Subject: Proposal: Hostile Takeover 2 (+ Trivia)

From: Kevan Davis <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 31 Jul 2002 16:05:59 +0100

Proposal - Hostile Takeover 2

{ Altering Mergers to default to *acceptance* after two days, with
resistance only possible if the Doctrine has enough Flock to defend
itself.

But also making it easy to avoid a Merger by breaking its "initial"
rules while it's still pending; deposing the Leader it was proposed
to, or tweaking its Precepts. Which gives interesting discouragement
to becoming *too* similar to everyone else... }

In Rule 1009 (Convergent Views), replace:-

"Once the merger becomes pending, the Leader of the Doctrine that
received the merger proposal has 2 duns to accept or decline the merger.
If no response is received within that time, the merger is automatically
declined."

with:-

"Once the merger becomes pending, the Leader of the Doctrine that
received the merger proposal has 3 duns to accept or decline the merger
(a merger may only be declined if the declining Doctrine has a greater
Flock than the proposing Doctrine). If no response is received within
that time, the merger is automatically accepted."

Also replace "at the time of the merger proposal" with "while the merger
is pending", and "immediately fails" with "immediately fails (and ceases
to be pending)".

----

Trivial Proposal - Half a Person

Reword the "Steal From Others" Action to:-

"A target Doctrine must be specified for this action. 1/20 of the Flock
value of the Doctrine (rounded down to the nearest integer) leaves the
target Doctrine to join the Doctrine initiating the action."

{ Removing the "or the Flock value, whichever value is smaller" - a
number is never smaller than 1/20th of itself. }

---

From: "Jeffrey J. Weston" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 31 Jul 2002 09:20:40 -0700 (PDT)

> number is never smaller than 1/20th of itself. }

Ahem... The flock value of the TARGET doctrine could be smaller than 1/20 
of the flock value of the initiating doctrine. That wording is there for a 
reason.

-- 
Jeff Weston (Sir Toby)

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: 05 Aug 2002 09:57:03 -0400

> is pending", and "immediately fails" with "immediately fails (and ceases

OK. +10 Kevan, +5 Goateus, Ian, Nim, Zarba.

> number is never smaller than 1/20th of itself. }

REJECTED, since this seems to be based on a misreading of the rule and
allows for the possibility of more people leaving a Doctrine than that
Doctrine has.

Granted, the rule is not stated as clearly as it could be. At first I
thought it meant 1/20 of the initiating doctrine's flock or 1/20 of
the target doctrine's flock, whichever is smaller.

-- 
- Doc

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: 05 Aug 2002 11:21:10 -0400

> > that time, the merger is automatically accepted."

For clarity, I have replaced the last above sentence with

If no response is received within that time, and the merger is still
pending, the merger is automatically accepted.

-- 
- Doc