Any point to the round?/Determination

[Heartless]

Originally Posted by Seth Mace

What story do you think Zhil is telling? I read Zhils comments to imply that this round 1up have had a similar level of incoming and those stats were highlighted to back this up?

So when you say "no" in response to my open question but then agree with (as far as im concerned anyway..) your false reading of Zhils reply, well it seems contradictory to me?

Basically Heartless, do you think 1up have had an easier r14 or equal/ tougher round compared to r13?

And if you do think 1ups incomings in r13 far exceed this round, can you explain why you think my previous reply was wrong?

Thx:P

Round 14 was easier than round 13 due to a few factors, like less organized incomings (for example).

No because I do not think you need sandmans to judge about an alliance's performance. The amount of covered and uncovered defense calls should be enough to tell how good alliance x or y is, and quite obviously how much they were targetted and thus how easy their round was.

[Neferti]

Originally Posted by Heartless

Round 14 was easier than round 13 due to a few factors, like less organized incomings (for example).

No because I do not think you need sandmans to judge about an alliance's performance. The amount of covered and uncovered defense calls should be enough to tell how good alliance x or y is, and quite obviously how much they were targetted and thus how easy their round was.

I don't think number of defense calls alone really tells you how hard it has been. You have to take into account the size of the defense calls, and how well organised they are as well. It does make a difference. 6 calls of 6 different ship classes are probably easier to cover than 6 calls of the same ship class, for eaxmple.

[Heartless]

Originally Posted by Neferti

I don't think number of defense calls alone really tells you how hard it has been. You have to take into account the size of the defense calls, and how well organised they are as well. It does make a difference. 6 calls of 6 different ship classes are probably easier to cover than 6 calls of the same ship class, for eaxmple.

Why exactly do you think so?
Don't you think that the total amount of defense calls, and the amount of covered and uncovered of these is enough to judge how hard the time for an alliance has been?

Keep in mind: No matter how easy (or hard) it is to cover a call, it has to be covered if you want to perform nicely. If it is not covered then it does not matter anymore why it was not covered, you are not doing well if this happens again and again.

[Seth Mace]

Originally Posted by Heartless

No because I do not think you need sandmans to judge about an alliance's performance. The amount of covered and uncovered defense calls should be enough to tell how good alliance x or y is, and quite obviously how much they were targetted and thus how easy their round was.

Thx for the reply

Well, a person in my position only has sandmans stats to judge an alliances performance. Your solution to what tools players should use to really make a judgement are privvy to 1up peons, so that aint much use to me is it?:P

Besides, i think Sandmans is as good a tool to judge alliance performance as any. The only thing it misses is value stats, something HCs may have a better idea on. The stats of incoming covered/ uncovered compared with what sandmans shows, wont differ in conclusion to sandy imo. It's not as simple as that when you take into account politics. As with 1up, most know that they've had many allies hitting them but their sandy figures dont represent an alliance being bashed? Hence my original post, is this because 1up are even better then last round or because their enemy is weaker? Based on political knowledge and sandy, I felt it was unfortunately the latter.

So I think sandmans stats can provide just as much perspective (when with a clear political grounding), as private internal covered/uncovered stats can.

[SkyHead]

Originally Posted by Kargool

While I can agree that 1up won this round deservedly, I cannot bring myself to brag about this win.

1up did never have any real competition this round. The fun thing about 1up is that they have way to much members. Gonna be interesting who's gonna be left out in the dark after this round.

That is if they drop someone, they have built up a bigger squad which gives them the stability they need, one can say they won because of the enemy being weaker, there is no doubt about the oppositition this round was alot less then it was last round, but there is no doubt they have also improven a great deal.

In Round 13 they started with around 70 members and it increased throughout the round, how much I don't remember, but it was as I understood mainly due to slow signups etc.
This round they started with around 90 and are now 100 planets in tag, that is almost a 30% increase since then, before they had the quality one could only ask for, but now they have that quality in big quantity (even more then ToF for that sake).

