Is alliance hopping lame, if...

[Urkki]

it would be NARWEET player jumping into VOM, perhaps even to spy against their old alliance? In the current situation, would you consider this lame, or would you praise them for having real guts to leave the "winners" and jump to the beaten side?

Obiviously NARWEET HC don't need to answer this, unless your opinion is different from the expected... But everybody else, especially VOM HC if any will bother to answer, what would you think of such a player?

And no, I'm not trying to give any ideas to any bored NARWEET player who might think the round sucks atm and thinks their HC is being lamers with their current politics, since obiviously there are no such players. I just want to know if people would think as badly about people who would jump to the losing side, as they now think of those who have jumped to the winning side

[Jonas]

If whole gals decided to do this for the fun of the game, I would consider them brave. If single players came asking, I would think NarWeet wanted even more spies

[Aryn]

hmm.. jumping from the losing side to the winning side is lame and cowardly.. jumping from the winning side to the losing side is.. well.. interesting :P
i actually concidered joining vomm earlier in the round, but i joined NoS to be with my old HR buddies. since i ended up joining a gal (to be with friends.. not because of the alliance situations) i can't 'jump sides' without betraying my gal. (mostly WP)

i don't think that jumping to the losing side is lame.

[Scouse]

No. Joining the winning side is only 'lame' because people do it to protect their roids and ships, for pure personal gain.

Kind of like 'backstabbing'. If an alliance said "We're breaking up our block, but, you can all fk off, we don't wanna ally any of you", they'd be considered heroes.

[cypher]

this would be a valid reason for shipjumping imo yes... as it is to try and do best for pa as the way things are going atm is not normal. and there are ALOT of other weetnar having the same ideas.. so you aint alone:/

[wubanger]

As Ministry HC I'd quit first before I accepted a defector regardless of which way he's hopping. They are of no use to me since they have no loyalty. I am fairly sure the other MiN HC feel just as strongly as I do about that.

[Jonas]

I think changing of alliances should happen between rounds, or when an allie really suck(like Rah did when I left them to return to hirr)

[Urkki]

Originally posted by wubanger
As Ministry HC I'd quit first before I accepted a defector regardless of which way he's hopping. They are of no use to me since they have no loyalty. I am fairly sure the other MiN HC feel just as strongly as I do about that.

But if you are in a situation, where you think your HC and half of the alliance is playing active part in something you don't want to have part of, would you think it's better to quit until end of round? At least I value loyality to the ideals of the alliance (or what they used to be...) higher, than loyality to the name of the alliance itself.

And I would think this is perhaps the best time to enter an alliance that has only the loyal core left playing actively, since everybody else has hopped to the winning side, gone to vac mode, quit, just gone inactive... I guess the hard part would be convincing the receiving alliance that you are joining for "noble" reasons, not as a spy...

[cypher]

Originally posted by Urkki
But if you are in a situation, where you think your HC and half of the alliance is playing active part in something you don't want to have part of, would you think it's better to quit until end of round? At least I value loyality to the ideals of the alliance (or what they used to be...) higher, than loyality to the name of the alliance itself.

And I would think this is perhaps the best time to enter an alliance that has only the loyal core left playing actively, since everybody else has hopped to the winning side, gone to vac mode, quit, just gone inactive... I guess the hard part would be convincing the receiving alliance that you are joining for "noble" reasons, not as a spy...

couldn't agree more tbh... no-one needs those damn 'sunshine'' players..
if you are being honest and not doing this cuz of some spying adventure i must say you are a true decent respectworthy player.

[Zitos]

if my whole galaxy would have followed me, i would ofcourse.. cause then i could attack for some weeks.. get ****edover, and stopp playing.. i am boared (and small) .. i love you ; D

[Akallabeth]

Originally posted by wubanger
As Ministry HC I'd quit first before I accepted a defector regardless of which way he's hopping. They are of no use to me since they have no loyalty. I am fairly sure the other MiN HC feel just as strongly as I do about that.

to put it another way: if ppl really wanna join we can always talk about it .... after the round

[RooKie]

VOM agreed pre round that we wouldnt add any planets to arbiter after tick 100.

[TAFKAJ]

it would be at least funny if many weetnar members defect to vomvm to change the round
The other way around is just lame, thats like giving up and give i nto the fact you only play to win

[Jester]

Originally posted by RooKie
VOM agreed pre round that we wouldnt add any planets to arbiter after tick 100.

It's almost as if you wanted to lose...

Jester

[RooKie]

Originally posted by Jester
It's almost as if you wanted to lose...

Jester

Well, we atleast wanted a fun and "fair" round...if that ment loosing we were okey with that.

[Howling]

We had some Grubs defect from Vomm allies in p4 early on.

