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I'll play again; if anything, I want to give this another crack and be actually able to focus on it more.

Gotta admit, I was baffled when nobody even mentioned rescuing Aleksei. Not like having a high-ranking officer as a hostage could be used to screw the other side over or anything.


...still want that beam SMG that Cima had.

Idiots in SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE

So, while Earth was bigger and flashier, space was, indeed, the place. It was full not only of Blackmages and big boobed vixen nazis, but also of Cid and his Cids, who Cidded around doing Ciddery things.

While Earth was characterized by everybody being pretty brilliant early and generally devolving into retards as the game went on, space was the reverse, starting out totally retarded and slowly and carefully becoming marginally less retarded.

See, space was basically Chan vs. flavor-of-the-month EF commander. There were a ton of EF commanders. I think it went Daren Blackmage Latooni Zero-0 Blackmage Jojo? Was that the order of things? Anyway. Some EF commanders were more retarded than others, while Chancrew didn't necessarily play bad, they just didn't play like Zeons, they played like this was a game of monopoly.

See, Chan and his cronies built mines. They built a gazillion mines. And I wanted people to build mines in space, but I didn't want them to build dozens of them (and more than a dozen were built), and I didn't want them to build them all at once. And, really, building dozens of them all at once is such a terrible idea. I will enumerate the reasoning.

See, it takes 3 weeks for you to make any profit off of a mine, and half a week to build the thing and get off of it, meaning each character can only build 2 mines a week and only if they have reserve capital and are organized. And if you buy pretty much any defenses at all for your mine, and you buy defenses for your mines, it takes 4 or more weeks to make any profit off the mine.

MY idea for minebuilding was that you fight some at 2E, but when your ships are so beat up you have to go back and repair, you build a mine. And then rinse and repeat. That way you aren't taking a two week vacation to go minebuilding, and you aren't sinking all of your income at once into a savings fund.

So, Chanco built nine NINE mines, and additionally a fortress, which pays itself off slow as goddamn fuck, and then bought all kinds of Marines and Zakus and turrets and asteroid minefields and etc. to defend them. The end result was this took them like the first 4 weeks of the game to do, in which time they were gaining almost no VP, and they made literally no profit at all until week 11 or 12 because so much cash was sunk into defending their assets.

And the hilarious thing is, had the EF taken this time to gain some VP beating on whoever and then come a gunnin' for the Zeon mines, Chanco would have been so ludicrously fucked it would not have been funny.

So of course the EF's strategy was to completely ignore the Jinyuan mining operation and go off trying to kill Cima Garahau for two weeks? WTF? You guys know a new ship just respawns there and it's no side RP lost because it can be paid off of Odessa and Baikonours ludicrous incomes right? I hope so.

So Zeon got away scott free with its plan. The first couple months in space were very slow, and eventually Daren left to join like every side in the game twice, and we got Latooni as our EFSF commander in chief.

To be fair, Latooni was kind of a badass. I liked Latooni. He caused drama and his strategies didn't afraid of anything, and especially didn't afraid of real world physics or common sense, but boy did the rules allow them. And they allowed them hard. Sure he sent Radune off to his death which ended up in Radunes horribly shady and badly roleplayed conversion to Zeon.

(By the way, here's my impression of Radunes roleplaying. img87.imageshack.us/img87/9858/laurads.jpg Really, every thread should have just been that picture repeatedly. Lord knows how many times he linked that crap in the chat.)

So anyhow, Latooni was pretty cool. He captured a Gwazine because people don't read the rules. He attacked mines that people thought were safely defended because people don't read the rules. He stopped people from getting to a major event on time because people don't read the rules. His weapons were knowledge and a carnival full of helium balloons. So many balloons I had to nerf them. At one point I got really sick of space because it was just mines vs. balloons and made very little quantifiable sense because neither side wanted to play the game as intended.

But lo, Latooni could not defeat the one man who reads the rules better than he. The man who, if he ever played Federation or Zeon, would kick so much ass that it could not be described in anything but song.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LZcMv0H1bI

Yes, Samuel Riley had come to the Earth Sphere. And in his month long wake he captured three ships including a Gwazine, captured four mines and a fortress, double profited off of and then stripped them all, killed two PCs, captured a third PC, and then skipped town before anybody could make him pay for his crimes. Rogue bias imo.

His targets were mostly the Federation, for at this point in time they were doing better than Zeon, and Cid was like the RPGs great equalizer, killing retarded mines and stealing stolen Gwazines and making the game look the way it was supposed to once again. By the time he left, Odessa was underway, and the Zeon and Federation of space would take part in orbit.

Oh yeah, we also had some Zephyr Phantom crap somewhere in there, but it got kinda gay and I think everybody forgot about it. Last runs Phantom event was much cooler.

Space Odessa was a great concept but turned into kind of a flop. Chan decided NOT to go wtf, and Nirvash who had been planning to run EF on the thing quit the game immediately prior for I guess time-related issues, never got the full story on that one. Anyway Blackmage was left with the control of the EF.

And please Blackmage, never play an officer again. You are fucking horrible at it.