While 1up kept receiving incs from much bigger parties then themselves, ND had their easy way plowing through the roid yard, with relatively little incs, just some quarrels with LCH\Hydra and the little "war" with Reunion before we joined em.
ND managed fairly well to handle Reunion 1on1, (even though we had our fair share of incs from all around uni at that time as a result of the shipjump, and by we I mean Reunion not only my bg). But compared to 1up they never had an real battle this round, except from now. As where 1up held off 3 allies at a time, 3x their score, with more or less concentrated incs ( I can only know what Insomnia did, which was our fair share in attacking ) for almost 2 weeks, ND now fall after a few days against 1up and Reunion, the score difference isn't as much, however I'd suspect it to be far less then what 1up had against them at an earlier stage.
1up\Reunion vs ND is in no eyes a fair fight, it would be fought to lose, but its still sad to see they drop as fast as they do. But the reason for the battle to have this approach with 2on ND all is a result of the way they played their politics.

This shows the difference between 100 1ups and 85 NDs, although the 1ups have Reunion to accompany them to the roids now.
And do not believe the value difference is as big as the score difference, ofcourse the winning alliance has a shitload of Xp more then the others.
While 1up has proven to be a force, no doubt stronger then ever this round, ND has only proven they can take on a fight one at a time, where the roids are most shiny for them but are not able to handle and sustain larger incs over time, 1up on the other hand can have 3 allies attacking them and still make a nice roid growth the day after.

With this post I wish to point to the fact of how strong 1up have become, and the fact that ND were in for this fight sooner or later, but 1up won it before it even started because of their politic play, which also is another strong side of 1up, which they simply lacked resistance in this round.

Now lets see if 1up decides to drop someone off, I somehow doubt it as it is a community based alliance, and there will always be people coming back, leaving, coming back again. I doubt their numbers will decrease by much till next round.

[higginz]

how can u pay respects to TGV who basically ****ed up APA and then stole the members...

[Neferti]

The fact that ND have had internal troubles with HC and others being forced to quit has no bearing on our performance then?

[Agerus]

in my opinion, a big part of 1up success was also the growth of Reunion.

I mean two of the most agressive 1up enemies, dS/Insomnia and Hydra "suddendly" join the other side (1up friendly), that makes a big impact.

Lets get real, 1up had incs from several major alliances before that, but it was never really coordinated and no where frequently. This was the positive effect of the round. For a while the race was pretty close and several alliances intended to win (1up, ND, LCH, Insomnia). Thats why the anti-1up faction never really "allied" in the fear one alliance could profit most and run away with the win.

I must add, 1ups propaganda worked quite well

After this move the battle was pretty much equal with 1up + Reunion vs LCH + ND

When LCH began to struggle NDs fate was decided and thus the victory of 1up

[aNgRyDuCk]

I don't think anyone has slammed the performance of the ND membership in any of these threads..fact is they've played well all round, and responded well to an early coords leak. ND Command's reluctance to "pull the trigger" at key moments during the round is why ND isn't in the race for #1 now.

[The_Fish]

TBH I think there is only one time we didn't pull the trigger when we should have, and that is when you threw your fleets, the kitchen sink, and reunion at us. Had we hit you the night before, things would have been slightly different.

We didn't have much luck this round, but when we could have hit LCH and chose not to was a wise decision imo, as we ended up napped to them, and if we'd killed them our own demise would have been far earlier.

[aNgRyDuCk]

you chose to ride the fence throughout the early stages of the round when other alliances were hitting 1up. As for Reunion, we have absolutely no military cooperation with them, no shared channels, no coordinated attacks, to say we "threw" Reunion at you is completely rediculous. They hit who they chose to hit, if that happened to be you, oh well.

Prior to our attack, you talked on AD for 2 weeks how #2 should be hitting #1 instead of you. So we launched a pre-emptive strike, simple as that. You were not equipped to handle the fleets launched at you. My point is, were you to get off the fence earlier in the round, and come after 1up then, the playing field possibly would have been a lot more even at this stage.

[Synthetic_Sid]

Originally Posted by The_Fish

TBH I think there is only one time we didn't pull the trigger when we should have, and that is when you threw your fleets, the kitchen sink, and reunion at us. Had we hit you the night before, things would have been slightly different.

