A Modest Proposal

[Zombielandes]

Sorry... I can't resist!

But I will try and make this my last post (kind of) on the whole invader defender thing here.

-We do an update attack, maybe within 3 minutes if we know the update time, if not we're basically doing a blind stab.

You can find out the update time the night before or earlier to the second (not hard at all)...

-At this point the endorsement count is 10-9 in favor of the Invaders

ok
-Defenders see the attack, commit one trooper. The count is now 10-10.

ok
-11 raiders are now screaming "OH HELL! OH HELL!" in unison, scrambling to find backup in the 2 minutes we have left to react.

ok
-Update happens, Invaders lose. Why? Because tie goes not to the invaders, but to the longest sitting resident in the region (the natives)

Wrong... the delegacy goes to the nation who had the most endorsements first.

if you get 11... and then we get 11... you win...

Anyway... there is no point in arguing this further. There are far more invader groups... and invader should win every time hands down... we only win when you make a mistake.

Actually YOU are Wrong, I read the new FAQ and it clearly states the longest standing resident recieves the delegacy.

[Spartzerina]

Sorry... I can't resist!

But I will try and make this my last post (kind of) on the whole invader defender thing here.

-We do an update attack, maybe within 3 minutes if we know the update time, if not we're basically doing a blind stab.
You can find out the update time the night before or earlier to the second (not hard at all)...

-At this point the endorsement count is 10-9 in favor of the Invaders

ok
-Defenders see the attack, commit one trooper. The count is now 10-10.

ok
-11 raiders are now screaming "OH HELL! OH HELL!" in unison, scrambling to find backup in the 2 minutes we have left to react.

ok
-Update happens, Invaders lose. Why? Because tie goes not to the invaders, but to the longest sitting resident in the region (the natives)

Wrong... the delegacy goes to the nation who had the most endorsements first.

if you get 11... and then we get 11... you win...

Anyway... there is no point in arguing this further. There are far more invader groups... and invader should win every time hands down... we only win when you make a mistake.

Actually YOU are Wrong, I read the new FAQ and it clearly states the longest standing resident recieves the delegacy.

Wrong again. Read the new FAQ:

What happens when there is a tie for the WA delegate position?
Depending on the situation, the game uses one of two processes to determine who the new WA delegate will be.
1) If the current WA delegate is one of the people involved in the tie, then they retain delegateship. You have to beat the current delegate to become delegate of a region.
2) If the current WA delegate is not involved in the tie (or there is no current delegate) then whichever nation has been in the region longest will win the tie.

As it clearly states, if the current WA delegate is in the tie, it always wins. If the current WA delegate is not involved in the tie, only then does the longest standing resident that is in the tie becomes delegate.

[Pythagosaurus]

The official FAQ says nothing of the sort. Any other FAQ is maintained by people who don't have access to the code and are thus only guessing.

A tie goes to the current delegate. If the delegate is not involved in the tie, then it's... complicated. Suffice it to say that the criterion is non-obvious, and I'm going to change it now to something more deterministic.

[Unibot]

I'm going to change it now to something more deterministic

Maybe something involving regional influence levels?

[Havensky]

The official FAQ says nothing of the sort. Any other FAQ is maintained by people who don't have access to the code and are thus only guessing.

A tie goes to the current delegate. If the delegate is not involved in the tie, then it's... complicated. Suffice it to say that the criterion is non-obvious, and I'm going to change it now to something more deterministic.

Is it going to be published or something the Skyan Intelligence Service is going to have to figure out?

[Pythagosaurus]

I prefer not to publish such things, as then it can have bugs without people blaming me.

[Neasmyrna]

Aye ^

And yes... after I posted I thought about it a lil more... and then remembered that cases change depending on whether there is a delegate or not and stuff... my bad EW

[Evil Wolf]

I prefer not to publish such things, as then it can have bugs without people blaming me.

Too late Pyth, I was already planning on blaming everything that goes wrong with the game on you anyway.

[Pythagosaurus]

That's pretty reasonable anyway, but this way you won't know it's wrong.

[Kandarin]

Raiding is a necessary part of the game,

The rest of us (which one actual raider estimated, in a thread earlier this year about changes in the game, to be about 90% of the players) could and would get along with our other aspects of the game perfectly well if there was no raiding at all...

Are you referring to this? Personally, I found that the result saying that about a third of the active playerbase was interested in raiding/defending a lot more telling than the one that said that only 10% thought it was the most important aspect.

There's a lot more interest in raiding/defending than those well outside of it realize. That said, there's a lot more outside of it than those inside of it realize, and nobody, it seems, makes up a majority of the game. That doesn't mean it ought to be considered the domain of a tiny minority, because it isn't.

...defend the helpless, the innocent, the ignorant? Come on, Nai. No one, not even Biyah or Tres could believe that.

You see, what I find incredible, is that you really seem to believe this.

We all know that the defender community has lots of people who don't believe it. There are plenty of defenders and organizations that are in it for purely cynical reasons, and both the invader and defender communities have a rather hefty population of people who hopped over to give the other side a try. Despite this, there are indeed plenty of people who really believe in defender ideology. For everyone who says defender things with tongue lodged firmly in cheek, there's at least someone who genuinely believes that they're doing a good turn. And y'know, a lot of the time they are.

Indeed, the defender community wouldn't exist without them. All defenders - even the ones with 'defender' scrawled over their passkeys to the Old Raiding Club's rum cellar - need the fact that there are true believers to give their cause purpose. Without that ideology and those that stand by it, defenders could not recruit, could not organize, and could not run. Invaders are not much different in the respect of need for ideology; invaders are by no means a rigidly structured group and a lot of different sorts are doing it for a lot of different reasons. Most invaders really aren't fiery old-school raiders who preach about "fenda hegemony", raider unity and the sanctity of a geomorphic gamemap, but the raider community would be a lot less significant if those people didn't exist.

(Note to TORC members: Change the lock on the rum cellar already.)

[Leporida]

Well, I'm not a raider nor a defender, but, if I had to choose, I'd go for the defender side, just because of ideology... Should we make a poll?
Redarding the main topic, the way I see it, if there was a War-World and a Peace-World, players who want to do their game without being invaded would be on the Peace side, whereas raiders (and defenders, perhaps) would move to the War-World. Now: who would the raiders raid and who would defenders defend, since "raidable" regions would be on the Peace-World?
As far as liberation resolutions are concerned, I tend to see them as the real UN missions for peace maintenance and, in this respect, I do not really have a problem with them.

[UNIverseVERSE]

Are you referring to this? Personally, I found that the result saying that about a third of the active playerbase was interested in raiding/defending a lot more telling than the one that said that only 10% thought it was the most important aspect.

The flaw with that is bolded. Most of the playerbase aren't 'active' in that sense -- they aren't involved in one of the bigger regions, or in the forums, or in raiding/defending. They're groups of people who've drifted together for some reason into a small region, post to each other occasionally on the RMB, and answer some issues. Of course, those are also the groups most likely to be targeted for invasion -- they're small, probably weak, likely to not be particularly active.

I suspect that if you could get all of those people as well, the percentage of the game who had a broadly negative opinion of raiding and region destruction would go up rather a lot.

[Evil Wolf]

Well I suppose you could try to poll the inactive player base, it would just take a really, really long time

I for one don't like this idea, it reminds me too much of warzones. Besides, we already have a version of this "War-World and Peace-World" idea in play, its called founderless vs. founder regions. If you don't want to get raided, be in a region with a founder. If your nation is in a founderless region, you have to accept the fact that, on some level, you are partaking in the raider/defender game.