Yes the 'neutrality' card in VO is an absolute lie. You'd have to be a complete moron to believe that its possible at all.

The premier example is TGFT who know damn well and regularly acknowledge amongst their leadership that they are not at all neutral - but recognise the power of it as a kind of PR strategy to make problems go away and appeal to naive souls that think declaring that they are 'neutral' will allow them to operate without interference.

There is no such thing as neutrality, this will be especially true with supply side variability, if you are using stations you will be consuming resources, prepare to defend yourself or lose access to them.

I follow the rule of trade with all parties. I also follow the rule: Don't get involved with your client's politics. If client A orders 100cu of goods and you deliver them and Client B orders 500cu of goods and you deliver them then who cares? By implying that by only doing 100cu of business with one group over the 500cu with another, I am taking sides which is not the case. Client A ordered 100cu. I did not tell Client A that I would only do 100cu, they asked for 100cu. What part of this process do you not comprehend? Walmart is a neutral store. Neutral in that anyone can shop there regardless of Race, Gender, Nationality, Religion, Criminal Past, Rich/Poor/Middle class. The only limiting factor they have in place is: No shirt, no Shoes, no pants = no service. That is a neutral business of trade.

The point is that just because you think you can keep out of other people's politics doesn't mean that the other people are going to play along. If you try to trade with two enemy parties, and one of them doesn't really need your help but takes offense to you helping their enemy, then they will see you as an enemy as well. You can babble to them all you want about how neutral you are and it won't make a lick of difference to them.

And when it comes to neutrality, their perception is what matters, not your own. Neutral status is totally at the whim of everybody around you, and those people may not be rational.

By all means, try it. Just don't expect it to work out for long, and don't throw a fit in chat when people shoot at you. "Neutral" parties have a tendency to be whiny about stuff like that.

True, look at TGFT they don't do well with neutralilty

thanks for the advice. My method for the madness, it this, We may be neutral but if you fire at us, we will not hesitate to fuck your day up or die trying. If someone is irrational, we try to limit contact as much as possible. Not to say we would cease all contact. I know from experience playing Medic on DayZ, people dont seem to Give a F@#$ if you are friendly to all. That is fine. That is their prerogative.

Yes Rin makes an excellent point, the amount of times i've heard "You refuse to recognise our true status as a neutral party" bullshit - your status as a neutral party is entirely defined by others perception of you. And it's not even the perception that you're neutral, real 'neutral' parties have everybody else believing you're on their side, it's an inherent lie and one that can only be maintained by a clever and devious leader not by a carebear.

Its a hell of a lot harder to maintain a neutral party in vo than irl, cuz the consequences of war (e.g. two guilds KOS with each other) are less severe. As far as I know, TGFT hasn't done anything that deserves anyone being pissed off at them. I think the incident everyone is subtly referring to is the KOS of TGFT by RED because of itani trading or something; if I misinterpreted because of my lack of knowledge of recent events, I apologize in advance.

However, unless some embargo agreement has been established beforehand, most nation's citizens are allowed to trade with whomever they want, whenever they want, all under the protection of that nation. If guilds worked like nations do irl, TGFT would in fact be neutral.

@TRS:
I disagree with how to go about being a neutral guild. The only two guilds I know of which are neutral to almost everyone is ORE and EMS. Since when have they ever seemed like they were on anyones side? They never seemed to imply that on any of the occasions I met their guild members.

RED declared war on TGFT because TGFT defended the members of TGFT that had higher Itani standing than Serco standing, and were being persecuted by RED because of it. Just so that's clear. :p

tarenty's OPINION is exactly that, every single member of RED and BR1 disagrees with him and has for the entire period of the war, and your evidence for that is when they turned up to fight against TGFT at conquerable station battles. The RED war was started because Corona Oceana joined in an attempt to circumvent the Itani military embargo on capital ship production and was discovered.

