[violet] wrote:There must be a gap between what the game allows and what defenders consider "right." If there isn't, everyone in the game is either a defender or a griefer. There would be no way to conduct any kind of invasion that might interest a defender, except to break the game rules, in which case you risk having your account deleted. And there would be no real need for defenders to do anything even then, because mods could handle it more effectively anyway.
I don't see any way forward if the only acceptable solution for defenders is to outlaw invasions.
Invasions have always been legal, and that posed no problem for defenders in terms of motivation. But they were legal only within limits. The rules never permitted the total destruction of regions, for example, even if the code did. So before Influence, defenders considered themselves to be, if not game moderators, then at least on the same side of law and order - helpful players taking care of the things the mods wouldn't or couldn't. Now, the rules do permit the total destruction of regions - and pretty much anything else, too, because the code IS the rules. It's like playing cops and robbers in a world where there are suddenly no laws but gravitation.
[violet] wrote:This puzzles me, too. It reads like a treaty, where defenders agree to turn a blind eye to the less offensive kinds of invasion, while invaders agree not to conduct particularly violent ones.
It was a treaty of sorts that unfortunately never went into effect (word from older players is that the ADN et al. preferred to keep their options open in matters of espionage...). There are a few things to notice about the raider agreement to leave active regions, and the defender agreement not to interfere except to supervise: 1) This is, in effect, defenders acting like moderators and raiders agreeing to abide by their joint rules. 2) It only applied to regions that didn't have a WA (UN) delegate when the raiders came in. All other regions were still fair game. For the raiders, that meant the targets fought over could still be significant ones, and they could keep inactive regions as trophies; for the defenders, it meant that they would no longer have to dedicate troops to the defense of smaller active regions, but could concentrate more effectively on preventing big attacks.
[violet] wrote:Which is a really interesting thing to arise out of gameplay, but if it actually worked -- or, more relevantly for this discussion, if it were enshrined in the Game Rules, and violations punishable by mods -- what's left for defenders to do? Aren't you putting yourselves out of a job? Or is that kind of the point: that you're winning by preventing invasions from even getting started?
That
is kind of the point for defenders... As for the leaving us something to do, I think that could be solved easily enough. Gameplay prefers to self-govern, when we can - the ruling on Francos Spain started that, it's enshrined in the FAQ, and we've absorbed the lesson well enough that most of our new players couldn't even name the NS mods.
Moderator action is a last resort - it's what we look to for answers to problems we can't solve on our own. Any kind of appeal would probably move through the players first, in the same way that forum issues can be identified and brought by the players to the Moderation forum. (I'd prefer for all appeals to be run through a player-elected council first, actually, but I understand the hesitation there.) Being found guilty of breaking the rules agreed upon by a council of raiders and defenders wouldn't automatically result in mod action, either. Perpetrators have a Founderless home region? Then we can take care of them ourselves. Perpetrators have a home region with a Founder? Well, we can't take care of that on our own. But if the penalty for destroying a Founderless region was simply that you lost your Founded status, then we
could take over from there. And that would have a certain element of poetic justice.
Mayor For Life wrote:Completely disagree with Unibot about defenders having lost meaning (the logical extension of which is that raiders have, too). Some of my best friends are defenders and they love a good campaign, brandish their ribbons proudly in off site forums, and look forward to the next raid.
In order to prevent it, you mean.
I realize there are a number of enthusiastic defenders still out there. I was every bit as enthusiastic, until I stopped and asked myself about the principles of what I was actually doing. They're happy because they don't think about why they do what they do, and they don't need to - felt conviction is a sufficient substitute for reasoned justification. And after all, they get pretty medals. (Not picking on anyone; I have my share of defender bling as well.)
Don't get me wrong - there
are potentially valid, RL justifications for defender action, but I'll be banned if any of the defenders I know can produce them in a sustained argument. They can defend others; they can't defend themselves, and most of the time they don't even bother to try. They refuse to participate in sophisticated political or ideological discourse, and so they are relegated as a group either to the role of pawns or bystanders. "See raider, stop raider" may be all some people want out of this game, but that can't support the vibrant world of interregional politics that grew out of the original conflict. Salvaging the politics will take something other than tweaks to the invasion code.
Unibot wrote:In this hypothetical bicameral world, there wouldn't need to be a founder, as those regions that practice isolationism would have collected so much influence from having a regional delegate that just sits there - that I'm sure they could defend a raid easily.
That's only if your Regional Delegate never changed, and if the RD accumulated Influence at the same rate as the WAD, despite being non-WA. That still wouldn't help the newest, most vulnerable regions - instead, it would give the raiders two possible avenues of attack, and no guaranteed defense.
Unibot wrote:The Regional Delegate wouldn't be a position easily raided because there would be several ways to vote him into power that wouldn't allow for a raider to sneak into power easily.
Create it, and they'll use it. Our whole world is built around manipulating the system. The only two things that could provide some protection would be to assign the Regional Delegacy to the nation that had been in-region for the longest, or to leave it in anarchy.
Biteland wrote:That way, the small foundered region can still sit back and remove themselves from the defender/invader war but once they reach a certain size they should have to defend like any other non-founded region.
The first result of this would be for established regions to break themselves into chunks or subsidiary states small enough to retain Founder status, while sharing a common forum. Plus, I don't think they
should have to defend. They should be free to opt out as long as they take the basic precaution of keeping their Founder nation alive, just as we're free to opt out of RP.
[violet] wrote:Another proposal for your comments: a "Liberation" category of World Assembly Resolution. If passed, it removes the password from the nominated region.
Could be used to deal with situations like France. Liberated regions would not be able to password-protect for as long as the resolution stands.
Now, that is an extremely interesting idea. On first glance, I have some of the same concerns about it that Kandarin has. But if "as long as the resolution stands" means that it could be repealed like any other, then I'm all for it. Wow, am I for it.