Utari's Puppies (Formerly Off-Topic Thread)

[Teinyhr]

Ah yes, only combat requires skill. I totes forgot about that.

And I said “or something” - how about who bakes the best pies, who can knit a sweater fastest, who wins a round of whatever is the hottest hologame of the month? Possibilities are endless.
But no, the capsuleers in their infinite time and nearly infinite resources can think of no better things to do but lob thermonuclear devices on each other at the nearest star just to prove I don’t know bloody what.

Pfeh.

And before someone starts whinging something stupid at me, I don’t consider myself particularly superior morally or otherwise to any of you. My hands are just as tainted and as a combat pilot I am mediocre at best, but spirits do I tire of your company and lack of imagination sometimes.

[Kalaratiri]

Imagination has very little to do with it. Many capsuleers enter the profession through one form of military service or another and combat is literally what we’re trained for. It’s a common ground that almost all of us have some prior experience with.

Sure, someone could challenge me to a contest in a skill they have, lets take your example of knitting a sweater. I don’t know how to knit. Nice fair challenge there. I could challenge someone to tying a knot in a piece of string using only their tongue. They can’t do that, I am clearly the superior being.

It might be a little monotonous, but combat is something that damn near all capsuleers can use as a fairly level playing field.

[Teinyhr]

@Kalaratiri

Imagination has very little to do with it. Many capsuleers enter the profession through one form of military service or another and combat is literally what we’re trained for. It’s a common ground that almost all of us have some prior experience with.

Imagination has much to do with it. Many capsuleers are also miners, traders, explorers, what have you with corresponding training. And that said, even those coming through military programs aren’t necessarily soldiers. I went through RMS but my specializations were in being a force multiplier; command ships, electronic warfare, logistics - not firing broadsides, but negating them or stopping them from happening.
Combat is a common ground for many, but hardly “almost all of us.”

@Kalaratiri

Sure, someone could challenge me to a contest in a skill they have, lets take your example of knitting a sweater. I don’t know how to knit. Nice fair challenge there. I could challenge someone to tying a knot in a piece of string using only their tongue. They can’t do that, I am clearly the superior being.

Capsuleers care for fair challenges? I’ve been hearing more often than not that if “you’re fighting fair, you’re doing something wrong.” And seeing how many times I’ve been dropkicked by 4 or more pilots when I’ve been alone, or seen the same happen to others, fairness seems to be the least of capsuleers concerns.

@Kalaratiri

It might be a little monotonous

It’s the single most often touted taunt among capsuleers it’s a bit more than a little monotonous, it is a blaring monotone.

[Kalaratiri]

Nothing stopping you from leading by example

[Teinyhr]

Indeed. I guess I should start challenging people to duels with card games if I have the urge to ever challenge anyone to a duel.

[Arrendis]

I challenge you to a game of 52-pickup!

[Mizhara_Del_thul]

I thought you guys preferred whack-a-fighter?

[Arrendis]

Yes, but the idea is games that aren’t combat oriented.

[Mizhara_Del_thul]

Didn’t exactly seem to be very combat oriented, did it?

[Charles_Cambridge_Schmidt]

We could play the quiet game?

[Veikitamo_Gesakaarin]

If, after years of training both physically and mentally, risking either outright death or the little death of a wetgrave, at the cost of millions of ISK just to be able to uplink with a hydrostatic interface that one’s ambitions in life become the baking of bread or the knitting of sweaters then that really is the individual choice.

If one enjoys such endeavours then it stands to reason that one would desire to be better at a chosen endeavour one finds personally engaging then one would equally desire to be better at it. To say being a capsuleer combatant is meaningless or pointless, would be a failure in recognizing those who view it as an occupation and endeavour to be pursued. Just as one might want to be a better painter, writer, scientist, or indeed baker or knitter then one seeks out the experience and knowledge in those fields both through doing and through the artifice of creation of new techniques.

