NS History: You've Got Questions, We've Got Answers!

[Unibot III]

Oh, boy! Now this is a nation I haven't used for a while. Sadly no telegrams that give away what I was up to in Lazarus. Or what I was up to in the South Pacific several months later, but with a nation title of 'Mythical Mod Puppet' I sadly doubt it was anything nefarious.

<3 Awesome.

One of Lazarus's earliest delegates!

[Tinhampton]

Oh, boy! Now this is a nation I haven't used for a while. Sadly no telegrams that give away what I was up to in Lazarus. Or what I was up to in the South Pacific several months later, but with a nation title of 'Mythical Mod Puppet' I sadly doubt it was anything nefarious.

And that account's been dead for how long now, or did it die after its banjection from Lazarus?

[Myrth]

Oh, boy! Now this is a nation I haven't used for a while. Sadly no telegrams that give away what I was up to in Lazarus. Or what I was up to in the South Pacific several months later, but with a nation title of 'Mythical Mod Puppet' I sadly doubt it was anything nefarious.

And that account's been dead for how long now, or did it die after its banjection from Lazarus?

It wasn't ejected from Lazarus. The population is 3 billion now so I must have kept it alive for quite some time after that page was archived.

[Flanderlion]

And that account's been dead for how long now, or did it die after its banjection from Lazarus?

It wasn't ejected from Lazarus. The population is 3 billion now so I must have kept it alive for quite some time after that page was archived.

Lazarus didn't have ejection powers then did it?

[Frattastan II]

It wasn't ejected from Lazarus. The population is 3 billion now so I must have kept it alive for quite some time after that page was archived.

Lazarus didn't have ejection powers then did it?

It did not. They were only introduced after the creation of Balder/Osiris (which had them from the start).
The inability to control the region may be another reason for the lack of attention towards Lazarus in its first year.

[Drop Your Pants]

Lazarus didn't have ejection powers then did it?

Lazarus got a ban button slightly after Osiris and Balder. It was a great day, i caught a GGR spammer on its way through

[Unibot III]

Lazarus didn't have ejection powers then did it?

It did not. They were only introduced after the creation of Balder/Osiris (which had them from the start).
The inability to control the region may be another reason for the lack of attention towards Lazarus in its first year.

Yes I was around when Lazarus got ejection powers, but Testlandia had founder status in early Lazarus (I don't think it's faked in the WFE like NPO used to do with "Founder: Francos Spain" because Testlandia's name is actually a functional url.)

It's really just natural fluctuation, but TNP's been #1 for a while.

It's not fluctuation if it doesn't fluctuate.

There was an argument awhile ago about this which broke down into two camps: those who thought there was something hardwired into the game to do this, and those who thought that TNP was just doing a better job than the others at retaining and attracting players. I don't recall who argued what, but the thread is out there somewhere, probably in the technical forum. I think Unibot III started the thread but I could be completely wrong on that.

I was definitely concerned there might have been a legitimate bug causing TNP to receive more nations daily than other feeders. The boom in TNP's population was a modern phenomenon, it took hold around 2011 and I have to admit I was suspicious that a GCR could pull ahead past other GCRs so much.

However, Starrie in the Rejected Times dispelled most of my concerns in a really quite exhaustive article on the subject, "Why Is The North Pacific The Largest GCR?" The source of boom according to Starrie appears to be endorsement retention programs. It's something that I'll admit I got quite wrong as a TNP cabinet minister. It's easy to forget but at that time TNP was the go-to coup region, it was couped almost annually; so when I was a minister I didn't understand why a feeder which had such a high risk of coups was increasing its endorsement coups and encouraging endorsement trading. However, in retrospect, I have to admit Eluvatar's reasoning that there was safety in numbers, that liberty was all the security that a liberal democratic state needed, holds up when you look at the enduring success of those programs and its successors.

[Tinhampton]

Could somebody please tell me more about the TAO Manouver?

[Mallorea and Riva]

Could somebody please tell me more about the TAO Manouver?

The slingshot? We have a plethora of experts on that.

[Angry Kittens]

Could somebody please tell me more about the TAO Manouver?

Taken straight from TWP's RMB;

The Slingshot was invented by TAO in the early days of influence. He asked, as Delegate, a number of nations to become Guardians, nations that were allowed to increase their endo counts and gain influence.
So when a nation of relatively high influence needed to be removed from the region the Guardians and several other trusted nations removed their endos from TAO, slingshotting the next highest nation and Guardian, Cave Canem, into the Delegacy.
CC then banjected the troublesome nation, taking the hit in influence. A couple of days later we moved the endos around again moving TAO back into the Delegacy without him losing influence.
Hence the Slingshot or TAO Manoeuvre.

[Cerian Quilor]

Could someone (Unibot, someone else) explain what this mean:

the Benelux tradition of defending through Ostendt and Ballotonia, rather than the ADN or FRA

What's the Benelux tradition and how does it differ from the 'ADN or FRA' tradition?

[Punkoria]

How would you put your rules in a place where everyone can see them? I tried to put it in a google doc but not everyone can see it unless it is shared. HELP!!

[Cerian Quilor]

How would you put your rules in a place where everyone can see them? I tried to put it in a google doc but not everyone can see it unless it is shared. HELP!!

Put them in a dispatch. This is also not the right thread for that.

