International Domestic Soccer Discussion

[Osarius]

Also, when trying to sign a free transfer, what is the procedure?
Do I need to place a bid in the 'bids' page of the spreadsheet?
Do I need permission from the current nation to sign a free player?
As soon as I place one of my clubs names in the 'new club' comumn, is that it? Is he signed?

For free transfers, no, no and yes respectively.
For bidding on players in the transfer list, yes, yes and no respectively.

[Anglatia]

I can now announce that I'll be here for at least one more cycle. In the World Cup and UICA at least, not the World Bowl or U-21 WC or many other competitions.

With that being said, if you're interested in any of my players, and I mean any player no matter how big name they are, feel free to telegram me and try to work out a deal. I'm looking to expand my nation's footballing influence a bit by getting players into foreign leagues, and my league is always up for blockbuster transfers for the right price. Our teams are also open to trades in some cases. The same goes if you want Nordskanian players.

[Qasden]

>snippity snap<

Good to see you hanging around a bit longer, Anglatia! RL's always a butt, but that's what makes NS better

If any of your players are looking for a fresh start in a new league (like Van's Primier or FP League), lmk.

---

Oh yeah, for everyone in general, there's one spot still left for the 2nd Prince's Cup! Hopefully, if knowledge doesn't slap me in the face, I should start the tourney by the end of qualifiers or after the WC proper

[Qasden]

Welp, the 2nd Prince's Cup guest spots are officially filled, but I'm more than willing to expand the tourney for 4 more guests (if that is four more countries want to throw a club in the hat), and I'll also start takin' dibs for PC3 spots too. I guess other than that my work is done here until something else comes to mind later •_•

[Anglatia]

With the window opening soon, I should mention that I have a pair of players that will be starters for my U-18 national team available for end of contract free transfers. Allie Vacek and Hakki Ojala. If you've looked at my domestic thread you already know who they are, if not, you'll see more about Allie and maybe Hakki in the RP series I'm starting for the WC playoff and am planning to continue in the Beach Cup(You'll probably see One Last Time as my series during the finals and Saints of Death as my series in the Runner Cup). If you're interested in signing either or both of them, please TG me before the window opens so I can get an idea of how much interest there is and what teams are interested.

[TOPS HQ]

To: Managers across the multiverse
CC: TOPS management

Dear,

I am contacting you on behalf of the TOPS – the Transtopia Organisation of Professional Sports. With our commercial partners, we aim at bringing a professional football league to Transtopia. This will be organised as a single entity under which the eight founding franchise will operate, each of them bringing the sports to a specific region of Transtopia. Across the upcoming weeks, these teams will be presented to the international press in the build-up to the opening season.

The obvious question arising is why I would send such an announcement to your inbox. In order to raise the level of the competition, we aim at adding talented and prestigious players to the rosters. These will of course be the ambassadors of the competition across the multiverse, a crucial and important role that will be rewarded accordingly and generously.

Depending on their personal wishes and interests, players can be signed for one, two or three seasons, after which they are automatically released. As the season wraps up with twenty match days, three play-off games and two half-season Bowl dates, it is not technically impossible to play a half season in Transtopia and one in their original nation. Draftwise, they will be assigned to a specific team for the course of this agreement. For all interest, you can reach us till the 21th of November.

Yours sincerely,
Elmer Rubnov

---

Dear all. I’ll let it to the better Sherlock Holmeses to spot which former OOC player wants to make his return here with a new project. I’ve discovered that what I like doing most is the domestic stuff, but on the other hand I love the interaction with other nations’ players.

How can you help me in doing so? No need to send your very best – even to the contrary. Those who read between the lines might have spotted that this league has a proper financial backing but a rather moderate level. What kind of players am I looking for? Older players who still want to make some good cash in the autumn of their career (because they can’t deal with top level anymore). Guys who dropped to second tier but deserve a bit of a story. Young guns from nations with IC poor leagues. A maximum of two by nation and four by user – find me by TG! Many thanks in advance.

[The Redvale]

While we're talking about requesting players, I'm going to mention that one of my main goals on NS sports has shifted to getting a top domestic league. I'm actually going to try to do it mainly with my WC puppet, Nordskania, and with this account, through RPing in UICA rather than in the World Cup like I do with Anglatia. For this account, I'm going to try something a bit unconventional and not use any scorinators at all for my leagues, because scorinators have messed up my narratives in the past because certain teams are too good and others aren't good enough, which has affected my RP. I'm going to start writing up the women's season today and the men's season will kick off when the transfer window opens.