This at least is why I have fought, and will continue to fight – because the conduct of violence and warfare brings to me the same pleasure and satisfaction others might find in whatever field they personally feel gives them the chance to pursue the accumulation of skills, knowledge, and which to them is an expressive act all in its own.

[Valerie_Valate]

@Kalaratiri

I could challenge someone to tying a knot in a piece of string using only their tongue.

[Yarosara_Ruil]

I must be a very special pirate, because the only thing I can do with some degree of competence is science and industry!

I made a robotic parts factory yesterday for example!

[Teinyhr]

@Veikitamo_Gesakaarin

To say being a capsuleer combatant is meaningless or pointless, would be a failure in recognizing those who view it as an occupation and endeavour to be pursued.

On the surface you are correct, but I am not surprised I have to explain this once again. In capsuleer social interactions absurdly many only care about how many capsuleer-versus-capsuleer combat records they can scrounge up about the person they are talking to as a measure of their worthiness. Or, as a so-called dick measuring contest.

Which is something I have trouble understanding, because C vs. C combat is in my eyes pointless - they put nothing they value on the line, like say, the termination of their cloning contract. They only value their ISK investment in the battle, and even that’s a big if for a capsuleer who is more than a couple of years old and often by that time so wealthy, loss is a financial inconvenience, and a minor one at that.
You could argue that they put their reputation or something immaterial like that on the line, but a capsuleers reputation is, well, almost worthless outside a fairly small circle of other capsuleers.

@Veikitamo_Gesakaarin

This at least is why I have fought, and will continue to fight – because the conduct of violence and warfare brings to me the same pleasure and satisfaction others might find in whatever field they personally feel gives them the chance to pursue the accumulation of skills, knowledge, and which to them is an expressive act all in its own.

And that is understandable, if a bit questionable. Sometimes it feels like your average capsuleer is a 7 year old sociopath burning small insectoids with magnifying glasses for their own, messed up pleasure because they never developed a basic sense of empathy.

That said, I can understand combat as something that brings a primal rush or satisfaction, just like any sport. Personally, though, as I have said many times already, capsuleer ship-to-ship combat feels completely… How would I say it… Impersonal. Disconnected from anything. I’d much rather fight you in hand-to-hand than in space.

Hmh. Well, since it feels like I’m always railing against a wall of people, maybe it is time to ponder if I am fundamentally somehow different, and not them.

[Jev_North]

@Teinyhr

But what if it is ultimately completely ■■■■■■■ pointless? All you achieved is you just killed a bunch of baseliners to measure your proverbial penis.

I did say “some” types of capsuleer conflicts, and I meant the ones for which solving them with violence is actually possible. Admittedly that doesn’t apply to a lot of the disputes that grace the pages of the IGS; they tend to have little to do with the daily reality of being a capsuleer. You obviously can’t solve an argument about morality in the same way you can interdict market competition, settle territorial claims, or build or break the wealth and morale of groups that actually hold assets they’re capable of losing.

Paying more attention to the arguments of people involved in these things is admittedly a heuristic, but I think it’s actually a decent one; you need to have your house in order to do these things successfully. As an added bonus I find myself a bit more careful around people who can, as they say, wreck my sh*t up, in ways people whose main skills involve spraying ureic and acetic acid all over the IGS can not.

@Teinyhr

How about - for once - people challenge each other for a mining duel or something.

Several jokes present themselves, but I guess I shouldn’t knock it too much; after all, this is basically how the nullsec empires decide their differences now. Supercaps don’t grow on trees!

@Teinyhr

And seeing how many times I’ve been dropkicked by 4 or more pilots when I’ve been alone, or seen the same happen to others, fairness seems to be the least of capsuleers concerns.

There’s a wide gap between honour duels and conflict; in the former, you need to at least make it look like it’s a challenge your opponent finds worth taking. The latter, it’s not like they’ll have any choice in the matter…

…speaking of, how often do you get dropkicked by four or more pilots by yourself? You mentioned your training focusing on force multiplication; shouldn’t you try to be multiplying some forces? It seems a more productive use of energy than being jumped by your lonesome, then complaining about unfairness.

