If this had been for profit, we would have stripped each kit after radding them. Our order of attack was to fight our way into the HQ first, and kill that. The HQ was actually easier than a few of the other galaxies, which sealed the fate of the rest.

We struggled to heal all of ONE galaxy, out of the 32 with IE's flag. And after all of this was done, I was personally told we had destroyed 30 trillion worth of gear and builds. And that the bases demo'd were 3-4 years worth of building. I didn't see any evidence of that.

I know that IE's been around a long time. They've always build north of SP, and no one has ever attacked them, for reasons unknown. With those kind of resources and income, you'd think that their galaxies could have repelled our small PvB squad.

As for leaving the space untouched, that was a choice. IE could rebuild stronger, or attempt to get the rest of the game to fall on us for being pirates. They've chosen the latter. Imperium has taken the initiative to claim some of their galaxies, which is fine. The area is open for whomever.

lol @ 30 tril estimate

/me looks at 4 ada hps kits per gal plus other ada kits...

Yeah.... I don't understand why people build so little defense kits for so much space in such deep space D:

Now I kinda wish Universe would be scaled to active playerbase size, so there would be like half a galaxy per player ( buildable galaxy).

Because unless someone attacks you, there isn't really a reason. Termites aren't a thing, AI die to just a few drones. The universe is generally a perfectly safe place to lay a bunch of t3/t9 bases in a galaxy and be just fine.

You can reap the profits of an entire galaxy without investing a single damn thing. Even in deep warp 3 Wild.

This

Yeah EF have a gal called cesi that just has t3 colos - how nooby!

So this thread was a way fun read, especially after everything last night. Clearly everyone knows what they are talking about. Its like if John Dickerson and David Brooks played Star Sonata and were talking about geopolitics.

The points made by IE's representative at the beginning, while kind of whiny, are the most interesting here though since he is the most right and the most wrong. Everyone here is basically reminding a fairly inexperienced team that if they are going to move into high DF space that they need to fortify. People like Lemon do exist, and as his unprovoked war declaration last night against UDA that foiled an easy roll over of AS proves, not all actors make rational decisions.

Lemon's rollover clearly served as a team building exercise as stated earlier, and nothing else. This does not delegitmize the action, but the argument that because it can be done (i.e. the bases were weakly fortified) does not explain why they would do it. As also stated though, conquest is a completely legitimate game mechanic and if you aren't ready to defend you aren't ready to build. IE states that they were uncontested in this space for several uni's and I'm glad they managed that, but this would have always happened eventually without sufficient deterrence.

The economic point of a low level team getting rich quickly off of low investment colonies in higher DF space was kind of ironic though. A low level team is probably using their money to buy T20 and T21 gear and ships which I would assume would be great for a T22 player with a shop selling those things at higher prices. The Sour Shop would have probably been one of the greatest recipients, but yet another group of people now hate RF and will probably choose to pay a higher price somewhere else rather than provide them revenue.

IE does make an extremely valuable point though. I think it has been largely ignored because of the whiny tone in which it was made but maybe also because some people know it is in fact very true that actions like this do diminish the player base. These are big uber guys making bank while no one is looking. This is a newish pre T22 team that probably doesn't log in quite as much as Lemon does. Some of their players will probably be stronger from the experience, but some will probably quit too. Now if SS had a vibrantly overflowing player base at the moment this would be great, but I think everyone knows we don't. As much of this conversation stated we don't currently have the player base to fill this uni out. While the developers should probably add some new cool ruins and maybe some new even rarer commods to extract for some peri peri stuff maybe, the biggest problem with the territorial conquest mechanic is that there is a whole lot of territory for each player.

Isn't this game more fun with more people playing it? The only reason why Lemon might kind of suck for having done this is exactly the point that IE makes which is that the space was completely uncontested. That space is now a little bit less contested than it was, which kind of sucks. Maybe if these guys had been allowed to sprawl out some other newby F2P guys would have thought, "hey lets pay for subs and do it too". Maybe eventually space becomes a real issue and people start having real reasons to fight. Instead, what we have is guys like Lemon deciding that it would be fun to instruct those who don't seem to have learned their lesson yet.

What Lemon did was not against the rules or anything but part of a completely legitimate game mechanic. However, mutual defense and defining geopolitics is also part of how this game works. The developers set up the game to let you do whatever you wanted not so we can beat up on noobs (full disclosure, I'm still pretty much a noob), they did it because it should be us making the rules not them.