I am sure weetnar welcomed them with open arms as they had lots of information regarding gal/members etc etc.

If weetnar Hc's had any scruples they would attack the defectors as they are a bunch of fairweather players.

Ppl that do the dirty .... "do the dirty"

[Jester]

Originally posted by RooKie
Well, we atleast wanted a fun and "fair" round...if that ment loosing we were okey with that.

It isn't very fun though, is it? You chose to take on a handicap (several of them, actually), the outcome was rather predictable. And please don't say that 'they should've done it too'. You granted your opponent an unfair* advantage, and now you're experiencing the consequences of it.

Jester

*I don't mean 'fair' in the 'justice' sense of the word. I mean it in the 'being in accordance with relative merit or significance' sense.

[ComradeRob]

Originally posted by Urkki
it would be NARWEET player jumping into VOM, perhaps even to spy against their old alliance? In the current situation, would you consider this lame, or would you praise them for having real guts to leave the "winners" and jump to the beaten side?

Alliance-hopping can be considered bad for two reasons. The first is obviously the case of a person (or galaxy) changing sides in the hope of joining the winning side. This shows little loyalty, and a lot of greed and selfishness. People who do this will always be looked down upon.

The second reason that alliance-hopping is bad is that if you spend a period of time receiving protection from an alliance, and then join another alliance which is hostile to your original alliance, you will be attacking the people who were sending their ships to defend you earlier in the round. I would personally not be very pleased with a person who left my alliance and fought against me, if this was someone I had defended earlier.

Someone leaving a winning alliance to go to a losing alliance would not be considered bad for the first reason, but would for the second.

[Meth]

I still think the best case of this is Round Four, when Fury snagged Esthar late in a round in which we got smashed, a huge galaxy which would go on to become one of our flagships for rounds to come.

[RooKie]

Originally posted by Jester
It isn't very fun though, is it? You chose to take on a handicap (several of them, actually), the outcome was rather predictable. And please don't say that 'they should've done it too'. You granted your opponent an unfair* advantage, and now you're experiencing the consequences of it.

Jester

*I don't mean 'fair' in the 'justice' sense of the word. I mean it in the 'being in accordance with relative merit or significance' sense.

As I said in other threads, me neither VOM will use any mean to win a round.

What we discussed most regarding possible opponents, was how early NAHR would join WEET. I repeated myself in joint HC room a 100 times that they will only do if if we became too strong.

As everyone knows, I was terribly wrong.

[Jester]

Originally posted by RooKie
As I said in other threads, me neither VOM will use any mean to win a round.

That's very 'honorable' of you, I suppose. I don't really think honor like this has a place in the game though. I don't suppose I can really add much new to the discussion though, it's been rehashed so many times I might take a dull spoon to my eyes the next time I see flamewar about it.

What we discussed most regarding possible opponents, was how early NAHR would join WEET. I repeated myself in joint HC room a 100 times that they will only do if if we became too strong.

Coming from a former Deus member I'm disappointed

As everyone knows, I was terribly wrong.

Yes and no. VVOMM presented a 'Bush-like' statement in saying that 'either you're with us, or against us'. Alliances have done this in the past many times, FLTV in round 6, Wanx in round 7, RaH, Fury and maybe some others in round 8. It's never really gotten them anywhere, has it?

Jester

[Urkki]

Originally posted by ComradeRob
The second reason that alliance-hopping is bad is that if you spend a period of time receiving protection from an alliance, and then join another alliance which is hostile to your original alliance, you will be attacking the people who were sending their ships to defend you earlier in the round. I would personally not be very pleased with a person who left my alliance and fought against me, if this was someone I had defended earlier.

Someone leaving a winning alliance to go to a losing alliance would not be considered bad for the first reason, but would for the second.

Unless perhaps if said hopper had already sent much more defence that he has received? Which I suppose can be easily true for most WEETNAR, considering how much bigger they are in numbers...

[Urkki]

Originally posted by Jester
That's very 'honorable' of you, I suppose. I don't really think honor like this has a place in the game though.

Oh yes it does. Depends on what kind of person you are, really. I value same things in PA friends than in RL friends, and being honourable is one of the things I value most.

Personal opinion of course, YMMV.

[mazzelaar]

I tried to leave NoS for Fury about 1/3 into Rnd 6 but got turned down :/


That was simply because of issues I had with NoS HC or certain members thereof.

[Jester]

Originally posted by Urkki
Oh yes it does. Depends on what kind of person you are, really. I value same things in PA friends than in RL friends, and being honourable is one of the things I value most.

Personal opinion of course, YMMV.

I assume you don't play games with your rl friends, then? Do you think Kasparov plays an 'honorable' game of Chess?

