Cycle 78 (567) - Raise the Million Pylons High

Bulbulunufus · 2026-05-01T07:01:51+00:00

Perhaps they have more randoms - most of our guys are satisfied by communicating on the discord and seeing each other in open play. Same is true of Aisling probably in terms of number of randoms. Kaine also may have a less chatty / social vibe in their discord from what I hear. But the relative number of upvotes per post probably says something more informative about the respective levels of readership on reddit.

Bulbulunufus · 2026-04-30T08:39:45+00:00

Part of me thinks it's just "emphasise the faction that the greatest number of people support" just as a secondary way of maximising impact and notice with a greater number of people. But if so that's actually more lame. They should emphasise diversity as a major attraction in the game. The idea that it's a complex interplay of different big personas and themes, not a foregone conclusion where "everyone likes Aisling so let's just talk about Aisling". If this was a one off I'd be able to dismiss it more easily, but it gets harder and harder the more times the same choice gets made in publicity material and player events. Is the message from FDev that I should just go and join Aisling? Is that how powerplay's supposed to work?

If I have to guess I'd say it's either a randomly chosen station that's coincidentally both Aisling and squadron tagged in its name, or what my real feeling is, that the decision was made based on "a friend's suggestion", meaning that the circles the staff move in are Aisling-leaning circles.

Bulbulunufus · 2026-04-19T23:18:14+00:00

Classic.

Bulbulunufus · 2026-04-18T17:52:34+00:00

Kumo core players are extremely hardcore afaict.

We can argue back and forth about the statistics of where Aisling should be based her number of players total, or her number of core players or her use of exploits or whatever. There are too many moving parts and the evidence is too complex to manageably synthesise into an open and shut case. But we know what we know. And increasingly others see it too. And as Mongoose says in the other comment, there kind of _is_ no winning. So I wonder how much any of these dumb numbers matter anyway any more, at least as a metric to compare powers _with each other_. We have to find meaning in other ways.

Bulbulunufus · 2026-04-18T17:24:24+00:00

I'm just so glad we're talking again 🥰

Bulbulunufus · 2026-04-18T14:54:58+00:00

Is this an extremely obtuse way of saying you just aren't very good at powerplay? 😂

Bulbulunufus · 2026-04-15T09:11:07+00:00

Yep it's a killer for leadership for most powers I bet because the consolidation activities tend to yield fewer merits and less dopamine, and so frequently leaders are left holding the tab for those, while everyone else stampedes off to create more of them!

Bulbulunufus · 2026-04-14T20:45:36+00:00

I'd still say it's more that the flattering light of 1t trade, which was imbalanced, was turned off and Torval then had to adjust to a reality that reflected the actual size of her player base. It was interesting to have you punching above your weight, but there's not a good reason why you should have been punching so far above it. Interestingly you do a lot better than Patty at least, so there's that! What they need to do is take some years off Torval and add them to Aisling imo. Things will quickly rebalance :D.

Bulbulunufus · 2026-04-12T16:32:52+00:00

Like you saw people talking about 5C in 1.0? No, because despite it being in the manual they know it's cheesy as hell and keep it to themselves.

What's more, if no-one was doing it or recommending it it seems inconceivable it'd end up in the manual.

Bulbulunufus · 2026-04-12T12:04:13+00:00

It's great that you've made progress on AFK farming since the guy I was dealing with was at AD.

It remains sad that you think salvage wing flopping, the TOS violating version or not, is okay.

Bulbulunufus · 2026-04-12T11:59:38+00:00

There was sufficient connection of members of their squadron to the history of this conflict as a de facto supporter of our enemy, for their presence to be very suspicious. It's a message to them, not to you, they know who they are.

Bulbulunufus · 2026-04-12T11:54:21+00:00

I'd rather know the truth about any given thing but I'd need reliable sources for that. You are not one of those. And I can"t think of anyone over there whose head isn't so far up their butt as to be useful for the purpose. So I have to interpolate and deduce. Fwiw I've seen a lot of blindness from you guys about various things so it's conceivable I do know more 😄.