It should also be noted that tarenty is a member of TGFT and therefore his comments should be considered in light of his obvious bias towards them and obvious bias against the Serco

"TGFT hasn't done anything that deserves anyone being pissed off at them"

Yesterday they joined in with Itani military to attack Serco pilots, last week they let Itani military board their capships and fire at members of the Serco military. Sure, they're fricken angels.

I am not at liberty to talk about ORE, but EMS is only neutral by virtue of its virtual nonexistence, the question of their neutrality rarely comes up because their pilots rarely log in. The last EMS I came across was myself.

A: I'm a member of every major guild in the game.
II: Those aggressions were enacted after they were already at war with you.
3: There was an Itani embargo on capital construction?

You aren't an active participating member of any serco guilds, especially not RED. So your opinion is not 'valid commentary' it's clear itani bias.

Wrong, but you can certainly ignore my presence. :p

But ignoring my points only makes them appear stronger.

You have no way to prove their validity without them becoming invalid, I'd say your points are pretty much dead right there.

Bu I digress, neutrality is mostly impossible except for circumstances where you are particularly clever - it does not matter 'what you would be in real life' because it is not real life.

O.p. Should seriously consider exactly what his strategy is for keeping everybody satisfied if indeed 'neutral' is what he is going for. Personally I think the idea of neutrality is an absolute snoozer in VO and I tell this to CD all the time she needs to become the Serco Rock Extraction guild or be deemed forever boring.

Really though, what embargo was there?

Surb, that picture was perfect timing lol

Ok just so this is clear I mentioned before I said all that stuff that it was TO THE BEST OF MY KNOWLEDGE. Also I mentioned I did not know many of the events going on. And it seems, neither does anyone else, or at least there is no majority opinion that agrees what caused the war. I was a little pissed at TGFT and RED for being at war because it interfered with some... stuff.. I was doing so I was trying to clear it up a bit.

Until you guys can agree on what factors caused the war, I'm afraid I can't comment as I never was at any of those events TRS and tarenty are speaking of.

However, my point still stands that ORE and EMS pulled it off. It's BS that EMS is never online, I've seen them around quite a bit since I got back; you've just got to be on at the right time and hang out in the right places to meet em. Most of the time they are busy mentoring noobs to try to help the game along, which is why you don't often hear/see them. I'd say about half the time I'm on there is at least one EMS on 100 who announces they are online. I also noticed you don't often see ORE around. Maybe this is another thing that helps them stay so neutral? (with the obvious exception of griefer/pirate guilds who only ally with other such guilds).

P.S. TRS, don't be surprised if tarenty has 20 serco alts in your serco guilds.

I just assumed that they didn't get along because RED contained so many former pirates, and everything else said by either side was just excuse-making.

Neutrality isn't always so easy in RL either. The US between 1799 and 1812 attempted to be "neutral" by trading with both Great Britain and Napoleonic France. Britain took offense to that and began harassing US shipping up to and including capturing freight haulers suspected of heading towards french ports. Between things like this and some congressmen from Kentucky and Tennessee who regularly declared that conquering Canada would be a "mere matter of marching" we ended up with the War of 1812.

There are a lot of guilds in VO which have attempted neutrality. PA tried it for a time, but got annoyed over being treated like 2nd class citizens by treaty partners and kept being drawn into conflicts against its will due to those same treaties. I would still like us to stay neutral if possible, but for any guild which has members from all 3 nations, it's likely well nigh impossible; somebody always takes offense.

Perhaps what's needed is a VO definition of neutrality. I think we all agree that neutrality in the RL sense can't work, but I'm sure there can be a defined set of rules by which a guild which deems itself to be neutral can manage it in the game sense.

I'm neutral. I kill everybody.

At least in the sense of "this trade guild or nation vs. that trade guild or nation". I do have a clear bias when it comes to "traders in general vs. outlaws".

"Perhaps what's needed is a VO definition of neutrality."

You meant to say

"Perhaps what's needed is for all the fun to be magically sucked out of the game"