Another msg from ETA
Hi CMDR Vasi,Oh boy, I think we got each other really on the wrong foot and got quite a clusterfuck as a result - with both parties thinking they are in the right and that the other one is wrong, an aggressor and a bully...
So lets try to set a few things straight and to explain how we ended up in this mess (from our point of view). Please take the time to read it and to think about how you would have reacted if the same happened to your group (and as such please try to understand our point of view and why we reacted as we did). Then we can hopefully start again with a clean slate and get to a much better relationship.
I'll reply to the different parts of your message after this explanation - and how the points you mentioned look like from my/our point of view as well (and yes, it looks quite different from our side of the road).
Additionally, please keep in mind that I'm German, and that most of our members are from the UK, and that cultural differences - both in the way we talk and write and how we communicate with others in general, and especially when online - exist between the US and Europe/Germany (oh, and that English is my second language, so I'm often missing a lot of subtleties and probably pressing all the wron buttons by wrong wording). Which might explain some other things which obviously infuriated you and some of your members, one of them - at least I guess he is a member of your group, unless I understood his comment wrong - enough to not only insult me in public with VERY foul language, but to threaten me in real life as well in his comment - which, btw. is an offence both in the US and Germany... talking about escalation here).
OK, so this is what happened (from our POV):
We are of course monitoring our influence in systems owned by us, and we noticed that right after we had a war in BD+57 1692, one of our oldest systems, our influence suddenly plummeted - first from 45.40% (with which we won the war) to 34.60% on the 20th, then another 4% down to 30.73% on the 21st and then the big hammer - a sudden drop of 27.63% to 3.10% on the 22nd. Of course we tried to figure out what happened there, more precisely, what could have resulted in such a drastic drop in our influence. The first thing we did (naturally) was to check the "Top Bounties" in the system to see if somebody - and who - was killing our ships and system security ships in big style. Turned out, it was a CMDR Dragnurazz, which led to me posting this in our own Facebook group (accompanied by a screenshot from the station which showed the bounty):
"If you see a CMDR Dragnurazz in BD+57 1692, please ask him (nicely) if he could please choose another system for his shenanigans? Because I guess he's the one which is causing our problem there (look at his bounty :-O )"
Since we weren't sure if this was just a random CMDR doing his thing there or if this was something else, I looked him up in Inara, and it turned out he is a member of the Fireflies - a group which is present in two of the systems in which we are present in as well (btw: yes, you were the first in Cao Yans, but you weren't the first ones in SPOCS 719 - we were already in the system for close to three weeks at the time you entered it, but this is only a side-note) - and his ship has the name "THE SALTY SNATCH" (guess what impression that name gave to us... right, not a good one, especially when you just lost 27% of influence in one of your core systems, most probably because of that guy). Add to that that The Fireflies seemed to have started their BGS game just lately (You were present in Gilya for months before you started to suddenly expand into other systems in the space we monitored).
Which in turn led us to believe that we are under an (unfair and unprovoked) attack by the Fireflies - most probably with the intention to get us shut down (and to hinder us as much as possible by getting us in a Lockdown) and as such busy with saving our other systems, so we wouldn't be able to compete in Cao Yans or SPOCS 719 (which, ironically, as I already wrote in the other message, are not of interest for us at all - with our current membership numbers, the 23 systems we are present in right now are already quite a burden to keep, so we were actually thinking about reducing them to 20 for easier upkeep for some time already - which includes getting rid of Cao Yans and SPOCS 719, some of the last systems we expanded into. Of course this made it all even worse for us - we thought we are suddenly in a war about some systems which we didn't even wantto take over).
Since we were still not completely sure if this really was an attack (but didn't want to take any chances), I wrote that message on Inara to CMDR Dragnurazz - which, as you might recall, stated exactly that fact right in the first paragraph:
"I guess you (either you alone of the Fireflies as such) are the main reason that our influence in BD+57 1692 went down 42% (and that it went down significantly in Alignak as well) over the last three days and that you are destroying EDGVC ships and as such drove us into Lockdown."
