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The Current Situation

Tommorow's News Today -- Day 5212
1.) The Current Situation
2.) What the Heck is a Training War?
3.) Inside the Kentucky White House
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The Current Situation





Quote of the week:

"Russian warship: go f*ck yourself!"
-- Ukranian soldiers on Snake Island, in the Black Sea, near the border of Ukraine and Romania, responding to threats


For many players, especially those in Europe, this has been a harrowing time. Real life has intruded on our game world in a terrifying way.

With Russian tanks, helicopters and artillery invading, and the country under martial law, Ukraine is shut off. Lots of folks in nearby, bordering and friendly countries are focussing all of their attention on the situation there, with little time left for our small world of play-war, pretend-economics, ersatz-nationalisms and (in my case) ludicrous-journalism.

For US-based players, let us be mindful that many of our closest gaming allies -- as well as some of our dearest "frenemies" -- are located in Slavic countries not too far removed from the conflict zone geographically. Also, many of our fellow players in Eastern Europe and the Balkans are tied to Russia and Ukraine through long bonds of inter-twined history, language, politics, economics and culture.

On a practical level, as folks are affected by and pre-occupied with the events in Ukraine, probably some of the recent fun and excitement regarding "real war" battles will need to tone down a bit. Our hearts go out to all those who are suffering. It should be understandable that for many players, real life may need to take precedence over the game world at this point.






What the Heck is a Training War?

This question arises periodically. Often posed by a new or returning player. The large numbers of friendly conflicts that the e-USA is engaged in? WTF? And why the country is split up into such a patchwork of occupied zones? And what is the difference between a Training War and a Real War?

Super-great questions and thanks for asking them!


To find the answers, I started out by quizzing one of my erstwhile predecessors in this post: What a Guy, a former Education Minister and Defense Secretary, longtime Beloved Chairman of the SFP, and also author of the Greatest Article of All Time (tm). Between drinks, as he scribbled away furiously on his memoirs, he graciously tossed me a copy of an article he'd once written for the DoD on this very same topic.

I've been careful to shamelessly plagarize from that. But I've also added a bit of interpretation and nuance. To help make a few things, well... If not clearer, at least a bit chucklesome.




To understand the background to all this, please realize that not so long ago, the e-world situation was dire for the e-USA. (See the scientific data visualization below.) Countries like Brazil , Argentina, Sweden and Lithuania had nice High Sexy ratings, while the good ol' USA was ranking in at Low Sexy.


As you can see from the map, this was making Murkins rather glum.






A team of clever player-psychologists got together to ponder the low-sexiness problem. They considered things like actually contributing assistance to allies, and not flaking out every time there's a shift in the balance of power, for example.

Then they took a look at how happy the occasional "training war" had made players over the years.


The idea of a training war is not a new one. As I recall, it was friends in Ireland way back when -- like 12 years ago -- who first proposed the idea.

The concept is simple. Decide ahead of time the outcome of a conflict. Then use game mechanics and the occasional strategic deployment of tank-level players to manage a friendly match in which both sides can build up strength (you know, push buttons!) in the various divisions.

Without risk of suffering permanent damages or losses.




The more recent innovation is to do so on a much larger scale. Again, a visualization will help. As everyone knows, Uhmurka is a land of plenty. Especially, plenty of pizza.


Except for a few states, like Nevada, which are mostly all desert and hookers anyway, we're jam-packed with places who deliver tasty, crunchy, cheap cheesy delights to your doorstep at a moment's notice!

With all this pizza available, the Wise Old Gnomes of the e-USA realized that we could become Farmville to the World! We easily "rent out" quite a few states, making it easy-peasy to conduct training wars. While retaining plenty of delicious pizza for ourselves to munch on!



For example, take a look at Kentucky, where our nation's capital is located. (circled on the map). Amidst all its scenic hollers and racetracks and quaint mountain hamlets devastated by coal companies, it hosts every kind of pizza joint known to man!






Furthermore, being the world's greatest host of training wars is a neat trick ideologically. If you're left-wing anarcho-socialist internationalist like me, it has the cachet of offering basic gamer solidarity, a friendly co-operative vibe and a peaceful alternative to drooling nationalist hoo-ha. If you're a practical-minded market enthusiast, it's just darn good business. If you're a leave-me-the-f-alone libertarian, then you're probably happy that each of the state's can kind of "do its own thing" on a tidy contractual basis.

To put it more simply. Hosting lots of training wars makes us much sexier!


Downsides?

Some players'd prefer eRep to be only a belligerantly nationalistic kind of sport. Regardless of whether one likes or dislikes that kind of play, tho', it doesn't match up with the capabilities of our player base. If we tried it, we'd simply get wiped out in short order.

Then we'd have no pizza at all. Not sexy.

The other downside bubbles up when we hilariously refer to the training wars as "Farmville". While we all benefit from the Jeffersonian paradise of hosting multiple ongoing training wars, and while most of us would prefer to not go around sounding like Nazis, it is, after all, largely a war game. And there is a certain kind fun that can be had only by engaging in battles that really do carry a risk of loss.

So. Yeah.

Only "playing Farmville" can grow a bit dull.






The Administration and its Asteria allies are dedicated to the smooth running of these cooperative friendly matches. However, sometimes that normal pattern of training wars gets disrupted. This can happen for various reasons:

1. Once a battle ends, the winning side has 24 hours to attack. If a nation's CP fails to select a region to attack, at the end of the 24 hour period, the nation automatically attacks a random region. Shockingly, this happens all the time!

2. Sometimes we have to relocate a nation to a different region, and normal traffic has to stop to let them move through any regions along the way. Similarly, a new partner may drop in by air strike.

3. The CP launching the attack may simply have entered the wrong region name when attacking. It happens to the best of us!

4. And, of course, someone could just be a dick, messing it up on purpose.

We hope this information will help you enjoy safe, productive Training Wars. Remember, farming is war.






^{A typical scene at the Presidential Daily Briefing}

As previously reported in this journal, the previous administrations left the Kentucky White House in abominable shape.

President Kody's Chief of Staff, the irrepressible Paul Proteus, spent many hours personally tidying, sweeping us broken glass and cookie crumbs, mopping sticky stuff up off the floor, scrubbing and painting over the many childish -- if hilarious -- depictions of various chicken-themed memes.

Once he'd tastefully decorated the place, Sec. Proteus conducted the first "PDB", which is how the elite insiders who actually run the country refer to the meetings of their cabal.



Your intrepid reporter and loyal gardener stuck his head in just briefly. Intending to share my thoughtful and learned opinion with this elevated gathering, that reading only the first page of Charles Dickens' Bleak House -- which consists entirely of two paragraphs devoted solely to describing fog -- will teach a thoughtful reader more about how to engage in the craft of literature than any number of freaking YouTube videos.


But I said nothing, shocked at the ribald scenes unfolding there. Shocked I tell you. Shocked.




xio, PQ