Intergalactic Summit

Every single one of your conflicts plays directly into their hand. Like for every capsuleer business, nullsec is no exception, and is even magnified tenfold.

It keeps a large number of us from slaughtering them...

my proof being to look at the vast majority of capsuleers, if they weren't shooting each other, who's left to shoot at?

Every tax, every control you relinquish to them (every capsuleer), the cleaning of pirate elements in lawless regions, the sovereignty costs, the economic prospects and war casualties and ensuing material requirements that will eventually get back to the empire fold, stargate control and invulnerability, the fact that you still obey to what they let you interact with and nothing else, that you still have to pay for your license like everyone else, that they can shut you down any time they want, rules regulating infrastructure deployment...

I can continue... I thought all of this was more or less obvious...

As a Righteous believer in one of the True Faiths, I have this to say about the Trials:

God Wills It.

That is All.

Well, also some Polite Applause.

Not really. I'm not saying our activities aren't indirectly benefiting CONCORD and the Great Empires, or that CONCORD isn't still able to limit where our supercapital fleets go. But you've said every one of our conflicts directly plays into the Empires' and CONCORD's hands, and I'm still not seeing it. Other than as what can only be a drop-in-the-economic bucket, I don't see how a few billion ISK is directly playing into their hands - especially since it's not like CONCORD gets paid every time a system changes hands.

I don't see the direct benefit to the Empires that was derived Darkness' reconquista of Querious earlier this year, or of their loss of Delve two months before that. That's what I'm saying: that while sure, there are all sorts of indirect benefits, if you're going to claim "Every single one of [our] conflicts plays directly into their hand" then you have to show how each of these conflicts directly advances their agenda.

Because otherwise, if we're only talking about indirect economic benefits from Sov bills, or the destruction of a few thousand pirate ships every month, or that starbases require a moon's gravity well (which is a technical limitation, not a CONCORD ordinance), then I'm really not seeing how your statement lines up with the reality of capsuleers in null who have the economic power to move directly and noticeably manipulate commodity prices cluster-wide, or the military power to inflict trillions of ISK in losses in a few short days in high-sec while rendering CONCORD completely impotent in any attempts to stop them.

No, see, you've given examples of what sort of activities you say are directly feeding into their hands, but you haven't shown how.

Here, let me give you an example:

"You people spending all day destroying Guristas directly plays into the CONCORD and the Empires' hands because the Guristas are massing a force to attack the Empires. But by listing that space as 'unclaimed' rather than as claimed by the Guristas, CONCORD has convinced you all to act as a buffer state to keep the Guristas menace at bay."

See the difference? That doesn't just say 'you're doing X, and that plays into their hands', that actually elucidates how it plays into their hands.

What is the direct benefit to CONCORD and the Empires for X activity? What would be the cost to them if we were to stop?

So, since you say our 'every conflict' plays directly into their hands: What is the direct benefit to CONCORD and the Empires of our having evicted NCdot from Tribute three years ago? How would us having ignored NCdot's violation of OTEC and attack on our Technetium moons have harmed CONCORD or the Empires?

Or do the Halloween War. Or Fountain in YC115. Or the Fountain/Delve invasion/counterinvasion this past year.

But show how it plays into their hands, instead of simply listing an activity and claiming it does. Because the piddling little trifles that are sov bills can't be even a drop in the bucket of their economic activity. If it is, they're a lot weaker than we are, economically.

Well, then yes, I'm going to have to disagree with you.

CONCORD is on-record as saying the massive explosion of capsuleer power is not something they like. Almost all of the trade we engage in, even in high-sec, is with other capsuleers, which means we're undercutting CONCORD's authority by producing the new class of (relative to what there was previously in high-sec) super-wealthy industrialists... who aren't producing for the Empires. Their products don't go, for example, to be used in the periodic maintenance and refitting of supercapitals, for example, or the maintaining of stargates in the State. The only benefit the Empires see - and it's a relatively small one - is the taxes on trading.

I mean, just really think about this for a moment here: do you think the Republic would rather have all those megatons of ore, planetary products, etc, being used to build capsuleer ships for them to make a nominal, largely insignificant, amount taxing... or going to build up the Republic's infrastructure, agricultural capacity, industrial capabilities. A lot gets made about the plight of the refugees in the Republic, but the only limiting factors on how much aid they can receive is supply. They'll certainly use anything you make available to them, and in doing so, they'll drive economic development further. But none of the billions of tons of livestock or water or any of the consumables, commodities, or construction materials going through Rens and Hek daily ever gets diverted to that.

So a massive growth of economic power that isn't being put to the ends the Empires would like, inside their own space, among a class of people they're already starting to get a bit paranoid about... no, I don't see how that plays directly into their hands. And that's not even taking into account the blatant undermining of CONCORD's legitimacy that happens during the 'Burn' events every year. CONCORD's supposed to stop that sort of thing from happening, and yet they're demonstrably powerless to do so.

And my example with the Guristas was facetious. They're not massing for an attack. If they were, they'd be doing it in the space they hold in Venal where they have stations, and we don't bother. Example: The Blood Raiders. Capsuleer pirate-hunting in Delve certainly didn't slow them down a bit, did it?

I think both you and Ms Arrendis are failing to stay on the topic of this thread.

Cute??

I was having the courtesy not to tell you up front I find your typical nullsec centric views really naive, but I believe this is going nowhere in any case...




Hasn't it run its course?

While I was disappointed that the Sarum Champions lost, I hope the Kor-Azor team prevails in the end!