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

[Luna Amore]

Another question, when does your founding date become "antiquity" is it pre 2008 or earlier?

Using the forum memberlist (which doesn't show all nations, just the ones who joined the forum), sometime in late November 2003. The earliest non-mod created date on there is November 26, 2003.

[Nonononononononono]

I would also like to know the answers to the above questions. However, additionally, I'd like to know who was Franco and what DEN is.

Francos Spain.

Nations can have their own custom website?...

[Luna Amore]

Francos Spain.

Nations can have their own custom website?...

Not sure what you mean? That's the nation known as Franco. He's not around anymore. Hasn't been for a long while.

[Nonononononononono]

Nations can have their own custom website?...

Not sure what you mean? That's the nation known as Franco. He's not around anymore. Hasn't been for a long while.

Why is the nation so famous, then?

[Wisgothistan]

Francos Spain was the founder of Francoism, which basically wanted Feeders to have non puppet governments and that they should be feederite lead. Mostly, I know this from the cybernation wing of the New Pacific Order's propaganda.

[Canton Empire]

Ballo sounds like a WWII war hero. What is Ballo's attack on Great Bight and why did it matter?

[Zaolat]

DEN was a raider region/military organization. They had been around for a very long time (as that dispatch shows), but under multiple iterations/leaderships. The last one was 2015-April 2016. They were using a script developed and maintained by the DoS player Halcones, which violated all the scripting rules. The rulebreaking was so bad and so systemic, that the moderators had no choice but to forcibly disband the organization and never allow anybody to use their name again (same goes for Cora's Cimmeria org when she got DoS'd then too).

How many nations in DEN were breaking the rules, what did Halcones do wrong to get a DoS, and how systemic was the rulebreaking?

Another one of my questions: are there regions with lots of opportunity supporting communism, especially Stalinism?

Halcones was DoS'd for illegal script usage, recruitment ones primarily, along with Bob Moran. This was before DEN was obliterated aka Predator Incident.

[Altmoras]

http://nsdossier.texasregion.net/histor ... d=20110101

Between 2010/03/02 and 2010/03/08 the population of The North Pacific declined from 2,314 to 742. This coincides with a delegacy transfer between Durkadurkiranistan (DEAT) and New Kervoskia (CTE). What's the full story there?

[Frattastan II]

http://nsdossier.texasregion.net/history.aspx?region=The+North+Pacific&type=Exact&group=region&start=20090101&end=20110101

Between 2010/03/02 and 2010/03/08 the population of The North Pacific declined from 2,314 to 742. This coincides with a delegacy transfer between Durkadurkiranistan (DEAT) and New Kervoskia (CTE). What's the full story there?

Durk, the regional Delegate, went rogue and ejected as many nations as he could before running out of influence. Then he got himself deleted by replacing TNP's flag and World Factbook Entry with George Carlin's seven dirty words.

He (with the nation Durkadurkiranistan II) did another purge in October of the same year, when he illegally took over the North Pacific delegacy during a transition, and ejected over 600 nations. This latter incident was mentioned in SC resolution #33.

[Evil Dictators Happyland]

[Frattastan II]

Not sure what you mean? That's the nation known as Franco. He's not around anymore. Hasn't been for a long while.

Why is the nation so famous, then?

He founded the New Pacific Order (NPO), which has controlled the Pacific since August 2003.
I believe that originally it was a nation from the region "Spain", that moved/returned to TP and gained enough endorsements to overthrow the previous delegate, "Thedoc". Once in power, he banned the previous community, installed a new autocratic government, and created an unprecedented regime of endorsement caps (non-existent in the Pacifics before then) and mass ejections (probably only matched, in his time, by 1 Infinite Loop - delegate of TEP).

Francos Spain left NS in August 2004, but the NPO had a great influence in interregional politics for the next three years, being engaged in war / uneasy relations with the Alliance Defense Network (a defender organisation that came to include The North Pacific, The West Pacific, and The Rejected Realms).
I'm sure the history of the Pacific is mentioned elsewhere here. As well the Great Bight invasion of TNP (not a rogue delegacy). As well as Operation Puppetmaster.
They are all related. Just use the search function in this topic.

[Old Tyrannia]

(Image)

Evil Dictators Happyland: given your previous warning for spam appears to have gone unheeded, enjoy a *** one day ban for picspam. ***

[Unibot III]

Ballo sounds like a WWII war hero. What is Ballo's attack on Great Bight and why did it matter?

Ballotonia was the architect of the Puppetmaster Attack: probably the most complicated (successful) liberation ever orchestrated.