You can check out the Redvale sports thread if you want an idea of what the country and the leagues are like, and feel free to contact me if you want to send players. I don't plan on RPing it as a top quality league immediately meaning if you have young players who won't get game time at your big clubs, you can send them here where they'll probably start every match. I also won't be playing a national team with this country in football(I'll find an IC reason for this later), but I'll have some Redvali top performers from my league up on the transfer window if anyone is willing to take a chance on them. They'll cost a lot less than other star players, mainly because they're unproven and Redvali football clubs aren't run like big businesses for the most part.

[Northern Sunrise Islands]

While we're talking about requesting players, I'm going to mention that one of my main goals on NS sports has shifted to getting a top domestic league. I'm actually going to try to do it mainly with my WC puppet, Nordskania, and with this account, through RPing in UICA rather than in the World Cup like I do with Anglatia. For this account, I'm going to try something a bit unconventional and not use any scorinators at all for my leagues, because scorinators have messed up my narratives in the past because certain teams are too good and others aren't good enough, which has affected my RP. I'm going to start writing up the women's season today and the men's season will kick off when the transfer window opens.

Man, not gonna lie, there's some major problem with the whole "not scorinate" bit.

[Qasden]

Might as well throw some players into the transfers sheet. So far I've got three on there, but I plan on putting basically my entire U21 squad on the free agents tab except for Namba and Munson (1 whom is already on a team while other is up on standard list) X3

If your interested in a QAD for some reason, claim them when you can and what not.

Cheers!

[The Redvale]

While we're talking about requesting players, I'm going to mention that one of my main goals on NS sports has shifted to getting a top domestic league. I'm actually going to try to do it mainly with my WC puppet, Nordskania, and with this account, through RPing in UICA rather than in the World Cup like I do with Anglatia. For this account, I'm going to try something a bit unconventional and not use any scorinators at all for my leagues, because scorinators have messed up my narratives in the past because certain teams are too good and others aren't good enough, which has affected my RP. I'm going to start writing up the women's season today and the men's season will kick off when the transfer window opens.

Man, not gonna lie, there's some major problem with the whole "not scorinate" bit.

How so? The only thing using a scorinator for a domestic league does is organize the schedule and mess up planned narratives seemingly every time. Except it's not that hard to manually keep up with the schedule because it's a small league and it's just a matter of making sure everyone doesn't play more than three times a season.

[Drawkland]

Man, not gonna lie, there's some major problem with the whole "not scorinate" bit.

How so? The only thing using a scorinator for a domestic league does is organize the schedule and mess up planned narratives seemingly every time. Except it's not that hard to manually keep up with the schedule because it's a small league and it's just a matter of making sure everyone doesn't play more than three times a season.

Honestly ... asking people to put their players into a league where there's 0 probability of their team winning because of another "narrative" is sorta backhanded. That's my take on it anyway.

In any case, I'd say that unexpected results create even more of a narrative than the ones you want, since that creates a narrative for the team that won.

And even then, there's still other ways to ensure a team will do specifically good or specifically bad without scrapping the scorinator. Completely predetermined results is just too ... I dunno, corrupt? It just feels illegitimate.

[The Redvale]

How so? The only thing using a scorinator for a domestic league does is organize the schedule and mess up planned narratives seemingly every time. Except it's not that hard to manually keep up with the schedule because it's a small league and it's just a matter of making sure everyone doesn't play more than three times a season.

Honestly ... asking people to put their players into a league where there's 0 probability of their team winning because of another "narrative" is sorta backhanded. That's my take on it anyway.

In any case, I'd say that unexpected results create even more of a narrative than the ones you want, since that creates a narrative for the team that won.

And even then, there's still other ways to ensure a team will do specifically good or specifically bad without scrapping the scorinator. Completely predetermined results is just too ... I dunno, corrupt? It just feels illegitimate.

That's not really accurate considering the past results in Redvale have more parity than the Premier League.

And the only thing that's come from the traditional method of running a domestic league is storylines getting messed up and my national teams getting affected. For example, having to break up a super team because they were a massive flop in the title race. Or having to add roster shakeup to a national team because the right domestic teams aren't performing.

