It's clearly not holoemitters, since they are already an in game item. Player customization gets the backseat when we are talking about equipment that is unique to a faction. In this case, getting ships and consoles from one faction simply by choosing to go to another.
Say I'm a grizzled old Klingon who has gotten tired of J'mpok's blather and decides to defect to the New Romulan Republic. I'm used to my Klingon ships. Even if I have to get a Romulan warbird, what possible reason could there be for not allowing me to strap a holoemitter to the thing to make it look like my old Klingon ship?
But again, sometimes "realism" has to take a back seat to player customization in an MMO.
Perhaps I should also add "player convenience." Do you have a solution that won't inconvenience the players? Note: do you have a solution? The status quo (Two and a Half Factions, starring a Level 100 Q with #Targblood, still #Winning) is not a solution, because the status quo is the issue which needs a solution.
Even Carlos the Mad, could brainstorm better than the status quo.
My suggestion, OP? Go and find the dozen or so other people who want to be a playable part of something which is dead and best forgotten and RP with them. You and the rest of the moustache twirlers can hatch nefarious plots in the Chat Window to your heart's content. You might even get the chance to type in a <Mua-ha-ha-ha> or two.
Hahaha well said.
"He shall be my finest warrior, this generic man who was forced upon me.
Like a badass I shall make him look, and in the furnace of war I shall forge him.
he shall be of iron will and steely sinew.
In great armour I shall clad him and with the mightiest weapons he shall be armed.
He will be untouched by plague or disease; no sickness shall blight him.
He shall have such tactics, strategies and machines that no foe will best him in battle.
He is my answer to cryptic logic, he is the Defender of my Romulan Crew.
He is Tovan Khev... and he shall know no fear."
Uh, nope. Claiming numerical superiority for your positions as you regularly do without actually providing evidence. Is an Argumentum ad Populum. And no, telling someone to tally the posts of a ~20 page thread into for-RSE and against RSE categories does not count as providing evidence.
As for the supposed lack of evidence of you never comparing those you disagree with to TRIBBLE or other unpleasant sorts...
Protogoth is the one who keeps comparing folks who disagree with her to TRIBBLE. You however, have compared others to racial supremacists, religious supremacists, and insinuated that others would fit in with the North Korean regime. Which is just as vapid and insulting here as comparing them to TRIBBLE.
"TRIBBLE are bad. The Star Empire is bad. Anyone who likes the Star Empire must like TRIBBLE" is an association fallacy and is exactly what is going on when one compares someone they disagree with to TRIBBLE, Hitler, Stalin, etc. It's not 'oversimplifying' or building a strawman.
On the contrary, ...
Eventually, the law grew so widely cited that it spawned a backlash from those who thought TRIBBLE comparisons could be perfectly valid. As one Ars forum denizen put it last year, "I never really got the Godwin's law rule. TRIBBLE Germany was a reality and should be used as any part of history would be. If I have a valid point that I can make about something and it is directly quantifiable with TRIBBLE Germany, the point is still valid. Just because I mention TRIBBLE Germany doesn't invalidate it Are we going to change this rule every time a new evil force comes along, negating the current Godwin's law? The next law will be Bin Laden's law?"
Salon.com columnist Glenn Greenwald devoted an entire column to the topic, arguing that "the very notion that a major 20th Century event like German aggression is off-limits in political discussions is both arbitrary and anti-intellectual in the extreme. There simply are instances where such comparisons uniquely illuminate important truths."
Mother Jones writer Kevin Drum called the law "an endlessly tiresome way of feigning moral indignation" and hoped for its "repeal."
And as far back as 2005, libertarian writer Dave Weigel wrote that we'd all be "better off rolling back Godwin's Law and admitting the all-purpose usefulness of TRIBBLE analogies."
Godwin's law does not claim to articulate a fallacy; it is instead framed as a memetic tool to reduce the incidence of inappropriate hyperbolic comparisons.
-- Source (emphasis added)
More to the point, ...
Godwin's law applies especially to inappropriate, inordinate, or hyperbolic comparisons of other situations (or one's opponent) with TRIBBLE often referred to as "playing the Hitler card". The law and its corollaries would not apply to discussions covering known mainstays of TRIBBLE Germany such as genocide, eugenics, or racial superiority, nor, more debatably, to a discussion of other totalitarian regimes or ideologies, if that was the explicit topic of conversation, because a TRIBBLE comparison in those circumstances may be appropriate.
-- Source (emphasis added)
Nobody has committed Association Fallacy in pointing out the similarities between the RSE and TRIBBLE Germany, nor, more specifically, between the Tal'Shiar and the Gestapo. Your effort to paint what we have said as Association Fallacy is where your Straw Man comes in. YOU KNOW THIS, BUT YOU HAVE REPEATEDLY ATTEMPTED TO TWIST WHAT WE HAVE SAID INTO THIS CARICATURE. The argument we have put forth is that there are numerous similarities between the RSE and the TRIBBLE (and especially between the Tal'Shiar and the Gestapo). Yet, even when we compared the Tal'Shiar to the KGB or NKVD, you cried "foul" lest the truth interrupt your perverse phantasy of glorious raptor vomiting all over any effort to restore the ORIGINAL presentation of Romulans as honorable warriors.
In 1990, Godwin got fed up with TRIBBLE comparisons on bulletin boards, Usenet newsgroups, and the WELL discussion site. So prevalent had these comparisons become that Godwin began to wonder how debates had ever occurred without having that handy rhetorical hammer.
He believed that most of these comparisons simply trivialized the Holocaust and the true horror of the TRIBBLE regime and so consciously decided to build a countermeme designed to make discussion participants see how they were (and are) acting as vectors to a particularly silly and offensive meme. The result was Godwin's Law in its original form:
<< As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving TRIBBLE or Hitler approaches one. >>
The destruction of the Eisn system and the mass murder of BILLIONS are ABSOLUTELY WORTHY OF COMPARISON TO NAZISM WITHOUT MIKE GODWIN GETTING HIS KNICKERS IN A TWIST OVER "TRIVIALIZING" THE HOLOCAUST. Your efforts to dismiss this comparison as somehow fallacious (when never did Godwin claim a fallacy was being committed) are nauseating.
But Godwin never meant the law to cover all TRIBBLE comparisons, only "glib comparisons," as he wrote in a follow-up note to Greenwald. Godwin reflected on the law in a 2008 piece for Jewcy:
<< I sometimes have some ambivalence about the law, which is far beyond my control these days When I saw the photographs from Abu Ghraib, for example, I understood instantly the connection between the humiliations inflicted there and the ones the TRIBBLE imposed upon death camp inmatesbut I am the one person in the world least able to draw attention to that valid comparison.
Overall, though, I'm content that the law has as much popcult traction as it does. My feeling is that "Never Again" loses its meaning if we don't regularly remind ourselves of the terrible inflection point marked in human culture by the Holocaust Key to that obligation is remembering, which is what Godwin's Law is all about. >>
When he saw the success his counter-meme had, Godwin began pondering the ethics of the situationif destructive memes could spread virus-like through Internet society, did people have a positive ethical duty to create counter-memes? In Cyber Rights, he put it this way:
<< When we see a bad or false meme go by, should we take pains to chase it with a countermeme? Do we have an obligation to improve our informational environment? The time has come, I think, for good netizens and committed First Amendment supporters to commit ourselves to memetic engineeringcrafting good memes that improve society as well as "anti-viral" countermemes that may neutralize and even eliminate the bad memes floating around out there on the Net and in society at large. >>
Incidentally, ...
One of the funnier offshoots of Godwin's Law is Bright's Law, created by some guy named Peter Bright: "If you cannot work out whether someone is trolling or merely stupid, the answer is probably both."
...As far as I'm concerned, the vast majority of Romulans depicted in TNG and later were the "fake" Romulans, and the TOS Romulans were how Romulan society, even among military personnel, was supposed to be...
Your position on the matter has been made clear multiple times by now. Of course, what you hold true in your own headcanon is fine for you and all, but using headcanon as proof of your position is dishonest. I have my own 'headcanon' on certain issues
Then why are you complaining about it? You most certainly aren't 'dealing with it' if you seem to find the need to complain about it yourself.