Jester

[Urkki]

Originally posted by Jester
I assume you don't play games with your rl friends, then?

Not often. Mostly Starcraft, sometimes board games. Why, are you implying that we don't play fair?

We like to make our game sessions (usually around 10 games in a row) as fair as possible, starting with 4on4, or sometimes 3on5 if we know those 3 are likely to kick the asses of the other 5 anyway. Then if one side is overpowering, and the losing side specifically doesn't want revenge with the same setup, we either shuffle teams completely, or just move some players from the winning team to the losers for the next game (and it's rare even the 2 best of us together win 2on6).

Mostly everybody is in the winning side of a game or two every time (unless being really unlucky).

I assume you would like to compare one single game of <name your game> to a round of PA? I'd rather compare a round of PA to a game session with multiple games, and over the session everybody aims for everybody to have fun, even if in a single game everybody is ruthless and merciless. And (to our knowledge) nobody has ever cheated, but if somebody did, I don't think he'd be invited to play again...

With your question, are you implying that when you play with your friends, you don't try to play as fair as possible? And you like it that way? If so, I think that kind of proves what I wrote earlier, you try to find same kind of PA friends than your RL friends are...

Do you think Kasparov plays an 'honorable' game of Chess?

How do you play an unhonourable game of chess, or a chess tournanament which would be closer to a PA round? I'd guess stuff like trying to prolong the game and not giving up when you've clearly lost just to annoy your opponent, or just toying with your opponent after you have won if he doesn't have the sense to give up, or harassing your opponent between games, making faces at him when he's trying to think etc would be considered unhonourable in chess.

I have no idea what kind of a person Kasparov is, but even if he's a total cnut, I bet he's way too proud of his skill to resort to anything that would lessen his victories.

So what actually was your point?
That WEETNAR take no pride in their PA skills? I agree.
That PA isn't like a game of chess? I agree.
That Kasparov would cheat in chess if he could get away with it? I don't believe he would.

[Jester]

Originally posted by Urkki
Not often. Mostly Starcraft, sometimes board games. Why, are you implying that we don't play fair?

We like to make our game sessions (usually around 10 games in a row) as fair as possible, starting with 4on4, or sometimes 3on5 if we know those 3 are likely to kick the asses of the other 5 anyway. Then if one side is overpowering, and the losing side specifically doesn't want revenge with the same setup, we either shuffle teams completely, or just move some players from the winning team to the losers for the next game (and it's rare even the 2 best of us together win 2on6).

Mostly everybody is in the winning side of a game or two every time (unless being really unlucky).

That's a nice system; in PA making those sides is part of the game.

I assume you would like to compare one single game of <name your game> to a round of PA? I'd rather compare a round of PA to a game session with multiple games, and over the session everybody aims for everybody to have fun, even if in a single game everybody is ruthless and merciless. And (to our knowledge) nobody has ever cheated, but if somebody did, I don't think he'd be invited to play again...

I don't play many games, I think PA has spoiled my enjoyment of them. If someone cheats, I agree: they shouldn't be let back. So why does Killmark have a planet yet again?

With your question, are you implying that when you play with your friends, you don't try to play as fair as possible? And you like it that way?

It's hard to make 'fair' teams in FPS free for alls (some of the last games I played reasonably seriously before I got into PA).

How do you play an unhonourable game of chess, or a chess tournanament which would be closer to a PA round? I'd guess stuff like trying to prolong the game and not giving up when you've clearly lost just to annoy your opponent, or just toying with your opponent after you have won if he doesn't have the sense to give up, or harassing your opponent between games, making faces at him when he's trying to think etc would be considered unhonourable in chess.

At a high level, most mind games are as much psychological as they are intellectual. One of the world's best Go players is nicknamed 'the Stone Buddha' because he is entirely unreadable. This intimidates opponents, just like Kasparov's name alone. A surprising move can be considered 'dishonorable' if it throws an opponent off his game, by your definition.

I have no idea what kind of a person Kasparov is, but even if he's a total cnut, I bet he's way too proud of his skill to resort to anything that would lessen his victories.

To be honest, I just pulled his name out of my magic hat, so I can't really answer this

So what actually was your point?
That WEETNAR take no pride in their PA skills? I agree.

I think it's a much too vast generalization to say that several hundred players are of this opinion just because some appear that way.

That PA isn't like a game of chess? I agree.

No, I guess it's not. I enjoy likening it to Risk, though. And following that analogy, are the informal agreements in Risk are dishonorable. But Risk would be dead boring without them.

That Kasparov would cheat in chess if he could get away with it? I don't believe he would.

Nor would I support anyone trying to do this in Planetarion. This is honorable play, in my opinion.