Great Bight, a rogue delegate (not so vaguely linked to NPO) in TNP, had taken control of TNP. Ballotonia, one of the benelux defenders, worked with the ADN, the major defending organization at the time, to exploit a game flaw that allowed nations to endorse nations in other regions without moving regions - combining this with the absence of national happenings (a later tech development) enabled Ballo, Crazygirl, Ananke and others to run a mass stealth coup against Great Bight, placing Ballo's nation, Better Times into the delegate seat.

It was a significant development because it liberated TNP, perhaps directing it even more along a path opposite to the other feeders, towards anti-francoism, towards liberal democracy. It was also a major victory of the ADN's and for the NPO, the loss stung; their founder, Francos Spain, basically left the game in a hissy fit (ejected from TNP and ultimately CTE'ing in TRR.) The departure of Francos Spain was the climax of the ADN-NPO "Great War" and would mark the thawing of the NPO's diplomatic relations under its new delegate, Unlimited.

[Pierconium]

Ballo sounds like a WWII war hero. What is Ballo's attack on Great Bight and why did it matter?

Ballotonia was the architect of the Puppetmaster Attack: probably the most complicated (successful) liberation ever orchestrated.

Great Bight, a rogue delegate (not so vaguely linked to NPO) in TNP, had taken control of TNP. Ballotonia, one of the benelux defenders, worked with the ADN, the major defending organization at the time, to exploit a game flaw that allowed nations to endorse nations in other regions without moving regions - combining this with the absence of national happenings (a later tech development) enabled Ballo, Crazygirl, Ananke and others to run a mass stealth coup against Great Bight, placing Ballo's nation, Better Times into the delegate seat.

It was a significant development because it liberated TNP, perhaps directing it even more along a path opposite to the other feeders, towards anti-francoism, towards liberal democracy. It was also a major victory of the ADN's and for the NPO, the loss stung; their founder, Francos Spain, basically left the game in a hissy fit (ejected from TNP and ultimately CTE'ing in TRR.) The departure of Francos Spain was the climax of the ADN-NPO "Great War" and would mark the thawing of the NPO's diplomatic relations under its new delegate, Unlimited.

The Puppetmaster plan utilized a coding loophole that was later disavowed and (supposedly*) removed from the game in order to prevent similar actions in the future. But, not before Puppetmaster II failed miserably under the same cadre of leaders - also signaling a shift within the ADN but in the opposite direction.

* I've heard different accounts of what took place behind closed doors on this matter. Sal stated at one point that it was removed from the code but others have said that it was not.

[Unibot III]

The Puppetmaster plan utilized a coding loophole that was later disavowed and (supposedly*) removed from the game in order to prevent similar actions in the future. But, not before Puppetmaster II failed miserably under the same cadre of leaders - also signaling a shift within the ADN but in the opposite direction.

* I've heard different accounts of what took place behind closed doors on this matter. Sal stated at one point that it was removed from the code but others have said that it was not.

I was later taught how to do one aspect of Puppetmaster by Ballo, the endorsement trick*, which involved manipulating the endorsement button's HTML code. That trick was not disavowed in 2004, in fact Max Barry said it was okay to use for as long as the exploit existed - but it was later removed in 2011 when the UDL started putting it into regular use for liberations.

(*It allowed users to endorse nations in regions they were not currently present in.)

I believe there was a second component to Puppetmaster, using security PINs, that allowed the 'puppetmasters' to move puppets without the users directing the accounts. But I'm fuzzy on the details and I'm prying from what I heard second hand, five years ago. I know the PIN vulnerability was removed early in the game's history but I'm not sure if it was related.

As for Puppetmaster II, it was a significant failure to liberate TNP from...well, you; a desperate organizational challenge that proved all for naught. I would agree it came at the autumn of the ADN's life, but I wouldn't attribute it to any rise in the NPO's strength - not when most of the game was starting to slip into a coma. Did it even the stakes of the Great War (then dwindling)? Perhaps.

What I would say is the absence of the ADN gave the NPO freer rein to consolidate its influence through its diaspora in the other GCRs - TSP, TEP, TWP, Lazarus - over the next, say, five years; over that period of time, NPO encouraged a sort of neutral isolationism which was ultimately advantageous to the NPO. A diaspora that's been most challenged in TSP and Lazarus, as far as modernity is concerned.

[Solorni]

I was later taught how to do one aspect of Puppetmaster by Ballo, the endorsement trick*, which involved manipulating the endorsement button's HTML code. That trick was not disavowed in 2004, in fact Max Barry said it was okay to use for as long as the exploit existed - but it was later removed in 2011 when the UDL started putting it into regular use for liberations.

This is why we can't have nice things :/

[Myrth]

The Puppetmaster plan utilized a coding loophole that was later disavowed and (supposedly*) removed from the game in order to prevent similar actions in the future. But, not before Puppetmaster II failed miserably under the same cadre of leaders - also signaling a shift within the ADN but in the opposite direction.