Because the orbit Odessa battle was meant to be extensively micromanaged, and because BM did so badly, even though Chan did not participate he was able to kill like a dozen Federation ships with half as many Zeon ships and almost no PCs participating. I think the only Zeon space PC participating was Draco, and to be fair I screwed Draco pretty hard in the writing of that event and I feel bad about it. But Draco is a whiny bitch and almost deserves to be actually fucked over once because every time you give him something nice he thinks you're fucking him over anyway. I digress.

So after Odessa, things were paradoxically back in Zeons favor, because they actually did by this point have some quantifiable profit from their mining efforts, and had done so well at space-dessa. Yet, the EF was still like 20 VP ahead of them on average because they had spent no time building mines. Zeon had more money and the EF had more VP. What the shit.

Now, at this point of the game, BMs strategy was simple. It was buy Salamis Kais, put GMs on them, and throw them at stuff, not paying any attention to whether the targets or timings of his attacks coincided with anything strategic, nor the fact that 2 Salamis, 1 Columbus and 10 GMs cost the same as and are better than 2 Salamis Kais and 10 GMs and don't have to be refitted.

And Chan started kicking some pretty serious ass at this point. His monetary advantage was too hard to stop. He won battles repeatedly. Carved the shit out of the EF fleets. Zeon actually won the War in the Pocket event, the only major event in the RPG that ended with a Zeon victory, despite me straight up going back on my word and allowing Altoh to participate through a late action.

But lo, it was a case of too little too late, for by then the EF had secured Earth, and it sent its best and brightest warriors to space to help out the flailing Blackmage. Orange Base and her crew bolstered the legions of Salamis Kais enough to put the EF back on top, and by simply throwing vast quantities of Side RP at their problem, the Federation was able to defeat the more wily Zeon once and for all.

One final point that was really cool however, is the RPing phenomenon that happened at the very end of the game, where the captured Aleksei (not gonna rescue him? Really guys? Really. He was captured for like 3 weeks. Remind me not to play games with you jackasses.) convinced Chanco to stand down at A Bao A Qu, in name of newtypes, peace, and everything that is synonymous with Gundamu. It was pretty surreal and awesome, at least in my head. I actually never read the parts of that event I didn't write.

I didn't read most of the games events. I hope they were good, people told me they were.

I read Cidvent like 3 times though. Teehee.

I found this to be rather interesting and I hope you do the one for space.

The OYW Mk 5's Journey to Jaburo

Following Odessa, the Earth portion of the game was one giant headache for me, and I wish I could forget all of it. Right around the same time Nader started RE, and transformed into a gigantic douchebag, which at the very least he would later admit to and apologize for. Thank god for that.

And of course Zeon thought it wasn't fair that they had lost Odessa and that they couldn't win the game at this point and therefor they should all quit. We had a lot of quitters around this time. It was depressing. But I suppose it's to be expected, a lot of people had this idea that the game was going to end after Odessa anyway, a new RPG was starting, we'd been running a long time and I hadn't handled the Odessa writing as well as I could have.

So, lots of quitters. And when there's lots of quitters, the game naturally slows down a bit.

However, this was the time period where Chris and Draco took over Zeon, and to their credit, managed to pull it up out of the ditch once again. They won several major battles in the West Arctic, North America and South America during this time period.

Of course, winning isn't enough for Draco. I need to explain something about how the game works, because Draco clearly didn't understand it.

Just because an event says "EF Victory" at the end, doesn't mean the EF won the battle in terms of the larger strategery of the game. There's this catchphrase called winning the battle but losing the war, you know.

And there are times when you lose an event, but at the same time you cause so much damage that you force the Jojo/Kyle Combine to retreat to the Azores to repair for 8 days (I think I said before that they do this a lot) while you can then run amok and blow up things like Rio De Janeiro. This is a good thing. You have lost an individual event, but gained a strategic victory.

Draco didn't get that, so he quit. And absolutely nobody cared, because by then Draco had singlehandedly ruined all his friendships in the game and made everybody hate him with all his whining.

So Zeon actually outmaneuvered the EF here pretty hard. The Brennan Navy crushed thing after thing while Draco held the EF fleets at bay. The EF decided that Chris was too powerful to contest, and this resulted in the largest Zeon victories of the game, taking out multiple supply fleets and 2-3 bases in quick succession.

Zeons ultimate goal? Why, it was brilliant. They were going to attack Torrington, steal the nukes, and then use them at Jaburo. It was simple, and with their advantage in momentum they were definitely able to pull it off. Not only that, but killing Torrington at the time would have given Zeon control of orbit again, and allowed Side 3 to send Side RP to California yet again.

You may ask, but Ketara! If Zeon has a brilliant scheme and they've totally outmaneuvered the EF, then how did EF win the war! Who stopped Zeon from executing its brilliant scheme?

Well, of course Zeon did.

See, somebody (Chris) realized two things. #1, that Torrington was not a coastal base, therefor his submarines would not be able to take it out. And #2, destroying Augusta would also make Earth Orbit Zeon controlled.

These two points had one thing in common: They were both wrong and based on incorrect readings of the rules.