We didn't have much luck this round, but when we could have hit LCH and chose not to was a wise decision imo, as we ended up napped to them, and if we'd killed them our own demise would have been far earlier.

We never threw reunion at you: the first night we hit you reunion were just doing galaxy raids. To date there's been no cooperation ever between 1up/reunion on hitting ND. Obviously hitting 1up properly first would have changed things a bit - by how much noone can ever know. Instead you waved a couple of big 1up planets rather than doing a proper attack.

I'm not at all convinced you hitting LCH would have been a bad move. It may not have been your best move but it would have been much better than planning such an attack then backing down twice. Planning a hit then not going through with it is bad both in terms of your own members' morale - and in terms of your credibility with other alliances. Twice suggesting a joint attack to 1up and backing out both times just established you as an alliance that people would hesitate to assist in war - as if you'd (apparently) bottle out when you had 1up agreeing to assist you, how could a smaller alliance have confidence that you'd follow through when you ask them to help you?

You then repeated the same thing vs 1up. You went round other alliances asking for help hitting 1up - then failed to do so yourself to any large degree. You told your members "tomorrow we'll strike back at 1up" - yet that soon changed to "we'll hit reunion for the rest of the round".

Criticism over your unwillingness to pull the trigger isn't necessarily based on the assumption that you were aiming the gun at the right person, rather than that if you point at a gun at someone you MUST be willing to pull the trigger and deal with the consequences.

Making the right decisions is obviously important - but sometimes it's better to make a marginally wrong decision rather than vacillate between various alternatives. Decisiveness is probably ultimately ND's biggest weakness at a command level this round - you seemed unable to make decisions quickly and follow through on them.

Other than that, congrats on a round well played.

[Synthetic_Sid]

Originally Posted by aNgRyDuCk

you chose to ride the fence throughout the early stages of the round when other alliances were hitting 1up. As for Reunion, we have absolutely no military cooperation with them, no shared channels, no coordinated attacks, to say we "threw" Reunion at you is completely rediculous. They hit who they chose to hit, if that happened to be you, oh well.

Prior to our attack, you talked on AD for 2 weeks how #2 should be hitting #1 instead of you. So we launched a pre-emptive strike, simple as that. You were not equipped to handle the fleets launched at you. My point is, were you to get off the fence earlier in the round, and come after 1up then, the playing field possibly would have been a lot more even at this stage.

I have to correct you on one issue. There IS a shared channel (at HC level) between 1up and reunion - which is basically used to sort recalls of friendly fire and exchange updates on members coords lists. There's no shared channels for military commanders, however.

[Synthetic_Sid]

Originally Posted by aNgRyDuCk

Prior to our attack, you talked on AD for 2 weeks how #2 should be hitting #1 instead of you. So we launched a pre-emptive strike, simple as that. You were not equipped to handle the fleets launched at you. My point is, were you to get off the fence earlier in the round, and come after 1up then, the playing field possibly would have been a lot more even at this stage.

I think one of the key problems for ND this round was that the whole playing field changed very rapidly when insomnia collapsed - which was something they couldn't have anticipated. At that stage they'd burnt all bridges with 1up this round by their repeated invitations to cooperate followed by backing out. That left 1up HC in a situation where even if we'd wanted to force a realignment of alliances we had no confidence in the ability of ND to actually deliver on any deals they made. Other alliances also had similar fears - leaving ND left with the only alliance that would cooperate with them being an embattled LCH whose situation was even more dire than ND's own.

That in part is why I believe criticism of ND's failure to "pull the trigger" on LCH twice is entirely justified. Not because they should (necessarily) have been hitting LCH - but because to other alliances they appeared unwilling to actually act and hence not desirable as partners. No alliance wanted to hit 1up - then have ND back out and be left carrying the can themselves.

The justification of not pulling the trigger then by various NDs appears to be entirely based on hindsight: "insomnia/lch/hydra collapsed so we'd have had noone left to fight 1up". None of those things (maybe hydra) was apparent at the time - so it's not valid to use it as justification for your actions at the time.

