Horizon Federation-RentDueYesterday War

Horizon Federation-RentDueYesterday War
A Horizon Federation "lagfleet" sieges the Vega siege station DeepSpaceFuelDepot.
Date 6 October 2023 - 8 January 2024 (94 days) Location Server-wide Result Vega drops out of war on 7 December 2023 with white peace. RentDueYesterday dissolves and is replaced with the Andurian Federation on 8 January 2024. Horizon Federation formally dissolved on 5 February 2024.
Participants
Horizon Federation Arimfea Orovika Imperial Nova Cortesia Del Mar New Amcar Shadow United Federation of Planets Sanctuary	RentDueYesterday Vega

The Horizon Federation-RentDueYesterday War was a major military conflict on Horizon's End, fought between the large pirating nation of RentDueYesterday and their ally Vega against the Horizon Federation coalition, at the end of 2023.

History

Prelude

Shadow-Orovika War

Main article: Shadow-Orovika War

Prior to the establishment of RentDueYesterday, several of the players who would go on to create it, including FellOffBridge, AdelieXY, and Noix444, fought for the nation of Shadow (then under the control of Ae0n) in a smaller conflict against Orovika.

This conflict, which lasted from 22 August to 29 September 2023, is widely considered to be a progenitor to the Horizon Federation-RentDueYesterday war, as it involved many of the same players fighting one another on the same sides as the Horizon Federation-RentDueYesterday War would. Several pirate players involved in the conflict (most notably FellOffBridge) transitioned seamlessly from fighting Orovika for Shadow to fighting Orovika (and others) for RentDueYesterday, even after peace was struck with Shadow on 29 September.

Arimfean Piracy

The nation of Arimfea has, under the leadership of several different governments, historically vacillated between permitting and not permitting piracy among its members - that is, allowing them to attack other players on the server apolitically. Under the leadership of Grand Vizier Vortexion, and especially following Arimfea's alignment with the privateer-dominated Alliance of Regulus in the Alliance of Regulus-Vega War, Arimfea had largely normalized its relations with other nations by September 2023, and presented itself as a respectable diplomatic player.

However, Arimfea at this time did not fully purge all pirates and piracy from its ranks. The players FellOffBridge and K9_Caper, both members of Arimfea, still engaged in occasional piracy and mercenary work, actions to which Arimfea largely turned a blind eye throughout September 2023. Publicly, Vortexion managed these contradicting aims via a delicate diplomatic balance. Privately, he justified these internal contradictions as a lesser of two evils: he reasoned that Arimfean pirate players like FellOffBridge, if forced to choose between Arimfea and piracy, would choose piracy over Arimfea; thus, by keeping Arimfea hospitable to these players, he could retain control over them and limit the damage they caused to the server.

On 7 October 2023, one day after the Horizon Federation was established, Vortexion said in the Horizon Federation discord,

"I hope you finally see what massive tidal wave of shit I was holding back."

Establishment of RentDueYesterday

The nation of RentDueYesterday was established on 20 September 2023 (while the Shadow-Orovika War was still ongoing) by FellOffBridge and K9_Caper. The following day, K9_Caper seceded over not wanting to indiscriminately target personal allies, and joined Imperial Nova instead; this left FellOffBridge in full control of RentDueYesterday.

RentDueYesterday quickly recruited other pirate players such as AdelieXY and BrooklynSupreme to their ranks, and began broadening the scope of their attacks (though they did not immediately target the entire server). In addition to fighting Orovika on behalf of Shadow, RentDueYesterday began attacking Imperial Nova, leading to the establishment of an informal anti-piracy alliance between Orovika and Imperial Nova on the evening of 29 September (a few hours after peace was struck between Orovika and Shadow).

Vortexion announces a rework of the Fortitude no-fire zone.

Fortitude No-Fire Zone Rework

In the intervening week between the end of the Shadow-Orovika War and the start of the Horizon Federation-RentDueYesterday War, RentDueYesterday engaged in independent piracy against Orovikan and Novan targets, to which Orovika and Nova responded with fleet action.

A majority of these fights (as in most wars) occurred in Regulus. At this time, Arimfea maintained an absolute "no-fire zone" policy within the bounds of their space station Fortitude, located in northern-central Regulus (as Vortexion described it in June 2023, "violate the safezone and I violate your ships"). FellOffBridge in particular made extensive use of this policy to escape counter-attacks by Orovikan/Novan forces, which led to strong diplomatic pressure from Orovika and Imperial Nova on Arimfea to rework the rules of the Fortitude no-fire zone.

