Join the new world

I enjoyed this morning’s stunt, one of the more exiting things I’ve done in erep in awhile. I understand it was terribly reckless, but it was recklessness I could afford, I’m well aware of my limits 😉 Thanks to everybody who joined the party and pushed me on the ballot, I was amazed at how much support I was able to find at 2AM in the morning. Now, if you enjoy walls of text, awesome since this one is a little longer than my previous article. A lot of ranting as a share some of my ideas and thoughts with you all. Of course, if words bore you, I’ll have a tl;dr ready before election day so don’t fret too much.

Moving along, I would like to talk about education, as I’ve opted to include a MoE in my cabinet (something that hasn’t happened in eCanada for a very long time), who will have 3 objectives for the month.

Get in touch with the independently run noob-friendly programs out there, and work on synchronizing those efforts into a single organized unit. Maybe we’ll get to talking and discover that it’d be better for operate as separate entities rather than 1 organized initiative, maybe we’ll learn to pool some resources and make things more efficient. It’s a simple plan that’s worth a shot.

Long ago, eCanadians could receive a bursary (usually CAD, but under some administrations goodies were handed out) by simply registering on the eCanadian forums. I want to go about it differently, through the guise of edumacation. The basic plan is to set up a kind of erepublik 101 test, that asks a number of basic must know questions about erepublik and eCanada. A new citizen would be tasked with finding these answers themselves. Of course they’d be permitted to ask other players questions about erepublik, and search the wiki for information. The idea is that they have to learn how to teach themselves, with the reward being that bursary I spoke about. This plan isn’t much more than an idea at this point, and still needs some fine tuning, but I’ll be looking for advice on the subject wherever I can find it.

Bringing back the presidential scenarios! Some of us may remember back when Kronos Q was president, he ran a unique program where Canadians signed up to what was like an ‘internship’ position in the executive government, where they had to respond to various presidential scenarios while helping the cabinet out wherever they were needed. (Usually your typical grunt and gofer work). Again, this is something I think has the potential to benefit eCanada and pursuing it would certainly be worth the effort.

Now onto my thoughts on war, which is always a hot topic in eCanada. The funny thing with the current module is that who the country goes to war with and when is a power that lies with the congress, not the president. Since a region is auto-attacked every 24 hours getting eCanada involved in a direct war is, from a mechanical viewpoint at least, extremely easy. So why doesn’t it happen, and why is the president so pivotal picking our battles when they aren’t mechanically necessary? It’s because when we go to war, we don’t quite enjoy losing, but in order to win it’s vital that the campaign be well planned, that we employ every strategy in the book, and that takes time. Because of the alliance system (by that I mean you average country has 20 MPPs give or take), it’s safe to assume that we’re in a state of constant war, but it’s never between individual nations, rather a global conflict between T/EDEN aligned forces against ONE aligned forces, which takes place over various battlefields throughout the world. While it is beneficial (for the most part) to be involved in a war directly, eCanada is geographically and mathematically not well situated for one, and this is the basic reason why Canada@War is such a rare occurrence. I don’t intend to try and sugar coat it, I can’t guarantee that eCanada will become directly involved in a war if elected. What I can do is negotiate with allies, and the alliance as a whole, and make it known that we’re more than willing to bend over backwards to get in on a meaningful battle.

Just hitting the attack button at random will result in either a win or loss of territory (most likely a loss), but that’s only temporary. Territorial conquests are never permanent in erepublik, and while regions come and go, our reputation as a nation, based on the actions of individuals, can have an everlasting impact on eCanada.

So, while attempting to combine military and diplomatic initiatives, I find myself coming to the mercenary option. If you’ve ever found yourself chatting with me on the subject of mercenaries, you’d find that I’m extremely fond of the idea, but with a slightly different approach to it. Typical mercing is when a country is involved in a very important battle and they need an extra push, so they offer tanks in exchange for people’s fights. It’s become extremely common in erepublik, you’ve probably seen at least one merc related shout. In fact I’ve got one in my feed right now~


So what does this shout mean? The battle link (USA v. Poland) is obviously the battle that needs support. #defence is the IRC channel you can join to find out how you can get supplies for this battle. 4K str is the minimum amount of strength you must have to request supplies; after all, if you’re spending $ on tanks for damage, you don’t want to be wasting it on somebody who’s not going to have an impact on the battlefield. You can usually guess how important the battle is by how low the strength requirement is, since the lower it is, the more desperate they are for fighters. (And 4k is about as low as they get, though 3K isn’t unheard of 😉 )

So that’s mercing 101. eCanada has refrained from participating because we’re seldom involved in an important battle, but congress would also prefer that our funding and resources go solely into funding eCanadian fighters. For some eRepers, mercing is how they make their living, and a well operated merc initiative can turn the tide of any battle. I would like to have tanks set aside for 3-5 operations for the month. This would not be limited to Canadian battles, but also allied battles that need an extra push. Why? Because what benefits our allies will typically benefit us. Because I want eCanada to have a reputation as a good ally.

Naturally the process would be made easier for eCanadian fighters, who would be exempt from any strength requirement. Having worked with my own MU trying to encourage people to get on IRC, I found that signing onto IRC, even if for some extra tanks, just isn’t for everyone. Which is why, if supplies are opened by the eCan government, I’d like an alternate method of supply requests to exist for Canadian soldiers, one more easily accessible.