It's 3AM
Do you know where you vaguely worded banal diplomatic notes are?

Being used as toilet paper, no doubt.

So, I was considering. The Star Wars STGOD uses a modified time scale: 7 RL days = 1 game month. Then so many RL weeks (I forget how many, but Coyote will know) = 1 game year. That seems like a better way to do it, slow things down a bit.

I know Steve mentioned it earlier, but I agree. The further we get into the future, the more speculative our technology is going to get. Given that, and our universal usage of Unreal Time to the nth degree, it might help to slow things down. 1 RL month/year is a pretty rapid pace, especially when you consider how slow we tend to be at posting lately.

I'd say if we did it, the new year would take place on the 17th, which is more-or-less close to what it would have been, and gives us an easy to remember Sunday -> Sunday monthly progression.

Thoughts?

I agree with the proposal of RogueIce, makes sense as not to make the pace so rapid. Were we playing from 1920, there'd be no political or technical problem, but future speculations are really going to get off in the near future. So a slowdown in the current, more or less realistic level, would be appreciated.

And just to show my brain doesn't always work too well at 2am, It's obvious that if 7 RL days (aka 1 week) = 1 game month, then 12 RL weeks would be 1 game year. Duh.

One thing though: If the game slows down too much, it might kill activity altogether because people procrastinate this game to death.

And it still doesn't solve the problem of what happens post 2020.

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STGOD: Byzantine Empire
Your spirit, diseased as it is, refuses to allow you to give up, no matter what threats you face... and whatever wreckage you leave behind you.
Kreia

Damn! If you people are gonna slow down time, I have to get to the lunar landing STAT!

EDIT: Also, Wilkens, hurry up with that exchange guy. I want to finalize the landing crew already!

Slowing down time, works for me.

I don't really have much of an opinion, time-wise.

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Conversion Table:

2000 Mockingbirds = 2 Kilomockingbirds
Basic Unit of Laryngitis = 1 Hoarsepower
453.6 Graham Crackers = 1 Pound Cake
1 Kilogram of Falling Figs - 1 Fig Newton
Time Between Slipping on a Banana Peel and Smacking the Pavement = 1 Bananosecond
Half of a Large Intestine = 1 Semicolon

Oh, PeZook, I forgot-- at the conference you asked what I meant by "freezing foreign involvement in place in Frequesque". I meant to get back to it but never did; what I meant was freezing military activity, and territorial acquisitions of any sort, until things could be sorted.

Let's just come up with a list of things we all agree on respective to our in-world roles and say that's what we agreed to and get this conference done with.

ISCA: I vote yea
INTERPOL: yea

What else would b on our docket?

Because of this, I wholeheartedly agree on the amended time frame.

Considering the virulence of 'goddamn unreal time' at the moment I guess we pretty much need to change the flow of time.

I'm all for ISCA and Interpol, but I would like to see a far more thorough definition of what constitutes "territorial acquisitions of any sort" and "foreign involvement". If 'territorial acquisitions' means 'military conquests', then that's fine by me. However I would not wish and cannot support an accord limiting mutual agreements between sovereign states.

I also strongly suspect that if we impose a moratorium like what you propose "until things could be sorted", they will never be sorted. This summit was intended to deal with these issues, if we can't get this worked out now what makes you think we can in the future when people's attention is elsewhere? Frankly I see such a sloppily worded agreement as an inevitable cause for more problems in the future as people will inevitably think 'to hell with this' at some point, whereupon much whining will commence.

So all things considered the NFT won't be at all happy if the sole result of the meeting is a vaguely worded accord that doesn't ultimately solve any of the issues we set out to settle, and I don't think I can be a signatory to something like that.

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SDN World 2: The North Frequesuan Trust
SDN World 3: The Sultanate of Egypt
SDN World 4: The United Solarian Sovereignty

There'll be a bodycount, we're gonna watch it rise
The folks at CNN, they won't believe their eyes

I had put forward a set of items that included some of the above to be discussed at the summit, but yeah, there has been no reply from the MESS on those issues, or did that piece of paper fly out of the window somewhere?

Also let's be frank, the ISCA and Interpol is pretty much a side show to the real main issues to be discussed. Otherwise, if nothing comes out of this in the next few days (because within the next few days, it will fast approach a month since the summit started), I will start running reports about how big a failure this summit was, with it being a talk shop where nothing of consequence got talked about.

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STGOD: Byzantine Empire
Your spirit, diseased as it is, refuses to allow you to give up, no matter what threats you face... and whatever wreckage you leave behind you.
Kreia

I was sidetracked by the set-up of conflict plot arcs with my Darth Coyotus account; also, there's been enough lag times from all participants to effectively make another round of finger-pointing counterproductive.

To wit, we should halt in place any and all military activity in Frequesque as much as possible and practical. Right now, what clearly needs to be dealt with is the Costas situation. My proposal will be thus:

No increase in any troops, including Baernish.
Organize a referendum ballot to be held so that the people can choose what they want:
to become a Baernish protectorate, or;
to become independent.

If they become independent, thay have the right to join any other alliance (ie, CATO or MESS if they meet the requirements of the organizations) and the others have to respect their decision; they also have the right to sign with no alliance or other outsiode alliances. In other words, no one will have any claim on them.

They can petition any or all of us for financial aid to get their nation back on its feet.