This issue came to a head in a battle on 4 October 2023. In a battle report in the Orovika discord, yodabird19 describes:

Fell piloted a gunship and started dogfighting me over Vask. When PepperedApple showed up to back me up, Fell fled into space and started cruise-dcing northwest. I pursued him while everybody else tried to jump in front of him, but he made it inside Fortitude's borders and everyone decided to pull off but Longy, who was quote "not gonna play his games". 
Longy sunk his unpiloted gunship inside Fortitude, and Fell (as anticipated) did his level best to get Vortexion to declare war. Vortexion publicly demanded a stack of chetherite blocks as reparations for damage incurred to the station's glass ceiling (Fell tried to fly into it) and for "violating the no-fire zone"; when Longy went to fortitude to fork over the reps, Fell shot him dead. Vortexion proclaimed, "oh my god this is such a clusterfuck", and presumably went to bed.

The following day, on 5 October, Vortexion posted a message in the Horizon's End #server-news channel entitled "FORTITUDE NO-FIRE ZONE REWORK". The message stated that "warships may not invoke the no-fire zone under any circumstances", and that "dragging ANY AND ALL kind of conflict to Fortitude...is considered a breach of the no-fire zone". This is broadly understood to be the moment at which Arimfea ended its strategic balancing act between its pirate and non-pirate interests, decisively putting its foot down against the actions of RentDueYesterday.

Conflict

yodabird19 describes to the Orovikan military the incident that started the war.

6 October Incident

While RentDueYesterday had engaged in attacks against colonist targets on the server since its establishment, the 6 October Incident is regarded as the point at which the war truly began.

At 8:33PM EDT on 6 October 2023, MaidPierce of Vega (which had hitherto been completely uninvolved in server affairs since the end of the Alliance of Regulus-Vega War on 10 September) attacked and sunk KR_Builder's medium freighter in Regulus. Immediately thereafter, Vega's intentions became clear when they established in-game "ALLY" relations with RentDueYesterday.

This development drastically increased the severity of the conflict, as Vega possessed both more and more skilled SvS pilots than RentDueYesterday. It also immediately increased the scope of the war, as Vega leaguing with a pirate nation invoked the latent Alliance of Regulus's stipulation to return if Vega posed a threat to server well-being in the future, thus obligating Arimfea to join the conflict alongside Orovika and Imperial Nova. The need for a new alliance between Arimfea, Imperial Nova, and Orovika, coupled with the fact that FellOffBridge owned the old Alliance of Regulus discord server, led that same evening to the rapid establishment of the Horizon Federation, an emergency coalition to fight RentDueYesterday and Vega.

Lagfleets

For the bulk of the war, the Horizon Federation fought from a significant disadvantage. Reminiscent of the Allied Sovereign States before them, the Horizon Federation suffered from lower SvS skill, worse ship designs, and less effective combat coordination and tactics, than their Vegan opponents. Being the largest alliance in the history of Horizon's End, however, the Horizon Federation possessed one critical advantage, which they would lean on during the war as much as they could: their extreme numerical superiority.

This led to a Horizon Federation fleet doctrine heavily centered on turning out as many people as possible to every single fight, with almost no other considerations taken when selecting combat matchups. In practice, Vega and RentDueYesterday forces typically would not voluntarily engage Horizon Federation fleets of this sort (which were often liable to outnumber them 2:1 or even 3:1), and disorganization within Horizon Federation fleets made coordinated chasing impossible, making this fleet doctrine into essentially a stalemate tactic. As a result, Horizon Federation fleets would often be composed heavily of players with little to no SvS experience, as the only qualification required to join such a fleet was being another ship to increase the fleet's size. This type of fleet was dubbed a "lagfleet" in popular vernacular, since piloting so many ships at once would typically lag the server, often to the point of making combat completely impossible, even if Vega and RentDueYesterday had wanted to engage the fleet.

This strategy is generally looked upon poorly by most players on the server today, for two primary reasons:

• Perceptions-wise, "lagfleet" fleet doctrine is viewed as tantamount to a concession in combat. This strategy required little-to-no combat skill (as evidenced by the fact that the fleets often consisted of people with minimal SvS training), and as such is generally understood both by ex-Horizon Federation and non ex-Horizon Federation players to be symptomatic of a sharp skill differential between the Horizon Federation and their opponents in this war.
• Tactically, "lagfleets" are generally not effective at anything more than stalemating. While this made them useful for taking siege stations, they were extremely ineffective at incurring losses to Vega or RentDueYesterday (and on the rare occasions such fleets engaged in combat, the result was typically multiple sinks on the Horizon Federation side). This deficiency was the chief motivator for the radical departure of Ilios Alliance fleet doctrine during the Ilios Alliance-Vask Authority War six months later.