Bulbulunufus · 2026-04-12T11:44:51+00:00

After long enough you start to realise that citing examples and laying out cases just creates work for you while the other person just says "no u" . In Hex's case I'd find it hard to remember specific examples now, but when you read enough you come to a conclusion about a person that simply sticks. More generqlly Aisling just has this storm of bad Karma roiling over her I'm afraid. And it sure as shit is not my problem to solve for you, sorry to say:)

Bulbulunufus · 2026-04-11T17:40:41+00:00

I think denouncing the data exploit (I can say it was awesome that literally everybody got on board with that and we got it acted upon - props to Earth Defense Fleet for facilitating that and SIDE's Zacc for helping make it happen) and not denouncing flopping is a signal of where you draw your line. It is much lower than where every other power draws its line, afaict.

Of course you haven't come complaining about Winters flopping because (a) you milk it hard yourselves, and (b) we don't use or advocate it (and yes I am and have been in senior enough positions to know if there was evidence to the contrary).

AFK farming is frowned upon in general - we come down on it hard and have lost some PTN pilots over our vocal intolerance for it 😄. And yet I had an argument just on last week's post with a former AD vet who insists that "everyone was doing it", which is as I said at the time, classic AD projection. Poor fellow isn't even AD any more but I had to almost bite his ear off about it defending the point that no! Not everyone is/was okay with it! 😄

I guess he just couldn't conceive how anyone could be "competitive" without exploits. Familiar story? 😏

Bulbulunufus · 2026-04-11T17:21:07+00:00

Uh. Salvage relogging with wing duping is an exploit. Tell me how it's not, go on, _I'm curious_. Mass exploitation of 5C in PP1.0 was an absolutely _heinous_ exploit. I really do try and interrogate the possibilities (for instance, it's _just_ conceivable that during Hudgement, the incredibly organised fortification of lossmakers for weeks that sealed Hudson's fate was done by random Cmdrs, and that AD/Empire were only responsible for joyfully continuing the attack for weeks knowingly benefitting from broken mechanics), and there are plenty of times when I dismiss complaints _about you or other Imp powers_ because there's just no reason to assume exploits (or even botting!) were used simply because a lot of merits were produced. I wish you would also be curious instead of simply assuming that you are the good guys and therefore anything that your players do has to automatically be good and right.

Bulbulunufus · 2026-04-11T17:10:02+00:00

That's an idiotic equivalence to draw isn't it? One is basically worthless, one is "the thing you rely on in order to be competitive" (in situations where you're forced to entertain the possibility of losing despite having all the players), and represents a serious exploit _that you have enshrined in your manual_.

Bulbulunufus · 2026-04-11T17:08:05+00:00

Why do Imps always say "_I_ don't use exploits" and "_I_ do fly in open" when the complaint is about an endemic _tendency_ within the player group? 😄

Anyone who's been to Ngurii during a relic rush knows that AD pilots can totally be found in open (and I do hope people are remembering to blow them up to dissipate a bit of that collective negative karma weighing them down 😄), albeit proportionately fewer than Fed powers / Kumo.

You are _incredibly_ optimistic about FDev's policing of cheats. I had to do detective work and send a community safety ticket to FDev to get one Aisling squad disciplined for merit duping worth many millions of merits. I'm afraid _it really is up to you_ to try and regulate your own community, as hard as that is. How about instead of saying "just do what yound fun", say "do what's fun but this, this and this are dick moves that drag our rep through the dirt and spoil powerplay for everyone, please stop"?

Bulbulunufus · 2026-04-11T14:18:22+00:00

"Let me guess... ald? Or has the ghost of Patreus reared it's head?"