So, I'm not shitting you, after the Zeon fleet had spent a week moving to Australia with all its PCs, with no EF even within Paradrop distance, it turned around and went back to the Arctic, trading a chest full of nukes and the possibility of a Zeon controlled orbit to take out a minor EF base for next to no benefit. Even though the Jojo/Kyle combine was repairing at the Azores for likely the better part of a week, by the time Zeon had doubled back, they were ready to fight them on an even keel.

So, once again Zeon fucked its own plans up. But they were not done, oh no. Having decided that they could not win a straight fight, they came up with the next of their epic schemes: They were going to buy nukes from Rogues, and nuke Jaburo that way.

So, they bought nukes from Dan. And they came dangerously close to succeeding with their terrible scheme. For several days I thought Jaburo was going to be destroyed, and Zeon was going to win the war.

Until I found out Dan wasn't going to give them the nukes they'd bought. That was pretty hilarious.

So the battle for Jaburo came. Zeon tried their best, and caused way more collatoral damage than they would have had the EF actually tried to stop them earlier rather than running away from them like scared chickens and waiting things out.

But without the nukes, it was not quite enough. Garma died, people cried, and Zeons back was officially broken. Zeon Earth would do one last, final awesome thing in the game, but the consistantly average Earth Federal Forces had won the day.

PRE SEATTLE EARTH

The pre-Seattle part of the RPG is always the most fun for a lot of people, because it's when everybody is starting out and everything seems new, and people feel like the RPG can easily go both ways.

The reality of it is that, while I feel the game is roughly equal for both EF and Zeon, it is definitely harder to play Zeon than it is to play EF. The reason for this is that Zeon must take the initiative in this portion of the game in order to win, and it is in this portion of the game when taking initiative is the most difficult, as people generally become more organized as the game progresses.

In this portion of the game the EF's money advantage hasn't really kicked in yet, and they don't have access to most of their ridiculous shop units and ships. On the flipside, Zeon starts with a more defensible position, tougher bases, more VP, and cheaper shop items that lets them quickly get quality MS teams that the EF generally has to wait a few weeks to pick up. So it's important that Zeon cements their advantage by beating the EF down and gaining an advantage in initiative in the first 4-5 weeks.


This is, of course, completely not what happened.


At the start of the RPG, Earthside Jojo and Kyle had this perfect coordination going, where they split into a North African and East Asian division, and tried to distract Zeon in Asia while destroying Mines in Africa. It worked reasonably well, because Zeon at the same time was a big disorganized clusterfuck. After a few weeks Marcus, Gaplant and Chris beat enough heads to get some momentum going, but at the start they were basically forced to do everything Jojo and Kyle wanted them to.

However, Jojo stayed his advantage a little bit too long in Africa. The concept of their plan was for Kyle to be a big diversion at Manila while he killed mines. Kyle was an excellent diversion, but the combined might of Marina and the Basterds eventually won out in the Phillipines, and Jojo for some reason decided to stay in Africa after his diversion had fled the scene. This let Zeon put pressure on them in the name of Draco, who got his first of many Medea kills, and the first of his many bullshit arguments where he whined that a character with a great RPing history wasn't killed in an event like 3 weeks into the game. Oh Draco, how misfortuned you are. If I give you a ridiculous upgrade later will it make things better? We'll see.

Following Jojo's rout in Africa, the Jojo-Kyle conspiracy began one of the stupider things that they would continue to do throughout the game: Hiding in the oceans while they repaired.

See, Jojo and Kyle had this idea that after every operation they should retreat into friendly territory, repair all their ships, buy new ones and attack again. Reorganization is obviously an important thing, but while you're sitting in a base and repairing, you may as well be sitting on a base that has a possibility of being attacked, thereby bolstering its defenses while you repair? That makes sense, right?

Well, they don't do that in this game. Not only that but going to the Azores to repair often takes 3 days longer than reparing at Malta and Belfast.

Speaking of Malta, while I was just typing this apparently Marcus and Gaplant coordinated an overnight assault and destroyed it. Nice job Kyle and Jojo. We'll see what other advantages you give up by spontaneously leaving contested zones for no reason later.

Following the destruction of Malta, Zeon was actually in a fairly advantageous position, and when the Seattle event happened, they decided to solidify it. Jojo had this literally brilliant plan to build a base in the West Arctic, thereby preventing Zeon from being able to make it to Seattle without patrols damaging all of them. It was one of the best plans of the game.

However, like many of the best plans of the game, nobody in the EF thought it was a good plan, so they didn't give him any cash and Jojo had to decide to build the base after the event instead. More on New Amsterdam later.

Anyway, Zeon was able to use its momentum to cause a lot of damage at Seattle, kill some players, destroy some players, and at the end of the Seattle event Zeon Earth was on the whole less damaged, had more VP, more ships, more money, and were in a position to pretty much push their advantage in whatever way they wanted. We had a week long break, and Marcus, Chris and Gaplant came up with some pretty awesome plans. I was expecting Zeon to take the game away at this point. Despite early victories by the EF, the EF had thrown away its momentum, and all Zeon needed to do was keep playing as well as they had been.

More on how Zeon fucked itself up after Seattle later.