Activity Crisis & Vegan Drop-Out

The war placed significant stress on the player-base of Horizon's End. The Horizon Federation, which continued to expand (admitting nations such as Shadow and Amcar) as RentDueYesterday and Vega began attacking even more nations, ultimately composed the vast majority of Horizon's End's active players; the bulk of these players did not want conflict, nor were they prepared to handle it. This resulted in a steady and persistent decline in activity among the colonist playerbase of the server; GutinGongoozler, the server owner, admitted bluntly that "the late 2022-early 2023 period was known for low player counts". yodabird19, following the war's conclusion, described this decline in activity in the following terms:

RDY especially did a fantastic job of illustrating to everybody just how pointless and interminable war and combat is on this server, [in my opinion]
it doesn't matter whether you fight back or don't, nothing you can do (ingame) will actually bring a war any closer to ending
why would anybody log on to fight a war they neither asked for nor can do anything to end?

As a result of this dissatisfaction, on 6 December 2023, an incident occurred wherein Vortexion posted a poll to coalition membership, proposing the delivery of the following ultimatum:

Ultimatum vote:
Either staff enforces a clean ceasefire with no terms on either side, and ends this war, or the HF and its members quit HE for a healthy while. Yes/No?

While the poll received 90% votes against, and the ultimatum was never delivered, it is strongly hypothesized that this incident prompted unofficial intervention from the Horizon's End Staff in the war. Moderator ItsAlreadyGold said,

As a mod, I'd like to make it clear that the mod team and Gutin are already in support of fixing things to make it fun for everyone again, instead of just a handful of players (For those of you who are not in the staff discord). You don't need to convince us of what we already believe.

The following day (7 December), Vega announced that it was exiting the conflict, offering white peace to all nations in the Horizon Federation. The remaining month of the war would be fought exclusively against the forces of RentDueYesterday.

yodabird19, in the Horizon Federation leadership chat, summarizes the events of the day.

Dissolution of RentDueYesterday

The final month of the Horizon Federation-RentDueYesterday War was less intense than the period which saw Vegan involvement, though still far more severe and pervasive than prior to 6 October 2023. The war continued with largely the same dynamic as it previously had, save that Horizon Federation combat victories became more common, and RentDueYesterday piracy attacks somewhat less frequent.

The Horizon Federation-RentDueYesterday war ultimately ended when, with little warning, FellOffBridge left RentDueYesterday to join Vega, leaving RentDueYesterday to pqio. FellOffBridge and other ex-members of RentDueYesterday have identified this development as originating out of boredom - that is, the members had grown tired of fighting the Horizon Federation, and so simply elected to stop.

Aftermath

Andurian Federation

Upon acquiring control of RentDueYesterday, pqio immediately reformed it into a second iteration of the Andurian Federation. pqio immediately offered white peace with the Horizon Federation, which the Horizon Federation accepted the following day (9 January). pqio signed off his announcement of the Andurian Federation's reconstitution by saying, "the old alliances are dead and the war should die with them".

The Andurian Federation would be re-formed into Vask Authority on 3 May 2024.

Dissolution of the Horizon Federation

Following the war's end, the Horizon Federation was not immediately dissolved, as its members were not certain that the peace would last. However, there existed a consensus among the leadership of the Horizon Federation that, as the alliance had been formed as an emergency coalition to fight a specific enemy, the alliance should expire in the absence of a clear need for it. Consequently, on 5 February 2024, yodabird19 announced the official dissolution of the Horizon Federation:

Formal Dissolution of the Horizon Federation
Four months ago, the Horizon Federation was formed to protect its members and the server from an existential threat. Now, the war is over - the server has been at peace for four weeks - and thus, as was promised, so is the wartime alliance. 
With the unanimous support of the Leadership Council, the Horizon Federation is hereby disbanded; relations between members will be returned to their pre-war state, and member states are free to pursue diplomatic objectives amongst each other and with other states independently.
We earnestly thank every nation and player that has sought, through this alliance, the achievement of a better Horizon's End - and now that we can say with confidence that we have achieved it, we look forward with eager anticipation to what the future brings.
Sincerely,
Leaders of the Horizon Federation

Several former members of the Horizon Federation (Cortesia Del Mar, Orovika, and Shadow) would go on to form the Ilios Alliance on 23 April 2024.

Legacy

RentDueYesterday's reign is considered a blemish on the server's history, due to both the involvement of Vega (whose military supremacy made the conflict extremely one-sided), and the relentless nature of the attacks carried out by RentDueYesterday. The war is generally held to have been the second-worst driver of players quitting the server, after the Cheth Wars of 2022.

RentDueYesterday is often used as a meter-stick against which other player groups perceived to denigrate server health are measured; the Horizon Federation-RentDueYesterday War is considered by many to be the archetypical example of pointless combat.

Calls for changes to server mechanics that would make combat more consequential and meaningful, which were spurred on primarily by this war, led to the implementation of supercapitals, as well as the combat tag system.