Ultimately ND's strategy appeared to be "Let's hope Insomnia+LCH+Hydra will trade roids with 1up and we can win without fighting anyone too much". At least that's how it looked to everyone else not in ND. No doubt ND's actual strategy was slightly more interventionist and involved the concept of joining in on one side or the other as necessary to maintain some sort of balance. Such a strategy is a good one - but there are 3 important factors, not all of which were considered carefully enough:

1. The sides need to be fairly balanced. This wasn't an issue early on - the collapse of insomnia and hydra totally ruined it.
2. You need to be in a position to deal with BOTH sides. This is ideally achieved by making sure you cooperate at least to a small with both sides early on - so you can move between sides as needed without the other side feeling there's no way you'll work with them and going all out on you. ND failed miserably at this.
3. When one side wins you need to be able to beat them. In theory this should be easy - the two sides are giving one another incs and so you should surely be outgrowing both of them nicely. ND failed to outgrow 1up quickly enough while we were bogged down in our early wars.

[Gio2k]

I blame it all on Skyhead

Skyhead's move to leave Insomnia was the event that turned the balance in favor of 1up.
Insomnia stopped being a threat to 1up, and let them concentrate their firepower, on the only real enemy that they had left: LCH. As much as it pains me to admit, 1up vs LCH one on one was actually 90 vs 50, because of our inactivity. 1up hit LCH constantly, weakening the moral of their normal players, and then, when the medium planets broke, they went for the big fish, hitting hard and well, fleetcatching and taking roids. During this time, ND was not yet involved in the war with 1up, and decided instead to fight Reunion rather than 1up. In my opinion, the strategy of hitting Reunion and hoping LCH would pin 1up long enough was a bad move. I think going with LCH with all firepower against either 1up or Reunion would have been better. Going all against Reunion, in the hope they might break soon, so that the firepower could be then used on 1up, or goign all against 1up in the hope that Reunion would not outgrow ND.
This round had many unexpected turns, and 1up won it by persistence and seizing the oportunities that were presented to them with great efficiency. Congratulations are in order.

[Gate]

Originally Posted by Gio2k

During this time, ND was not yet involved in the war with 1up, and decided instead to fight Reunion rather than 1up. In my opinion, the strategy of hitting Reunion and hoping LCH would pin 1up long enough was a bad move.

To be fair, if you had been ND, and Reunion were hitting you with everything, would you have ignored them,allowed them to keep taking your roids, or would you remove them, and hope LCH could hold 1up enough to be reinforced later? Simply by launching daytime raids and earlier attacks, we noticed a massive drop in the amount of fleets Reunion were attacking us with (thugh our attacks were receiving more def)

As for 'tomorrow we hit 1up', I believe we did, as those were the instructions I left to BCs before I quit (doctor's orders etc). And for not hitting LCH, teh first time Insomnia declared an end to our NAP and we were pretty much told 'prepare for battle', and the second time, Reunion recruited dS and the 1up/Reunion side suddenyl massively outgrew LCH. Not throwing away the round at that point was, I feel, the most sensible option. My biggest mistake was not getting every single inc immediately coordchecked (hard, when teh only people with logs of the entire night and access were either asleep or busy), and realising that Reunion had actually hit us more than LCH.

[The_Fish]

We did hit 1up that night. However, with so many fleets out fromd efence, plus the next 300 or so inc fleets that night left us with no chance to beat 1up. So we did what any sensible person would do, make sure 2nd is safe.

I still believe it is.

[The_Fish]

Originally Posted by Synthetic_Sid

Big log

ND never wanted a nap with 1up this round, we were almost forced into it with Insomnia's overactive HC deciding our nap was over for a couple of hours.

The political spectrum changed a lot during this round, and with the 3 active ND HC being active but generally not that much together, we had no natural leader, so we all did our bit here and there. If Barrow hadn't disappeared we'd have had the perfect HC this round, activity, hunger, determination and a sensible head.

However, it went through stages of different HC making decisions, which appeared to other people as indecisiveness, which maybe it was, but I believe it was just inexperience.

As Gate said, the first time we were set to pull the trigger on LCH, we had everything set up, but had to cancel with Insomnia HC being a bit gay, the second time was awkward for ND, me and Sprit were afk, Gate would have been the next day. It was generally unlucky and bad timing for us.

