Morgan Industries DECLARES WAR!

[Snoddasmannen]

Originally posted by Zeiter
Or perhaps they happen to have a fairly good idea of just how long it would take us to mount an invasion or a raiding party on their lands. I mean, they had infiltration on Zak, so they would have known about where University base was located.

:snip:

production over to synthmetal skirmishers suddenly 2 turns before we land our party, causing us to find some tough defenses when we get there. I don't know. That's the only logical explanation I can come up with.

But still, that's a bit of a leap of faith for them. They can't know how many forces we deployed in Arcadia, we never revealed all of them within range of the University bases. How would they know when to start building skirmishers? (they have no idea how many cruisers with rovers we have coming their way) They should have started right away, building defenses, imo, if they had any idea what we were up to.

But we'll see. Turn will be with us within 2 days. If they still haven't started building defendes, then I'll be happily surprised

One thing I think we should keep in mind is, if it looks like there is ANY doubt that our raiding party will fail in its objective within the first turn of invasion, we need to call it off and wait to combine it with the second invasion force. As of now that doesn't look to be the case, but things could change 4 turns from now.

Definately agreed

[Zeiter]

This is why I suggested that we sign peace, even if for 2-3 turns, to keep them in the dark until they're dead for real.

Well, if we sign a peace treaty, we forfeit all of our diplomatic advantage with the Gaians and Angels because:
1. By signing a treaty, we are essentially saying that we forgive them, and thus, we can use what they did as an excuse for future actions, just as the Morganites can't use our infiltration as an excuse (although in that situation it was entirely legal for us to do that while having a treaty with them. A treaty does not provide a guarantee against such actions. There is no betrayal in carrying out that act. They should have recognized the possibility of a probe attack and properly prepared for it. However, in the case of the Hunter incident, a treaty DOES, or I should say, is supposed to guarantee against mind controlling units. Hence, the game forces them to declare vendetta against us when they commit such an action.)
2. When we do launch the raiding party, it will look like appalling and atrocious aggression instead of retaliation.

We clearly have the diplomatic upper hand right now, and I think that's going to be something very valuable after we mop-up Morgania. It's going to be very tempting to the Angels and Gaians to team up on one of the belligerents in this upcoming Morgan/Sparta conflict. We need to make sure that we don't become the target. Furthermore, the longer we can keep those two neutral in general, after the Morgan invasion, the better chances we'll have at securing victory, and having the diplomatic high-ground with Morgan would help with that.

If we do sign a treaty, and we decide that we will betray them, why don't we go all-out and betray them enormously with one huge invasion? If we can convince them that we aren't going to attack them, then why don't we take full advantage of it and net the PTS and HGP for ourselves?

I suppose what we could do is engineer our negotiations with them to be so much in our favor so as to almost assure their failure. And if they do, for some reason, agree to our demands, then we'll be THAT much better off for the whole incident, and they'll be the ones who come out behind because of their little charade.

[Modo44]

Originally posted by Zeiter
Well, if we sign a peace treaty, we forfeit all of our diplomatic advantage with the Gaians and Angels because:

Any diplomatic advantage will be lost anyway, once we start obliterating bases. And we will. I say we should accept it, and plan for it. The only real advantage is short-term, and I feel we should use it to gain as much as possible.

Originally posted by Zeiter
If we do sign a treaty, and we decide that we will betray them, why don't we go all-out and betray them enormously with one huge invasion? If we can convince them that we aren't going to attack them, then why don't we take full advantage of it and net the PTS and HGP for ourselves?

That is exactly my favourite plan. Make one big mess out of our reputation, but completely crush Morgan in the process.

I'll repeat, that we should try and use Yang to keep the others busy. He's very strong for an AI, and doing some dirty work already, so let's not stop him yet.

[Snoddasmannen]

Originally posted by Zeiter
If we do sign a treaty, and we decide that we will betray them, why don't we go all-out and betray them enormously with one huge invasion? If we can convince them that we aren't going to attack them, then why don't we take full advantage of it and net the PTS and HGP for ourselves?
Originally posted by Modo44
That is exactly my favourite plan. Make one big mess out of our reputation, but completely crush Morgan in the process.

The "full scale invasion right-off" plan looks to be gaining in popularity. I am yet to be convinced that it is better than a PTS raid and a following invasion proper, but regardless it has been discussed a lot and maybe we should make a proper decision regarding this.

A poll perhaps? A live-chat?

[Kassiopeia]

A chat would be great to discuss it in depth.

[Kassiopeia]

Kass

We would like to get back to profitable peaceful trade with you.

Let me explain on the probe of the Hunter.

We did not want to do it because it cost a lot of money to probe, would lead to drone riot problems, and cost a mineral to support. We only probed it because we felt you would kill our probe the next.

We have the turn now and have to decide what to do. Can you give me a counter offer before our turn is up?

We have no problem with sharing screenshots from the Hunter (as well as other Morgan ships operating within 8 spaces of your bases). This is helpful to you in that you get additional coverage that cost you nothing.

Please let me know what you think.

There are a some over here who have a lot of hurt feelings over here about the Modo doctraine as well as a feeling that we have been accomdating to Sparta whereas Sparta has been pushy towards Morgan. I however, feel that there is a lot of good work that we can accomplish together. I hope I am not wrong.

