Robigo under Preparation?
- Thread starter Gamel0rd1
- Start date
"Fifth column" is standard military/political parlance. It can also be used in a purely political sense
A while back, long before long-range missions were a thing, a group of Antal supporters decided to turn Takurua into a Control system. As far as I know, it was a genuine Powerplay experiment they engaged in, rather than a fifth column sabotage by secret Antal-haters. They found out the hard way that Controlling an isolated system like Takurua or Robigo is a really, really dumb idea - the combination of remoteness and lack of exploitable neighbouring systems means that they made a massive loss on the whole project.
A while back, long before long-range missions were a thing, a group of Antal supporters decided to turn Takurua into a Control system. As far as I know, it was a genuine Powerplay experiment they engaged in, rather than a fifth column sabotage by secret Antal-haters. They found out the hard way that Controlling an isolated system like Takurua or Robigo is a really, really dumb idea - the combination of remoteness and lack of exploitable neighbouring systems means that they made a massive loss on the whole project.
How is controlling an isolated system a bad idea though? Set foot there, backstab later elsewhere...
While "in real life" (34C era space life?!?!) it might actually be useful to control this remote system, it's the PP mechanics themselves that make this a fruitless, nay damaging, exercise. I don't Power Play in the slightest, but from what I gather the cost to control a system is based on the distance from HQ and income comes from surrounding systems. So, for a "good" expansion one needs to offset this income against the control cost and come out positive or have the coffers drained each PP cycle.
PP is more of a boardgame like Risk rather than a Political simulator like Game of Thrones.
Oh, and why does your tori have no tamas? ;-)
Or in English, why does your chicken have no balls?
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Haven't yet met any that had.Or in English, why does your chicken have no balls?
I find the fact so many people don't seem to have come across the term 'fifth column' far more surprising than anything that may be happening in Robigo. What do they teach in schools these days other than facebook and emo?
I'm 42 years old now... I haven't heard about this "columning" in school. Probably was dissed as irrelevant during history classes (or then I slept through them).
What I find funny, is that that is considered a broken mechanic and wrong and should be an offense of which players are expedited into the gates of hell. Usually by the same folks that only PP in solo and haven't quite logically worked through the simple fact that PP in solo ensures there's no repercussions. If PP was an open only feature, then people suddenly become far more accountable. But this would upset the same people who hate fifth column.
In any sufficiently large militarised organisation, regardless of who it is, spies and counter-agents will be actively subverting (or encouraging those in other organisations to subvert on their behalf).
I've noticed a strong repetition where wrong/ right moral objections are confused as having a 1:1 relationship with valid game mechanics - the two are not the same. This includes PP, where amazingly, subverting your own power is actually possible and is able to enact changes equal to the distortion PP in solo brings.
It just illustrates what happens when a developer absolutely completely and utterly abandons a feature (PP is dead, long live PP) and people work out how to best leverage it to flip systems and screw with the BGS. I'm sure those doing so are having a ball.
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Even Sandro has spoken many times about how the devs don't like fifth-columning. On the recent livestream he barely stopped short of saying it should result in disciplinary action against the saboteur's account.
Powerplay is supposed to be a cold-war political struggle and is explicitly designed to pit player groups against each other. I see underhanded tactics like infiltrating opposing factions and deliberately preparing bad systems, or waiting until the last minute to hand in undermining vouchers as completely in-context plausible and viable tactics.
Contrast with going around pew-pewing new players and defenceless explorers or traders, which is just harmless roleplaying.
Sort of. It was before my time, but as I understand it, people did know that it would be ruinously expensive - in fact that was kind of the point. It seems to have been an attempt to reduce an out-of-control surplus that kept resulting in bad preparations when the power didn't have the organisation or manpower to deal with in. It's not the decision I would have made, but it wasn't totally ridiculous.
As good systems dry up, we are even considering the idea of doing something similar again. You have to make unorthodox decisions when you're stuck in the armpit of the galaxy.
Hmmm. 42 years old and presumably have at least a passing fondness for sci-fi since you're playing this, so tell me - did you watch V when you were a kid? That was actually the first time I came across the term