* I've heard different accounts of what took place behind closed doors on this matter. Sal stated at one point that it was removed from the code but others have said that it was not.

I was later taught how to do one aspect of Puppetmaster by Ballo, the endorsement trick*, which involved manipulating the endorsement button's HTML code. That trick was not disavowed in 2004, in fact Max Barry said it was okay to use for as long as the exploit existed - but it was later removed in 2011 when the UDL started putting it into regular use for liberations.

(*It allowed users to endorse nations in regions they were not currently present in.)

I believe there was a second component to Puppetmaster, using security PINs, that allowed the 'puppetmasters' to move puppets without the users directing the accounts. But I'm fuzzy on the details and I'm prying from what I heard second hand, five years ago. I know the PIN vulnerability was removed early in the game's history but I'm not sure if it was related.

PINs had been removed long before this - they effectively allowed you access to the nation in question so that you could change the password and steal it.
This is all very hazy as it happened so long ago but I believe Puppetmaster involved some very shady tactics that included the endorsement trick that you mentioned, and a second aspect that came very, very close to UN multi-ing. The second component being the source of the name 'puppet master' as it allowed a few players to co-ordinate a mass of nations.
Better Times at the time was dodging the UN updates so even though he was no longer TNP, he held onto his endorsements. Sal patched the pre-endorsing bug shortly after this.

[Escape from Trump]

I've always been curious about the history of raider/defender gameplay. Which was the first invader region and when was it founded? When did raiding become popular. Same questions about defenders.

[Myrth]

I've always been curious about the history of raider/defender gameplay. Which was the first invader region and when was it founded? When did raiding become popular. Same questions about defenders.

Perhaps not the first, but certainly one of the earliest, was the Atlantic Central Command. This was back in early 2003, just before Founders were implemented. Back then, there weren't really any organised defender organisations.

[Todd McCloud]

I've always been curious about the history of raider/defender gameplay. Which was the first invader region and when was it founded? When did raiding become popular. Same questions about defenders.

I think the first 'raider' organization came from the Farkers, who landed here from somethingawful. They ran TEP in it's early history and apparently passed the delegacy around like a hot potato. We don't know any of them now. The first known delegate of TEP is lotlanthanderamore, but she certainly wasn't the first.

[Ananke II]

I believe there was a second component to Puppetmaster, using security PINs, that allowed the 'puppetmasters' to move puppets without the users directing the accounts.

See my reply to Myrth below.

The second component being the source of the name 'puppet master' as it allowed a few players to co-ordinate a mass of nations.

That's not true. Every participant in the Puppetmaster attack moved their nations to the region and joined the UN on their own, when the order to do so went out. The plan was discussed with [violet] in advance and deemed legal or we wouldn't have used it. The only notable difference with this particular liberation compared to other big ones, was that the participants didn't know the endorsement lead in advance, which meant that noone could leak it to Great Bight.

But, not before Puppetmaster II failed miserably under the same cadre of leaders - also signaling a shift within the ADN but in the opposite direction.

eh, that never became a serious try. A bit of groundwork was done in regards to trying a 2nd time, but I think most of us knew that it was a long shot. The factors which made the first try a success had changed in the meantime and the component of surprise had been lost. Basically, a 2nd try was abandoned because it wasn't likely to succeed (and the plan which took it's place ended up working pretty well).

[Unibot III]

The second component being the source of the name 'puppet master' as it allowed a few players to co-ordinate a mass of nations.

That's not true. Every participant in the Puppetmaster attack moved their nations to the region and joined the UN on their own, when the order to do so went out. The plan was discussed with [violet] in advance and deemed legal or we wouldn't have used it. The only notable difference with this particular liberation compared to other big ones, was that the participants didn't know the endorsement lead in advance, which meant that noone could leak it to Great Bight.

Thanks for clarifying, Ananke. Not sure where I read that then.

So the second component of the mission was the ID pin of the endorsed nation (Better Times) that was distributed allowed the lead account to remain anonymous to even the participants of the liberation... correct? Makes sense, if so.

[Ananke II]

So the second component of the mission was the ID pin of the endorsed nation (Better Times) that was distributed allowed the lead account to remain anonymous to even the participants of the liberation... correct? Makes sense, if so.

Not exactly. But I expect others know the technical details better than me. I helped out with the organizing and practical application after Ballo showed me how, but don't remember all the details. It was a rather busy time.

[Gig em Aggies]

Query: What was the purpose of NS? and what were the very First Nations on NS?

Plus: Does violet have an actual nation on NS?

[Maljaratas]

Query: What was the purpose of NS? and what were the very First Nations on NS?

Plus: Does violet have an actual nation on NS?

I'm no expert, but I think I can answer these:
1) To advertise Max Barry's book Jennifer Government
2) No, but I believe she used to.