Mead

PS

I wish I was back in town prior to your ship being probed, but I have to work with what I have.

I feel sorry for him.

He wants a counteroffer before their turn is up. Should I suggest something outrageous so that we can be sure they won't accept? Bases maybe? It's hard not to be too blatant about it, or they'll start to suspect that we're not interested.

[Modo44]

Perhaps not bases. A lot of cash. I mean A LOT. It's obvious we want compensation, blablabla. Basically, I think we should make the demand look like a real offer, and cash is something they will probably expect. Start high, ("there are some in the Junta raging with fury", blablabla ), and go down slowly, turn by turn. I don't know, would 500 be high enough?

If they accept it, well, that's their own doom they'd be paying for (insta-build of an even stronger raid?). And if not, no harm done. Well, perhaps "no harm" is the wrong wording in view of what's headed for Morgan lands.

[Kassiopeia]

I think 500 might be a bit too little... maybe 100 a turn for X turns? Something that would pretty much cripple them.

[Snoddasmannen]

Interesting PM. Poor Mead probably didn't like that probe action ... I agree with Modo, don't suggest bases, that's way too much and we don't want it to be blatantly obvious. Oodles of cash? Better, but I'm not so sure ...

My suggestion: Don't make him a counter-offer. Continue to argue the issue. Ask him why they didn't simply ask us to spare their probe ship, with assurances that it would be withdrawn to non-Spartan territories. We would certainly have prefered this to their mind-controlling it. (I am honestly wondering why they didn't do this, it severely dents the credibility of their story)

Then you can make a passing reference to a future live-chat with the Junta where we will discuss this among other issues. Of course you will not be comfortable making any concrete suggestions before then.

It will be difficult to keep this charade up for another 5 turns though

In regards to a future chat to decide the whole Morgan issue, I think it's actually a great idea. I am often available late in the evenings GMT. We could do it while playing the turn.

Now ... it's been a long night, pardon my spelling, I need some sleep

[Maniac]

To try and save our reputation with he Gaians-Angels even after we destroy the PTS, we could perhaps claim in a Phalanx issue that the Morganites had started a huge military build-up the turn after mindcontrolling the Hunter, and that our action was therefore a last ditch attempt to save ourselves from destruction?

We only probed it because we felt you would kill our probe the next.

Perhaps you could counterargue, and as Snoddasmannen suggests win time by not yet making a counteroffer, that they not only mindcontrolled the Hunter, but that according to the MorganLink issue, the Morganites left their Spartan embassy and for the second time unilaterally threw our treaties, contracts and agreements out of the window. In other words a full declaraction of war. And that therefore the compensation should be rather high to gain our trust again.

Perhaps you could also ask, if the Hunter's causing them so much trouble with drone riots etc, why didn't they just disband the ship? (They actually used the ship to podpop two unity pods we would otherwise have popped ourselves the next turn. So perhaps as part of a compensation we could ask to be compensated the gain we lost from those pods?

[Kassiopeia]

Good ideas, guys. I could also draw on Mead's apparent personal distaste of the matter and try to spin up something to the effect of "you already violated our treaties once and obviously have a touch of fickleness, why should we trust you".

I'll wait 'til I wake up to send though. Every hour won arguing is useful at this point.

for the second time unilaterally threw our treaties, contracts and agreements out of the window.

Refresh my memory, if you'd please - what was the first occasion?

[Googlie]

When we killed their probe team - they suspended payments and arbitrarily docked us for 50 ec's from amounts due to us

[Modo44]

Originally posted by Maniac
They actually used the ship to podpop two unity pods we would otherwise have popped ourselves the next turn. So perhaps as part of a compensation we could ask to be compensated the gain we lost from those pods?

That sounds like a good addition as well. Will make our cash claims (100 per turn sounds sweet ) more believeable.

[Snoddasmannen]

Originally posted by Maniac
(They actually used the ship to podpop two unity pods we would otherwise have popped ourselves the next turn. So perhaps as part of a compensation we could ask to be compensated the gain we lost from those pods?

Good point. In fact, they popped a completion pod and got that super-crawler right? We should ask for the super-crawler as compensation.

Oh and on a different note, have you guys started on the fiction pieces to go along with the Morgan declaration of war? The helots burning the Morgan embassy and the crew of the Hunter swimming ashore after the energy bomb detonated, amongst others. I'm not trying to nag or anything, and it's not critical for the game-play itself, I just really like to read your stories

EDIT: And hey Kass, more brainstorming for your PM to Mead. In their story on the general forum, Mead drew a hand-gun when escaping from the embassy. Did he hurt any of our troops? We should definately be compensated for that

The Ambassador pulled a holstered sidearm from the drawer and strapped it on. "This could get ugly," he muttered under his breath

[Kassiopeia]

I sent a general stalling message with a bit of apologizing for the delay (claiming team inactivity and 'personal reasons'), using the stuff you had posted here. I also remembered to ask him about the ship, mainly, why they haven't disbanded it if it's causing drone problems. I didn't make a counteroffer, I just gave a nebulous "the Junta will meet in a live chat soonish and I'll do what I can about the issue".