Crisps? Maybe a nice purse?

All good ideas, worth doing.

Just as a general reminder- tell your friends.

No, you've just described polar opposites:

Neoxx is more than a mere troll- love him or hate him, he's intelligent and clever.

You, on the other hand, are much less than a troll- heck, I'm yawning even as I struggle to finish this sentence about you.

He's definitely preoccupied with it; I'm not sure wipes would be enough.

Maybe some kind of protective covering? That would take care of the aerosol stuff, too.

Ok, try "preview reply" before posting- that way, you might catch mistakes like "arguement," and thus you'll be more successful in being taken seriously.

Now, you really should have someone explain "spurious" to you in order to avoid future embarrassment. The argument was sound, and still stands: just because nobody was able to provide information to the contrary does not mean it is invalid.

Moreover, it has "bearing" because I explicitly give it that bearing in the following sentences, and am about to do it again in this post.

This is precisely my point. I have no risk at all because nobody is doing this. Let me spell it out for you:

1. No corps are exercising their ability to control the flow of epitron, [there are plenty reasons for this, but enumerating them would be spurious (see? not so hard to use )].

2. Because of this, any 'risk' I have is purely theoretical, not real.

3. Therefore, I may claim to have no risk at all.

Re-read what I wrote, and you will see that my point is related to this: obviously nobody is skilled, powerful, or clever enough (choose whichever you prefer) to change this situation.

You are right, there is an alliance that opened its island to all comers, and this helps to lower the cost of epitron a great deal. This demonstrates that either a) no corp wants to stop them (for whatever reason), or b) the corps that do want to stop them are not capable of it. Which is yours?

Again, this the point I made above and elsewhere: no corps stand out as powerful enough to affect the mining of epitron, and no corps stand out as clever enough to manipulate the market.

No, this is true only to a limited extent: you can be self-sufficient, but only at the cost of superlative performance in other areas. In other words, if your corp tries to meet all of its needs internally, it will be able to do so, but only at the cost of success in other areas.

You'll note that most successful armies don't make their own bullets.

This!

In another thread, I lamented that none of our existing corps is showing any creativity, and that their "reputations" were mere puffery.

IF any existing corps were a bit more creative, they'd spend less time whining about safe zones and arkhes, and more time creating a stranglehold on epitron. But they aren't, so I'm raking in the profits with absolutely no risk at all.

As independents, we should be forced either to join a corp OR strike a bargain with a larger corp in order to gain access to this stuff. PvP-centered corps especially should be considering this: why should they mine and craft when others could save them time, and do it for them?

Very nice, and thank you for sharing!

This is the kind of thing I love- when a game spurs creativity such as this, it's a good game.

Exactly. If you want to have anything other than blobs, you need to make the cost of some mechs prohibitive, so only a corp could afford them, and only a few of them at that.

Of course, they should have correspondingly high firepower, and be able to take a lot of damage- you don't need another battleship to take out a battleship, but you do need a heck of a lot of guns.

An excellent point- it does indeed look like a premature solution.

To be honest, though, I don't know if its removal would make much of a difference- the way most PvPers describe it, honest kills are hard enough to come by. If that's true, then aren't we really talking about a difference of a small number of items?

In other words, it makes sense to allow players to loot their kills, but as a reward mechanic, I don't think it would ever balance with risk.

I agree that it's a bit of a hassle for PvE, especially if you're farming drones, so that might raise enough objections to get it changed again.

That's very honorable of you; I hope some of the players who benefit give you some props next time.

You make a good point about the risk/reward balance, much like Kaito's. But I wonder if that's really the intention behind loot in the first place- it seems to me that the game is designed to reward PvPers through the island control mechanic, and that loot, if any, is more of a bonus.

I wish I could concede this point to you, but it is obviously not the case for several of the posters above. But you may be one of those for whom this is true- if so, then you make a good and arguable point- which children such as Postman have not done.

Why not argue on those terms? You'll get more out of it.

No, my argument is quite sound, and your attempt to turn it around is ham-fisted.

You assume that I wish to deny you your loot: please quote where I have made such an implication, because I would like to improve my writing if that is the case. I'm not on either side of the argument, as it seems silly to me- but I had not considered the point you made above, which makes the issue a bit more relevant, so thank you for pointing it out.

Now, as for the rest, how does denying you the loot deny you the reward? Does it erase the victory from the leaderboards? Does it stop having potential implications regarding the influence of your alliance? As far as I know, these are the rewards of victory, and they appear not to be going away.

Ah, now it starts to make sense: some people need to feel that they are causing as much grief as possible to as many people as possible.

A simple victory, with a corresponding loss of mech, is not enough punishment: you want a defeat so devastating, so horrible, that the loser instantly quits, leaving you, the victor alone on top of the heap, trophy in one hand, d1ck in the other.

In other words, you're a child.