[lokken]

On the thread more generally:

Competent defence by people that use resources efficiently and most important of all, treat defence fleets as if they were their own and don't get them killed is one of the cornerstones of an effective alliance. If you don't make defence possible or viable as an art, then you just turn it into a boring numbers game and pretty much a situation where people just build attack fleets, as there's no point trying to defend. On top of that, it means people have to be disciplined enough not to crash. Because we have viable defence, we have 'better' and 'worse' alliances and I think that's a good thing.

Another element is metagame (politics). In the past few rounds when JBG has been in charge, I'd say Ascendancy has pursued something that I would coin 'negative politics'. This has basically involved not hitting alliances who can't win but can block your path to #1 (DLR is a prime example), and to basically let your rivals do the hard work for you by upsetting them, even at the cost of a roid lead. If you're aiming for #1, going for alliances that aren't capable of finishing #1 while being a threat to you makes no sense. Never mind the fact that if your opponent X has been hitting alliance Y but you haven't, your negotiations with Y are a hell of a lot easier.

This has meant that politics usually ended up swinging naturally in our favour, with us having very few enemies except those who really counted, so they just ended up getting shredded. Under JBG's leadership we actually had very few titanic struggles, mainly because his strategy was so effective. Last round was an absolute masterclass by JBG - Apprime were shit generally but politically they were dead by the pt 400 to 500 period.

I'm with JBG on changing the game radically. It would **** up most people's game, but they'd have to think up new ideas and ways of being successful.

(P.S. screw you mz)