For example, with my last nation it was hard to call Lions an important and culturally significant club in RP when in the actual results, they shit the bed often against teams that are supposed to be in relegation battles or in the mid table. The same goes for Southeastern inexplicably dropping tons of points to finish dozens of points out of the title race.

I'd rather have more control over the storylines that happen since the domestic leagues are an extension of my RP and I have plans to use them extensively for that(for example, in college football, there was potential for the NSCF storyline I'm writing now to get ruined if Mount Maris took a loss before the national title game in Redvale).

[Osarius]

I'd rather have more control over the storylines that happen since the domestic leagues are an extension of my RP and I have plans to use them extensively for that

That's fair. I imagine a lot of users fiddle the results of their domestic leagues tbh. I know I've altered ranks mid-season when it looked like a big club was falling too far behind and I had a lot of NT players in the squad, or when I calculated my ranks for a new season a team was behind the title contenders who I intended to be among the leading pack... but I guess that's not quite the same.

That said, I'm pretty sure there's no rule that says you have to scorinate your domestic league. Choosing to reveal that you're not might backfire though (as we can see). But I dunno. I mean, I can see solid narrative reasons to send players to no-hoper clubs. And there's always the free transfers tab. Not really a big deal to me, especially considering it's been revealed up front. *shrug*

[Cosumar]

The only thing using a scorinator for a domestic league does is organize the schedule and mess up planned narratives seemingly every time.

That's the thing, I don't go into each league season with tons of planned narratives. I let the scores shape the narrative as it goes along, not the other way around. Sure, it can be frustrating sometimes, but I love the narrative fluidity. A player I had no plans for can suddenly burst onto the scene of the NT thanks to the scorinator's whim. The unexpected is simply part of the beauty of sports!

And if you really want more say in how teams finish, couldn't you just adjust your ranking system? I'm not saying this "controlled" way of running a league is wrong - you're certainly free to RP however you like - but it would ruin the excitement of RPing a season for me personally. Just fundamentally different approaches to the whole concept. I'd totally still be willing to send a player over and see how it goes though!

I'd rather have more control over the storylines that happen since the domestic leagues are an extension of my RP and I have plans to use them extensively for that

That's fair. I imagine a lot of users fiddle the results of their domestic leagues tbh. I know I've altered ranks mid-season when it looked like a big club was falling too far behind and I had a lot of NT players in the squad, or when I calculated my ranks for a new season a team was behind the title contenders who I intended to be among the leading pack... but I guess that's not quite the same

I allow myself small modifications to the ranks before the season to reflect IC changes, but I've never altered them midseason (even when title contenders have been in the relegation battle - lol). I might be the minority there though.

[Valanora]

That's the thing though, even if you have planned storylines with your clubs and the players that are on them, the results of a scorination can bring out new ones or make the ones you already have turn out better. For example, both of my domestic leagues have a team or two who are the best of the best and usually win the title, with little to no fiddling from me. See, my only caveat when to rescore is when those two teams are relegated, as that to me is simply just the drastic sort of rand() that is too far from the norm to allow, something I've only had to do a handful of times in my hundreds of seasons of running domestic seasons. However that rand() also allowed for some crazy things to happened that helped writer better stories, like the team clawing their way all the way back to defeat their rivals on the last MD to secure the title on goal difference or a team that finished 8th the previous season having a great one and taking the title. To simply write and rig the results for yourself goes against the very spirit of the subforum as a whole and I doubt that you will find many users willing to send their players to a rigged league.

[Eastfield Lodge]

The only thing using a scorinator for a domestic league does is organize the schedule and mess up planned narratives seemingly every time.

That's the thing, I don't go into each league season with tons of planned narratives. I let the scores shape the narrative as it goes along, not the other way around. Sure, it can be frustrating sometimes, but I love the narrative fluidity. A player I had no plans for can suddenly burst onto the scene of the NT thanks to the scorinator's whim. The unexpected is simply part of the beauty of sports!

And if you really want more say in how teams finish, couldn't you just adjust your ranking system? I'm not saying this "controlled" way of running a league is wrong - you're certainly free to RP however you like - but it would ruin the excitement of RPing a season for me personally. Just fundamentally different approaches to the whole concept. I'd totally still be willing to send a player over and see how it goes though!

