Public Message to The Black Cloud #3067

[Coconutheads]

My preference is to communicate in private with The Black Cloud. However, the continued lack of communication and/or response from the player who runs The Black Cloud in addition to the "creative" way he defended his homeworld this turn prompts this post.

 

No doubt as you are aware, that trick of launching a GATK against your ally's (Galvorn Protectorate) pop group situated at your HW (which allowed you to capture my empty pop group and prevent my GATK this cycle) got through the cracks. Right now, your turnsheet indicates that you own what used to be my empty pop group along with all 219 troops that I subsequently offloaded.

 

What I'm puzzled by is whether you honestly thought that this would stand uncorrected. As soon as I saw what you had done, I gave Pete a call. He's looked into it and understands what happened. Pete has adjusted the database so that I control the pop group I set down on your HW. In addition, I control the 219 troops that I offloaded into that pop group. Army #26 (Black Cloud Busters) has been created. All that needs be done is for me to issue the DIV and GATK orders (#1 and #2 of next turn) and chances are goodt that you will no longer control your HW.

 

Maybe you thought that by pulling this trick, you'd be allowed to use any troops that may have been in your production queue for this August 22nd turn to defend your HW? Hahah... you think Pete won't adjust the database to account for this?

 

Aside from causing Pete additional work, what have you accomplished by exploiting this loophole? The database has been adjusted and all is as it was supposed to have been. Savor these last few days of ownership of your HW.

 

I wonder whether the White Shadow Imperium and Galvorn Protectorate have learned anything from this. Hey boys, why don't you man up and open up a dialog? Those explorers that scouted out the Black Cloud HW are still in the area with nothing to do now. How long do you think you can hide? Shoot me an email and heck, maybe we can become allies. If that happens, you can keep your homeworlds .

[WKE235]

Pete has always stated that he will not allow this kind of trickery concerning people trying to prevent ground attacks. To do a successful attack, you have to first COLB on one turn, and then next turn spend at least 4 orders getting ready to attack (NEWA, OC to offload troops, DIV to form up, and ABP to set the battle orders). Pete has answered on this board that he will allow no one to try to become invincible by simply issuing GATK orders early on to take a base before the army can form up. That would be unfair in allowing players to take advantage of a flaw/weakness in rules processing.

 

Of course on, I am unsure if Pete has published this information on the turns or in any guides. Black Cloud may not read this forum. So, I will have to give Black Cloud the benefit of the doubt. They may have simply thought they did find a clever way to protect themselves, without realizing Pete would not allow it. Heck, when planning my first HW attack I thought this as well. I then asked Pete about it as I thought it was too good to be true. Yep, it was.

[hobknob]

While I agree in general terms that you should not be prevented an attack due to a game mechanic exploit, I also believe that a HW owner should be able to clean off all alien pop groups as desired as long as they have the forces to do so. It should be incumbent on the attacker to need to drop a new COLB on the turn prior to the GATK.

 

 

Good luck on the Assault..

 

Good luck on the Defense...

 

[Coconutheads]

While I agree in general terms that you should not be prevented an attack due to a game mechanic exploit, I also believe that a HW owner should be able to clean off all alien pop groups as desired as long as they have the forces to do so. It should be incumbent on the attacker to need to drop a new COLB on the turn prior to the GATK.

 

 

Good luck on the Assault..

 

Good luck on the Defense...

 

 

I does make sense that a HW owner should be able to clear off old popgroups that have been around for some time period x. However, in this instance I issued a COLB on the August 9th turn and dropped troops on the August 22nd turn.

 

It appears is that Galvorn sent an email to Pete authorizing Pete to allow BCL to take over his pop group on BCL's HW. Since Pete received the OK, he allowed the BCL GATK to process. The tricky part is that my empty pop group was also on BCL's HW. When Pete processed the GATK against Galvorn, it 'just happened' that my empty pop group was also taken over by BCL, preventing my NEWA order from processing (since I no longer owned my pop group).

 

My belief is that the timing required to accomplish this is was not a fortunate coincidence that BCL benefitted from. Rather it appears that this was a deliberate attempt to circumvent the GATK process. Thanfully Pete has been great in remedying this so that this will not recurr next turn.

 

It would be great to hear a response from BCL on all this. Perhaps he doesn't participate in this forum as was suggested by WKE. However, it seems unlikely that of all the people reading this, there isn't a single one who knows the player running The Black Cloud or his allies White Shadow Imperium and Galvorn Protectorate. If you are one of these people, please pass this post on to them. Realistically it's too late for BCL , but perhaps White Shadow and/or Galvorn can become allies.