Jun 2nd 2013, 17:17:08
To state the obvious; SoF is primarily a war alliance. We seldom netgain. We love to war and we live for war. However, there is much more to us than that. When Helmet formed SoF long ago, he founded the alliance upon 'Truth, Honour, Justice, Courage, Dedication and Community' To this day our doctrine is to continue these fine values.
We are TRUE to our allies and friends. We will try to do what's right for them and we are prepared to die for them. We HONOUR our pacts and scorn those who fail to abide by their treaties. We deliver JUSTICE to those who oppose our interests and those of our allies. We'll always collect our debts one way or another. We are DEDICATED to our mission to be as strong as we can possibly be and we have a strong COMMUNITY, which gives us to strength to try and shape the wider game into following our ideology.
<u>Types of Pacts and Ideology</u>
SoF has two types of pacts, a FDP, which are for genuine allies whose interests we will fight for and we have a uNAP/PP, for those alliance we have cordial relations with and have been able to come to terms with.
The terms of our pacts, reflect the level of relationship between our alliances with ideals of competitiveness and fairness in mind. While SoF is a war alliance, we have allies who netgain and know that we must netgain ourselves during some resets for the good of the game; therefore policies aimed at ensuring fairness and encouraging competitiveness are behind our wider policy.
The following two paragraphs give an insight behind our ideals and policies:
- Netgaining is both an individual and alliance competition; just as warring is. In war we fight as an alliance to win and stand together, but we also compete for most hits, most spy ops, etc individually. Similarly, while netgaining, we stand as an alliance to win TNW, ANW and total members, but there is an interesting individual element to it, which abusive 'landtrading' in particular destroys. It is a lazy and unfair way of playing, which can only be countered by everyone doing it, which we disagree with (see next paragraph) or by countering the practice through our policy. Of course some of you may argue that all-explore is boring and grabbing other alliances adds something to the game; I agree with you. That is why the policies we have designed act to encourage 'non-abusive landtrading', which is better than all-exploring, but not as effective as people who spend hours bottomfeeding and micromanaging to win.
- Furthermore netgaining should be competitive. Two countries agreeing to hit each other to both gain land, leads us to the conclusion that those two players should be playing Sim City. People who grab should be trying to maximise their country, not their rivals; it should be competitive. This is why SoF recognises the right of a country to manipulate SS/PS retals to 79.9%, so that the retaller is entitled to another grab when taking land:land. Therefore, our competitive grabbing is why we do not exchange grabs with our FDPs; only those with uNAP/PPs and no pacts.
<u><b>Policies</b></u>
While we have set terms with pacted alliances, we do not have any for unpacted and untags. If an unpacted alliance attacks us we expect them to accept our retal policy. If we attack an unpacted alliance, then we are happy to follow that alliances policy provided we find it reasonable. However, we will enforce our anti-landtrading/two-stepping policies on all alliances and are prepared to fight over it.
<u>Retal Policy</u>
- The retal policy for mid/bottomfeeds is 1:1 (escalating), while topfeeds are retalled land:land. A topfeed is defined as the defender having more than 125% the land of the attacker before the grab. There is a 72 hour retal window for land:land and a 48 hour retal window for escalating retals.
- Land:Land retals are considered over when the retalling alliance fails a retal, or reaches 80% of land:land. We consider it a fair practice if an alliance tries to maximise retals, by trying to get as close to 80% as possible (Using PS/SS if necessary) and taking a final retal. In the same way, we consider it fair play if the attacker tries to get the retaller to fail a retal. This is because we see grabbing as competitive.
- Missile attacks will be retaliated land:land or 2:1, whichever is greater.
- More than 4 attacks on a SoF country from an individual country in a single week will be grounds for a kill.
- Reparations are calculated as $27,500 per acre per week.
<u>Land-Trading and Self-Farming</u>
For the last two years, SoF has been trying to encourage grabbing between alliances in a way that isn't abusive (multiple exchanges in a day) and isn't 'friendly/mutual', which takes away the competitive element of the game (What we call 'landtrading'). SoF also believes that farming your own members, or taking retals for other members and then recycling the land is against the spirit of competitiveness. This is because SoF sees netgaining as both an alliance competition and an individual competition, and the latter is a unique factor, which should be preserved.
* Landtrading is defined by two countries exchanging hits between each other more than once within a 48 hour period. This is not to be mistaken with a RoR (Retal on a Retal), which are retaliated 2:1 and therefore the difference is apparent. However, any such inventive attempts to get around this, such as two alliances colluding to RoR, then switching the scenario in 48 hours (to gain land) is only too apparent and will be seen as land trading, just as any other type of mutually agreed landtrading is blatant.
* Self-farming is defined by any countries involved in any kind of intra-alliance grabbing (including 3rd party retals). Grabbing your own members, whether active or not is a cheap way of gaining an individual advantage. This includes letting another country retal and then grabbing that country (3rd party retals). Not only can that member not dissuade others from grabbing their land and not defend their land, but they can't even get it back themselves, hence being totally undeserving of that land.
- Countries that have participated in land trading or self-farming will be denied land:land retals for 48 hours after the violation. This means if topfed, that country is only eligible to take escalating retals (1:1, 2:3, 3:6). This policy evens up, and acts as a check, to the excessive land differences that countries abusing landtrading can achieve.
<u>Two-Stepping</u>
- SoF and x agree not to two-step each other. Two-stepping is when an alliance grabs an untagged player or another alliances' country, which has hit the other alliance three or more times, while being 'unprovoked'.
- The victimised alliance should get 4 hours to take retals on the offender. Any grabs on the offender before this timeframe is two stepping.
- A country is considered provoked only when it has been hit three or more times. Even if this is the case the attacks are only classified as unprovoked if they retaliate against the offender(s), and NOT another member of the offender's alliance.
- The alliance that has been two-stepped can take land:land or 1:1, whichever is greater, against the offender.
<u>Policing</u>
- WarDNH's are offered as an act of courtesy between pacted alliances, but not necessarily for unpacted alliances. SoF may refuse to acknowledge policing action for unpacted alliances under certain circumstances.
- Policing can be initiated via an AT message with confirmation from the warring alliance and the policing alliance.
- If SoF polices for an alliance, we will fully commit ourselves to the job whether it be taking retals, killing suiciders, dissuading outside interference, or declaring war. We expect the same from our police in return.
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