Unfortunately, the round has been too hectic and too unreliable for me and Gate to keep up with. Gate is now in vac mode, and glad for the rest, and I will not be playing R15. Both of us will hold our heads up high and be proud of what ND has done and how we have helped it. Very few put us in their t10 lists for this round, and 2nd (maybe 3rd, but I doubt it ) is a fantastic achievement, and ND will be strong in the rounds to come, and even stronger due to the fact we did not nap 1up.

I don't think we failed miserably at switching sides. We kept relatively good terms with 1up (you didnt really hit us until LCH was dead) and we kept similar terms with LCH+friends. We was walking a tightrope, and just about surviving, the collapse of Hydra, LCH and Insomnia ultimately ended our hopes for #1.

We (unexpectedly) had a decent shot for #1, but 1up are deserving winners, and no-one can deny that they are the best alliance this round.

[G.K Zhukov]

Originally Posted by Gio2k

I blame it all on Skyhead

I say Sid&Co ows that boy a cookie. Or two.

[hobo]

Originally Posted by higginz

how can u pay respects to TGV who basically ****ed up APA and then stole the members...

Apparently too few viewed APA as being "****ed up" by the current leadership of TGV (then APA).

Indeed kudos for TGV as a whole, and the other alliances that scraped themselves up from the abyss.

P.S. Zhukov, I ate all the cookies =-/

[The_Mad_Keg]

Dude because it wasnt them that ****ed up APA, APA were doing well till u arrived, and they didnt steal the members, u drove them away.

[SkyHead]

Originally Posted by G.K Zhukov

I say Sid&Co ows that boy a cookie. Or two.

How about a P nap?

[Storebo]

Originally Posted by The_Fish

TBH I think there is only one time we didn't pull the trigger when we should have, and that is when you threw your fleets, the kitchen sink, and reunion at us. Had we hit you the night before, things would have been slightly different.

We didn't have much luck this round, but when we could have hit LCH and chose not to was a wise decision imo, as we ended up napped to them, and if we'd killed them our own demise would have been far earlier.

Doubtful... No offence but i've seen reunion attacking my non-1up, non-nd galm8's more often then them heading for the nd'ers. And first night 1up went up right above 10k roids and nd lost right above 11k roids. So I don't see how u can claim we got much help. Ofcourse some might for some reason have a bigger grudge against nd than 1up this round and got the rest of the roids. =)

U guys attacking 1up first might have made the fight longer... u guys attacking us at all when we attacked u guys also might have made the round longer. But doubt there is many scenarios where u would have won 1 on 1. Allways is a way ofcourse... but very little chance.

[Gate]

Originally Posted by Storebo

And first night 1up went up right above 10k roids and nd lost right above 11k roids. So I don't see how u can claim we got much help.

We were capping, say, 4-5k roids per day, even with the fewer attack fleets, we probably capped 3k or so that day. That's 14k losses, 1up taking 10k, the 4k others had to go somewhere else?

[noah02]

Originally Posted by Gate

We were capping, say, 4-5k roids per day, even with the fewer attack fleets, we probably capped 3k or so that day. That's 14k losses, 1up taking 10k, the 4k others had to go somewhere else?

I would have guess you where to busy defending that day

[Zh|l]

Originally Posted by Gate

We were capping, say, 4-5k roids per day, even with the fewer attack fleets, we probably capped 3k or so that day. That's 14k losses, 1up taking 10k, the 4k others had to go somewhere else?

You discount the possibility that 1up also lost roids that night that arent reflected in Sandman's.

Anyway, it's already been stated that the opening night was 1up alone with Reunion doing galaxy attacks and no attack coordination with 1up. So really there was no 1up AND Reunion targetting you.

There were bound to be other attackers upon you - just like how 1up has received a mix of incoming from xVx, F-crew, ToF and so forth throughout the round.

[Benneh]

Originally Posted by Zh|l

There were bound to be other attackers upon you - just like how 1up has received a mix of incoming from xVx, F-crew, ToF and so forth throughout the round.

BLOCK!!!!1

[MaVeRiXX]

No ur not!! :eek: