Like, I agree that L&L position is not totally unreasonable. They don't have an obligation to ask us for help, in the end. But arguing that they were and we just ignored it is such an asinine position to take that I don't even now what to say.
The thing is, we
know this has been going on, canonically, for five years or more. We know the Laio first communicated to us about the problem four years ago, that the problem was not in fact fixed by anyone involved.
How is it asinine to say "the Federation, for whatever reason, didn't help the Laio with this ongoing problem..." And yet
less asinine to say "the Laio, for whatever reason, stopped asking for help on this issue that they were freaking out over four years ago, and willing to go to war over today?" Like, if we assume
our government is competent enough that every member species request for Starfleet help actually reaches our attention both IC* and OOC**, shouldn't we be equally charitable to the Laio and assume they're competent enough to not just sit there drooling and being too dumb to ask us for help on a problem that has been kicking their butts for years and which they're unable to solve alone?
I feel like if we're being roughly equally generous to both the Federation and the Laio, the most likely explanation is that the Laio have been acknowledged, and have gotten a bit of help in the sense of "oh yeah, a ship or two will cruise through the area you say these so-called attacks are happening in, as long as they're not too busy doing something else elsewhere in the HBZ that month." But the net
effect, the measurable in-game consequences of our help, has been fairly limited. We can justify that, but if the Laio had some fixed amount of patience that could be exhausted before going to war, it would be unsurprising to learn that this patience had simply expired.
_________________________
*(as commander of Starfleet)
**(as players of a game whose co-QMs can only provide us with so much information at once, and who we KNOW sometimes deliberately withhold information like the existence of tags until certain preconditions are met)?
I'm going to assume, based on context, that Simon is roleplaying at everyone. I've got him on ignore, and only took him off to read the omake, so I'll not be replying to whatever bizarre feudalism apologia he's peddling in-character.
So let me get this straight... I'm getting sniped at by someone who says they're ignoring everything I say, except apparently when it's time to read one of my stories, which they do... why, exactly?
Can someone help me out here?
No, give him that. He had the courtesy to not do the constant IC responses since people said it annoyed them and is engaging in Licori defense using normal message board posting language.
I rarely do "IC" responses except when it serves one of the following purposes:
1) When making a joke or other light-hearted remark,
2) When making an in-game statement that other people with a dram of sense would feel
encouraged to take with a grain of salt if there's a reason to disbelieve it (e.g. 'Leslie' rambling about something Starfleet did in the 2280s).
3) When specifically trying to point out "this specific character, as they've been written, would think this."
In this particular context, what Halkh thinks is largely beside the point. This isn't really about his opinion, nor does he have any special knowledge that's relevant, nor am I in any position or having any inclination to claim facts about the situation that we don't all already know. However, there remains a point that the facts
as we know them are very far from exonerating the OSA.
I'll once again take substantial issue with that. The L&L are actually committing an evil here, and their choice to pursue warfare given the information available to them is in fact malicious. Stripping away the pile-up of negatives, I don't see a way they're even a little in the right consider all the information we received last time we had this argument. The OSA government is not willfully obtuse and blind, and we have plenty of WoG and in-quest information backing that up. In fact, that the OSA government are obtuse and blind here is exactly the opposite of willful. The L&L want to wage a war to change a government that is willing to change peaceably, and that makes the choice to use warfare in this situation actually a little insane or a little evil (the degree to which remains to be seen). We are left with the question of whether it is justifiable to wage warfare on innocent parties, to which I remain staunchly and irrevocably opposed. And I care not one whit for the relativity argument, because I am judging the situation from an objective moral stance.
We're being told repeatedly,
out of character, that the OSA government is willing to rein in the megacorps, but unfortunately the Laio and Licori apparently don't have access to the quest's Discord server and can't read the QMs' messages. Nor do they have easy access to their own corps of experienced diplomats and xenopsychologists who give them the
in-character information we possess. Their reading of the OSA government may well be less accourate than our
in-character reading, and they can hardly be blamed for not knowing
out-of-character information that is clearly influencing you to increase your confidence in "the OSA government is nice and will listen to reason" to metagamey levels.
Given the OSA's behavior (promise to investigate, do nothing, repeatedly claim that evidence that has convinced everyone in the quadrant
EXCEPT them that the OSA is supporting the pirates is insufficient and that they need more proof)... Well, suffice to say that if someone behaved like this in real life and I
didn't have a direct line to God reassuring me that they were just a bunch of misunderstood nice guys with a racial reluctance to believe anyone would do something as nasty as piracy, I'd be assuming they were
deliberately turning a blind eye to the piracy.
In particular, consider the implications if the Licori leaders are
one tenth as wicked a bunch as they're made out to be (and in fact, they are rather more than one tenth that wicked). If so, then even the slightest trickle of typical-mind fallacy would lead them to believe that surely the OSA knows of the piracy and is complicit, but doesn't want to admit it and cannot do so publicly. Because if the Licori were behaving this way, that would probably be the reason (and yes, if it were the Licori doing this, I would be
totally sure their government knew and was complicit but pretending not to know for political reasons).
The OSA is, apparently, extremely rare if not unique in their capacity for denial and ignorance of the actions of the worst of their own species. So much so that if
anyone else were behaving as the OSA is behaving, it would seem very obvious and likely that they were complicit. If Orions did this and the Union government refused to acknowledge it, we'd be wondering if the Syndicate had suborned the Union leadership. If the Goshawnar did this we'd be quite sure the Cardassians were complicit. If a bunch of Harmony nationals did it, we wouldn't be arguing on IF it was a Harmony plot, but how they did it. And so on.
ONLY the OSA could be doing something like this with their left hand, and have their right hand honestly be able to say they didn't know, and that they tried to investigate but turned up nothing.
And because of that very strangeness of the OSA's nature that makes this possible... In-character, the Laio and Licori have
very plausible reasons for assuming the OSA government is acting in good faith, and for being deeply offended and frustrated by that fact.
Does that justify war? You can make a good case the answer is 'no.' But I am restricting myself specifically to that question of motives, right now.
People always seem to assume the NPCs I write are hypermorons, it gets very depressing at times :C
I fully agree that this is being done unfairly.
The OSA aren't hypermorons
except that they have this single very big blind spot that you do in fact have a plausible explanation for. Unfortunately it's a blind spot in
just exactly the right place to result in them infuriating their neighbors by committing acts of war that their species as a whole never intended or wanted, but that's tragedy, not being a Pakled/Kazon-tier moron.
The Laio aren't hypermorons at all as far as I can tell; they are a genuinely aggrieved party.
The Licori have a long list of faults, but "deeply stupid" isn't one of them in this context.
And the Federation, given gameplay limits on our ability to react to ill-defined or nebulous crises that don't correspond to a concrete tag we can work on, hasn't been hypermoronic either.
I think everyone involved is a rational actor except the OSA government, which is irrational in a
specific and very understandable, even sympathetic, way. Just a way that, as a tragic flaw, can readily lead to major interstellar wars breaking out because that's what happens when your citizens kill other people's nationals over and over and you let them get away with it.
I mean, as long as we're tossing blame around, I presume the "and help the Licori out too" part of our post-war economic recovery suggestion got de-emphasized in the political part of the President's dealings to implement Development's own plan. But I can also see that the lack of continuing support to the Licori is something that's exacerbating existing socio-economic issues in the Acadian Empire, which is going to 100% be a future flashpoint.
Just you know, to add my own "but X person dropped the ball" complaint.
You are like 150% right about this.
DAMMIT N'GIR! WILL YOU NEVER STOP STABBING US IN TENDER PLACES!?!?!?
[but seriously that is a very good point]
[No I will never have Halkh kvetch about this in-character, it would never occur to him that this was a valid cause for complaint]