[Jev_North]

@Aria_Jenneth

Power, and the conviction to use it, is a little persuasive.

I’m not sure it actually does good things for those who have them, or, maybe more particularly, seek them, though. It seems like it turns into its own justification pretty easily: building a bigger toolbox for the sake of having more tools, instead of having something really worthwhile to do with them.

Ah, but at least you’re building something! Or destroying it. Those are things capsuleers are, and possibly should be, good at.

Winds know our track record of solving societal or philosophical disputes through the power of persuasion alone is spotty at best.

[Arrendis]

I don’t know that the fighter pilots would agree there, Miz.

[Mizhara_Del_thul]

I’m sure they think highly of the assholes sitting safely on their citadels while they barrel off to their deaths. Sad part is, I can’t even particularly sneer at it. It’s become the norm all across New Eden, that no one has the courage left to actually put anything on the line. If something is to be done, it’s to be done in the most risk-averse way possible.

Who’d have thunk it, the people in New Eden closest to functional immortality and endless wealth turns out to be the cowards of the cluster.

It’s rather disgusting in the end.

[Andreus_Ixiris]

On a completely different note, you know that guy Kruul, right, and his pal Zor - you know, that guy from the Seven who flies a Raven? You know them, right? You guys must know them.

I’ve been getting assignments from some corporate executive every week for twelve bloody years asking me to retrieve his daughter from some establishment in Sinq Laison that Kruul runs. I’m not joking - every single week, at the exact same time - Wednesday, at exactly 16:00 EST. The exact same time, the exact same place. So I fly my Tengu out there - and yeah, that Tengu, the Starfire Eclipse, is the same ship I’ve used for this gig week in, week out since, gosh, must be YC 113 - and I pick her up. Sometimes I have to fight waves of Kruul’s ships, sometimes I have to fight Kruul, sometimes Zor pops out in his Raven and we mix it up. I’ve never once lost a fight if they start it, never once even had to warp away, even way back in the days when I was flying a Typhoon or a Hyperion.

But nowadays I… guess I’m sort of friends with them? I mean, sometimes they shoot me but I feel like that’s just for old time’s sake? Because most of the time they just let me dock and take the girl onto my ship. Sometimes they even send an escort with me to make sure I don’t get jumped by Goons or CODE on the way home. And I mean, she’s not really a girl anymore… she was 19 the first time I met her I think? So she’s got to be, what, in her 30s at least, by now? She was studying at the University of Caille and she has some sort of sociology degree now - she’s working for Egonics as some sort of market researcher. We can get in at least a good five minutes of talking on each ride back to her father’s place.

You know, I’m really happy that Kruul, Zor and her have struck up such a committed polyamorous relationship. Three-cules are actually very difficult to maintain with any kind of stability, and the ones I’ve seen friends try out usually collapse after a few months. But here’s this unlikely trio, who’ve put some real work into this and I think that means they must really love each other.

I don’t know what the father’s deal is, right? I mean, he’s a mid-high level executive in a cluster-wide megacorporation, there’s no way he’s stupid enough to think his daughter has been kidnapped 628… 628?

Huh. Let me check.

There’s no way he’s stupid enough to think his daughter has been kidnapped 634 times by the same guy to the same place, right? I mean, surely he’s just trying to save face because Kruul and Zor aren’t exactly the most glamorous of characters for a young woman of her standing to be hanging out with… right?

But that got me thinking even further, right? So the father always calls me up in a panic saying that his daughter’s been kidnapped. But when I get there, she and Kruul and Zor are all just fine, and they’re happy together. And along I come, and I take her away.

Am I the kidnapper?

Am I the bad guy in this situation?

[Mizhara_Del_thul]

It’s not nice to hog all the good drugs.