Siege bloodlust

[Grumblesaur]

That is not necessarily a win-win solution. It is the same outcome either way. Harms the community.

It is not fair, not in the spirit of the game, and would be seen not as inRP intimidation to get a surrender, but bullying.

It does not harm the community. It harms the base. Sometimes the only goal is to get a base out of the way because it's a threat, a nuisance, or an obstruction. Why is preserving bases in the spirit of the game, when destroying them isn't? Damn near every ship in the mod has at least one gun on it, which is a clear statement that blowing things up is not only part of the game, but the intended primary course of play. Player bases even themselves can have guns, through weapon platforms. This design indicates that they are supposed to be a focal point for conflict, and the fact that they can have weapon platforms indicates that they will, at times, need to defend themselves from utter destruction, regardless of whatever negotiations come.

Furthermore, giving a faction the opportunity to remove their own assets in lieu of getting the hammer dropped on them gives them the opportunity to evacuate instead of being outright murdered. Even then, though, sometimes the goal is literally to kill the members of the enemy side. For a lore example, Royalist Gallia glassed Leeds to damage Bretonia's economy and infrastructure and to send a message that they are a powerful, dangerous force unrestricted by moral quibbling over such trivialities as "war crimes". The sieges of player bases can be viewed in such a way.

Destruction without negotiation is roleplay in such circumstances, but because it's roleplay that harms a thing that players can invest time in, it's suddenly bad? Player bases are a risky, optional endpoint to server gameplay intended to be a money sink and designed to be maintained by a sizeable group of players for maintenance and protection. Trading, mining, and smuggling have various protections regarding "reasonability" because they are more common modes of gameplay intended to populate the server with generic civilians and criminals, and to give players a means of funding their characters and projects.

Player bases already benefit from the protections offered to traders because POB maintenance and creation necessitate trading. Outside of engagements with nomads, or in certain small, protected areas, traders are given the protection of their adversaries needing to make a demand. In saying that a POB must be met with a "reasonable demand", you not only get all of the little graces offered by the rules of trading, but one final opportunity to subvert destruction with roleplay whose consequences are difficult or impossible to enforce in-game.

It should be the burden of the base operators to source their own security. If they will be unable to ensure that they or their allies are able to defend the base, then they have no business building a base at all.

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A way a lone a last a loved a long the riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay,
brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.