training

[Tim-Opolis]

A strong and incredibly impressive and honorable move by The Black Hawks, particularly in terms of enacting new scripting rules for its organization and the stands against working with the Black Rider individuals most heavily implicated within the Predator scandal. I hope to see you all be able to move past the amount of negative stigma that Predator, and DEN in general, have ended up giving the Invader community. My one quick question, since it's a bit unclear to me, when you say 'publicly available' in regards to TBH scripts is that referring to within The Black Hawks Forum, or posted openly on Technical such as what Aurum has done with 20xx?

[Crushing Our Enemies]

My one quick question, since it's a bit unclear to me, when you say 'publicly available' in regards to TBH scripts is that referring to within The Black Hawks Forum, or posted openly on Technical such as what Aurum has done with 20xx?

Publicly available means that anyone can read it. Technical is ideal, but there may be other ways, such as dispatches or a well-circulated github.

[Tim-Opolis]

My one quick question, since it's a bit unclear to me, when you say 'publicly available' in regards to TBH scripts is that referring to within The Black Hawks Forum, or posted openly on Technical such as what Aurum has done with 20xx?

Publicly available means that anyone can read it. Technical is ideal, but there may be other ways, such as dispatches or a well-circulated github.

Cool, sounds good! Thank you for the clarification

[Ever-Wandering Souls]

A strong and incredibly impressive and honorable move by The Black Hawks, particularly in terms of enacting new scripting rules for its organization and the stands against working with the Black Rider individuals most heavily implicated within the Predator scandal. I hope to see you all be able to move past the amount of negative stigma that Predator, and DEN in general, have ended up giving the Invader community. My one quick question, since it's a bit unclear to me, when you say 'publicly available' in regards to TBH scripts is that referring to within The Black Hawks Forum, or posted openly on Technical such as what Aurum has done with 20xx?

As one of the two council members leading the effort to enforce these internal scripting rules, I'll back up CoE in stating that a post in technical will be the preffered method. We'd be willing to consider the mentioned alternatives, perhaps if someone insisted it not be searchable on NS, but the bottom line is that anyone who wants to has to be able to read the code. In the case of 20xx, it has been further reviewed to meet the posted standards, and is additionally being checked by an unlisted process we're still confirming is effective.

On the note about implication, I'll reiterate what was said in the statement in slightly greater detail - the "rulings" we've made here are based on metrics that may not align with NS' official rules entirely, but are all backed by solid evidence and lengthy discussion. There was a deeper level of detail to it than one might assume, and reasonings one might not expect... however, since some of those risk running afoul of the defamation policy, we've decided to take all ruling-specific questions offsite.

[Cormactopia II]

There's a reason I've always regarded The Black Hawks as the best of the raider community, and this is it. Well done. I hope other raider leaders, especially those leading the regions to which former TBR/DEN people are migrating, will take note and take a similar approach.

[Bhang Bhang Duc]

A strong and principled statement by TBH. Well done.

[Of crazed]

Enjoy your luxury of actually being able to move on.

[Kaguya Hime]

Ouch.. I take it I'd have been banned from TBH too had I not retired first eh?

[Jakker]

Ouch.. I take it I'd have been banned from TBH too had I not retired first eh?

This is incorrect. We believed that the moderator's sanctions of Hawks' use of predator were more than sufficient. Our focus in this response was less so on predator use and more so on the handling of the overall incident utilizing the evidence we had. Your status in our military would not have been affected.