All I Got For Christmas Was…
Posted by: Marlenus, in Notable Smacktalk, Today In Ironfleet…a war declaration, the bird, and a compliment.
Actually, that’s not true. Outside of EVE space, I got some very nice presents, and had an excellent dinner with family.
But when I logged in? Another story.
What to my wondering eye should appear but the following:
Equilibrium L.L.C. has declared war on Ironfleet Towing And Salvage. After 24 hours fighting can legally occur between those involved.
I searched my conscience, and found it free of recent offenses. True, there was a guy who got huffy yesterday over 600 cubic meters of ore:
Tootenh’amon > give me my stuff back plz
Marlenus > I don’t have your stuff?
Tootenh’amon > yes, you do. you took it from my cache
Marlenus > If it was yours, it would be in your cargo hold, or in your warehouse
Tootenh’amon > or in cache in which i store it
Marlenus > You mean, the can you jettisoned it in?
Tootenh’amon > yes
Tootenh’amon > we can resolve it two ways
Marlenus > Jettison = “throw away”
Tootenh’amon > you return me the goods
Tootenh’amon > or…
Marlenus > I’m a salvager, wouldn’t be much profit in returning salvaged goods.
Tootenh’amon > well, fortunately enough, next time when you’ll see you around i’ll know to let you salvage some missiles and plutonium rounds as well.
Marlenus > Do as you see fit, but you might want to have a look at the ironfleet.com corporate blog … others who’ve felt that way have found out that shooting at Ironfleet is a losing proposition.
Tootenh’amon > just skip it, all right? You took my goods. when i shoot you it doesn’t matter if you are allah mc muhammad ali, you go down. beware of our next meeting.
But Toot didn’t really sound war-deccing mad. Better look up the corp info on Equilibrium L.L.C. Brand new corp founded three days ago, interesting. Two members? Curiouser and curiouser. CEO?
Ah. Light dawns on Marble Head (mine, that is.) The CEO is Chebri, she of the unexpected Hound. I wonder why she left AC-ME? Not just so she could come after little old me, surely?
Irrelevant aside: Chebri’s portrait is about as babealicious as EVE portraits get. Look:
My one encounter with Chebri was professional and smack-free, so this war shouldn’t be too unpleasant. Let’s check her bio for clues to current state of mind, shall we?
Pilots that need to die:
-Ore thieves
-Salvage thieves
-Pirates
-Macro Miners
-Macro RattersFor Shamus Horus and Marlenus
[ASCII art of somebody gesturing with middle finger]
Because they are thieves.
Ugh. Judgmental much?
Apparently the professional politeness Cordus extended me did not reflect the sentiments of the AC-ME rank and file. Sadly, it sounds like Chebri is another Eve player who is not happy unless she’s telling someone “you’re not playing the game right.” Ah, well, it takes all kinds.
So, we’ve covered the war dec and the finger. Where was the compliment?
Well, it’s subtle. But if, as seems likely, AC-ME spun Chebri off into a separate attack-dog corporation to spare themselves and their new alliance (!) the devastating consequences of Ironfleet’s awesome retributional wrath, isn’t that a compliment of sorts? As a low-player-count corp with a stated policy of avoiding the sort of open combat that makes the pew-pew crowd happy, exactly how dangerous did they think we could be?
Sounds like a compliment to me.
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December 26th, 2007 at 7:03 am
Marlenus
Your ore theft (and yes it is theft because the game mechanics make it so) upset some friends of mine. Since there is an alliance policy of ‘thou shalt not start sh*t’ I decided to make my own corp to dec you. I’m protective of my friends. That’s it in a nut shell.
Enjoy. =)
December 26th, 2007 at 7:06 am
P.S.
Thanks for writing so much on the internet about your habits. This blog and your over 200 posts on the official forums made it very easy to determine your habits and thus establish a strategy. Cheers.
December 26th, 2007 at 12:47 pm
Chebri, your reference to “salvage theft” in your bio makes it clear that you are condemning behavior that the game mechanics do *not* categorize as theft, so I’m afraid that argument fails. ;-)
You’re welcome, with regard to the writing. The Ironfleet position is that by making our tactics and policies clear, we advance our interests. Good luck with your strategy; I don’t think you’ll find much joy in it. As you’ll have seen before, nobody’s ever gotten any value or fun out of a war dec against Ironfleet; I doubt you’ll be the first.
If you’ve studied my blog posts, you’ll know that my conflict avoidance methods make it fairly irrelevant how many people Ironfleet is at war with. So, did you not consider the fact that if Ironfleet is on a war footing for an extended period of time, we might as well war dec your friends and disrupt their operations during the hours when you’re not online and wasting your time camping us in stations? I can guarantee nobody in AC-ME will get any mining done while you’re asleep, if you bore me into taking that step. Keep this up and you may end up getting AC-ME kicked out of its new alliance.
In that regard, I really appreciate you posting here so that I’ll have something to point to in explanation when your former alliance asks “what did we do?”
Food for thought while you’re camping!
December 26th, 2007 at 3:53 pm
Pay attention.
I said the ore theft is stealing and the game mechanics make it so.
Salvage theft is annoying but the game mechanics allow it.
December 26th, 2007 at 5:05 pm
And I quote from your bio:
“Pilots that need to die:
-Ore thieves
-Salvage thieves”
Aren’t you trying to have it both ways, in suggesting that ore salvage is “stealing” because “the game mechanics make it so”, but that salvage is also theft even though the game mechanics expressly provide that it is not a criminal act?
Either theft is defined by game mechanics (which I dispute, but that’s your argument) or it isn’t. Either way, picking up jettisoned cans and salvaging abandoned wrecks cannot both be thievery, when the mechanics treat one as a criminal act and not the other.
Someone’s not paying attention, but it isn’t me.
No worries, I don’t care about the semantics anyway. Ironfleet’s activities (all of them, even the ones that you despise) are allowed by the game mechanics, and it strikes me as silly to morally condemn allowed activities within a game, or to use morally judgmental language about them. It’s that behavior that I am (gently, gently) mocking.
December 30th, 2007 at 6:26 pm
We’re just going to have to agree to disagree on the theft definition in regards to ore. Scanning down a player in a mission and salvaging their wrecks is just plain rude. Let’s do this. You keep calling your ore theft ‘salvage’ and I’ll keep calling the salvaging of wrecks that were the result of another player’s work ‘theft’.
You enjoy taking advantage of other players’ hard work (mining) and keeping all the profits for yourself. I find this type of game play loathsome at best. You are the bully. I’m just protecting the local miners.
December 30th, 2007 at 9:04 pm
Now your vendetta is justified because my preferred playstyle is “rude” and I’m a “bully”? Which of us started this war, again? “I don’t think that word means, what you think that word means.”
Have you forgotten that this is a PVP game? Seriously?
Near as I can tell, your attempted moral outrage is just a complicated gloss on the fact that I’m not playing the game the way you think I should.