NGC4 PBW Game News..

[Alneyan]

Which is indeed our point. The betrayal of the Narn brought down their destruction; the same goes true for any Empire. To say the Narn might have been honourable is obviously nonsensical; all know full well the treacherous actions of this regime, and the fate that befallen on them.

As the Narn were defeated after their treachery, so other powerful Empires may be crushed, following the footsteps of the Narn. And so the Collective will fall as well.

I do not have the slightest clue about what might have caused this problem Roanon. The only thing looking like an explanation would be intelligence (the project destroying treaties between two Empires). There would have been no Messages, but it shouldn't have prevented you from opening fire. Hmm...

[AMF]

No, there is definitely something weird going on. I declared war on him, but our relations are now listed as "none". His ships did not fire back, even though they had the ability. I would say that his ships were acting as if they were still allied to me, and mine were acting as if we were at war. Which is obviously a bug.

Suggestions on how to deal with this? Anyone? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

Alarik

I do not have the slightest clue about what might have caused this problem Roanon. The only thing looking like an explanation would be intelligence (the project destroying treaties between two Empires). There would have been no Messages, but it shouldn't have prevented you from opening fire. Hmm...

[Roanon]

Yes, I have also a "none" treaty listed. From both of you. And I did no Messages from both of you. I have no explanation. I hope this will fix itself, I will not accept another turn loosing dozens of battleships to light cruisers and well-defended planets against fighters just because they don't fire back.

[Roanon]

The treacherous Aether Lords of course try to cover their actions. It was clear that a war has been prepared against our peaceful empire. Increasingly more ridiculous demands from the Federation have been made, up to the point that we should surrender a complete well-developed system to them. Minelayers have been sent into our territory. Warp closers have been positioned on our most important warppoints. We are sure satisfying any demand would have led to more demands, and when we finally would have rejected even more ridiculous demands, the prepared fleets would have attacked.

We just have made a first strike against what we knew would certainly become the spearhead of an assault on our empire. That the Aether Lords now jump in and declare war so fast and easy, despite our long explanations about our reasons for this war, only eliminates the Last doubts that they have been scheming against us. They now just try a Last desperate effort to carry out their evil plots despite our nearly successful countermeasures.

It has already been pointed out how ridiculous their accusations against our Collective are. The Narn never have been directly attacked by us, rather the Aether Lords were happy to join as fast as possible in greedy demand of new planets. It still escapes our wisdom where we have devastated or destroyed peaceful people. We still hear the cries for help from the Federation after which we attacked their attacker, the Earth 2000g Alliance. We still can recall the numerous complaints about the MAR-Zen and their disregard of any neighbors borders. We just have helped where we could, and brought our wisdom to those worlds ruled by less wise rulers. All the planets under our rule now praise our wisdom, and alien races florish and prosper as well as our own citizens.

The evil intents of the Aether Lords are furthermore clearly shown when they announce they just want to destroy and kill what they will find. While accusing us when we attacked a well-defended enemy planet and destroyed it by collateral damage, without intent, they did not even try to bring in troops, went on a rampage raid killing our peaceful citizens in mindless and blind rage, doing the very same of what they wrongly accused us. That means even by their own standards the Aether Lords are evil and should be destroyed, like every treacherous race has been destroyed in this galaxy up to now.

Again we assure all races that we have never attacked unprovoked, and will never attack anyone unprovoked. Our wise rulership is not as mad as the Aether Lords try to describe with easy to be seen motives. Also, the report of the Amon'krie of our alleged resource production can easily be recognized as false; we neither have 25% more minerals as 2 months ago (20% due to the addition of systemwide robotic factories, which obviously is a once-only incentive), and one million every two or three months would mean the galaxy is not even a year old if taken seriously. Every race should remember that our traders give away freely these riches, while profiting less from incoming trade. Still our wisdom does not mind and break these treaties.

That the Amon'krie now try to join against us, has been expected. They are like vultures feasting on what they think is weak or dead. We still see their rush to the Narn planets, a former ally of them. We still know what they tried to do to the poor Narrewians, which our wise rulership saved from certain destruction by Earth 2000g and MAR-Zen fleets. While we will punish the Aether Lords for their treachery first, we will only defend against the Amon'krie vultures. Any wise race is invited to attack them, we will soon make sure there is no fleet left to retalliate. We do not want to expand further in that direction, but we invite all honorable and peace-loving races to gain strength by taking over the ill-gotten gains of the Amon'krie policy. We want to strengthen the rightful and just, so that they do not have to fear us and act mad out of sheer fear, like maybe the poor Aether Lords, who have been more wise in the past.

[Alneyan]

The Amon'Krie has never, ever, been involved in an alliance with the Narn Regime on equal terms. The old Amon-Kurath was forced into giving his assent to an alliance with the Narn, a blade in his back. The Narn warfleet was also waiting for this pretence to invasion, and so we had but the choice; an alliance with the Narn was imposed on us, for otherwise our people would have been slaughtered.

Our current operations have been to secure our borders and to retake the worlds the Narn Regime has taken from us with the same threats. We have no wish of expanding our borders to the Manticore Kingdom, but we merely seek to cast the line of our borders in all directions. Would such concerns for our safety be labelled as being "vultures", preying on the dead? If it is so, there are quite a lot of carrion crows in the galaxy.

Our relationship with the Narrewians has certainly not been the best in the universe under the rulership of Amon-Kurath; for this, we apologise, and point out the Narrewians themselves seem not to hold any grudge with the Continuum for our past mistakes. Amon-Kurath has been growing more and more insane, and we suspect the Narns to have acted in this direction; who else could have feed our ruler with smoking herbs and various drugs? Only a few months ago did Amon-Kurath know his demise, and since then the Continuum has been working together with the Narrewians. You might want to know we have been helping them to rebuild their worlds, and gladly give up our colonies in their systems to their control. The Narrewians will vouch for our word and our honourable foreign policies.