That's fair. I imagine a lot of users fiddle the results of their domestic leagues tbh. I know I've altered ranks mid-season when it looked like a big club was falling too far behind and I had a lot of NT players in the squad, or when I calculated my ranks for a new season a team was behind the title contenders who I intended to be among the leading pack... but I guess that's not quite the same

I allow myself small modifications to the ranks before the season to reflect IC changes, but I've never altered them midseason (even when title contenders have been in the relegation battle - lol). I might be the minority there though.

I'll second what Cosumar said. I find it easier to let the scores build the narrative, not the other way around. Definitely fits my style of RP'ing much more. There's something great about getting a surprising result, and then running with it all the way. An example from my own league - I have a team that has thrown away the title for three seasons in a row; however, it was the random nature of my league that first suggested that they would be title contenders (along with another team), and in the process displacing three of the initial four big teams. I took that surprise opportunity, and ran with it.

Yes, I play a large part in rigging of league - I keep re-simming to get a final league table that looks realistic ranking wise (i.e. top 5 teams actually finishing where they should, or near enough). However, that's the final table; the mechanics of the season itself is where I get my enjoyment from RP'ing - a close season, with many twists and turns (just look at my current season's results, if you want), something that keeps me interested, even though I know how it all turns out. Sure, I do have some planned narratives beforehand, and they sometimes get derailed, or delayed, but I don't mind because usually something new crops up.

[The Redvale]

As far as changing the rankings go, I have changed rankings around like Cosumar and Osarius have mentioned. My experience though is that most of my leagues have ended up either:
a: Very top heavy, where the only way to stop the best team from dropping too many unexplained results is to make them far better than everyone else and let them win the league weeks before the season is over
b: Competitive to a fault, where the mid table teams are too good and there's barely a difference between the mid table and the top tier
c: Completely unpredictable, which is the absolute worst because it messes up my RPs(for example, RC Lions losing 10-0 to Dinamo Barrier and finishing something like tenth despite being a top five team in the rankings and producing half my national team starters with Armeia)

I get that surprise is part of sports, but I'm a writer first and foremost and it's hard to write based on something that changes unpredictably and has the potential to completely shift the narrative. Even in tournaments, there's enough predictability from rankings and/or rp bonuses to have a good idea of how things should play out, which makes that not so much of a problem for RPing national teams. But I find my club results to be much more unpredictable to the point that with this nation, I would probably throw out domestic leagues completely if I wasn't writing it this way.

It's just too hard for me to tell a story based on something that can change so much, so quickly, and it does affect my national teams because my leagues are the main source of my domestic talent. For example, on my main account, Anglatia(which btw, I've paused scorinating the Anglatian league till the CoH is over), there's a team called Union South Bay that was supposed to be upper mid table at best, and now they're title contenders. It might be an exciting storyline if nothing else is planned, but it messes things up because my league is canonically supposed to be top heavy, and having a tiny club from a tiny city start dominating it hurts my national team because I have to explain how most of my talent comes from clubs that are underperforming. I had this problem as Armeia too. Canonically, Lions was a very important and significant club that produced a lot of talent, and they produced multiple starters for me, but in the actual results they were more disappointing than anyone in the league and it was hard to justify consistently using their players.

So yeah. I'm an extremely detail oriented person. Having random league results is really going to make it hard to seriously RP for UICA and also for the World Bowl, where I'm planning something about my domestic gridiron league. I'm sure some might not like it, but if I ever do turn Redvale into a high ranked UICA nation, I doubt the biggest nations are going to withhold their players because the league isn't scorinated. If you really consider it, is it even any different this way than if someone had half their national team come from one club, and so they gave that club a 100 out of 100 ranking in the scorinator to ensure that they won the title? Or if someone wanted to RP a club rising and so they had them get bought out and gave them more ranking points for a new season?

Also I just saw your post EL, and that's kind of how I did my last league. But my leagues often tie into what I RP, and it's just hard for me to have random scores when I plan things out ahead of time often. Sometimes it works out(in the case of my BoF run, where I had the idea for the nation and for what would happen for awhile before I did the actual writing) and sometimes it doesn't(in the case of the Second Torsjo War, where timing really messed it up and made it so I couldn't RP it properly), but I find that my best work is written when I can plan in detail and not wait until the tournament has already started and now I only have a day to figure out what happens(IMO my worst work was written when I only had a day to figure it out and didn't have a plan) between each game.