You can compare Planetarion to your LAN games with Starcraft all you want, but you should realize that you're not playing with 5 friends here, you're playing against people you don't know. You make a good point, and in fact I'll make more of an effort to make sides more equal if I play team games with friends again, but it's flawed when applied to Planetarion.

Jester

[Urkki]

Originally posted by Jester
You can compare Planetarion to your LAN games with Starcraft all you want, but you should realize that you're not playing with 5 friends here, you're playing against people you don't know. You make a good point, and in fact I'll make more of an effort to make sides more equal if I play team games with friends again, but it's flawed when applied to Planetarion.

Actually it was you who asked if I don't play games with friends, but you didn't tell why you asked, so I assumed you meant that you think that also games with RL friends can go like this PA round has gone, since you seemed be disagreeing with me... And I think I described how it's totally different from this round at least, where the "winners" keep bashing the "losers" when it has become pointless, and some of them are clearly aiming for R5-style round with sure victory for themselves even if it'll be dead boring... Maybe I interpreted your question wrong there.

(And I can tell you from experience of being rather high in R5 both personally and galaxy-wise, that trying to get roids in such a stagnated universe in order to catch or stay ahead of other top players/gals is living hell, the only thing that kept me going back then was doing it for my galaxy. And this round looks to become even worse, so you're likely to get just what you deserve, just like we did in R5...).

But anyway this is completely off topic for this thread...

[Urkki]

Originally posted by cyphie
couldn't agree more tbh... no-one needs those damn 'sunshine'' players..
if you are being honest and not doing this cuz of some spying adventure i must say you are a true decent respectworthy player.

Not sure if you are referring to me as "you" above, or just talking generally, but I just want to point out that I'm not in NARWEET, myself... Just asking the question after some irc discussions...

[Jester]

Originally posted by Urkki
Actually it was you who asked if I don't play games with friends, but you didn't tell why you asked

And in hind sight it was a bad way to make my point. I was hoping you played some games that resembled PA.

so I assumed you meant that you think that also games with RL friends can go like this PA round has gone, since you seemed be disagreeing with me... And I think I described how it's totally different from this round at least, where the "winners" keep bashing the "losers" when it has become pointless, and some of them are clearly aiming for R5-style round with sure victory for themselves even if it'll be dead boring... Maybe I interpreted your question wrong there.

Somewhat. My point was that people who refrain from playing the game to its fullest, in this case by imposing an arbitrary handicap on themselves, can expect nothing else, especially not in a gaming environment where people must sacrifice so much time and effort to play the game.

(And I can tell you from experience of being rather high in R5 both personally and galaxy-wise, that trying to get roids in such a stagnated universe in order to catch or stay ahead of other top players/gals is living hell, the only thing that kept me going back then was doing it for my galaxy. And this round looks to become even worse, so you're likely to get just what you deserve, just like we did in R5...).

But anyway this is completely off topic for this thread...

This round isn't much like round 5 yet. It's more like round 6 so far. FLTV and VOM have more in common than many people on either side are willing to admit.

Jester

[Urkki]

Originally posted by Jester
This round isn't much like round 5 yet. It's more like round 6 so far. FLTV and VOM have more in common than many people on either side are willing to admit.

To me it seems more like start of R5 accelerated a bit. But it depends on if NARWEET starts dropping off small parts and roiding them down R5 style (more of the round left, but also more allies to drop...), or if they split R6 style.

Also, power of VOM gets less and less as we speak, so them joining the less powerful part of split will make less and less difference, which is so R5, a brief flame of action when WP&Ely were dropped to be roided, NoCeX already totally insignificant.

But I hope you're right with R6-style...

[RooKie]

Originally posted by Jester
Yes and no. VVOMM presented a 'Bush-like' statement in saying that 'either you're with us, or against us'. Alliances have done this in the past many times, FLTV in round 6, Wanx in round 7, RaH, Fury and maybe some others in round 8. It's never really gotten them anywhere, has it?

Jester

I really love you Jester. \o/

But to take ur argument, its not like we wanted more people on our side. We wanted a 3 way war, as we saw that as the best scenario for a fun round.

I have learned tonight that important ppl in command outside VOM thinks a 3 way war never will happen.

Their argument is that if VOM would ally NAHR, if WEET didnt. I can say that we never even discussed allying NAHR as we honestly wanted an open 3 sided war, with our main enemy in WEET.

[DarkAngel]

Originally posted by Urkki
it would be NARWEET player jumping into VOM, perhaps even to spy against their old alliance? In the current situation, would you consider this lame, or would you praise them for having real guts to leave the "winners" and jump to the beaten side?

Jumping ship is lame regardless, once u have pledged yourself to a "side" for the round, you should stick with them, through & through.