[Mallorea and Riva]

Could someone (Unibot, someone else) explain what this mean:

the Benelux tradition of defending through Ostendt and Ballotonia, rather than the ADN or FRA

What's the Benelux tradition and how does it differ from the 'ADN or FRA' tradition?

Presumably Unibot is referring to a distinction in the culture of defending that was promoted by the Benelux players vs the ADN/FRA orgs.

[Cerian Quilor]

Yes, bu what was that difference?

[Mallorea and Riva]

Yes, bu what was that difference?

For that, you'll actually need Unibot.

[Cerian Quilor]

Yes, bu what was that difference?

For that, you'll actually need Unibot.

I was wondering if anyone else knew what that distinction meant tho. Sounds like he was referring to a distinction that used to exist and be more broadly understood from what he said.

[Unibot III]

Could someone (Unibot, someone else) explain what this mean:

the Benelux tradition of defending through Ostendt and Ballotonia, rather than the ADN or FRA

What's the Benelux tradition and how does it differ from the 'ADN or FRA' tradition?

Benelux is a just shorthand way of saying Belgium, Netherlands, and Luxembourg. But mostly Belgium and the Netherlands in the context of NS.

I like to think of defenderdom as a tree that's growing outward with different strands, ever combining and ever diversifying. And the 'traditions' are those branches. The Belgian/Dutch tradition is one of the oldest of those branches - it's no-nonsense, relies on its intuitions, extremely resourceful and about as 'hardcore' defender as you could get. The TITO and Texan traditions would be distinct compatriots - distant to cooperative efforts, more unilateral, more militarized in its lingo and more 'American'. The ADN tradition, I see as related to the Belgian tradition but distinct: deeply political, resourceful all the same, with a more militarized culture. FRA is the child of the EAA tradition, the 'cowboys' acting outside the politicking of the RLA and the ADN.

To be blunt: these are generalizations and they never worked out to something clear that I would have written a thesis about. CQ's right that it should only be broadly understood.

But basically, I think there's a strong cultural divide in defenderdom. It's my pet theory that NationStates Gameplay came into being in the same year as the Iraq War and that had an unconscious effect on the evolution of defenderdom. There's a divide between the 'Americianisms' of TITO, TDF, RRA and the ADN, the 'Europeanisms' of the FRA, UDL, GLA, and the RLA. It's not a divide that a lot of invaders would be aware of, but timezones and culture matter to some degree in defending. Minor updates are for Europeans, Major updates are American. TITO operates on Pacific Time (because TITO was commanded by Aussies), UDL operated on EST (because UDL did a lot of major update liberations with a Canadian commander), FRA operated on British time (because its spotters were mostly British, Irish and continental Europeans.) The time zone that an organization operates in is a bigger deal than you might think, it sets the tone.

It wasn't until I largely retired from defending that I realized what a big impact being a Canadian had had on my activity in NationStates. I believe I was unconsciously echoing what Canadians have always maintained is their role to play in the world as peacemakers, multilateralists and a force for good. It's always pained me to see Canada in NationStates as 'neutral' - that's a major distortion of what Canada is and always will be. If RL Canada were really a region in NationStates, it would be one of the most committed defender regions in the game. The Canada of Wilfrid Laurier, of Pearson, of King, of Trudeau, of Chretien would never lie silent on the arbitrary invasion of regions. The position of NS Canada is an insult to the RL Canada, really.

[The Blaatschapen]

Yes, bu what was that difference?

The difference was that we usually slept during major update

Well, the Dutch. I remember Belgium sigs with lots of smileys. A Belgium flag at the beginning of 20 of them. Then followed by a Dutch flag with two smileys.

You can try to poke Riemstagrad who is still around.

Or Ballotonia himself. Crazy Girl, while Dutch, was much more in line with TRR, and we hardly ever saw her

I can't say much more, for fear of leaking potential classified information (yes, even after a decade )

Edit: Though minor, back in the days, was fairly irrelevant, since delegate changes only happened at major.

[Unibot III]

Edit: Though minor, back in the days, was fairly irrelevant, since delegate changes only happened at major.

However, the major extended much later when update was slower. It would have ended at sunrise for Europeans at its worst.

[The Blaatschapen]

Edit: Though minor, back in the days, was fairly irrelevant, since delegate changes only happened at major.

However, the major extended much later when update was slower. It would have ended at sunrise for Europeans at its worst.

I was a student, mornings were not my priority

[Unibot III]

However, the major extended much later when update was slower. It would have ended at sunrise for Europeans at its worst.

I was a student, mornings were not my priority

SAAAAAME. I should have been able to attend both minor and major but often slept past noon.

[The Blaatschapen]

I was a student, mornings were not my priority

SAAAAAME. I should have been able to attend both minor and major but often slept past noon.

Major starts at 6 and ended somewhere around 8, sometimes 9.

Noon, I could have made

[Ananke II]

The difference was that we usually slept during major update

In the early days spotting was mostly done by europeans and insomniac americans though. The sane americans would spot the early invader movements and then hand over spotting to us euros up to and throughout the update. Major update (the only one which mattered) ran from ~8 am to 12 am GMT back then. Those were fun times.

@ Unibot; The connections between defenders from Belgium/Netherlands and ADN grew pretty early. Their NS worldview were rather similar.

I'm interested in hearing how you think the 'americanism' and 'europeanism' affected the defender groups you mentioned? Especially considering minor update wasn't a thing at the time several of them were active.

[Tinhampton]

Although it was not an eventful year (for obvious reasons), what exactly was GP's most notable event in 2002?