What were the moments of action like? Were they disruptive? Random? Did they spark more passive roleplay? Were they bloodthirsty?
The action was definitely different between the initial rules that warranted PKs for most scenarios and it created a lot more action when they were relaxed. The addition of two military sides and a policing/state side, plus citizens sort did more harm than good to the feeling of overall progress of a story-line for the entirety of the server as well as the individual story-lines of characters.
Certain S2K events were destined to be bloody. Some I think could've been better planned out, but the staff team was solid when it came to the off-server events in my books. The on-server events are tough to balance, and a lot of the time, they run the risk of becoming something we weren't at the time.
Did the experience evolve over the year before it ended? Did the pandemic have an impact? Should anything have been handled differently in hindsight?
The experience evolved, as mentioned above. It felt like we were taking the right approach by making gradual changes to the preference of the 'voter base' as forum presence is concerned and it ended up watering down other elements and with the shrinking population, it made it all the more difficult to handle. In hindsight, I don't particularly think I would've wanted anything different. The experience I had were well worth the time I spent staffing and managing the faction. I feel like I sacrificed my grades a bit, but I would do it all over again, as I repeatedly do for some reason every nebulous.cloud gamemode
EXCEPT HL2RP.
We can blame the pandemic, or new releases, or whatever. It seemed to me as if theme has niche audience and only a select few people that were politically and historically literate enough to understand and produce fitting content for the server. Most people probably don't know much about socialism, the German Democratic Republic, the aftermath of World War Two and I don't blame them, it was a long time ago and its hard to imagine what could've been. The lore was solid and the scripting was great. The question became how do we adapt the 'business' menu, aka, requsitioning from the stasi to fit in the different settings as time went on and the war progressed. That became difficult and then sort of obsolete, although, I still did what I could to provide injections into the economy here and there.
Were there any long term storylines? What was fun about the server, and do any particular highlights come to mind?
There were a lot of highlights in my memory, so many so that I probably won't be able to write them all down.
First of all, I'll start off with the most memorable story of them all... psych, I'll end with it.
How I became Federalist Lead
Alright, so I began playing resistance, and then when Stasi was struggling with activity, I did both. I ended up in a position where I led the resistance because Mendel made a poetic suicide to garner the support of the people. We (Stasi and Soviets) captured "Akula" during a breakout plan to get out afric or danny?, [classified, forgot lol] after s/he was arrested under and interrogated. Two Stasi are gunned down in the underground and I came down too late (on my stasi CO). Akula stays behind to deliver a message to the public because there was a public banquet celebrating Lenin's birthday. Akula makes a big stand and ends up getting shot by KGB played by Char. At that point in time, my other character, Frederick 'Freddy' Dietrich becomes the head resistance guy, leading the Federalist resistance.
How my leadership of Federalists came to an end
After an extensive recruiting run, we get a bunch of new people. I feel rough about leading the stasi and the federalists at the same time, so I decide to ICly write off Freddy, who was my day one character. A character I truly loved and cared for. I said my good-byes and farewell. I start walking off and somebody begins to accuse me of being a traitor because there was a mole and concluded that because some recently spilt information resulted in an attack on a few Federalists (with their deaths being PKs) that Freddy, was trying to make his escape and so they shot Freddy in the heart after he said, "What are you gonna' do, shoot me?" Bam. The Head Honcho and his Second in Command, put into first, both dead within the week, leaving the West to keep up the fight.
Covering undercover branch's rules
Another story, this time with myself being on my undercover Stasi character. For this faction, I set up very strict rules that require yourself to PK yourself upon death that others would usually simply be NLR'd under. I did this because our undercover branch had access to nice battle rifles, sights, silencers, etc. and very good armor which we rarely deploy in unless its necessary.