And here we have you trying to imply that folks who like the Star Empire must share its values and morals. Ad Hominem, again. NO. Just because I find the RSE fascinating and enjoyable to watch on-screen, does not mean I'm in favor of police states, Imperialism, slavery, genocide, brainwashing etc.
x doing z absolutely does justify y doing z- the circumstances are almost identical. Why is 'evil' content OK for the Klingons but suddenly nonviable when Romulans come up? Cryptic rubber stamping the KDF in that state while balking at making the Romulan faction reflect their more unsavory traits is a completely valid observation. Whether they have successfully developed it to nurture it and encourage its player base to grow is another thing entirely-and Cryptic has rightly been accused of neglecting both the factions in this regard in pursuit of the optimal ROI, but that doesn't change the fact that they had no problem initially writing the Klingons with all their unsavory traits included.
Not sure who you are talking about that you are accusing about fabricating screenshots. I must have missed that one.
You seem to count just about anything other than quoting an entire essay-length post as 'taking out of context', so I don't think much at all about when you accuse others of such. I sometimes exaggerate things for hyperbolic effect, but that's a far cry from repeatedly insisting that those who disagree with you all just want to play missions where they torture and abduct dissidents or something similar etc, instead of the reality-that most RSE supporters just want to play Romulans like those from TNG or DS9, and actually despise the portrayal of the RSE in STO.
It is an ad hominim in that you are attempting to associate those who like the RSE with various unsavory individuals or organizations. Guilt-by association. Plus, you have made much more direct accusations in the past.
A hypothetical example of a similar situation: "The previous poster wants to play as a one of those Cardassian TRIBBLE, but I don't think anyone else here wants to play a fascist"
Ad Hominim can occur without outright calling someone a Stalinist or whatever.
Calling projection on something isn't the same as proving it. Nice appeal to authority by the way, but claiming to have taken some undergraduate courses in philosophy doesn't make your authority on the subject infallible just because you say so. A fallacy fallacy is exactly what happens when you drop a "X fallacy" etc and then hit "post comment with no explanation or counter argument.
Funny you should say that when you routinely choose parts to ignore out of other posts, even going so far to post single sentence rebuttals to multi-paragraph long arguments. (as mentioned above, and present in this very thread) If you want to claim someone's moving goalposts, provide some proof, because as is, it's just argument from assertion if you are not going to. We somewhat recently had another thread where on the subject of Romulan Lore you progressively moved the goalposts on what the 'real' romulan history was until it came down to basically your headcanon. Which would be bad enough if it had been the first time the conflicts between the Kobiyashu Maru novel,Star Trek ENT, and your own account of Romulan history.
Nice Ad Hominim and Argumentum ad populum btw. Calling me a troll and implying it must be true because others have said the same.
Also, complaining about ' not fully reading and replying' to your posts in the same breath as claiming that anyone who complains about you not addressing their own arguments of not having a life....that's rich.
As for complaining about not being polite? Complain all you want, If you can't reply to a post of mine you disagree with without calling someone a troll, contrarian, etc or implying that they are fascist. Well, all I have to say is Golden Rule
It seems that Sela can't poke her snout above ground without someone proclaiming that the RSE is coming back. In that vein, I am declaring a new Romulan holiday. Sela Day. If Sela see's her shadow, we get six more weeks of brutal dictatorship nostalgia.
So that's how many days until then that I have time to kill that dishonorable to'ba?
For defection, instead of it being just a click-and-done thing. How about this?
When you choose to defect, you get a list of DOFF assignments, or Admiralty assignments where you attempt to bring your ships with you to the side you are defecting. These missions have different risk levels, and success rates. When there's higher risks, you might want to assign ships you value less. Lower risks, you assign the ship you value more. Basically the assignments are themed around ship hijacking and takeovers. And the ship you really want to keep, you pilot yourself.
So you'll get to keep some of the ships you got up till the point you defected, and also lose some because realistic the faction you're defecting from will try to prevent you and reclaim the ships you're stealing. Or even better, for the ship you are piloting yourself, you will have to deal with mutineers who don't want to join your defection. And maybe for this one mission, your death actually matters. If you "die" or get "incapacitated", you fail to keep the ship you were piloting, and join the faction you defected to with the other ships. If you managed to subdue your mutineers, you keep the ship, and maybe a whole bunch of prisoners (who you can later assign to DOFF assignments to try to persuade them to become your bridge crew again).
And about faction system in general... I think Cryptic should do the following if they intend to keep introducing alien ships.
Character Creation revamp. You choose your species and desired homeworld first - colony, capital planet, whichever, up to you.
The game starts and you get a short origin story based on your selected homeworld. Your homeworld is attacked by whichever faction the homeworld's faction is at war with. So if you are a human on some colony, a likely origin tale is a Klingon raiding party attacks you home (based on the early Fed story). Now during the raid, a few possibilities, you flee with the Federation rescue ships, and through a string of events, you eventually reach a point where you join starfleet, or somehow find a ship to captain by yourself (through black markets etc.). Or you get captured by Klingons, and decide to work with the KDF, eventually killing your captain and becoming a captain yourself.
And so it goes for every species in the game. You choose a Romulan, living on Vulcan. You might have an option to join Starfleet, or captain Vulcan ships (I cannot think of creating narratives for all of these now but cryptic can be invited to do so).
The gist being.
Step 1. Choose species
Step 2. Choose homeworld.
Step 3. Game presents an origin story based on the homeworld. Your species will change how some characters address you and refer to you. If you are a strange alien or Qo'nos, NPCs may remark and say as much, or even throw a few xenophobic remarks.
Step 4. Throughout the origin story, decisions and events are presented offering you a chance to join various factions, be it KDF, Federation, or Romulan Republic, or maybe even other factions not yet playable like Tal Shiar, The True Way, Cardassia, Borg Cooperative, Orion Syndicate etc.
Step 5. Having joined the faction, you gain access to titles related to the faction, and easier access to the ships (the ranks, and free ships assigned to you, come in here),
OR
Reject proper factions and do something like piracy, or Orion Syndicate criminal style stuff, and get ships through the black market and hijacking, with your own crew of ragtag outlaws, misfits, and criminals.
???
Step 12: Denounce the criminal life and apply to a faction because faction ships are just too expensive on the black market (exchange) to justify playing a criminal.
???
???
???
Step 25. Get assimilated by the Borg. Do not resist their commands. It is futile. Become Two of Seven. Command a Cube. Assimilate Earth.
This post is too long with the new forum character limit if I quote your entire post in it, otherwise I would do so.
Yeah, if you re-read my reply carefully, you'll see that I never denied comparing the TNG-RSE/Tal'Shiar sympathizers to TRIBBLE, and that I in fact admitted having done so. What I denied was comparing them to Stalinists and the KKK. I'm quite certain that I have never once compared you or your fellows with Stalinists, and I don't recall having ever compared any of you to the KKK, nor do I believe I have done so. Some other Republic supporters may have done so (in fact, I believe I remember at least one having used the Stalinist comparison more than once); I have not. That's not my schtick. I'm not Joe McCarthy on a witch hunt for "communists" by any means (and I'm probably going to ignore Stalin most of the time, since criticisms of "communism" based on his practices fail to recognize that he was not even socialist, let alone communist, by any stretch of the imagination); I am, however, very much anti-fascist.
And Godwin's Law is NOT a fallacy. I supplied you with references (and links to those references) in support of that. The fact is that not all TRIBBLE comparisons are fallacious, and Godwin's Law does not attempt to describe a fallacy; it merely asserts that the longer a forum debate or dialectic or disagreement goes on, the more likely someone is to mention TRIBBLE, Naziism, or the like, or compare one of the other participants or his/her position to such. So what? The very idea that any comparison with TRIBBLE is somehow fallacious is itself, to be rather blunt, extremely stupid. And denying that the fascist police state of TNG-era RSE shares salient characteristics with TRIBBLE Germany is blatant in its falsehood. In reply to this, you attempted to conflate Godwin's Law with Reductio ad Hitlerum; they are not the same by any means. I suggest you do a bit more study of the two and seek to grasp the distinctions. One simply describes what is likely to happen in a certain situation, while the other describes a logical fallacy. If, for example, I were to point out that Hitler disliked smoking cigarettes, or tried to prohibit such, and then noted that you shared that view, and then called you a TRIBBLE, yeah, that would be Reductio ad Hitlerum. You actually got it all kinds of messed up in your attempt to explain what you THOUGHT Godwin's Law was at the time; it's not "TRIBBLE are bad. The Star Empire is bad. Therefore, anyone who likes the Star Empire must be TRIBBLE." No, that's neither Godwin's Law nor Reductio ad Hitlerum, and it's also not "association fallacy"; it's the Fallacy of the Undistributed Middle, and no, despite your attempts to claim that I have done that, I have not. NOR did I commit Reductio ad Hitlerum. I have pointed to salient features which the TNG-era RSE and its Tal'Shiar share with Fascism (of which a type is Naziism -- so you could, perhaps, accuse me of having used negative emotive terminology, but since more people are likely to have a fair idea of what Naziism is than are likely to know the salient features of Fascism in general, I simply chose the more familiar term). Salient features, mind you, not mere superficialities or irrelevant characteristics. Now, if I were to point to mere superficial similarities of the TNG-era RSE and Tal'Shiar with Naziism or characteristics which they share which are irrelevant in that they are also characteristic of other things, that would be something to call Reductio ad Hitlerum on, but that's not what I have done. And in fact, with reference back to the OOC/IC divide, the so-called "laundry list" I gave recently was a list of salient features commonly associated with fascist techniques (especially rhetorical techniques) by historians (with some translation into the STO Romulan milieu by replacing "anti-communism" with "anti-republicanism" and replacing "pro-capitalism" with "pro-imperialism"). Every one of those things to which I gave a "check" has been expressed by people (note again no "all") who support the TNG-era RSE and want to play as such in STO. So, you know, shoe, fit, wear.
The statement about "fake" Romulans (you did I suppose, notice the quotation marks?) was in reply to revandarklighter's insinuation that Republic Romulans are somehow inauthentic Romulans. Again, however, you removed the statement from its context, so let's just put it back into some amount of context, shall we?
The D'Tan pansies are far to concerned to applie to federation ideals to be real romulans, that's the problem. Not that they are "not bad guys". I never saw the romulans as just bad guys, the only cliche romulan being just bad for being bad was Nero. And the only romulan about him were the pointy ears anyway.
Problem is the romulans do not behave like romulans.... Simple as that.
And now "pansies"? Perhaps you're not aware, but this is a slur which is not something you should be using in these fora, no matter who your intended target be.
Not everyone who is loyal to the Republic is a Reunificationist (in fact, based on what we've actually seen in the storyline, they're likely to be a minority), and Federation ideals are not particularly characteristic of the Republic. TOS Romulans were NOT your beloved TNG-era brainwashed and terrorized militarists and fascists and sheeple. As far as I'm concerned, the vast majority of Romulans depicted in TNG and later were the "fake" Romulans, and the TOS Romulans were how Romulan society, even among military personnel, was supposed to be. Why TNG's people chose to throw out the original depiction of the Romulans in favor of an almost entirely alien culture (by which I mean alien to the original depiction) has got to be one of the most astounding bits of creative stupidity to have ever sullied the screens of televisions.
And yes, the Republic Romulans do behave like Romulans, much closer to the original Romulans of the 1960s, than the jack-booted thugs of TNG and later.
Mind you, that's only a portion of the post, but it does supply some amount of context, which you willfully omitted. The point to this was, essentially, "You say Republic Romulans are not 'real Romulans,' so I counter that TNG Romulans were not 'real Romulans'." Both assertions are equally ridiculous; both are examples of the "No True Scotsman" fallacy. My intention was to demonstrate to revandarklighter that his/her assertion could be turned on its head and the opposite could be said. The difference, however, was that I gave some reasons for what I said, but even then, it was satire and not logic.
As for the alleged ad Hominem, again, you overlook modifiers. "Often" is a modifier. No absolute statement was made; I neither asserted "All S are P" nor "No S are P," but rather, "Some S are P." Whether you are an S who be also a P did not enter into the statement; not everything is about you.
X doing Z does in NO WAY justify Y doing Z. Tu Quoque. To be more general, Two Wrongs Make a Right fallacy, of which Tu Quoque is a subtype. You are very much aware that several of us chose to ally with the KDF, and you have trotted this out several times in the past, attempting to accuse us of hypocrisy because we oppose the TNG-RSE and Tal'Shiar villainy, and yet, you have claimed, we have done all these things that the KDF does. On the contrary, nobody is required to do any particular DOff mission (which is where almost all of that takes place, with a couple of notable exceptions in KDF-only storyline missions -- missions which KDF-allied Romulans/Remans CANNOT do), so you are also guilty of Unwarranted Assumption in these cases. I note that, in these efforts to shame us and insinuate hypocrisy on our part, you have not made any observations about the Starfleet Captain massacring innocents at the behest of an Undine, nor, if we're going to actually critique the KDF's actions and character, have you ever mentioned the Starfleet NPCs who used to be present in the T'Ong Nebula Exploration Cluster missions who were engaged in extortion and blackmail of the locals, demanding tribute in exchange for "protection." No, that wouldn't be useful to you in your efforts to fight with us, so you ignore all of that.
I didn't say anything about fabricating screenshots. I said that some have made outrageous claims (The Big Lie), and repeated them multiple times (Argumentum ad Nauseam), even after in-game screenshots were supplied which proved The Big Lie to be false. In fact, not only in-game screenshots were used, but also concept art, but no, they would have none of that, and instead continued vomiting the same Big Lie as if it had not been proven to be false. And you know exactly who I'm talking about.
Taking a single statement out of a paragraph in a post in a thread and twisting that single statement in an effort to prove something that the original statement did not support in the context in which it was made IS taking it out of context. I mean, look, I can tell you that the Bible says "Judas went and hanged himself" and "Go thou and do likewise," and yes, it does say both things, but not together, and the second statement is taken wildly out of context and twisted to suggest a command to someone who was not addressed in context and in reference to another statement which is wholly unrelated. That's of course an extreme example, but it does demonstrate what I'm talking about. The recent example which I showed in context was my talking, in this very thread (a thread which, by the way, since you have apparently forgotten what the thread is about, concerns making a playable RSE faction) about numbers and trying to twist that into an Argumentum ad Populum, which I provided context for, thereby showing that it was no such thing and instead had to do with Cryptic/PWE paying attention to metrics and not being willing to make a playable RSE faction because there aren't enough players who want that to ensure sufficient Return on Investment. And the thing here is that I'm not saying "I think blah blah blah." PWE supplied charts showing the metrics: Romulan players are the smallest group of STO players. I'm not happy about that, but it's still supported by evidence. And as for the number of those who would support a TNG-RSE/Tal'Shiar faction, not only have I told you where to look, I've even given you the link to go look. And yes, that IS evidence. The fact that tallying the numbers would be inconvenient is irrelevant; the evidence is there, inconvenient to extract or no. That's the fastest and easiest way for you to see, but if you really want to do it, go through this entire forum, "Romulan Discussion" (formerly named "Romulan Gameplay") and count unique participants, then assess their stated perspectives on the matter. YOU. DO. NOT. HAVE. THE. NUMBERS. TO. JUSTIFY. THE. TIME. AND. EFFORT. WHICH. WOULD. BE. REQUIRED. ON. CRYPTIC'S. PART. TO. DEVELOP. AND. IMPLEMENT. SUCH. A. FACTION. Disliking that does not make it false. Just as I don't like the fact that Romulan players constitute the smallest group of STO players, you don't have to like the fact that there aren't enough players who want the TNG-RSE faction which you would like, but just as I accept the fact I don't like, you have to accept the fact that you don't like, too. And it's not Argumentum ad Populum because it's not an appeal to numbers in an effort to prove that one side is correct and the other is mistaken. It's simply an explanation of why Cryptic/PWE is HIGHLY UNLIKELY to do this thing which you would like for them to do.
I called projection because it seems rather obvious to me. I have no intention of proving it, nor do I feel any need to do so. Everyone who has bothered to follow our fights over the past 2+ years has seen it more than once.
And I don't have to explain the meaning of a fallacy to someone on an internet forum who can easily go look it up in Google or Bing or some other search engine. You can again continue to attempt to make this about me, as you have done by insinuating that I have "made a claim" without evidence, but like I've told you before, I'm not posting photos of my transcripts from university and graduate school, because privacy -- and even if I did post such photos, your next moving of the goalposts would be predictible: "How do we know that's you?" Give it a rest. Anyone who knows diddly about Logic knows that I know what I'm talking about when it comes to that subject.
I don't always reply to everything and I've explained why. I don't have time to spend my entire life on this forum arguing with you. I also cannot satisfy you. If I reply to every point you make, you whine that my post is too long. If I don't reply to every post you make, you declare "victory" (showing that your MO is Rhetoric and not Logic) because I didn't answer everything you said. Now, that is moving the goalposts. No matter what I say, no matter how I reply to you, no matter what evidence or elaborate explanations or links or screenshots or whatever I supply, it's never good enough for you, and you change what it is which would satisfy you. Yes, that is moving the goalposts. I honestly wonder sometimes why I bother, which is why I stopped replying to you in the past, having decided you were trolling. And yes, when others express the same opinion, even people who generally agree with your stance on TNG and the TNG-era RSE, I would think that should be some kind of wake up call for you. Claim that's Argumentum ad Populum all you want. I don't give a rat's derriere, because you do not know what you're talking about. You venture into my home territory and try to use the terrain against me, but I know this territory far, far better than you do. Sure, you can google the fallacy names I use, but it won't give you the same level of understanding that a four years' worth of an undergraduate degree in Philosophy with a focus in Logic will give, nor the subsequent application thereof in graduate school courses.
But frankly, I'm not always going to use (and have not always used) Logical Analysis and Argumentation in reply to you, because you have demonstrated time and again that it doesn't phase you. This is not a debate either of us can "win." It's not about "winning" because it's not a debate. I'm not even trying to debate you, because I dislike Rhetoric. Rhetoric is using pretty or witty comments in order to impress an audience, and only bothers to concern itself with validity and truth if the Rhetorician is called on something -- but you don't bother even when you are called on something; you simply beg the question and/or engage in junior high level "I know you are but what am I" retorts.
But the most important reasons that I'm not inclined to engage with you are:
1. most people in this forum, myself included, are tired of the thread hijacks and same old tired fight which at one time eventually dominated every thread in this forum because I could not make a single statement without you and others jumping me with your same old "not real Romulans" and "Federation lapdogs" and other idiocy, nor could some of you post without me jumping you and others with allegations of fascism, because eventually in most of those threads one side or another would make a comment that those who did not agree with could not ignore, instead feeling a compulsion to respond and "set the record straight." It's been done to death and needs to stop from all sides.
2. Instead of fighting over what kind of Romulan we want to play (ah, remember that Machiavelli quote I posted not too long ago, the "Note" in this post? -- go ahead, put it into Google Translate; you'll get at least some sense of the meaning, but I'll be courteous and state that it's basically an elaboration of "Divide et impera" put into terms of military strategy instead of common political practice), we should all be fighting for full faction status for the RRF, because that's considerably more likely, albeit still involving some risk for PWE and Cryptic -- but nowhere near the level of risk OR the amount of time and effort involved in making an RSE/Tal'Shiar faction.
For defection, instead of it being just a click-and-done thing. How about this?
When you choose to defect, you get a list of DOFF assignments, or Admiralty assignments where you attempt to bring your ships with you to the side you are defecting. These missions have different risk levels, and success rates. When there's higher risks, you might want to assign ships you value less. Lower risks, you assign the ship you value more. Basically the assignments are themed around ship hijacking and takeovers. And the ship you really want to keep, you pilot yourself.
So you'll get to keep some of the ships you got up till the point you defected, and also lose some because realistic the faction you're defecting from will try to prevent you and reclaim the ships you're stealing. Or even better, for the ship you are piloting yourself, you will have to deal with mutineers who don't want to join your defection. And maybe for this one mission, your death actually matters. If you "die" or get "incapacitated", you fail to keep the ship you were piloting, and join the faction you defected to with the other ships. If you managed to subdue your mutineers, you keep the ship, and maybe a whole bunch of prisoners (who you can later assign to DOFF assignments to try to persuade them to become your bridge crew again).
I'm not giving up any ship I bought with Zen nor its consoles/weapons/whatever, faction and "realism" and even IC RP considerations be damned. This is still a game, and although it's billed as an MMORPG, there is not as much RPG to it as some would like. The conveniences of the customer will have to trump the RP aspects in this regard. My Orions will bring their Orion ships and any other Zen-bought ships with them, and the Klingon Empire can fulminate all it wants. My KDF-allied Romulans will keep their Plasmonic Leeches (which are now available to Feds as well, from a Lockbox, point being, in either case, someone spent Zen to get the thing, and someone had to buy that Zen with real-world money). No risk of loss can be involved; this is not EVE Online, and if I bought something, I intend to keep it and use it at will. If you had any idea of the amount of money I've spent on this game, 1. you would understand my position on this, and 2. you would think I'm insane for having spent that much.
And about faction system in general... I think Cryptic should do the following if they intend to keep introducing alien ships.
Character Creation revamp. You choose your species and desired homeworld first - colony, capital planet, whichever, up to you.
The game starts and you get a short origin story based on your selected homeworld. Your homeworld is attacked by whichever faction the homeworld's faction is at war with. So if you are a human on some colony, a likely origin tale is a Klingon raiding party attacks you home (based on the early Fed story). Now during the raid, a few possibilities, you flee with the Federation rescue ships, and through a string of events, you eventually reach a point where you join starfleet, or somehow find a ship to captain by yourself (through black markets etc.). Or you get captured by Klingons, and decide to work with the KDF, eventually killing your captain and becoming a captain yourself.
And so it goes for every species in the game. You choose a Romulan, living on Vulcan. You might have an option to join Starfleet, or captain Vulcan ships (I cannot think of creating narratives for all of these now but cryptic can be invited to do so).
Yeah, that would be great -- for new characters. I have ten already-extant characters. They get nothing from your proposal. I'm not terribly eager to make all-new characters just to have them in the faction I want them in. There are players who were here before LoR, before we could make a Romulan or Reman in the character creation screens, who made Fed or KDF aliens in order to be able to play as Romulans (never saw a Reman done this way, but I suppose it may have been possible to make an approximation in the aliengen character creation screen); those players should have been able to join the RRF when LoR went live, but they were not. My suggestion addresses that, as well as makes allowances for other already-extant characters. Your suggestion needs to do so as well, or it's not a satisfactory solution.
And about faction system in general... I think Cryptic should do the following if they intend to keep introducing alien ships.
Character Creation revamp. You choose your species and desired homeworld first - colony, capital planet, whichever, up to you.
The game starts and you get a short origin story based on your selected homeworld. Your homeworld is attacked by whichever faction the homeworld's faction is at war with. So if you are a human on some colony, a likely origin tale is a Klingon raiding party attacks you home (based on the early Fed story). Now during the raid, a few possibilities, you flee with the Federation rescue ships, and through a string of events, you eventually reach a point where you join starfleet, or somehow find a ship to captain by yourself (through black markets etc.). Or you get captured by Klingons, and decide to work with the KDF, eventually killing your captain and becoming a captain yourself.
And so it goes for every species in the game. You choose a Romulan, living on Vulcan. You might have an option to join Starfleet, or captain Vulcan ships (I cannot think of creating narratives for all of these now but cryptic can be invited to do so).
The gist being.
Step 1. Choose species
Step 2. Choose homeworld.
Step 3. Game presents an origin story based on the homeworld. Your species will change how some characters address you and refer to you. If you are a strange alien or Qo'nos, NPCs may remark and say as much, or even throw a few xenophobic remarks.
Step 4. Throughout the origin story, decisions and events are presented offering you a chance to join various factions, be it KDF, Federation, or Romulan Republic, or maybe even other factions not yet playable like Tal Shiar, The True Way, Cardassia, Borg Cooperative, Orion Syndicate etc.
Step 5. Having joined the faction, you gain access to titles related to the faction, and easier access to the ships (the ranks, and free ships assigned to you, come in here),
OR
Reject proper factions and do something like piracy, or Orion Syndicate criminal style stuff, and get ships through the black market and hijacking, with your own crew of ragtag outlaws, misfits, and criminals.
???
Step 12: Denounce the criminal life and apply to a faction because faction ships are just too expensive on the black market (exchange) to justify playing a criminal.
???
???
???
Step 25. Get assimilated by the Borg. Do not resist their commands. It is futile. Become Two of Seven. Command a Cube. Assimilate Earth.
For our dear friend who spent so much that he thinks I will consider him crazy if I knew how much he spent.
For existing toons, you get a character remake token, where you can change your appearance, choose your homeworld again,
After that, you experience the origin stories of your character via way of 'flashbacks' and 'holodeck recreations' that you can explore at your own pace. After you finish those episodes, you also get the rewards for them. Meanwhile, your current items and things gained remain as they were. The only challenge for you would be... to be 101% sure you want to stay the faction you're in for those toons since that will determine what plays in the flashbacks. Where other players starting a fresh toon get a choice to make in those certain scenarios, yours is just a flashback of choice already made.
About your fail of losing ships and refuse to have any system that will force you to do so. ... No comment.
For existing toons, you get a character remake token, where you can change your appearance, choose your homeworld again,
After that, you experience the origin stories of your character via way of 'flashbacks' and 'holodeck recreations' that you can explore at your own pace. After you finish those episodes, you also get the rewards for them. Meanwhile, your current items and things gained remain as they were. The only challenge for you would be... to be 101% sure you want to stay the faction you're in for those toons since that will determine what plays in the flashbacks. Where other players starting a fresh toon get a choice to make in those certain scenarios, yours is just a flashback of choice already made.
Why should an RRF character have to go through the same Romulan arc missions again, as flashbacks or otherwise? For that matter, a Klingon would still be a Klingon, with a past, so why should he or she have to go through a totally new origin story? The only difference would be that they had changed their allegiance.
About your fail of losing ships and refuse to have any system that will force you to do so. ... No comment.
So the fact that I PAID REAL-WORLD MONEY for these ships should be simply ignored? I should lose what I have bought? No. This is another of the objections of Cryptic/PWE to making the change; they realize that the rioting and rage quitting could be catastrophic, and that such an act would be very poor business practice. Any suggested solution has to take this into account. I'm not giving up any ship I paid for, nor the ability to dismiss and reclaim it, nor its consoles, unique weapons, etc. My suggestion allows for those who have purchased to retain and reclaim and so on, and your "immersion" is of less concern than my investment. In addition, I have provided an IC explanation, and, while it might be something which, in-universe, would/should be "rare," how many people, in-universe, can be "the one" to rediscover ch'Mol'Rihan? How many can be "the one" to deliver the World Heart into L'Miren's hands? How many can be "the one" to be captured and subjected to brainwashing by Hhakhifv and his lackeys? There is a point at which "realism" and "immersion" become ridiculous excuses.
Seriously though I dont worry about the story missions much for RP, and I'm a light RPer who can handwave when needed.
Maybe everyone did kill hakeev, maybe one person did? as long as that's not whats important to the story I don't see a major difference.
"He shall be my finest warrior, this generic man who was forced upon me.
Like a badass I shall make him look, and in the furnace of war I shall forge him.
he shall be of iron will and steely sinew.
In great armour I shall clad him and with the mightiest weapons he shall be armed.
He will be untouched by plague or disease; no sickness shall blight him.
He shall have such tactics, strategies and machines that no foe will best him in battle.
He is my answer to cryptic logic, he is the Defender of my Romulan Crew.
He is Tovan Khev... and he shall know no fear."
Seriously though I dont worry about the story missions much for RP, and I'm a light RPer who can handwave when needed.
Maybe everyone did kill hakeev, maybe one person did? as long as that's not whats important to the story I don't see a major difference.
The point I am making is simple:
Yes, the occurrence of a Klingon Dahar Master defecting with his/her fleet to Starfleet or the Romulan Republic Forces would/should, in-universe, be an extremely rare thing, possibly even unique.
Yes, the occurrence of a Starfleet Fleet Admiral defecting with her/his fleet to the Klingon Defense Force or the Romulan Republic Forces would/should, in-universe, be an extremely rare thing, possibly even unique.
Yes, only one person can kill Hhakhifv -- only one person is seen doing so in the cutscene -- the storyline intends that only one person actually pulled the trigger.
Yes, only one person can hand the World Heart to L'Miren -- only one person is seen doing so in the cutscene -- the storyline intends that only one person actually handed the World Heart off to L'Miren. (And while it's not impossible that multiple people could have been shooting at Hhakhifv, envisioning even two people handing the World Heart to L'Miren begins to stretch the imagination a bit much.)
HOWEVER,
everyone who plays that mission has the experience of watching their in-game avatar pull the trigger to kill Hhakhifv ...
everyone who plays that mission has the experience of watching their in-game avatar hand the World Heart to L'Miren.
It has been said before, and accurately, that the STO storyline is a single-player game, because it's impossible that everyone in the KDF became all buddy-buddy with Test Tube Kahless and was given a Shard Sword of Kahless (and yet all KDF players have one, or at least had one, if they've played that mission), just as it's impossible for everyone who plays "Midnight" to hand the World Heart to L'Miren, just as it's impossible for everyone to shoot Hhakhifv, just as ... and the list goes on.
So yes, from the perspective of taking the STO universe as somehow self-referentially consistent (... *raises a delicate but sharply-arched brow* ... Ahem ...), in which we as players might like to immerse ourselves and escape the frustrations of real life for a bit, the idea that persons of the highest rank in the militaries of the three major powers defecting at all to another of the major powers (let alone taking a small fleet of ships with them) would be a commonplace event beggars belief, and yet, very, very few people bust a gut over the idea that everyone gets to perform the same heroic and legendary feats in the storyline, because most recognize the single-player nature of the storyline.
To put it in the simplest terms, we are here discussing three different things: RP, storyline, and game mechanics, and the three are not coterminous, but must coexist (although many RPers will simply ignore the storyline almost entirely, and generally overlook anything in the game mechanics which might cause cognitive dissonance if taken into account for RP), which means that immersive RP must be able to accommodate the single-player nature of the storyline, as well as player convenience allowed by the game mechanics.
And ultimately, this entire idea of full faction status for the RRF is purely a matter of game mechanics; plenty of RRF players who RP already regard the RRF as a sovereign power and have no great Angst over the alliances, seeing them for what they are (from the perspective of the storyline), instead of misunderstanding the alliance system as somehow equivalent to begging for scraps from the table of the KDF and Starfleet. The UK and the US are allied; neither is any less sovereign for that alliance, neither begs for scraps from the other, neither is subservient to the other. Concern over the alliance system is not entirely irrelevant, but the alliance system is really only a molehill, and not a mountain.
If the RPer concerned with immersion can overlook multiple seeming impossibilities in the storyline, she/he can overlook a seeming impossibility in the game mechanics in deference to the fact that this is a game (and must be player-friendly), or her/his imagination is extremely weak.
And ultimately, this entire idea of full faction status for the RRF is purely a matter of game mechanics; plenty of RRF players who RP already regard the RRF as a sovereign power and have no great Angst over the alliances, seeing them for what they are (from the perspective of the storyline), instead of misunderstanding the alliance system as somehow equivalent to begging for scraps from the table of the KDF and Starfleet. The UK and the US are allied; neither is any less sovereign for that alliance, neither begs for scraps from the other, neither is subservient to the other. Concern over the alliance system is not entirely irrelevant, but the alliance system is really only a molehill, and not a mountain.
One definitely important point.
If the RPer concerned with immersion can overlook multiple seeming impossibilities in the storyline, she/he can overlook a seeming impossibility in the game mechanics in deference to the fact that this is a game (and must be player-friendly), or her/his imagination is extremely weak.
Agreed with this.
"He shall be my finest warrior, this generic man who was forced upon me.
Like a badass I shall make him look, and in the furnace of war I shall forge him.
he shall be of iron will and steely sinew.
In great armour I shall clad him and with the mightiest weapons he shall be armed.
He will be untouched by plague or disease; no sickness shall blight him.
He shall have such tactics, strategies and machines that no foe will best him in battle.
He is my answer to cryptic logic, he is the Defender of my Romulan Crew.
He is Tovan Khev... and he shall know no fear."
I won't admit that I'm happy about the destruction of Romulus or the hardship many of their people faced when that occured; still the story line that's been developed if very consistent with known Star Trek history. It also perfectly aligns the work Spock started with D'tan during some of the TNG episodes several decades earlier. What I'd like to see is a future episode that focused on further diplomatic ties between the Vulcan Government and Romulan Republic being expanded.
Comments
sorry someone needed to :P this dead horse topic was getting to mundane
Even Carlos the Mad, could brainstorm better than the status quo.
Tal'Shiar/Reman Resistance/Romulan Nemesis uniform, pls.
https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7403/13262502435_5604548f2c_o.png
Hahaha well said.
"He shall be my finest warrior, this generic man who was forced upon me.
Like a badass I shall make him look, and in the furnace of war I shall forge him.
he shall be of iron will and steely sinew.
In great armour I shall clad him and with the mightiest weapons he shall be armed.
He will be untouched by plague or disease; no sickness shall blight him.
He shall have such tactics, strategies and machines that no foe will best him in battle.
He is my answer to cryptic logic, he is the Defender of my Romulan Crew.
He is Tovan Khev... and he shall know no fear."
Reply spoilered, Warning: Wall of Text
As for the supposed lack of evidence of you never comparing those you disagree with to TRIBBLE or other unpleasant sorts...
(defending using Godwin's Law)
Sometimes you are a bit more direct:
No? Not ever?
Your position on the matter has been made clear multiple times by now. Of course, what you hold true in your own headcanon is fine for you and all, but using headcanon as proof of your position is dishonest. I have my own 'headcanon' on certain issues
Then why are you complaining about it? You most certainly aren't 'dealing with it' if you seem to find the need to complain about it yourself.
And here we have you trying to imply that folks who like the Star Empire must share its values and morals. Ad Hominem, again. NO. Just because I find the RSE fascinating and enjoyable to watch on-screen, does not mean I'm in favor of police states, Imperialism, slavery, genocide, brainwashing etc.
x doing z absolutely does justify y doing z- the circumstances are almost identical. Why is 'evil' content OK for the Klingons but suddenly nonviable when Romulans come up? Cryptic rubber stamping the KDF in that state while balking at making the Romulan faction reflect their more unsavory traits is a completely valid observation. Whether they have successfully developed it to nurture it and encourage its player base to grow is another thing entirely-and Cryptic has rightly been accused of neglecting both the factions in this regard in pursuit of the optimal ROI, but that doesn't change the fact that they had no problem initially writing the Klingons with all their unsavory traits included.
Not sure who you are talking about that you are accusing about fabricating screenshots. I must have missed that one.
You seem to count just about anything other than quoting an entire essay-length post as 'taking out of context', so I don't think much at all about when you accuse others of such. I sometimes exaggerate things for hyperbolic effect, but that's a far cry from repeatedly insisting that those who disagree with you all just want to play missions where they torture and abduct dissidents or something similar etc, instead of the reality-that most RSE supporters just want to play Romulans like those from TNG or DS9, and actually despise the portrayal of the RSE in STO.
It is an ad hominim in that you are attempting to associate those who like the RSE with various unsavory individuals or organizations. Guilt-by association. Plus, you have made much more direct accusations in the past.
A hypothetical example of a similar situation: "The previous poster wants to play as a one of those Cardassian TRIBBLE, but I don't think anyone else here wants to play a fascist"
Ad Hominim can occur without outright calling someone a Stalinist or whatever.
Calling projection on something isn't the same as proving it. Nice appeal to authority by the way, but claiming to have taken some undergraduate courses in philosophy doesn't make your authority on the subject infallible just because you say so. A fallacy fallacy is exactly what happens when you drop a "X fallacy" etc and then hit "post comment with no explanation or counter argument.
Funny you should say that when you routinely choose parts to ignore out of other posts, even going so far to post single sentence rebuttals to multi-paragraph long arguments. (as mentioned above, and present in this very thread) If you want to claim someone's moving goalposts, provide some proof, because as is, it's just argument from assertion if you are not going to. We somewhat recently had another thread where on the subject of Romulan Lore you progressively moved the goalposts on what the 'real' romulan history was until it came down to basically your headcanon. Which would be bad enough if it had been the first time the conflicts between the Kobiyashu Maru novel,Star Trek ENT, and your own account of Romulan history.
Nice Ad Hominim and Argumentum ad populum btw. Calling me a troll and implying it must be true because others have said the same.
Also, complaining about ' not fully reading and replying' to your posts in the same breath as claiming that anyone who complains about you not addressing their own arguments of not having a life....that's rich.
As for complaining about not being polite? Complain all you want, If you can't reply to a post of mine you disagree with without calling someone a troll, contrarian, etc or implying that they are fascist. Well, all I have to say is Golden Rule
So that's how many days until then that I have time to kill that dishonorable to'ba?
When you choose to defect, you get a list of DOFF assignments, or Admiralty assignments where you attempt to bring your ships with you to the side you are defecting. These missions have different risk levels, and success rates. When there's higher risks, you might want to assign ships you value less. Lower risks, you assign the ship you value more. Basically the assignments are themed around ship hijacking and takeovers. And the ship you really want to keep, you pilot yourself.
So you'll get to keep some of the ships you got up till the point you defected, and also lose some because realistic the faction you're defecting from will try to prevent you and reclaim the ships you're stealing. Or even better, for the ship you are piloting yourself, you will have to deal with mutineers who don't want to join your defection. And maybe for this one mission, your death actually matters. If you "die" or get "incapacitated", you fail to keep the ship you were piloting, and join the faction you defected to with the other ships. If you managed to subdue your mutineers, you keep the ship, and maybe a whole bunch of prisoners (who you can later assign to DOFF assignments to try to persuade them to become your bridge crew again).
And about faction system in general... I think Cryptic should do the following if they intend to keep introducing alien ships.
Character Creation revamp. You choose your species and desired homeworld first - colony, capital planet, whichever, up to you.
The game starts and you get a short origin story based on your selected homeworld. Your homeworld is attacked by whichever faction the homeworld's faction is at war with. So if you are a human on some colony, a likely origin tale is a Klingon raiding party attacks you home (based on the early Fed story). Now during the raid, a few possibilities, you flee with the Federation rescue ships, and through a string of events, you eventually reach a point where you join starfleet, or somehow find a ship to captain by yourself (through black markets etc.). Or you get captured by Klingons, and decide to work with the KDF, eventually killing your captain and becoming a captain yourself.
And so it goes for every species in the game. You choose a Romulan, living on Vulcan. You might have an option to join Starfleet, or captain Vulcan ships (I cannot think of creating narratives for all of these now but cryptic can be invited to do so).
The gist being.
Step 1. Choose species
Step 2. Choose homeworld.
Step 3. Game presents an origin story based on the homeworld. Your species will change how some characters address you and refer to you. If you are a strange alien or Qo'nos, NPCs may remark and say as much, or even throw a few xenophobic remarks.
Step 4. Throughout the origin story, decisions and events are presented offering you a chance to join various factions, be it KDF, Federation, or Romulan Republic, or maybe even other factions not yet playable like Tal Shiar, The True Way, Cardassia, Borg Cooperative, Orion Syndicate etc.
Step 5. Having joined the faction, you gain access to titles related to the faction, and easier access to the ships (the ranks, and free ships assigned to you, come in here),
OR
Reject proper factions and do something like piracy, or Orion Syndicate criminal style stuff, and get ships through the black market and hijacking, with your own crew of ragtag outlaws, misfits, and criminals.
???
Step 12: Denounce the criminal life and apply to a faction because faction ships are just too expensive on the black market (exchange) to justify playing a criminal.
???
???
???
Step 25. Get assimilated by the Borg. Do not resist their commands. It is futile. Become Two of Seven. Command a Cube. Assimilate Earth.
This post is too long with the new forum character limit if I quote your entire post in it, otherwise I would do so.
Yeah, if you re-read my reply carefully, you'll see that I never denied comparing the TNG-RSE/Tal'Shiar sympathizers to TRIBBLE, and that I in fact admitted having done so. What I denied was comparing them to Stalinists and the KKK. I'm quite certain that I have never once compared you or your fellows with Stalinists, and I don't recall having ever compared any of you to the KKK, nor do I believe I have done so. Some other Republic supporters may have done so (in fact, I believe I remember at least one having used the Stalinist comparison more than once); I have not. That's not my schtick. I'm not Joe McCarthy on a witch hunt for "communists" by any means (and I'm probably going to ignore Stalin most of the time, since criticisms of "communism" based on his practices fail to recognize that he was not even socialist, let alone communist, by any stretch of the imagination); I am, however, very much anti-fascist.
And Godwin's Law is NOT a fallacy. I supplied you with references (and links to those references) in support of that. The fact is that not all TRIBBLE comparisons are fallacious, and Godwin's Law does not attempt to describe a fallacy; it merely asserts that the longer a forum debate or dialectic or disagreement goes on, the more likely someone is to mention TRIBBLE, Naziism, or the like, or compare one of the other participants or his/her position to such. So what? The very idea that any comparison with TRIBBLE is somehow fallacious is itself, to be rather blunt, extremely stupid. And denying that the fascist police state of TNG-era RSE shares salient characteristics with TRIBBLE Germany is blatant in its falsehood. In reply to this, you attempted to conflate Godwin's Law with Reductio ad Hitlerum; they are not the same by any means. I suggest you do a bit more study of the two and seek to grasp the distinctions. One simply describes what is likely to happen in a certain situation, while the other describes a logical fallacy. If, for example, I were to point out that Hitler disliked smoking cigarettes, or tried to prohibit such, and then noted that you shared that view, and then called you a TRIBBLE, yeah, that would be Reductio ad Hitlerum. You actually got it all kinds of messed up in your attempt to explain what you THOUGHT Godwin's Law was at the time; it's not "TRIBBLE are bad. The Star Empire is bad. Therefore, anyone who likes the Star Empire must be TRIBBLE." No, that's neither Godwin's Law nor Reductio ad Hitlerum, and it's also not "association fallacy"; it's the Fallacy of the Undistributed Middle, and no, despite your attempts to claim that I have done that, I have not. NOR did I commit Reductio ad Hitlerum. I have pointed to salient features which the TNG-era RSE and its Tal'Shiar share with Fascism (of which a type is Naziism -- so you could, perhaps, accuse me of having used negative emotive terminology, but since more people are likely to have a fair idea of what Naziism is than are likely to know the salient features of Fascism in general, I simply chose the more familiar term). Salient features, mind you, not mere superficialities or irrelevant characteristics. Now, if I were to point to mere superficial similarities of the TNG-era RSE and Tal'Shiar with Naziism or characteristics which they share which are irrelevant in that they are also characteristic of other things, that would be something to call Reductio ad Hitlerum on, but that's not what I have done. And in fact, with reference back to the OOC/IC divide, the so-called "laundry list" I gave recently was a list of salient features commonly associated with fascist techniques (especially rhetorical techniques) by historians (with some translation into the STO Romulan milieu by replacing "anti-communism" with "anti-republicanism" and replacing "pro-capitalism" with "pro-imperialism"). Every one of those things to which I gave a "check" has been expressed by people (note again no "all") who support the TNG-era RSE and want to play as such in STO. So, you know, shoe, fit, wear.
