Rock, Planet, Shotgun is now part of The Vanu Accord.
The Vanu Accord is an alliance - for coordination and support - between old Werner (the old PS1 EU server) outfits and new allies.
Background:
The main reason for moving the RPS EU outfits to Miller was the presence of the old Werner outfits. It was hoped that their presence would provide a more organised context. Those in who have certed for command chat may have already bumped into old names from PS1.
So it made sense to get RPS involved with the alliance formed between those ex-Werner outfits. In fact, RPS joined a few weeks ago, I just haven't made a deal about it.
The rationale for joining also made sense given that the format of this alliance follows how we currently play in Rock, Planet, Shotgun. There are no requirements to do certain things at certain times, nor is there any specific hiearchy; being part of TVA does not mean anyone will tell us what to do. Rather there's a mature assumption that everyone's capable and it instead provides opportunities for coordination, requesting support / reinforcements, more organised and largerops etc. It currently works as a more closely-knit command channel (those in command chat will already be aware that - though certainly useful - it's not the best arena in which to coordinate...)
What does it mean:
It's still early days yet, so we'll see how this pans out over the coming months.
For those in the ground?
Not a great deal, really. Hence the lack of fanfare thus far. You may find yourself fighting alongside other outfits a bit more often; at least that's the hope. Below there's a list of outfits part of TVA. It may also provide more context to bigger fights. Next time we're in a meatgrinder (or creating our own by locking down the TR gate...) there may be the hope for incoming support, or that we're doing something useful.
For PLs:
TVA runs a teamspeak server. Some outfits use it as we do Mumble, other have slots for commanders, which RPS now has. Being in the TVA commanders channel works similar to the whipsers we have in Mumble for SLs / PLs; it allows for the online outfits to coordinate. Currently this provides a better alternative to /command chat. Command chat is far from useless, but with the TVA commanders you can be more assured of being able to organise support / combined ops than you would through /command.
(Aside: My issues with command chat are not because it's open to such a low level / requirement as some are moaning. I'd rather as many people as are leading squads are in command chat (though seperately I sometimes wish /orders had higher requirements... There's nothing worse than conflicting / crap/ ALL CAPS orders to make a whole empire just ignore anything in yellow text. Which is a bad thing given that's all we currently have for empire-level coordination) My issues with command chat stem from it either being dead, or being full of useless chatter, and from my various attempts at coordination failing because no one really has any ties to stick by what they say they'll do...)
I should stress; it's not expected that any RPS PL will be on the TVA teamspeak. To be sure: I'm not making this a requirement for PL: far from it. Rather it's there as an extra layer of coordination / support. A resource for RPS PLs who like the idea.
So, on that: If you play as PL and intend to continue playing as PL and like the sound of what's been mentioned here, then drop me a PM and we'll arrange to get you sorted out on the TVA TS.
Our allies.
For reference, here are the current TVA members. I'm sure some tags will already be familiar to you. To reiterate: Things are still earlydays, but if all goes well, you'll be seeing some more of this lot:
[DW] Druckwelle
[F] Furious
[ISK] Immortal Serial Killers
[LdD] Libertas de Dominatus
[LFS] Long Forgotten Soliders
[PV] Purple Valour
[VC] Vanu Corp
[FRC] French Connection
[DWG] Death Watch Gaming
[MDK] Mandrake
[RPS]Rock Planet Shotgun
Originally Posted by CROCONOUGHTKEY
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