Its kind of whiny and stupid to try and turn blowing up noobs into a moral argument, but there is a very real question of whether or not allowing such action is desirable. Maybe IE should have fortified better to be in W3, but do you really want a big blank spot on the map going all the way to the tail? Do you really think that Lemon cares about whether they were in W3 or not? This kind of behavior is just going to lead to a situation where only ubers can exist in WS and everyone else is stuck in EF. Then no one new will ever be able to build the resources it takes to become uber and the player base will shrink as those people decide that this game kind of sucks for them. It is totally legitimate to go bully some noobs according to the game mechanics. It is also totally legitimate for the rest of the player base to decide that bullying noobs is not good for the game or the prices in their stores and choose to police such bad actors accordingly.

While IE makes the most important point though, they also make the worst by claiming as a good that they have stayed out of all the Starsodrama. I guess entangling alliances can be entangling I guess, but if you had taken the time to even just ask for support from the growing number of teams looking to each other for mutual defense you probably would have likely been welcome to it. More than that, if you had tried to network with more experienced players at all you would have known all of what is being said here and the full capabilities of RF before they blew up your bases, not after. I would strongly encourage IE leadership to reconsider the decision to stay out of politics and whine about how they got rolled over later. I would also encourage any member of IE to reconsider their membership in a team that builds weak, doesn't network, and then acts morally outraged when the are casually overrun. RF certainly is a bad actor, but did you not already know this? Didn't RE get rolled over just last uni the exact same way and I know that AS under Lemon's influence tried to roll us over with little more justification than there was to roll over you. We were spread pretty thin too (myself especially) and we paid some consequences for it. But the gals that had real investment were heavily protected by individuals who knew what they were doing. In the end MC worked through the politics and "starsodrama" to work with other teams of similar interest. Trying to use the claim that you didn't bother to interact with any other teams to justify the claim that no one should ever attack you ever is like saying no one should ever attack your bases because you only ever drop Apollo kits.

So yes, teams should fortify or else face the consequences, and all of that. I guess we should all look toward self reliance, personal responsibility, temperance and other exciting concepts of that nature. However the ubers out there who must like this game at least as much as I do should also think about the consequences of a small cadre of players who pick on newer players who don't know any better. I realize most of IE has probably been around longer than I have, but they have also probably been around a fraction of the time the people on this thread telling them they should have known better have. Fairness, morality and "the rules" are all ridiculous arguments about why Lemon should not pick on the unwary, but I don't know if that is what is good for this game right now. Maybe it's not your job to care about that, but if you have played this game for as many hours as I guess you have at this point I have to assume that it's in your interest to.

IE may have no right to complain, but Lemon probably needs to not get a free pass on this. At one time it may have made sense for the teams on top to keep the teams on the bottom from ascending too quickly, but right now SS needs to think about expanding its player base. Plus this whole thread exists because Lemon felt the need to brag about beating the crap out of some low level team that thought it had picked what effectively is an out of the way area that no one care about whether its W3 or not. The fact that there are W3 areas that no one really cares about should tell people that now is not a good time to go beat up rookie teams. Lemon should go pick on Traders or EF. The rest of the non pirate player base might want to consider trying to do something to support newer players besides criticize them for not realizing that there are some assholes in this game.

MC kos for trying to make RF bully EF and Traders...we have feelings to you know...

So maybe should had added at the end of that rant the views expressed herein are do not reflect those of Merchant Consortium or its affiliates.

Actually, might get my ass kicked by Crop for my monday morning quarterbacking addiction... It's a serious condition.

That was a a very well wrote and thought out post, thanks for making the effort to write it.

All roads lead back to the same issue, the gene pool. It's so desperately low now it's not funny.

Why? I haven't played in a bit, I knew SS had some odd people, (like lazerus or deathreus to name a few) but I didn't know it got so bad over the years.

When you see complete rodents on top teams just because directors are faced with the choice of either having bodies online or nobody online. They have to make tough choices to turn blind eye to scammers, pirates and popular timewasters just to have bodies in the team. You have to keep the whole rodent set onside just so you can have a quiet life as a director doing the things that are fun to you, and to keep the hardworking quiet members of your team safe.

If the game had thousands and thousands of players eventually market forces would wipe out the rodents as they would be useless to a top team, and could be replaced by those hardworking decent players coming up the ranks. Theres no wheat from the chaff to sort anymore.