Since the Fireflies obviously have more members than we do (we have more members than Inara shows, but of course you wouldn't know that, and if you were trying to shut us down because of this "member count superiority", we would have to make it clear that we are actually able to push back in numbers - thanks to our allies) - which explains the rest of the message. And yes, we were very pissed by the fact that obviously another group tried to use this cowardly way to undermine our faction in a way which is nearly impossible to counter - as you probably know, it's nearly impossible to get as many bounties in as somebody would be shooting down security ships, since he wouldn't have to fly to a station to get the result and could just continue shooting them down in a row, since security ships are around in the system all the time).
That's the reason why the message was a little bit harsher than normal - we had to make sure that you would understand that it was a bad idea to start a war with us in the first place, even though our group looked tiny on Inara). Since we are a PvE group and as such have literally no interest in challenging (or fighting) other groups in the first place, we added the treaty option - which btw, is actually quite fair, and something we have in place with a lot of other groups in exactly the same - or a very similar - way - and nope, we weren't the ones who came up with the idea "whoever enters the system first gets it", either - it was another player group we encountered and we think that it's a good idea to avoid future conflicts.
To sweeten the deal for your group, we even added that we would make sure to leave both SPOCS 719 and Cao Yans (even though we were the first ones in one of them).
It's quite difficult to try to intimidate a group (to make sure you are taken serious) and to offer a peace treaty at the same time (without having it look like we would simply "surrender" to your bigger group), but we thought the message would communicate exactly this.
And again, it was sent to CMDR Dragnurazz for two reasons: 1). he was the one we expected to be the cause of the sudden drop (with which we were actually correct, as you know), but weren't sure if he did it by chance or on purpose (that's why we wrote the first paragraph, so if it actually was something he did on his own - maybe even without malicious intend - he could simply answer that this all was a big misunderstanding and that he was sorry to have caused us harm, and no, the Fireflies as a group had nothing to do with this) and 2.) Because when I looked at your team roster, he looked like a member of the command crew, since he showed up as 3rd highest rank - and as a single person at that rank, while the next rank had already three people listed.
Now we had a problem - would that message be read (and when)? We already knew from experience that some people are present in wings on Inara, but only use it so often in a given time - and since our influence was down to a level which could result in a retreat from one of our core systems, time was of the essence. But we didn't get an answer on Inara. So on the next day (Monday), I remembered that I had seen the CMDR's name before in the EDC group, so I did a quick search for the CMDR name in the group, found one of the posts I remembered and saw who posted it, and so sent him a private message to please check his private messages on Inara (And since we were already drumming up our allies to be able to retaliate in case you really wanted a war, I made it urgent: "Hi CMDR Dragnurazz - please do yourself a favour and read my private message on Inara." (in hindsight, I could have formulated that much better, but as they say "hindsight is 20/20".
So we waited again, but still didn't even get any reply at all from him (and since we expected him to be in the command group, no reply from The Fireflies as such).
To get things going, I had a look at his (PUBLIC!) timeline to see if there was any clue about what the hell was going on (a lot of people boast about their exploits in game on Facebook, and yes, we had our bad experiences in that area, too, so we wanted to make sure the same thing wasn't happening to us again).
Now imaging our feelings (and just stop to think for a minute how it must have looked to us), when we saw a post on his timeline from Monday afternoon like this "I love when people make assumptions but really don't have any clue to what's going on lol". Which could have been totally innocent and about something completely different, but what if not? That's why I added the comment to basically ask if that was about us being "Putz who don't know what's going on":
"If you are talking about Eta Draconis Gold Vision Co in game, you better make sure to enlighten us - we are already calling in reinforcements from our allies to stand by for retaliation in case this conflict isn't solved peacefully ASAP."
And then the shit hit the fan (and I think you need to look up the word "stalking" again - what I did was just trying to get into contact with some gamer to make sure the whole thing didn't end in a disaster - and I couldn't get into contact with him in game because he was on XBox and we are on PC, and even if he was on PC, I guess he wouldn't have accepted a friend request from somebody he didn't know anyways - at least I wouldn't have, simply because some of our members had been hit by grievers that way before).