@Rondal the Mad Lad
So, here I was on my undercover character and the Stasi have pushed me out of my home and they took it as an outpost, so I decided to stir up some protestors before finding those among them that were active against the Stasi. I kept shouting about my bed, calling them thieves and so we were shouting and jeering at them at the line of the checkpoint. The Captain told us to back up, so we did but kept yelling at them and jeering. So finally, the Captain walks up to us and basically signals to his men by dabbing to the ground and all of us, the protestors, get gunned down. Now, being the man that I am, swallow my own medicine and character ban my own Stasi agent because of my own made up rules and put myself on 2 week probation for dying, leaving me on my Oberst.
Bomber Boy
One of the stories I remember that I believe was impactful at least to the atmosphere was the bombing of the Stasi/Sovet co-opted base. I was alerted to some information that there would be somebody to see me, and that I am not to take any visitors until one of them explodes. I abide by this and I'm radioed to come meet with somebody at the front gate, which I tell them to hold them outside far at an external checkpoint and stay away from him. I inform that there is a bomb within him and it ends up going off, killing a fuck ton of people (3?) and giving that paranoid feeling to the resistance that we have information.
Assassination of Tabarov
The story before last makes this one funnier, because its actually a story-line I personally missed out on, and it was the assassination of East's character, Tabarnov I think his name was. The Ministry received information from a trusted source and a prisoner that one of the plotters was still alive and well after Oberst Fischer had Hegel
@whiskers executed for his participation in the surgery to insert a bomb into a poor innocent victim of democratic propaganda. We ended up having to do the mission with only three agents. The job was to capture or assassinate him discreetly. Turns out, the badass motherfucker was strapped with a suicide vest, ready to blow. The senior agent slipped out, but Rondal and
@Shadok got blown up. (The situation was, the bomb was detonated, but oocly, somebody dinked east and they started walking out. Teleported the two closest ones back to where they were when the bomb went off and it blew up, killing two of them and almost killing the senior agent. I was down to one field agent, but the 'story-line' was completed to an extent with the retaliation for the assassination attempt.
The last story I'll touch on was the long play.
The Treachery of Rondal
When I first inherited what became the intelligence branch, then eventually co-lead and finally lead-lead, I kept the top secret stuff to myself mostly, to more or less balance what could and couldn't be done to harm the gameplay. I inherited an extremely valuable asset from Shrike, one that sort of didn't have much to do. He was passively gathering trust and I allowed him to participate in the siege of Frankfurt by not mentioning otherwise. He more or less gathered information on the top members and to see if he could get any info on any other elements that could be in the area of operations. I then turned it against him and threatened his life and using it as blackmail for failing to give me prior warning. I took him out of service for a time, put him into the Volksarmee to investigate fellow soldiers, particularly Rondal, my co-lead. I was informed during an interrogation with a civilian I later shot, as well as another civilian that I blackmailed into giving receipts of medical services who confirmed it, that Rondal was working in cahoots with the insurgents. Rondal's captain later approached my Oberst, who gave him a very stern talking to, shaming and ultimatum. He was to confess his treachery, explain the extent of it and explain the reasoning and beg for mercy to the Ministry for State Security and await the response. I allowed him to stay on base until the response rolled in, partially because I wanted to let him create something interesting, partially because I wanted to ICly hunt him down eventually. The verdict rolled in, Dazza responded to my PM saying, "yeah, if u want to kill him, go ahead", and I said aight. I called him into my office and he never arrived. I called again before putting the place on lockdown. I hear he escaped with an APC and blew his way out. Defected.
Capture The Captain
This leaves me to the next most epic piece of roleplay in the server, probably one of my favourite moments.
I'm on my resistance leader, Frederick 'Freddy' Dietrich and I'm in there with
@Bio Junior now, I think there was somebody up near the elevator, but I can't recall what happened to them. So, I'm smoking a cigarette by the sandbags and I hear the elevator. I radio in, "who's coming up the elevator", no response. I ask again before looking. Soviet patrol in their PK zone, BALLS FUCKING DEEP IN MY SWAMP!