EDIT: Well, that post came out WAY longer than I intended. Anyway, I'll do it like this for at least the first few cycles and see where it goes. I'm not expecting to get any big name players right away, or even soon, since we're an unranked nation with no national team and an unranked league in the UICA standings. If users eventually want to send their good players here, great. If not, it'll probably be a mostly domestic league and I'll fill spots where teams want international players with free agents.

[95X]

That said, I'm pretty sure there's no rule that says you have to scorinate your domestic league.

I think a scorinated final table is the bare minimum RP requirement to enter UICA competitions (that's not an official answer though).

I once mentioned on IRC that I re-scorinated a league championship several times (only to go with the original result), and/or would resim days with strange results (such as wild high scores or mostly draws). The response was along the lines of 'you did WHAT?!'

One only needs to look at RL to see where rigging/cheating/plagiarism gets them.

Granted, bad sports roleplay is still sports roleplay, and scorinating is merely a convention used by a vast majority of users of this subforum. With that said, publicly stating that a narrative is already written probably means it would be best if that league stuck with domestic RP characters, characters from your other nations, or players from users/nations you've already planned the narrative out with. Not saying I agree with the practice though.

[The Redvale]

That said, I'm pretty sure there's no rule that says you have to scorinate your domestic league.

I think a scorinated final table is the bare minimum RP requirement to enter UICA competitions (that's not an official answer though).

I once mentioned on IRC that I re-scorinated a league championship several times (only to go with the original result), and/or would resim days with strange results (such as wild high scores or mostly draws). The response was along the lines of 'you did WHAT?!'

One only needs to look at RL to see where rigging/cheating/plagiarism gets them.

Granted, bad sports roleplay is still sports roleplay, and scorinating is merely a convention used by a vast majority of users of this subforum. With that said, publicly stating that a narrative is already written probably means it would be best if that league stuck with domestic RP characters, characters from your other nations, or players from users/nations you've already planned the narrative out with. Not saying I agree with the practice though.

See, I don't get why anyone would treat writing league RPs without scorination as if it's the same as doing it in a real tournament. Using a scorinator is practical in competitions with more than one person because it's a fair way to get results. I don't necessarily think it makes sense to always use it when there's only one person's teams. Sure, there may be foreign players, however if someone sends their player to a team that doesn't win because I didn't plan that out, I don't see it as any different as if they sent their player to a league with a scorinator and 2 or 3 teams and their player didn't win because the person in control of the league gave the two top teams a ton of ranking points.

Like, why is it acceptable to give a ton of ranking points to certain teams so they'll be successful but not to RP them the same way without using scorinators? I'm out of UICA though if that's the minimum requirement.

[Drawkland]

Like, why is it acceptable to give a ton of ranking points to certain teams so they'll be successful but not to RP them the same way without using scorinators? I'm out of UICA though if that's the minimum requirement.

The element of chance, mostly.

It's the difference between a club buying all the best players in the league to hopefully win a lot as opposed to just paying people off and using bribery to ensure wins.

[Northern Sunrise Islands]

Look, you're free to do as you wish. But there's a lot of difference from having your league be like the Premier League or Harchester United vs. Melchester Rovers: the results.

And if I'm to be questioned about whether I ever re-scorinate them, nope. I do scorinate a couple of matchdays first to see if I didn't miss any team on the process of putting promoted and relegated teams at their own divisions but that's about it, hence why the Sunrisian Championship is as random as it is. Additionally, though, I've never really had any trouble messing with puppet leagues to get results I wished from then (have Esvorpita always have Betsna Breteleva losing all the time, per example) but whenever it's UICA-related stuff, any of those things are dropped.

Plus, like it was said before, I don't think anyone would really wish to send a player just to find out "oh, it's not getting a good season because I don't wish them to". Just saying.

See, I don't get why anyone would treat writing league RPs without scorination as if it's the same as doing it in a real tournament.

Because then everyone could literally just go on and write "Dynamo (our town) won the Champions' Cup. Gols by not-Cristiano Ronaldo, that's-certainly-not-Gazza, Dragon Le and Mr. Blobby". Feels kind of Lymantatian, only without the Bressler. With the results scorinated, at least one can say their league went on to... I duno, exist, instead of being just broken up bits of games featuring one or five major teams or something like a novel, which is what most tend to gun for, really.

