User talk:Natalya Zveda

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Leave me a message here if you wish.

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Nat - are you still active around Malton? I (Barry) recently woke up in a gutter and have been trying to put my life back together, so to speak ... --Barry Bravado 11:20, 5 Sep 2010 (GMT)

Hello, old friend. :) Good to hear from you; I hope to also see you soon. I was very active this past spring and summer, having found myself in something of a de facto leadership role for a time, when few to none of the other senior officers could be accounted for. At present, I, too, now, am attempting to return to active duty. The most recent entry on the private journal I keep is from early last month. Thanks for keeping in touch. --Natalya Zveda 11:34, 24 September 2010 (BST)

Wow, I was afraid you'd left the game altogether. Well, drop me a line when you get back on your feet, if you feel like co-ordinating activities. A (very, very) small group of us have found a private way to communicate. Let me know if you're interested. Barry Bravado 03:30, 27 Sep 2010 (GMT)

Yeah, you noticed I died, eh? Crazy times. I logged in the evening when I replied to you, and was presented with a wide-open, ruined FPPD, no living or standing 'Sards within recon distance, and, heavens to Betsy, a bona fide OMAR alt outside. I wasn't able to find a secure building before tiring out, and got chomped between then and sunrise. Will try to reconnect by mobile ASAP. --Natalya Zveda 04:14, 6 October 2010 (BST)

Malton is completely infested these days. Once we can get our respective mobile phone networks going I can give you a forum link. Until then, I'm wary of posting anything publically; I don't want to breach security for ourselves or our allies. Sorry it has to be so hard! --Barry Bravado5:00am, 7 Oct 2010

Completely understood. I'd expect no less where security is concerned. Good luck out there. --Natalya Zveda 02:07, 10 October 2010 (BST)

I sent you an in-game text message with some details. Hope to be in contact soon. I also hope you've got phone coverage! --Barry Bravado 00:10am 12 October 2010 (GMT)

The mobile service at Lindsey Towers is still out, alas. Can't wait for power to be restored there so I can check my messages! And I need to tell you something privately, too. In the meantime, stay safe. --Natalya Zveda 11:15, 13 October 2010 (BST)

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(Cleared out older messages by Brian and Hendrik today. Natalya Zveda 00:35, 28 Jan 2006 (GMT))

(Cleared out older messages by Icefox2k, Lynx7725, Dark Wingstalker, and Jon Pyre today. Cheers -- Natalya Zveda 16:55, 7 March 2006 (GMT)

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Hello. Do you speak russian? --Duke Garland_T^{LCD SSZ} 09:09, 7 June 2007 (BST)

OOC, I don't, actually. I've been trying to accent my roleplay by using words and phrases cribbed from various sources (one of my best friends, and comic books, and Web sites).

--Natalya Zveda 00:07, 9 July 2007 (BST)

Ow, that's a pity. I assume it's pretty hard to roleplay a character that speaks language you don't know. What if someone, me for example or anybody from USSR, once speaks to you in russian?.. --Duke Garland_T^{LCD SSZ} 10:30, 9 July 2007 (BST)

Yes, that's happened to me on occasion. I communicate in English in-game, though, and most people don't find that any more unusual than if my character name were "Marta Gomez" and I wasn't speaking Spanish. --Natalya Zveda 15:22, 12 July 2007 (BST)

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Hi Natalya, hope you're still in game (hadn't seen you pass by my hidey-hole recently. :). I've proposed some time ago an Op Plan for securing Lockettside, and to some extent I've implemented it.

At this point though, I'm fairly shorthanded as it is. I'm performing watch duties at both OP1 and OP2 and without our logisitics chain set up properly, I am often forced to hunt for generators, transmitters, and critically, fuel. Thus, while I hope that my activities had help to keep the lip on some of the more aggressive Zombie activities, I also realise that I've pretty much reached the limits of what a single player can do.

I'm not asking for the 'Sards to commit to this proposal; rather, I'll like inputs from the 'Sards as to the viability of such a proposal, and any improvements that you guys can suggest. Whether or not the 'Sards would support this is strictly something that is to be decided by your internal leadership -- all I'm doing is to raise awareness of it.

Have a nice day!

Thanks and regards -- Lynx7725 17:47, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

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I was wandering if you had heard anything from Barry bravado, I left on... A sabbatical of sorts, Came back to visit, and all i found was a group of Pkers under the name of "new sards", Them being pkers, and me feeling a little vengeful, i kinda.. erm... Killed 5 of them, but anyhow, i was talking to barry by cellphone, then the network went down, so i was wandering if there was any way you had contact with him?? if you do, Email me (i dont want my talk page to be a source of info for the new sards., and im sure they will be looking for me soon) at Dante_valentine@hotmail.co.uk --Dark Wingstalker ^W! 08:44, 27 March 2006 (BST)

'ello, this is Koudalen... about when the strike was taking place I took a break and have somewhat recently begun to play again but currently finding myself without an idea where to goto to join back up with the group. Originally from information I could find it appeared the group had gone its separate ways but a few days ago someone recognized me and suggested trying to get back in contact with the group. Sadly, it appears only Draznar is an option for internal messaging but as this point there has been no reply. If at all possible I would like to join back up with the group as the game tends to drag without an RP element so a direction to head would be appreciated. At present I am in an area with network coverage but otherwise I have a gmail account with the username koudalen. --Talzin 15:13, 8 May 2006 (BST)

Some of my thoughts about the game

Wishlist

• The ability to edit the "real name" and URL for a character would be very nice.

Glad that's finally been implemented. :)

Idea: Phone Mast Fleet

I think it would be interesting if MalTel or some similar group made an organized effort to have characters stationed at every mobile phone mast in the city. Permanently, mind you. I'm talking about a fleet consisting of characters who, once stationed, don't ever act in game or move from their posts. Ever. Yeah. Sounds crazy? Well, here's the thing, see: Survivors and zombies and lifeless corpses on the ground alike, can all still see whether a suburb's phone mast is powered or not. Once you get a character on a square containing a phone mast, you'll forever be able to tell, at a minimum, whether that suburb's phone mast is "active" or "inactive". Bonus if you're inside the building and can tell whether or not an "inactive" mast is actually completely "destroyed". So, all these characters would ever do is, first, move to their designated square, and then just exist on their square, for the purpose of updating the Mobile Phone Mast chart on the wiki.

Imagine you have 100 such characters evenly spread across the 100 suburbs of Malton. Every day, this group simply logs into each character and records the state of the phone mast. Now I'm not sure how the game server counts the "160 server hits" that a single IP address can make in a day, but it seems to me that if it only counts the hit made between the login page and the map page, a single person with a fleet stationed as described above could, in theory, update the entire Mobile Phone Mast chart every day, with 60 server hits to spare. If it also counts the hit made between the map page and the logout page, then a single person could still update half the chart in one day. Of course, that wouldn't be practical, and might even result in getting the entire fleet banned, so in practice this would best be implemented by a group of people, dividing the responsibility between, say, 5 people each reporting on 20 suburbs, or 10 for 10.

I'm not sure how well this idea would work in light of any anti-zerging countermeasures built into the game. (Per the FAQ: "Multiple characters found to be working together in a suspicious fashion will be automatically flagged, penalised or even banned by the system. If you're running a few characters, it's best to make sure that they stay in separate suburbs.") Just to be safe, I would not place a permanently stationary character in any suburb where I had an active character. For example, let's say I play primarily in the southwest, and I have a few stationary characters in the northeast. This is where division and coordination of responsibility would come into play: Perhaps someone who operates primarily in Yagoton would volunteer to station a second character at Penny Heights' phone mast; perhaps someone dedicated to the defense of Caiger Mall could spare a second character to update the phone mast data for the benefit of folks at Tompson Mall.

I really like your proposal and have considered something similar myself. Even dead bodies would be able to recognize blink or no blink. There is something about it that seems to violate the spirit of role playing. That said, I'm still not totally swayed against the idea. I think the concept of 10 for 10 might be more managable if there were that many commitments. Do you feel that perhaps every 3rd day might serve us just as well? In that case the number of IP addresses and committed parties that need to be involved could be further reduced. Thanks for taking the time to give it thought at all. --Spraycan Willy ^MalTel 19:46, 28 April 2006 (BST)

Hi Spraycan Willy, thank you for your response! Yes, it's definitely more of a "meta" idea, moving the roleplay from the individual level to more of a managerial level -- think "Sim City" instead of "The Sims". Coverage could only improve by adding more committed people (with separate IPs) to the project, but, yes, I think it could scale reasonably by reporting sporadically, logging into only certain suburbs across Malton in a staggered pattern every few days. --Natalya Zveda 19:51, 29 April 2006 (BST)

It is an interesting idea, but doesn't it directly come under the Zerging category Sentinel? Kripcat - ^I.U.S.S 03:10, 28 May 2006 (BST)

Hi Kripcat. To address your question, I read the "Sentinel" definition on that page. It sounds to me as though the definition refers to using two characters in one square -- "looking" with one, and "acting" with the other. The theoretical Phone Mast Fleet, by contrast, would involve a given IP address owning only one character per suburb at any time. I believe that the first part of the "Sentinel" definition is actually acceptable behavior: "A player places a character in a given building, and leaves them there. They log in every so often, thereby preventing the character from going inactive, and allowing them to check the status of the building." If all that someone does in a building is check its status and tell someone else about it, what is being abused? It seems to me that being a lookout is okay, as long as I'm not controlling a second character that moves into the same square as my lookout character. It's the remainder of the "Sentinel" definition -- "The player then knows the optimal place to move their combat mob." -- that makes it "zerging". That's my understanding of the issue, anyway. Let me know if that makes sense to you. --Natalya Zveda 10:43, 29 May 2006 (BST)

On Larger Named Groups Vs. Small Unnamed Cells

A speech given by one of my characters when the small group they're part of was considering adopting a group name and expanding.

One problem with becoming a well-known named group is that members tend to start putting trust in the group name, and by extension any individual who carries it, regardless of the individual's own level of contribution and commitment.

Another risk is that the group, once named, may succumb to group politics, develop an "us vs. them" mentality, and lose sight of the original goal of working together for the common defense.

Bureaucracy happens: The larger a group gets, the less manageable. Consider that person A declares himself a member of a named group, then does something objectionable to person B. B may then believe that the whole group should be punished.

A named group is a targetable group. A small group self-manages and self-repairs. As we are, now, there are just enough of us that we all still recognize each other and know each others' contributions.

I'd like to alternatively propose that we remain more cell-like, and cultivate new small self-sustaining cells of cooperating individuals in other buildings, rather than expanding beyond our own ability to self-manage.

As Sun Tzu wrote, 'The pinnacle of military deployment approaches the formless. If it is formless, then even the deepest spy cannot discern it, nor the wise make plans against it.'

On Low Visibility vs. Forum Exposure

Adapted from another small speech by the same character as above to members of the same small unnamed cell.

In a survivor forum that is being openly advertised, experience suggests that chances are high that the zombies will eventually be reading it too. It might be prudent, therefore, to not openly talk about one's precise location on such a forum. When representing one's group on a public forum, consider using vague phrases like 'fellow local residents', 'your neighbors', 'other nearby survivors', and so on.

Our very low visibility -- staying unnamed, no common profile tag to make us show up in stats, no group or building wiki page -- has worked very well to keep us safe so far. The moment we go public with our success, we not only invite the zombies to our door, we also attract survivors who may do nothing more than gawk, meddle, ride our coattails, or worse -- all of which will end up making us less efficient, less effective.

Group Philosophy

First, a summary of the (now-defunct) Malton Confederacy's Group Policy [1], which I deemed worth preserving:

1. We don't own Lockettside (or the southwest, or anywhere).
2. The more, the merrier: Crowds don't affect search odds.
3. Discrimination for out-of-game reasons is dumb.
4. There's no reason to attack survivors who haven't attacked us first.
5. Accept help from any source -- see point 2.
6. Our membership, not our location, defines us.

I agree with the above points, as pro-survivor groups go.