Quote Originally Posted by econ21
Sorry - no proxying, AussieGiant should autoresolve the battle and move on to the next turn.

If players are on reserve duty, they should inform the Chancellor in advance and he will try to keep them out of danger. Warluster did not do that - he mentioned difficulties in the OOC thread last week, but then reported that they were being solved and did not update the active duty list. He also turned down both AussieGiant's and my suggestions for "safe" moves for von Salza this turn. I had a PM exchange with Factionheir in which I questioned whether Warluster could pull off the high risk move that von Salza has taken, but Factionheir went ahead and ordered it anyway.

I am loathe to have other players act as subs for army commanders. We allowed that with AussieGiant in the past because he contributed a lot to the role-playing without an avatar for months and then, when he finally got an avatar, had to go away on business for months. However, even then I felt uneasy about his avatar accumulating vast amounts of battle traits based in part on other players fighting the battles. At the time, we did not have many (any?) other Austrian avatars, so it was pretty much a necessity in game terms and not such a big deal OOC. But it does not seem right that we have players who can fight kicking their heels while players who can't fight have their avatars pick up the traits and players who may have armies and battles of their own also fight other people's battles.

Keeping the close bond between the avatar and the player adds a lot to the role-playing of the game, increases the challenge for the Reich and helps share out the battles to available players. I would only offer the deal we offered AussieGiant to another player reluctantly - much better, I think, to have their avatar find a replacement army commander, move to a safer spot and do some civic work governing a city. If you want to get lots of battle traits, fight the battles. I am not inclined to offer it just because a player doesn't install 1.2.
Placeholder reply. Need to catch a train first.