DRONE diplomatic exchanges

[Corellion]

You can still compose the messages, just give them to someone else to send.

[Drogue]

Have received a PM from buster:

Hi,

nice to meet you and thank you for the friendly note.

I will of course have to clear details with my teammates but I believe there will be interest in both a treaty and a commlink exchange. We do have the Hives comm link and as you likely figured out have been trading with them for a while and unfortunately the techs you mention are on the "owed to us by Hive" list.

If you have anything else we would be interested. I will check when I get to the turn what we have that you don't. If I remember correct from last turn I believe ethical calculus may come in that category.

In any case an the treaty and comm linkexchange will be welcome.

I am sending this to you - will dig up DBTS's address and send further comms to you both.

regards
buster

OK, so if we want a trade, it will have to be HEC or Doc Ini. Is it worth it? Ethical Calculus could be useful? What do others think?

[Corellion]

Or we could trade with the Hive, as they may be desperate to get techs to pay them back. Our reliance on PEACE is broken!

[Drogue]

Great idea

We'll I'll PM back about saying yes to treaty and commlink trade, unless anyone objects?

[Corellion]

Sure! Hopefully they're more reasonable than PEACE!

BTW, if PEACE accuses us of being dishonest, we can always point out that all empirical evidence (i.e. the in-game labeller) indicates that we are a noble faction.

[Maniac]

Are we still noble after breaking pact?
Anyway, PEACE and PUT also have EthCalc, so it might be better to steal/trade with them.

[DeathByTheSword]

I like the idea of trading with the HIVE the techs they need to pay back the drones...and as soon as we have nonlmath i can cope with trading away doc: ini... not HEC btw (it leads to SFF if i recall correctly)..i would like to be atleast one weapon ahead of everyone

[Drogue]

I'll agree with DBTS. Although if we're very happy in a pact, we could trade away anything IMHO. Until then, no HEC, and no Non Math, but Doc Ini once we have Non Math IMHO.

[Corellion]

Yes. Cruisers aren't much of a threat, it's what they're equipped with that counts. Besides, PEACE has it, so it's going to get out soon anyway.

[Googlie]

And the big advantage of Doc: Init is the free naval yards and extra 2 movement points. So the MCC Owner's cruisers are to others' cruisers as their cruisers are to foils

[Corellion]

Exactly.

[Phenix]

Ah, finally diplomacy is up and rolling...

hopefully the Drones and other factions will be a bit more co-operative than those barbaric sea-farers

[Drogue]

Ok. Buster has asked in Googlie's thread about the resignation. I wanted to PM an answer, and in doing so, I have written about the whole affair, trying to be as unbiased as possible. Can I send this too him, or should I try to cut it down to just explain about Googlie's resignation and what PEACE said to him? I wanted to say why they were angry too, otherwise they will tell him.

Edit: I will PM this to buster:

From Googlie's resignation thread. I thought it better to PM a reply, as it is sensitive.

I have not heard these allegations so I have no idea what is being referred to.

It’s a complex matter. Basically, the CyCon did something that PEACE thought was in breach of the rules. Googlie ruled that it wasn't. PEACE accused, in the heat of the moment, Googlie of being biased and launched personal attacks. I do not know exactly what was said by PEACE, or by whom, as it was in their forum or by PM.

Googlie said to me in a PM, when I asked about it "I think that CMN/PEACE relations are so sour that I can't continue in the CMN role."

If I am authorised by my fellow CyCon’s, I will explain to you the problem that caused this and events leading up to it.

I am very sorry for the part we have played in this. We obviously did not intend for any of it to happen. I have PMed Googlie about it, and his reply is included at the bottom.

Yours,
Drogue

PM from Googlie regarding his resignation
Thanks Drogue.

I don't mind decisions being questioned, or argued with - after all, it is a democracygame.

But I have scrupulously tried to be neutral in all of this, and to have allegations of bias as well as personal attacks .... well, I'm too long in the tooth to let them seriously bother me, but I think that CMN/PEACE relations are so sour that I can't continue in the CMN role.

Good luck in the game

Googlie

Should I include Googlie's PM in it? It was a personal PM, but I think buster needs to know why Googlie left?

[Drogue]

If you agree, I will PM him with a longer explanation:

Here is a bit more insight into the actual problem:

The incident was a diplomatic one. They pre-accepted a tech offer, and sent a PM to DBTS about a deal. We did not know of the PM when we got the turn, and thought the tech it was a gift, as the tech they gave us was one we were researching, and the next tech we were to discover was one we owed to them, that we would then get quicker. Therefore, after checking with Googlie that it was inside the rules, we accepted it.

I will admit we were too hasty in accepting it without getting confirmation, but you have to look at our past diplomacy with PEACE. The relationship was already extremely rocky, since earlier they had played us off against other factions in demanding more, while Pacted. We had to delay our turn many times due to their negotiations leaving until the last minute and then demanding more. We know they are out to win, and so that did not really affect us much. Then in negotiations, one of their members accused me of planting viruses on their computers, and started a personal attack against me. This soured relations greatly. We tried to work through this, but found both sides had lost trust too much, so had decided to reduce relations to a treaty. Then this came up, and we decided that since I could not play the turn on time if we waited long enough for a reply, that we would accept it. It was pre-accepted, and we thought that meant they accepted the deal as it was on the table.

- To be fair, it is not like we were model pact mates either. Due to an error, when DBTS, who is not particularly active, played the turn while I was away, and choose the wrong tech to research, meaning we could not pay PEACE back the tech we intended to. And I will admit, after the incident with JDM, we were less friendly, and did end up trading with another faction once instead of PEACE. We are far from blameless ourselves.

Then we received a PM from PEACE asking what had happened, and why we had accepted it. They asked Googlie to remove the CyCon from the game, and gift our bases to PEACE over time as the aggrieved party. Googlie ruled, as he had said to us, that there was no rule in this DG against accepting a pre-accepted tech, even though it is apparently common practice for most PBEMs (none of the CyCon team are regular PBEM players, and so do not know any unwritten rules regarding this). PEACE then accused Googlie of bias and started “personal attacks” (Googlie’s words). However he said this was not his reason for leaving, he reason being that he couldn’t be CMN when one faction no longer trusted him.

I would ask that you keep this PM pretty secret, as it is sensitive information. PEACE have said they wish to publish on the main forum, as they have all the commlinks, their side of events. However I do not wish to mudsling. I admit we have done wrong, mostly without knowing it, but I have tried to explain some of the reasoning behind our actions. It was a relatively unsportsmanlike behaviour, but to be honest, with the way we feel we have been treated by PEACE, we did not feel like being particularly sportsmanlike. As Googlie stated, and looking at the rules page, there is no rule against what we did, and we did not realise there was any ‘normal’ PBEM rule against it.

Sorry for the long PM, but I thought you should be bought up to speed on what has happened, and therefore I needed to explain why we did what we did.

Yours,
Drogue

What do you think?

[DeathByTheSword]

send it...we need good allies