[The Redvale]

Alright, I'm not going to argue anymore. I've made my case and explained why I'm doing it this way. I think that this is a case of tradition being too important in NS sports, but I'm not going to change anyone's mind about it. If you don't want any of your players in the league, feel free to mention it and I won't sign any of them as free agents. However I seriously doubt that anyone will care unless it's top players like national team starters for example. I mean(and I'm not saying this as an insult or anything), we have some players who literally post hundreds of free agents and don't keep up with them like they would with important players.

I still don't think it's any difference this way than if there was a scorinator with a high probability of something. If I give a team 10 out of 100 ranking points in the scorinator for example, I doubt anyone will send players to them thinking that they'll win the title.

[Eastfield Lodge]

I think a scorinated final table is the bare minimum RP requirement to enter UICA competitions (that's not an official answer though).

I once mentioned on IRC that I re-scorinated a league championship several times (only to go with the original result), and/or would resim days with strange results (such as wild high scores or mostly draws). The response was along the lines of 'you did WHAT?!'

One only needs to look at RL to see where rigging/cheating/plagiarism gets them.

Granted, bad sports roleplay is still sports roleplay, and scorinating is merely a convention used by a vast majority of users of this subforum. With that said, publicly stating that a narrative is already written probably means it would be best if that league stuck with domestic RP characters, characters from your other nations, or players from users/nations you've already planned the narrative out with. Not saying I agree with the practice though.

See, I don't get why anyone would treat writing league RPs without scorination as if it's the same as doing it in a real tournament. Using a scorinator is practical in competitions with more than one person because it's a fair way to get results. I don't necessarily think it makes sense to always use it when there's only one person's teams. Sure, there may be foreign players, however if someone sends their player to a team that doesn't win because I didn't plan that out, I don't see it as any different as if they sent their player to a league with a scorinator and 2 or 3 teams and their player didn't win because the person in control of the league gave the two top teams a ton of ranking points.

Like, why is it acceptable to give a ton of ranking points to certain teams so they'll be successful but not to RP them the same way without using scorinators? I'm out of UICA though if that's the minimum requirement.

If you're that desperate to keep the narrative up, why not resim until you get what you want? It would be a lot easier than constructing every individual result yourself.

Also, a quick browse of the UICA rules thread suggests that scorination is not actually a requirement for entry.

EDIT: Actually, I've just been told that scorination is required. My bad.

[The Redvale]

See, I don't get why anyone would treat writing league RPs without scorination as if it's the same as doing it in a real tournament. Using a scorinator is practical in competitions with more than one person because it's a fair way to get results. I don't necessarily think it makes sense to always use it when there's only one person's teams. Sure, there may be foreign players, however if someone sends their player to a team that doesn't win because I didn't plan that out, I don't see it as any different as if they sent their player to a league with a scorinator and 2 or 3 teams and their player didn't win because the person in control of the league gave the two top teams a ton of ranking points.

Like, why is it acceptable to give a ton of ranking points to certain teams so they'll be successful but not to RP them the same way without using scorinators? I'm out of UICA though if that's the minimum requirement.

If you're that desperate to keep the narrative up, why not resim until you get what you want? It would be a lot easier than constructing every individual result yourself.

Also, a quick browse of the UICA rules thread suggests that scorination is not actually a requirement for entry.

EDIT: Actually, I've just been told that scorination is required. My bad.

I've done that, but I already listed how that's worked out for me. I'm just more comfortable doing things this way and it's less frustrating.

Also are you sure it's an actual requirement or just a convention that 99% of users follow? Three or four cycles back I entered my teams just fine without scorinating anything because it was a new league and I was waiting for the transfer window to open to start scoring it, I think.
EDIT: I just looked through the entry rules and unless I'm missing something all it says is that the teams should qualify on sporting merit in the last two seasons an that clubs can only enter the highest competition they qualify for.

[Ceni]

...but it messes things up because my league is canonically supposed to be top heavy, and having a tiny club from a tiny city start dominating it hurts my national team because I have to explain how most of my talent comes from clubs that are underperforming...

You know, your NT is not set in stone and that you can change players in your NT based on form. IIRC, that's how literally every nation does it, both IRL and in NS. You're not limited to your original 23, and things can change.