Our figures for your mineral production did seem to be correct after all; do not forget to take into account the wonderful technological breakthrough that allows the transmutation of various resources into minerals. While we do not mind your wealth, we are more than concerned about what you will do with such an impressive income, and fear the answer.

Lastly, the Continuum did not hear anything about the reasons of the war with the Federation. And yet, the Federation are our closest allies, our friends and our neighbours. Therefore, you cannot pretend you had "long explanations about [your] reasons for this war" as we heard nothing regarding this conflict. It either means you do not involve yourself in diplomacy, save your own propaganda, or that you did not care about the consequences your actions might have with the Continuum. If you were to break off your attack against the Federation at once, and to take a formal step to improve your dealings with all Empires in the future, we would likely consider a truce with your people. Unlike others, the Continuum is willing to consider peace when a war has been made groundless, despite all your prejudices in this matter.

[Roanon]

Indeed, we did not inform the Amon'krie about our problems with the Federation. We apologize for this, we probably should have raised our voice earler. But this has begun as a conflict within the anti-MARZen alliance, openly discussed between President Hippocrates and us with the Aether Lords, Manticores, True Republic being informed simultaneously. We did not want to whine about our problems to other races, but were determined to solve them on our own. We just informed the Aether Lords in more intimate detail, they being one of the most active parts in this alliance, hoping they would be able to get words of wisdom to the Federation. Unfortunately it looks like words of unwisdom have been fed to them before, resulting in this regrettable war, making our efforts obsolete from the start. We did not know this.

While we have tried to maintain contacts to the Amon'krie in the past, informing them of the current problems and trying to involve them in our politics, we never received satisfactory responses, just short Messages more or less acknowledging that our message has been received and read, but no reaction or words about their own situation. We were not informed in any way about closer than normal relations to the Federation, we just suddenly saw a military alliance had quietly been formed. We never received announcments or reason for this. We had to assume this was just another step from the Federation in direction of forming an all-surrounding threat to our empire, totally in line with their current policy against us.

So, maybe there just has been a misunderstanding between our empires. Maybe we have not done the utmost to improve our relations, but we have tried, and we must point out that this is more than we can say from you. We also were never informed about the now revealed baneful relations to the Narn, and you did not attack until after they were totally crushed. Thousands of warships should have been able to attack earlier, especially when the Narn were involved in desparate fights at the other end of their empire. Only when the Narn were dead, massive aquisitions of territory have been made, more than by the victors and rightful inheritants of that territory. Therefore the term vulture which, we agree here, applies to more than one. Our wisdom has never led us to occupy planets from races that we did not attack ourselves.

If you are worried about our production, you may look at your own plus your trades especially from us - it is not very far from that, considering that we do not get that much in trade income ourself. Only recently a gap has opend. But this is at least partially your own fault - we have invested in peaceful development, increasing health, safety and productivity of our citizens. We did not construct thousands of warships. Rather, we are trying to build a ringworld in our home system as a monument for our peaceful expansion and to be admired for our technological achivements. This has been our main joy and pride up to now, not been the building of huge warfleets to threaten our neighbors or other wise peaceful empires.

If the Amon'krie force us to change this policy we will do, reluctantly. But we can do. Still, we will not unleash this power on the whole galaxy. We will still listen to all the smaller empires and their cries for help, and fight greed and pure aggression against minors who are unable to defend, wherever and whenever possible. It is an easy excuse to blame the former leader for atrocities done to the Narrewians, but was this a single man or just a representative of the peoples general attitude? While we are happy to hear your words about improved relations to the Narrewians, they can continue to trust in us as a reliable guardian of their most basic interests, guaranteeing their survival after even the tiniest traces of evil races like the Narn or MAR-Zen have vanished forever.

[AMF]

The words of the Primeval are curious, and largely misrepresentations.

We'll dissect and show their falsehoods later. For now, we just want to also point out that we are not asking for assistance because they Primeval are evil, but becuase they are taking over the entire quadrant and will become unstoppable if not met now.

For us, this is a matter of history and righteousness. We fight to avenge broken allies and the murder of billions of humans.

For others, it is a matter of survival - for if the Primeval are not stopped now, they will come for you too, eventually, and they will be unstoppable then.

Aether

[Randallw]

Well the bug is gone. I don't dispute that it was unfair to the Primeval, but it is unfortunate that I am now in a war I didn't ask for and that the Primeval have gone on the offensive attacking some of my ships that they did not have reason to attack (or knowledge of) before.

[Ruatha]

The turn was run with the same orders as previous with the addition of the war declaration.

[Roanon]

Randallw, as I have been attacked by your and the Aether Lord's ships, I have assumed you have declared war as they did, causing the same bug as he. If you didn't break the treaty, it's even more strange than I thought. Lost/bugged Messages seem to be a reasonable explanation, but broken treaties without any side breaking it?
Are you absolutely sure you did not declare war or break the treaty? Maybe you forgot that you changed your turn on PBW after doing it first, maybe attacking on the Aether Lord's demand even if you did not really want? If you really did not order the attacks, maybe we should stop the turn again and try to find out what happend there, and find a way to fix it.

As for the new attacks, the bug caused only your ships to attack. So in the nebula where my uncloaked ships saw yours due to sensors but you didn't see mine, no combat was initiated - this being another effect of the bug. What happend now should have happend before, is correct programm behaviour and not effect of changed orders or something like that.