Last Stand cont. @mert @Colonel Sanders
I panic, I whip out my AK and I roleplay opening fire, and then, open fire. I stop shooting after like, 7 bullets and I realized, oh fuck, I'm out of ammo. BURISLOV DECIDES FUCK THIS IM OUT, and jumps off the elevator, probably hurting his legs, idk
@WeakenedHen5 can confirm. I open my inventory, NO AMMO! I run inside, pull out two boxes of 7.62x39mm, load it up and fire like, a mag at them but they're finally up. I'm with bio in the main room. They have to go through a single doorway to enter. I'm in there with our hostage, Rondal's defecting Captain who has a bounty on his head. We fight them off and they're yelling in German and Russian, I'm yelling in German, and we basically find out they have two Germans and a Soviet left up there. All wounded.The only one hurt bad and not terribly is I think
@mert (who I ended up giving a pretty good story-line to follow along with his battle-bro if he wants to talk about it with the whole prison ordeal/message to family). So basically, we're all hurt bad. We tell them that we've got friendlies coming to flank and sandwich them and that they can surrender or die with them. It ends up being 2 German soldiers, 1 Soviet (Balashor
@Colonel Sanders ), myself on Freddy, Bio Junior's ex-NATO and Rondal's defector, which, I toss a gun when I'm so badly wounded I pass out after, only to be revived by Freddy's
Waifu, played by
@Danny who was also NJSOC. I'm saved. This was one of my favorite moments in it, and it was so good that I was prepared to PK myself if I died in that situation because those brave soviets were willing to die for that bounty. I would've given them that victory and not bitched out with, 'well pk rules say that if you kill me in my zone, its nlr', they would've earned it.
Mole explained further @Numbers @Bio Junior
As I was saying, there was a mole that we had in the insurgency. The reason we knew there was some sort of internal insurgent information being leaked was because two ex-NJSOC we straight up assassinated and I decided Freddy would leave directly after that. Now, it should be known that this actually wasn't my doing. This was one-hundred percent a KGB operation which
@char pulled off by hiring a few mercs while working (unknowingly) a single NJSOC along side a few hired guns looking to profit. The operation was an astounding success, until somebody decided to blast his KGB enroute back to base, and for that, we remember him and all those times he blasted people's faces.
So, the mole.. yes, the mole I've been talking awhile for now. So, the mole ended up alerting me of the plot against Comrade Fischer's life (the plot against me) as well as those behind it. Did I mention it was the mole who shot Freddy in the back? Yes, well. It turned out that the same ended up being pretty much elected by the remaining Federalist and insurgents to lead.. which he did so up until the final plot against Tabarov.
Throughout the entirety of the server, I relied primarily on one person to infiltrate and find uncover people within the insurgency, which he did. He unmasked most of the leadership and was able to point to many NJSOC as members of the insurgency, but not specifically NJSOC, which was still pretty solid.
After the Tabarov situation, I recalled "The West", known to the GDR as, Master Sergeant Stefan Keller, now, after his service undercover became Major for toppling the Federalists, assassinating Frederick Dietrich, confirming Hegel as the doctor who participated in the bomb assassination plot against the Oberst, confirming Tabarov as the other plotter, (he failed to mention he was also one of the conspirators, this was somewhat evident considering he seemed to be able to tell when it would happen).
He returns decorated with a medal and now serves as Fischer's right-hand man.
Another fucking hilarious story.
I told one of my field operatives to infiltrate the clinic and get information from one of the women working there. They did just that, however, they ended up building a rapport with the wrong clinician. They ended up seducing the wrong woman and they straight up ended up with a "surprise" in the "sack". The amount of shame my operatives were willing to put themselves through in order to preserve order in the German Democratic Republic only reflects the amount of patriotism they have for the socialist cause.
It was a fantastic experience and I hope people who read this remember it all as well as I do. There was a lot more interactions, but I'd be here all night writing them out if I wanted to. I thought I'd bring some light to something not everybody was able to see or witness as a whole. As stasi lead and federalist lead I got to enjoy most of the story day to day that other people didn't so I'm glad I could fill you in. If anyone has any scenes or situations for me to recall and reiterate, I'd be happy to keep the memory of Stasiland going on.