Which is exactly the same thing I have done a lot over the last 25 years I'm playing online games in clans and which never was a problem for anybody on any of the used media - email in the beginning, Facebook etc. later on - at least in Europe, that is. I guess we just hit one of the "cultural differences" between Europe and the US right here...).
But again, there was not even a sign of any reply at all to any of the three ways I tried to contact him - no answer on Inara, no answer to the private Facebook message, not even a reply to my comment in his post.
We as a group were already "boiling on small flame" since obviously we weren't taken serious at all (by now we were quite sure that this all was a scheme to keep us in the dark as long as possible, just to make it more difficult for us to get out of that hole again once we would have to retaliate - and right here I should probably add that every time I wrote "we", I mean "we as a group" - at least the ones present at the corresponding time - and not "I, Stefan ), so I wrote him another private message on Facebook:
"OK, this is the last warning - if The Fireflies don't stop their campaign to bring down our (Eta Draconis Gold Vision Co) reputation IMMEDIATELY, I'll have to call in our allied groups and retaliate in full force. Since you are only present in three systems right now, this would mean that you will be reduced to being in your home system with a constant lock down and no influence at all for as long as you continue your cowardly attack on our peaceful systems. In case you haven't read the private message on Inara yet, I REALLY recommend to do so RIGHT NOW and get your group to stop these attacks RIGHT NOW. You have been warned.
We are a non PvP group playing the BGS, but if you continue attacking us, you'll regret it.
If you want to make our game miserable, we can do the same for your group, too."
But then came a reply to my Facebook comment (not from him, though) and I was genuinely shocked about the foul language and especially about the threats made against me in said reply from "Doc Cummings", but nevertheless I tried to keep my cool (as much as possible) and to explain why I commented on this post in a friendly way, trying to de-escalate the situation:
"This has nothing to do with stalking, my friend, this is simply trying to get into contact with somebody because it's difficult to do the same in game (since you cannot send messages in game to people not in your vicinity in game - which is not possible for me, since I am on PC and he is on Xbox - or on his friend list).
And I honestly suggest that you calm down yourself - after all, I'm not the one insulting people here.
And since you mentioned the "real world" - you know that you just threatened me in public, which is - at least in most countries - an offence as such, right?"
I spare you the answer I got to that one. Lets just say, it wasn't nice or even civil in any way.
Shortly afterwards I saw your (quite long) message on Inara, but since I had to leave for my Tai Chi classes, I hadn't really time to read more of it than the first few paragraphs. At that point I realized that obviously something went very much into the wrong direction with the whole issue - and about the same time, I checked Facebook again and saw that Chris finally had accepted the messages I sent him, so tried to explain the whole thing to him and to assure him that I won't be contacting him again over Facebook and to apologize to him to have bothered him in the first place:
"Hi Chris,
Just to clear this up a little bit: I got your name from the EDC group - I remembered seeing screenshots with that name there some time ago.
with your CMDR name, that is.
I see that somebody from your group answered in Inara
Your CMDR name was the one which came up in as top entry in the "Bounties" section of our systems, that's why I contacted you. I'm sorry for any inconvenience.
I just assumed that because you are a squadron leader (according to Inara) that you were part of the "command crew". Obviously I was mistaken.
Again, I'm sorry to have bothered you (but your friend REALLY should get some help with his anger issues ).
You won't hear anything from me here on Facebook - unless you want to, of course.
Have a nice day and o7!
Stefan aka Igor Rock"
Just for the record: I didn't get an answer to that one, either, which is really sad, since I still don't know if this actually bothered him or not.
OK, this answer got way longer than I thought it would get - I guess it's time for a part II (which will take some time to write, though, and it's already more than late right now, so I guess I'll have to answer tomorrow).
Nevertheless, I hope this has already cleared up some of the things and makes it clear that most of the clusterfuck we have right now is based on a lot of misunderstandings (on both sides) - and the silence we got as a reply for two days, which fueled our paranoia.
I really hope that we can get back to a more civil conversation (and hopefully an understanding, a treaty - and maybe even a chance to some mutual support as good neighbours).
Cheers,
CMDR Igor Rock