When the Moral High Ground Becomes The Doormat

[Mark Karlfeldt]

I challenge you, sah, to a du-ehl.

Didn't we already have a quick-draw? I believe I won.

[Agares Tretiak]

Quickdraws are not a thing of honor.

To (finally) address the topic at hand:

No, we should not permit or grant anyone to walk over us, however there is also a line where we can take a few blows other groups cannot or will not to permit for a more active and thriving community. While we do, as the Lord Imperator states, try to mentor where we can, it is very difficult, and we seek other, subtler or less politically 'upsetting' methods. A lot of groups value their own sovereignty or the appearance thereof higher than following their own rules or acting on an ethical basis. Even so, by comparison of what some groups once where in the past, the community has, for the most part improved. I personally have observed this is in part thanks to our often careful diplomatic and exemplary actions, and groups such as CATI, while not outright paragons of ethics in combat, are much more inclined to act ethically than in the past.

The line should be drawn at the blatant disregard for our own standards, particularly on Titan. While there is only so much we can do abroad, short of blockading them or diplomatic censure, at home we are capable of exerting the full force of our numbers, training, and rules to drive home our stance...and to bring underhanded individuals and groups to heel or otherwise deny them our combat if they're completely unruly and irreverent. I feel we are already very active diplomatically,though I think it is time to shift our tone a bit and focus on developing more transparency and a better set of commonly agreed "That ain't cool to do" guidelines for combat. The biggest thing about any diplomatic effort, however, is that it usually takes a lot of time and effort.

Results will often be a long time in coming,and changes can be fragile or small at first.

[RazorFox]

what would happen if some of us who have been around Ordo for a long time, decided to split off and - given the time, cash, and starting numbers - were to make another military group? Now one would probably think, "If they do so with spite towards Ordo, they're no different than the others." or on the flip side, "if they make a group with all the rules and regulations from Ordo in mind, it'd just be a mockup copy of Ordo."

If you ain't got Aryte at the top, you ain't got Ordo.

[Tamos Shan]

Oh, I know Agares. I don't expect instant results. That'd be foolish. I know things take time, and I have heard that CATI has slowly been improving, but I don't hear or see much else. Of course, I attribute that mostly to both my previous inactivity and my lack of overall experiance. I still think we could do much more. Shift the focus, like you said, become a little more transparent. I'm not saying we go out force other groups to act as we act. But perhaps just reach out to them.

My other suggestion is, perhaps, we form some sort of diplomatic division on a more official capacity. What I found out was that we didn't actually have one. We only had a few individuals in the administration specifically tailored for diplomatic relations. Who are they? What do they do? How often do they do what they do? I don't really know, and i'm sure many others not of the Administration or "in the know" have any idea either. To me, having an official diplomatic office within Ordo would help immensely with transparency and community outreach, as it would be a visible effort, and show to other groups we're serious about making this community as fun and as fair as we can.

[Tiridates Mikadze]

This is why I advocate a force projection model of moral enforcement: Flamethrowers for heresy, Carpet bombing for groups that couldn't work their way out of an ethical paper-bag with the sword of honest within easy reach, and instead, suffocate within it.

That aside, I'd try explaining the rules of escalation to X-corps like this:

We use guns that are balanced and fair. You use crazy guns because you can't bother to improve. We use more of said guns and still defeat you, you start breaking your own simulator rules, we still beat you, you start spamming rockets, we just arm our raid teams when we attack you guys with Cheeso's latest Nuke Spam'o'matic, using only one guy, you ban us, we all lose, and it's the Teen Grid all over again.

And then Tiridates burns the grid.

That's what would happen.

Do you really want me to burn the entire grid, X-corps? Do you really want me to have to go that far?

[Kraton Foxtrot]

If you ain't got Aryte at the top, you ain't got Ordo.

Of course not, but that wasn't what my post was about.