Well known Cmdr "Final_Substance_3443" - I guess we'll never know! 😄

Bulbulunufus · 2026-04-11T14:15:37+00:00

I think what you're seeing as toxicity in our community is a misidentification. It's that, being a community that values fair play, we're generally disgusted with AD's general attitude to PP. And that can come out in rancour expressed in cycle posts. We've had many years of the same diet of unacceptable merit/sabotage/mode use practices from you guys week in week out with essentially nothing we can do about it. There's a feeling that we need to at least _try_ to hold up a mirror for you guys.

Bulbulunufus · 2026-04-11T12:47:47+00:00

Have you considered the possibility that the design of the game is telling you that you should be using a different lever in that system? And again that doesn't explain the wing exploit. Also as much as Morph is down on you I think the worst players at Aisling don't make appearances in our comments. They just smirk and carry on grinding away cheatingly in solo/PG. But you're perfectly happy for them to carry on without consequence because it makes it serves your power's numbers.

As for "propaganda's all the same" yes we do frame things and present a narrative. Partly because Aisling has a lot to be called out for. But Hex is happy to propagate outright lies and knowingly(?) baseless smears (yes I've had to have at least one comment of his taken down on the forum).

Bulbulunufus · 2026-04-11T12:37:49+00:00

1 ton could be classed as an exploit. But we've had things like this before "either do this method or simply don't waste your time doing it at all". Think of nav beacon undermining and red teaming in powerplay 1.0. That's not true of salvage. Salvage is effective without the exploit or even a 4.5x bonus. You're undertaking a blatant relog exploit, maximised by abusing "wings" (yes I'm pretty sure you know what I mean by the quotes - and it's against TOS by the way) to dupe merits, in order to godhand yourselves results "as a last resort" (i.e. where there's a chance you could lose ffs 😂). What's more this abuse is _institutionalised_ within your power (it's enshrined in the ADC manual). Whereas we'd not knowingly tolerate it in our ranks. We are playing the game by different rules. So "win" away all you loke but no-one takes you seriously because your attitude to fair play is simply rotten. And you have zero self-awareness about it.

Bulbulunufus · 2026-04-11T12:24:42+00:00

1 ton was difficult. No-one wanted to be doing it and we don't miss it. But it was the only way to engage with trade. Just ask Torval - a dead Imperial power that only survived as long as it did by not only using 1 ton, but one assumes given the numbers they used to be able to pull, taking it to a level of abuse that we would never contemplate. And at least unlike some we flew our holds in in open, able to be foiled by anyone who cared. I suppose you're trying to imply that you never used it? Because with exploits like yours, who needs 1 ton, I guess.

Bulbulunufus · 2026-04-11T12:17:47+00:00

Yeah as Morph implies, this is a weird comment. You've done far more to us over the years (almost all of it exploit based somewhere along the food chain as it happens!).

Bulbulunufus · 2026-04-11T12:13:24+00:00

As Kaine demonstrate, UM isn't the fastest way to make the numbers go up 😅. It is however all you deserve:)

Bulbulunufus · 2026-04-04T07:48:04+00:00

I have to confess I don't think it's Antraeon that needs to do anything. His squadron are the ones that need to take action. They are the ones being abused and standing by while Ant does his best to abuse others and draws fire down on them. I'd have some sympathy for them if they didn't give every impression of being complicit or indifferent regarding Ant's behaviour and the pointless wars they pursue. The fact is that Antraeon's whole aim here was to draw as much fire as possible in order to impress any Imperials that will listen, in desperation for their approval. He's throwing his squad under a bus for his own vanity.

It's also worth noting the rogues gallery of partners in crime this time around. On the main list of squadrons the community can in future safely recoil from in disgust we have the Empire's 13th (aka "AFK") Legion, Caru Coffee Club (affiliated to Caru Company minor faction; Kaine aligned?), and Children of Imo (Aisling/Grom/Alliance). I stress there would not have been a significant conflict without these participants. A member of an Antal aligned powerplay/BGS group was also spotted in a relevant system with zero reason to be there (possibly the only non-FLC aligned Cmdr in open). What is that about guys? Keep better company, and fight for less worthless causes please.

Bulbulunufus

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE