Join the new world

If everybody could step down off your respective ledges, or stop throwing heavy objects at each other for just a minute. I know it's exciting that something actually happened in the eUS, and it even took a couple people by surprise. If you want you can get back to your fighting shortly.

First a tip of the cap to many in the forum thread who said a bunch of stuff I agree with and would echo. Wishing I could've written them first, but I write a bit too slowly.

For years the eUS has had military and political leaders, and armchair generals, shouting for one thing so much that it could be the official slogan of the eUS.

Coordinated Damage!!!

The pie-in-the-sky dream of every President, every General, and every soldier who watches battles closely. The perfect battle, with fighters in every division hitting just when needed, with a bare minimum of damage wasted.

Assumed to be surely impossible. Coordinating soldiers across 4 divisions is difficult enough, especially with often uneven distributions of soldiers and damage.

What's more, surely it's impossible to coordinate operations between multiple MUs, government-controlled and independent, with different leaders and different philosophies, who in some cases have trouble being in the same room together without their Q7 egos setting off WMDs.

A fantasy, all but given up on. The status quo of fighters and damage haphazardly dispersed around the globe accepted as the permanent reality.

But there are still dreamers. They happen to lead a few independent MUs, and they decided to reach for that dream. But what magic could they use to achieve the mythical Coordinated Damage?

Communication!!!

And oh how magical this communication is. MU Commanders and Officers talking not just within their own circles but talking between different MUs. Offering advice that could benefit not just themselves but can make other MUs better too. Sharing information that before has always been kept secret waiting for the best time to show "My MU is better than yours!" A collaborative planning process for a military operation, far more than "Fight here right now, I'm in charge here because my damage is bigger" but working together to get the most damage possible out of every division in every MU.

And that's what happened. Damage normally spread around the globe, once fighting individual battles and hunting for medals, concentrated in an organized operation. Damage from over a dozen different independently commanded MUs coordinated across three different simultaneous battles.

Nobody had to order, coerce, or berate any MUs into this experiment on coordinated damage. All volunteers, dreaming of what was thought to be impossible.

But this is dangerous, right? MUs can now fight wherever in the world they want! eUS fighters waving their tiny American flags around the globe, making a difference in battles of their own choosing! People not doing as they are told!

Yet that is the world we have lived in for so long now. eUS citizens fighting for whichever battle suited them, "representing the eUS" in their quest for medals, money, or personal satisfaction. MUs deploying to help in resistance wars in Canada and elsewhere because that is where they want to fight. So what is it that was so different this time?

They all did it working together, in the same place, at the same time.

Is that awful? Disastrous? Treasonous? So much worse than what came the day before, or would come the day after? Or maybe it's actually pretty exciting. Why?

The all did it working together, in the same place, at the same time!!!

For one day, just a little bit, the dream was alive.

Perceived change is scary. Unexpected things happen. Unplanned hurdles must be addressed. Things may not go exactly as you expected because there's other people out there playing the game too, and they can do things that change the status quo. We've lived in this situation for so long that we fear any potential change to it.

But do we really want to remain with the status quo? Do we want to continue seeing all that potential damage wasted every single day? Is our current situation so wonderful, and the potential alternative so disastrous? Or are we slipping further and further each day we refuse to adapt to the changing eWorld around us? And how can we possibly reach for the dream?

Communication!!!

Yes I know it's hard. People actually have to talk with each other, and listen to each other about things that are going on. You may have to share information that you could keep super secret, waiting for the perfect time to reveal it and make everybody think you're so smart and wonderful and so much better than everybody else. You might even feel compelled to share advice to help out somebody else instead of keeping it to yourself to make only yourself better.

Or you may be the one receiving the super secret information, or learning from the great advice so you can do better.

What's more, it's now as easy as it'll ever be to communicate effectively. Talk with one representative of over a dozen MUs, get information from all of them spoken through one voice, and say what you want to say just once to communicate to over a thousand independent eUS fighters.

The sun will in fact come up tomorrow, and again tomorrow independent fighters and independent MUs will be fighting all over the world. Fighting for or against countries that they chose, not doing what they've been told, because nobody actually communicated with them to tell them anything in the first place. That's the same as it's been for years, except for one little difference.

The dream is alive! It's been shown that eUS MUs can coordinate damage if they communicate. Plus independent eUS MUs have set up that potential line of communication that not just independent MUs but the government and eUSAF MUs can use to share information, learn ways to better themselves, and coordinate potentially all eUS damage and direct it using the most complete information available.

The country isn't doomed, at least no more today than yesterday or any of the days before that. And it won't be any more doomed tomorrow if a few independent MUs coordinate their damage to one battle they "were told not to" instead of fighting in a dozen different battles they "were told not to." Tomorrow is no more dangerous than yesterday was. But tomorrow does hold the opportunity to do better than the status quo. The opportunity to chase the dream of coordinated damage between all eUS MUs, government and independent.

I believe in the dream. I believe that with some communication, a bit of outreach, and a tiny bit of putting the country's well-being above stroking our own egos we can really try making that dream a reality.

Or everybody can go back to throwing heavy objects at each other.


Mercurius100
Commander, The Activity