I think that might be a tad unfair, Fin, to declare the summit a failure like that as people have other things they're doing and sometimes aren't even able to post often due to RL stuff.

OTOH, I believe that everyone should drop these other storylines for the moment if it detracts from, y'know, actually doing the summit. Leave the RUF story, the X-Files stuff in the UCSR, etc., alone.

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”A Radical is a man with both feet planted firmly in the air.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt

"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia

American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.

Moderator of SDN, Former Spacebattles Super-Mod, Veteran Chatnik

I personally recommend that we split the Costa up into voting districts for this; as demonstrated, there's pockets of strong support for both myself and others, and forcing one solution on such a divided country would be criminal.

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Conversion Table:

2000 Mockingbirds = 2 Kilomockingbirds
Basic Unit of Laryngitis = 1 Hoarsepower
453.6 Graham Crackers = 1 Pound Cake
1 Kilogram of Falling Figs - 1 Fig Newton
Time Between Slipping on a Banana Peel and Smacking the Pavement = 1 Bananosecond
Half of a Large Intestine = 1 Semicolon

Works for me. Break it into adminsitrative districts/statelets?

Or how about we agree to stuff here, without the need for elaborate RP, and then post a summary? Doing the summit in the RP thread will take freakin' forever...

That's a good idea.

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”A Radical is a man with both feet planted firmly in the air.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt

"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia

American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.

Moderator of SDN, Former Spacebattles Super-Mod, Veteran Chatnik

I'm sorry, Baerne. Their exfil helo won't be Japanistani-make, that's a neon sign right there. Some old knockoff MI- series bought surplus and traded hands over the years, something like that. They've put waaayyy too much effort into keeping this ambiguous to give it away at the last minute.

*stirs shit up*

Right, consider the helicopter type edited. I probably should have thought that through.

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Conversion Table:

2000 Mockingbirds = 2 Kilomockingbirds
Basic Unit of Laryngitis = 1 Hoarsepower
453.6 Graham Crackers = 1 Pound Cake
1 Kilogram of Falling Figs - 1 Fig Newton
Time Between Slipping on a Banana Peel and Smacking the Pavement = 1 Bananosecond
Half of a Large Intestine = 1 Semicolon

Eh, was hoping to have Shroom's guys get a chance to say some one liners but the way the battle unfolded it wasn't menat to be.

Anyway For actually diplomatic news if you'll want to divide up the Costas, why not actually organize provincial elections so you can figure out what the people really want rather than taking the word of outside interests?. Indhopal would back an elections process.

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SD.net World MK1: Indhopal
SD.net World MK2: 2nd. Republic of Indhopal
SD.net World MK3: Republic of Chilitina

It's one thing to have real life interfere for a bit, it's something else to have it sidetrack an important summit for the better part of a month.

Also, if the Costa de las Cinco Muertes are broken up the NFT will be aiming to incorporate the northern parts. Considering the people there actually like our troops because they've kept the peace and brought them plenty of dollars in terms of commerce, it should be a fair bet we get what we want there.

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SDN World 2: The North Frequesuan Trust
SDN World 3: The Sultanate of Egypt
SDN World 4: The United Solarian Sovereignty

There'll be a bodycount, we're gonna watch it rise
The folks at CNN, they won't believe their eyes

I guess so. I honestly don't remember that, at all.

As I've often lamented before, we don't have handy executive staffs to keep us on track. So sometimes real life intervenes, we get distracted, by the time we come back new posts have been made, and yes, we forget some things. We're single individual humans, OOC, so it's not surprising that this sort of thing can happen.

So saying "Bad MESS" or "Bad CATO" for this getting dragged out is counterproductive and, frankly, a bit dickish of either side. Nobody knows what has or hasn't happened to us RL to judge whether we "should" or "should not have" forgotten something, or maybe managed to miss a post altogether. I've found sometimes that using the Read Unread Posts button isn't always accurate; sometimes it thinks I've read a post when I haven't because I guess my cookies said I did. I only notice if I get further down and see something quoted I don't recognize. If that doesn't happen, I remain blissfully unaware.

And I haven't seen you all jumping to respond to my ISCA post, so yeah. Both sides here. Let's not point fingers, ok?


I agree with this. Let's just repost what we've brought forth to refresh everybody's memories, rather than get bent out of shape and call the summit a failure because of entirely OOC reasons.

So for my part, the ISCA, which in broad terms is a group that chips in funds and develops some standardized shipping that can be built by members for various developing nations, in effect giving them a leg up by developed nations partially subsidizing the design and construction costs. In addition, the same can be done for building infrastructure in those developing nations. Finally, it can serve as a sort of arbiter for maritime trade disputes that may or may not arise between member nations, and even nonmembers should they request it.

Siege, you know I'm just doing this to make the conference interesting, right?

Oh, I know . It fits with the Old D being a rather paranoid place. And I'm having some good fun playing up the venomously sarcastic side of Miss Duquesne. At the same time though I don't think that ganging up on the NFT representative is a particularly constructive way to bring about what the summit is supposed to bring about - namely a future with less CATO-MESS antipathy.

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SDN World 2: The North Frequesuan Trust
SDN World 3: The Sultanate of Egypt
SDN World 4: The United Solarian Sovereignty

There'll be a bodycount, we're gonna watch it rise
The folks at CNN, they won't believe their eyes