The statement about "fake" Romulans (you did I suppose, notice the quotation marks?) was in reply to revandarklighter's insinuation that Republic Romulans are somehow inauthentic Romulans. Again, however, you removed the statement from its context, so let's just put it back into some amount of context, shall we?
Mind you, that's only a portion of the post, but it does supply some amount of context, which you willfully omitted. The point to this was, essentially, "You say Republic Romulans are not 'real Romulans,' so I counter that TNG Romulans were not 'real Romulans'." Both assertions are equally ridiculous; both are examples of the "No True Scotsman" fallacy. My intention was to demonstrate to revandarklighter that his/her assertion could be turned on its head and the opposite could be said. The difference, however, was that I gave some reasons for what I said, but even then, it was satire and not logic.
As for the alleged ad Hominem, again, you overlook modifiers. "Often" is a modifier. No absolute statement was made; I neither asserted "All S are P" nor "No S are P," but rather, "Some S are P." Whether you are an S who be also a P did not enter into the statement; not everything is about you.
X doing Z does in NO WAY justify Y doing Z. Tu Quoque. To be more general, Two Wrongs Make a Right fallacy, of which Tu Quoque is a subtype. You are very much aware that several of us chose to ally with the KDF, and you have trotted this out several times in the past, attempting to accuse us of hypocrisy because we oppose the TNG-RSE and Tal'Shiar villainy, and yet, you have claimed, we have done all these things that the KDF does. On the contrary, nobody is required to do any particular DOff mission (which is where almost all of that takes place, with a couple of notable exceptions in KDF-only storyline missions -- missions which KDF-allied Romulans/Remans CANNOT do), so you are also guilty of Unwarranted Assumption in these cases. I note that, in these efforts to shame us and insinuate hypocrisy on our part, you have not made any observations about the Starfleet Captain massacring innocents at the behest of an Undine, nor, if we're going to actually critique the KDF's actions and character, have you ever mentioned the Starfleet NPCs who used to be present in the T'Ong Nebula Exploration Cluster missions who were engaged in extortion and blackmail of the locals, demanding tribute in exchange for "protection." No, that wouldn't be useful to you in your efforts to fight with us, so you ignore all of that.
I didn't say anything about fabricating screenshots. I said that some have made outrageous claims (The Big Lie), and repeated them multiple times (Argumentum ad Nauseam), even after in-game screenshots were supplied which proved The Big Lie to be false. In fact, not only in-game screenshots were used, but also concept art, but no, they would have none of that, and instead continued vomiting the same Big Lie as if it had not been proven to be false. And you know exactly who I'm talking about.
Taking a single statement out of a paragraph in a post in a thread and twisting that single statement in an effort to prove something that the original statement did not support in the context in which it was made IS taking it out of context. I mean, look, I can tell you that the Bible says "Judas went and hanged himself" and "Go thou and do likewise," and yes, it does say both things, but not together, and the second statement is taken wildly out of context and twisted to suggest a command to someone who was not addressed in context and in reference to another statement which is wholly unrelated. That's of course an extreme example, but it does demonstrate what I'm talking about. The recent example which I showed in context was my talking, in this very thread (a thread which, by the way, since you have apparently forgotten what the thread is about, concerns making a playable RSE faction) about numbers and trying to twist that into an Argumentum ad Populum, which I provided context for, thereby showing that it was no such thing and instead had to do with Cryptic/PWE paying attention to metrics and not being willing to make a playable RSE faction because there aren't enough players who want that to ensure sufficient Return on Investment. And the thing here is that I'm not saying "I think blah blah blah." PWE supplied charts showing the metrics: Romulan players are the smallest group of STO players. I'm not happy about that, but it's still supported by evidence. And as for the number of those who would support a TNG-RSE/Tal'Shiar faction, not only have I told you where to look, I've even given you the link to go look. And yes, that IS evidence. The fact that tallying the numbers would be inconvenient is irrelevant; the evidence is there, inconvenient to extract or no. That's the fastest and easiest way for you to see, but if you really want to do it, go through this entire forum, "Romulan Discussion" (formerly named "Romulan Gameplay") and count unique participants, then assess their stated perspectives on the matter. YOU. DO. NOT. HAVE. THE. NUMBERS. TO. JUSTIFY. THE. TIME. AND. EFFORT. WHICH. WOULD. BE. REQUIRED. ON. CRYPTIC'S. PART. TO. DEVELOP. AND. IMPLEMENT. SUCH. A. FACTION. Disliking that does not make it false. Just as I don't like the fact that Romulan players constitute the smallest group of STO players, you don't have to like the fact that there aren't enough players who want the TNG-RSE faction which you would like, but just as I accept the fact I don't like, you have to accept the fact that you don't like, too. And it's not Argumentum ad Populum because it's not an appeal to numbers in an effort to prove that one side is correct and the other is mistaken. It's simply an explanation of why Cryptic/PWE is HIGHLY UNLIKELY to do this thing which you would like for them to do.
I called projection because it seems rather obvious to me. I have no intention of proving it, nor do I feel any need to do so. Everyone who has bothered to follow our fights over the past 2+ years has seen it more than once.
And I don't have to explain the meaning of a fallacy to someone on an internet forum who can easily go look it up in Google or Bing or some other search engine. You can again continue to attempt to make this about me, as you have done by insinuating that I have "made a claim" without evidence, but like I've told you before, I'm not posting photos of my transcripts from university and graduate school, because privacy -- and even if I did post such photos, your next moving of the goalposts would be predictible: "How do we know that's you?" Give it a rest. Anyone who knows diddly about Logic knows that I know what I'm talking about when it comes to that subject.
I don't always reply to everything and I've explained why. I don't have time to spend my entire life on this forum arguing with you. I also cannot satisfy you. If I reply to every point you make, you whine that my post is too long. If I don't reply to every post you make, you declare "victory" (showing that your MO is Rhetoric and not Logic) because I didn't answer everything you said. Now, that is moving the goalposts. No matter what I say, no matter how I reply to you, no matter what evidence or elaborate explanations or links or screenshots or whatever I supply, it's never good enough for you, and you change what it is which would satisfy you. Yes, that is moving the goalposts. I honestly wonder sometimes why I bother, which is why I stopped replying to you in the past, having decided you were trolling. And yes, when others express the same opinion, even people who generally agree with your stance on TNG and the TNG-era RSE, I would think that should be some kind of wake up call for you. Claim that's Argumentum ad Populum all you want. I don't give a rat's derriere, because you do not know what you're talking about. You venture into my home territory and try to use the terrain against me, but I know this territory far, far better than you do. Sure, you can google the fallacy names I use, but it won't give you the same level of understanding that a four years' worth of an undergraduate degree in Philosophy with a focus in Logic will give, nor the subsequent application thereof in graduate school courses.
But frankly, I'm not always going to use (and have not always used) Logical Analysis and Argumentation in reply to you, because you have demonstrated time and again that it doesn't phase you. This is not a debate either of us can "win." It's not about "winning" because it's not a debate. I'm not even trying to debate you, because I dislike Rhetoric. Rhetoric is using pretty or witty comments in order to impress an audience, and only bothers to concern itself with validity and truth if the Rhetorician is called on something -- but you don't bother even when you are called on something; you simply beg the question and/or engage in junior high level "I know you are but what am I" retorts.
But the most important reasons that I'm not inclined to engage with you are:
1. most people in this forum, myself included, are tired of the thread hijacks and same old tired fight which at one time eventually dominated every thread in this forum because I could not make a single statement without you and others jumping me with your same old "not real Romulans" and "Federation lapdogs" and other idiocy, nor could some of you post without me jumping you and others with allegations of fascism, because eventually in most of those threads one side or another would make a comment that those who did not agree with could not ignore, instead feeling a compulsion to respond and "set the record straight." It's been done to death and needs to stop from all sides.
