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I would like to make my position on MU recruiting publicly known so that I don't have to field these types of PMs daily. Below is c/p from a PM exchange a few minutes ago.

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Kolv1k to The Libertine | 10 minutes ago

Hello!

I have been told you are sending out messages asking people from our MU to join yours instead. Can you please stop it, at least concerning our MU? You can do whatever you want with other MUs people but please leave our fighters alone. That seems kinda strange that someone will want to ask people from one MU to other. Unless you too have something against JCS lead Army branch...

thanks for the minute of your time.

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The Libertine to Kolv1k | now

I may have sent a few invites to baby players that have created accounts in the last few days, because eRep (I think) now makes new citizens pick an MU during the introduction steps of creating a citizen.

I believe brand new citizens should be messaged and interacted with by as many people as possible. Just because your MU name tricks brand new citizens into thinking you are the official military group of the country (your MU have over 100 avatar-less babynewbs) doesn't mean that you own these players the minute after they join your MU.

I have not targeted your MU nor any others. From time to time I check out the "Who's Online" list and send a few PMs, almost always only to citizens not yet in any MU.

I'm sure if you changed your MU name then there would not be so many brand new citizens joining and we would not have this awkward situation.

All the best,
The Libertine

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The suggestion about changing names was in jest, btw. Although, my overall point about the confusion still stands.

Does anyone know whether eRep prompts new citizens to join an MU during one's first login? I've been seeing virtually all brand new citizens being a member of one MU or another, so I suspect something of the sort must now be prompted.

I am slightly disturbed by the amount of brand new players joining the "US ARMY" Military Unit. Before I begin: This is not because of who this group is. I have no problem with the US ARMY. ( ❤ HadrianX ) It is because this sort of excessive funneling of new citizens into one MU (which was certainly not the intent of the US ARMY and I don't blame them at all for the natural way of things) has national implications as I'll lay out later in this article.

If you pick any random page of their Regiments (past the first few) you'll see upwards of 2/3rd avatar-less citizens. Their MU membership has at least doubled or tripled since the last MU changes were instituted (and, I suspect, after the admins changed the new citizen process to involved choosing an MU). I suspect many new players are joining the US ARMY MU believing that it is the official MU of the country. It is not, of course, though they are fine people and a fine organization. o//

I mentioned in a previous article that several countries have "official" civilian military units. I mentioned as well that we ~don't~ and that we were a bit behind the curve, depending on how you looked at things. The rapid rate at which new players are joining US ARMY, one of our many militia groups but one simply blessed with a recognizable name, is something that our country leaders need to contemplate.

As I suggested, a name change (as has been suggested for the last half year or so) would be the easiest solution to things, though certainly not the most reasonable solution. It would be easier than setting up a brand new civilian militia ~and~ figuring out how to brand it well enough that almost all new citizens join it. Even then, it would be difficult to maintain such a thing and make contact with the new soldiers each day, due to the sheer mass.

Ideally, what we want is an ~even~ distribution of new citizens into the MUs of the nation. It does no one any good to have 50% or 75% of new citizens all joining one MU and then having that MU think that they somehow own those new players, stifling recruitment attempts by other units.

So maybe ideally we actually should have an official civilian MU and declare it to be open-space for all recruiters. That would certainly help avoid newb recruiting turf-wars. But it would probably have to achieve a new-join rate of at least 40% or 50% to be useful in that manner.

To be perfectly honest, the best solution may be to make the "US ARMY" MU the official civilian MU of the country, since it is having such great success at drawing in brand new players. The name and logo are recognizable to someone who has never played eRep before so it is a natural fit for a national civilian MU. The government would then give the US ARMY a new MU for their actual soldiers and ask them to call it something like "US ARMY - Enlisted" and ask that a different logo be used.

I doubt that could be agreed to, but it would solve a lot of issues in one fell swoop. It would not involve any name changing of fighting groups, and it would give the nation an already operational ~open~ recruitment center that would be fair game for all military groups.

And if anything like that was ever actually agreed to, I would suggest that one of the terms be that the US ARMY and other JCS groups be allowed to once again include their recruiting links in the NCM (new citizen message), the WHPR (White House Press Releases), and the DoD Orders.

Sure would be swell for all sides to come together and agree to do something big like this. It would be a ~boon~ for this nation.


In Conclusion

1) No, no MU has "ownership rights" to citizens that have created accounts in the last three days or so, especially if eRep is encouraging them to join an MU right off the bat without much prior education about different groups. We need to encourage more communication and recruitment of new players, not less.

2) It is undeniably silly that we still have "US ARMY" and "United States Army" MUs, but whatever.

3) To be clear, I have no problem with any Military Unit (except for sausage-lovers-pizza's little clan) and I have not targeted any group while recruiting. I care ~zilch~ about old political squabbles, and I respect all those that run organized fighting groups, because I know how insanely time consuming that can be. If anyone felt disrespected by parts of this article I am sorry. I mean no disrespect. My interests are game mechanics and the overall tactical strength of the eUS. Funneling a majority of new citizens into one MU that will not allow others to recruit them is a tactical weakness, and I completely understand that that was not the intent of the US ARMY. But it is what it is, and these things are worth talking about and sorting out so that weaknesses can be turned into strengths.

4) While writing this article the "description" part of the US ARMY MU was changed to be more specific. Very good stuff!

5) Briefly: My goals in regard to A N O N Y M O U S are thus:
- Get (eUS) citizens who don't usually fight to join an MU and use to bazooka/energy bar bonus as an incentive to get them to fight at least once a day.
- Get foreigners with eUS citizenship to join an eUS MU so that they are fighting in "our" battles to get the energy bar bonus, boosting our overall national damage output.
- Have fun; Get laid
- And lastly, to create a home for people who want to be around other people that don't want to be in an official military group. We've created a nice atmosphere for people that no longer want to be in an official group, for people that never were and don't want to be, and for (newer) people that want to get used to logging in each day and enjoying the game in a simple way before making the leap to a more serious fighting group.

So far so good.

We are A N O N Y M O U S
We are legion
Expect us

All the best,
CRoy/The Libertine