The 369th Nation War was held Sunday at 2100 GMT in Sedina D-2. The participating teams were Itani, UIT, and Grey. Serco were a no show. All weapons and ships were allowed.

Today's prize contained 10,000,000 credits donated by:

[TGFT]
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A good battle this time with the Itani sporting a single trident and support fighter craft. Both UIT and Grey held out well against each other and against the Itani. Harpo and Greenwall survive giving the Itani another victory.

Until next time, cheers.
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The participants:

Itani
Greenwall [Survived]
Harpo [Survived]
Seiger

Serco
*****

UIT
Citrine
Doatoad
Surbius Bondevo
wolfman40

Grey
Boda Shandis
Rin Ganborro
THE PREACHER..
Toltec
Zylex
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Wins
Itani 122
Serco 65
UIT 111 (+2 FFA)
Grey 52
Rainbow 1

Basic Rules
Only those who are on-time are allowed to participate.
You may not start fighting until the host signals the start of the battle - this includes the 15 minute period prior to the planned starting time.
You may not return to the battle sector after you have left except to observe from a healthy distance in an EC-88 or EC-89.
No running from the asteroid field.
The last team standing wins.
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Notify me of any inconsistencies.

Some topics I think need to be discussed here:
-Tridents
-Team qualifications (what you need to be on a team)

I'll start with the topic of tridents. I think given the single-player ship domination of nation war and the now past inconvenience of repairing and reloading at stations done away with the addition of tridents, it's too much of a disparity in sides when one team has a trident with offensive weapons and support ability with repair and reload while the other teams must be content in their single hull and no flying fortress.

In the past some teams would have a dedicated single-player ship with a repair gun or two. And, we currently don't have inflight reloading yet. In my opinion, I think having the ability to dock, reload, repair, and fire from within capital ships in Nation War takes away from the player focused aspect of the event. Perhaps there can be a similar event but with each team requiring a trident to participate, I dunno.

Onto team qualifications. There has been and currently still is uncertainty of who plays on what team and what qualifies them to do so. Whether it's reputation within the game, faction standing, or the color of the name there has been little consensus on the topic between the various sides. My opinion currently is that if you have a known reputation or faction standing giving evidence to you belonging to a particular team then you join that team if you want to participate. As for those aspects to be quantified, it needs more input from you, the misfits of this war.

DISCUSS

There's no shortage of capital ships flown by players anymore. The game's a-changin' and more people should bring theirs.

If you ask me, this is a good thing. It makes victory a team effort. It's no longer a game of "whichever team has spidey or Nahin Lor wins."

I say Tridents in NW are another tactical aspect that shouldn't be banished. As ARF said, there's not only like one or two in game, but about a good 30 or 40 or so. Therefore banning it from NW makes no sense; every nation has access to atleast one Trident.
Moreover, the Trident's basic idea is terminated if it were to be forbidden in NW: It is after all a capital ship, made to support smaller ships... such as fighters.
In my opinion, limiting the amount of Tridents to one or two per team would create the maximum of fairness for everyone.

Personally, I don't mind capship fights, but I also like non-capship fights. I do think that weekly is too frequent for capship battles, and results in not enough people bringing theirs. My opinion is that nation war should be capship-free, and there should be a separate capital war held twice a month, or maybe every three weeks. I suspect it would get more turn-out that way.

As for team qualifications, whatever. Doing it by reputation is nice because it means the wussier pirates can be on the grey team. The problem is the potential for people to flip flop between teams if they don't have a clear affiliation.

From a management standpoint, requiring native-KOS to be on grey is simpler; anybody with good native standing can be considered a privateer and lumped into the national team, no need to remember what play-style that random unguilded guy uses. The downside there is that the grey team ends up being a lot smaller and people who are clearly pirates end up on national teams.

I do dislike the idea of requiring tri-kos to be on the grey team. Seems excessive. (And I am tri-kos myself, so that's not self-interest other than wanting a bigger team.)

I don't really mind non-grey nation wars though. They're an amusing change of pace.

I guess this whole post can be summed up by saying, "Variety is good."

I don't see why there is a debate that needs to be had about this. Nation War has historically, and will always be, attended by whatever smattering of people who happen to be online at that time. The teams have been unfair as much as they have been fair, and this is taking into account total people on teams and their respective skills.

I thought there was a general sentiment that whoever bothers to host nation war gets to set their own rules? This game can be dead as a doornail so often, I'd think that we'd all simply be thankful someone even bothered to host a nation war at all.

My opinion is if you want a totally fair and balanced nation war, where all teams have a chance against each other, you best get to organizing your own event and making your own rules, cause it's not likely to happen otherwise.

Of COURSE having a trident gives an insane advantage to a team over those that don't... there is no argument to be had there. But that doesn't mean the other teams (in the case of this nation war) had no chance... if they had implemented a better strategy they could have easily overtaken the Itani team.

Historically, the rule that a grey team member had to be KOS with their own nation was to overcome the FF restrictions in grey space at that time.

Now that restriction has been lifted the definition of grey is the choice of the host.

"I thought there was a general sentiment that whoever bothers to host nation war gets to set their own rules?"

Sure, but there's nothing wrong with the host asking for opinions.

My opinion would be to ban cap ships most NWs but allow them, say, on the first Sunday of the month. Then everyone knows when it will be allowed and can plan accordingly. Also it will make most NWs capship free.

Kudos to the remaining serco for neglecting to show up. Nation war is a zombie. Its the walking dead player event that a select few refuse to let die so that something meaningful and game supported can be built in its place.

Everyone wants player events; new player events, not zombies.

I can only speak for myself, but Nation War is one of the biggest draws to VO for me personally today. I really like the group vs group strategy engendered by single elimination rules. I fail to see how it qualifies as a "zombie" or is preventing other meaningful events from springing up. If anything, I think it may actually help other events.

Tridents definitely change the dynamics of the event in a drastic way; I'm not sure what the best solution is, but I think things will take the correct course due to natural pressure(s).

har... some serco took the correct course due to natural pressure this morning in my toilet.

Nation War has always been kinda like swimming carnival in highschool anyway where the winning team is just whoever gets the most people to actually show up. After that it shifted to being whoever can show up and run away the most for the longest and now it's just whoever shows up with a trident wins each time.

It's a zombie because the core things that made it meaningful died a long time ago yet we still try and force the event every week instead of coming up with something new that actually factors in things like tridents, imbalance in player numbers/factions. Vendetta is not big enough for two regular events. The natural pressure is for nation war to die off and be replaced by things like Capt'n Blood's event or Phaserlight's Sedina D-14 mining event until such time as a nation war style event becomes viable.

12 people showed up. That's more than you see talking in the game at any given time. I'd say it's still alive and that it's still fun.

I had fun, despite being distracted by eating an oddly tasty lunch while I was fighting.