2. Instead of fighting over what kind of Romulan we want to play (ah, remember that Machiavelli quote I posted not too long ago, the "Note" in this post? -- go ahead, put it into Google Translate; you'll get at least some sense of the meaning, but I'll be courteous and state that it's basically an elaboration of "Divide et impera" put into terms of military strategy instead of common political practice), we should all be fighting for full faction status for the RRF, because that's considerably more likely, albeit still involving some risk for PWE and Cryptic -- but nowhere near the level of risk OR the amount of time and effort involved in making an RSE/Tal'Shiar faction.
I'm not giving up any ship I bought with Zen nor its consoles/weapons/whatever, faction and "realism" and even IC RP considerations be damned. This is still a game, and although it's billed as an MMORPG, there is not as much RPG to it as some would like. The conveniences of the customer will have to trump the RP aspects in this regard. My Orions will bring their Orion ships and any other Zen-bought ships with them, and the Klingon Empire can fulminate all it wants. My KDF-allied Romulans will keep their Plasmonic Leeches (which are now available to Feds as well, from a Lockbox, point being, in either case, someone spent Zen to get the thing, and someone had to buy that Zen with real-world money). No risk of loss can be involved; this is not EVE Online, and if I bought something, I intend to keep it and use it at will. If you had any idea of the amount of money I've spent on this game, 1. you would understand my position on this, and 2. you would think I'm insane for having spent that much.
Yeah, that would be great -- for new characters. I have ten already-extant characters. They get nothing from your proposal. I'm not terribly eager to make all-new characters just to have them in the faction I want them in. There are players who were here before LoR, before we could make a Romulan or Reman in the character creation screens, who made Fed or KDF aliens in order to be able to play as Romulans (never saw a Reman done this way, but I suppose it may have been possible to make an approximation in the aliengen character creation screen); those players should have been able to join the RRF when LoR went live, but they were not. My suggestion addresses that, as well as makes allowances for other already-extant characters. Your suggestion needs to do so as well, or it's not a satisfactory solution.
Something like that would be great.
For existing toons, you get a character remake token, where you can change your appearance, choose your homeworld again,
After that, you experience the origin stories of your character via way of 'flashbacks' and 'holodeck recreations' that you can explore at your own pace. After you finish those episodes, you also get the rewards for them. Meanwhile, your current items and things gained remain as they were. The only challenge for you would be... to be 101% sure you want to stay the faction you're in for those toons since that will determine what plays in the flashbacks. Where other players starting a fresh toon get a choice to make in those certain scenarios, yours is just a flashback of choice already made.
About your fail of losing ships and refuse to have any system that will force you to do so. ... No comment.
Is my signature invisible or something? You know, that little bit there at the end in magenta letters?
Why should an RRF character have to go through the same Romulan arc missions again, as flashbacks or otherwise? For that matter, a Klingon would still be a Klingon, with a past, so why should he or she have to go through a totally new origin story? The only difference would be that they had changed their allegiance.
So the fact that I PAID REAL-WORLD MONEY for these ships should be simply ignored? I should lose what I have bought? No. This is another of the objections of Cryptic/PWE to making the change; they realize that the rioting and rage quitting could be catastrophic, and that such an act would be very poor business practice. Any suggested solution has to take this into account. I'm not giving up any ship I paid for, nor the ability to dismiss and reclaim it, nor its consoles, unique weapons, etc. My suggestion allows for those who have purchased to retain and reclaim and so on, and your "immersion" is of less concern than my investment. In addition, I have provided an IC explanation, and, while it might be something which, in-universe, would/should be "rare," how many people, in-universe, can be "the one" to rediscover ch'Mol'Rihan? How many can be "the one" to deliver the World Heart into L'Miren's hands? How many can be "the one" to be captured and subjected to brainwashing by Hhakhifv and his lackeys? There is a point at which "realism" and "immersion" become ridiculous excuses.
Seriously though I dont worry about the story missions much for RP, and I'm a light RPer who can handwave when needed.
Maybe everyone did kill hakeev, maybe one person did? as long as that's not whats important to the story I don't see a major difference.
"He shall be my finest warrior, this generic man who was forced upon me.
Like a badass I shall make him look, and in the furnace of war I shall forge him.
he shall be of iron will and steely sinew.
In great armour I shall clad him and with the mightiest weapons he shall be armed.
He will be untouched by plague or disease; no sickness shall blight him.
He shall have such tactics, strategies and machines that no foe will best him in battle.
He is my answer to cryptic logic, he is the Defender of my Romulan Crew.
He is Tovan Khev... and he shall know no fear."
The point I am making is simple:
Yes, the occurrence of a Klingon Dahar Master defecting with his/her fleet to Starfleet or the Romulan Republic Forces would/should, in-universe, be an extremely rare thing, possibly even unique.
Yes, the occurrence of a Starfleet Fleet Admiral defecting with her/his fleet to the Klingon Defense Force or the Romulan Republic Forces would/should, in-universe, be an extremely rare thing, possibly even unique.
Yes, only one person can kill Hhakhifv -- only one person is seen doing so in the cutscene -- the storyline intends that only one person actually pulled the trigger.
Yes, only one person can hand the World Heart to L'Miren -- only one person is seen doing so in the cutscene -- the storyline intends that only one person actually handed the World Heart off to L'Miren. (And while it's not impossible that multiple people could have been shooting at Hhakhifv, envisioning even two people handing the World Heart to L'Miren begins to stretch the imagination a bit much.)
HOWEVER,
everyone who plays that mission has the experience of watching their in-game avatar pull the trigger to kill Hhakhifv ...
everyone who plays that mission has the experience of watching their in-game avatar hand the World Heart to L'Miren.
It has been said before, and accurately, that the STO storyline is a single-player game, because it's impossible that everyone in the KDF became all buddy-buddy with Test Tube Kahless and was given a Shard Sword of Kahless (and yet all KDF players have one, or at least had one, if they've played that mission), just as it's impossible for everyone who plays "Midnight" to hand the World Heart to L'Miren, just as it's impossible for everyone to shoot Hhakhifv, just as ... and the list goes on.
So yes, from the perspective of taking the STO universe as somehow self-referentially consistent (... *raises a delicate but sharply-arched brow* ... Ahem ...), in which we as players might like to immerse ourselves and escape the frustrations of real life for a bit, the idea that persons of the highest rank in the militaries of the three major powers defecting at all to another of the major powers (let alone taking a small fleet of ships with them) would be a commonplace event beggars belief, and yet, very, very few people bust a gut over the idea that everyone gets to perform the same heroic and legendary feats in the storyline, because most recognize the single-player nature of the storyline.
To put it in the simplest terms, we are here discussing three different things: RP, storyline, and game mechanics, and the three are not coterminous, but must coexist (although many RPers will simply ignore the storyline almost entirely, and generally overlook anything in the game mechanics which might cause cognitive dissonance if taken into account for RP), which means that immersive RP must be able to accommodate the single-player nature of the storyline, as well as player convenience allowed by the game mechanics.
And ultimately, this entire idea of full faction status for the RRF is purely a matter of game mechanics; plenty of RRF players who RP already regard the RRF as a sovereign power and have no great Angst over the alliances, seeing them for what they are (from the perspective of the storyline), instead of misunderstanding the alliance system as somehow equivalent to begging for scraps from the table of the KDF and Starfleet. The UK and the US are allied; neither is any less sovereign for that alliance, neither begs for scraps from the other, neither is subservient to the other. Concern over the alliance system is not entirely irrelevant, but the alliance system is really only a molehill, and not a mountain.
If the RPer concerned with immersion can overlook multiple seeming impossibilities in the storyline, she/he can overlook a seeming impossibility in the game mechanics in deference to the fact that this is a game (and must be player-friendly), or her/his imagination is extremely weak.
One definitely important point.
Agreed with this.
"He shall be my finest warrior, this generic man who was forced upon me.
Like a badass I shall make him look, and in the furnace of war I shall forge him.
he shall be of iron will and steely sinew.
In great armour I shall clad him and with the mightiest weapons he shall be armed.
He will be untouched by plague or disease; no sickness shall blight him.
He shall have such tactics, strategies and machines that no foe will best him in battle.
He is my answer to cryptic logic, he is the Defender of my Romulan Crew.
He is Tovan Khev... and he shall know no fear."
http://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/startrekonline/#/discussion/1203876/reunification-in-season-11