Military Gameplay and Game Mechanics - A Primer

[[violet]]

I would like to add that the suggestion to add a continuous Influence cost for to keep a password up is a very good one. [...] The current cost to institute a password is not a significant deterrent, as the ratio of influence spent to reward gained is far more favorable than anything else that Delegates can spend influence on. It's such a great bargain, so to speak, that invaders aren't interested in the rest of the product line.

Raising the up-front cost might help, but unless it was raised by a truly massive amount the effect would likely be the same. Rather, I believe that instituting a daily influence cost to maintain a password would work as a solution to the problem. It would force invaders to strategize, to allocate their influence resources between defensive (passwords) and offensive (eject/ban) maneuvers. In passwords, invaders have an easy, unbeatable defensive tactic that lets them use offensive moves without the risk that really ought to be involved.

Very good to know. What about both? (I.e. big increase in cost to implement, plus maintenance cost.)

My concern with maintenance cost is it might force all passwords to be temporary--that is, regions currently using it to keep themselves safe will be unable to afford to continue doing so.

Passwords are certainly intended as a defensive measure; if there was a way to reduce their usefulness as an offensive weapon, that would be great.

[Dyani]

Probably not something you can use, but it has been bugging me..

All you need to do now, is park a puppet in a region, let it gain influence (all you need to do is log in once every 60 days) and when you feel it's been there long enough, slam a WA membership on it and you have enough to kick a load of people out and password the place. It's no effort at all and you can grief a region, no problem at all.

What I was wondering is if you cn make something that seperates "staying in the region rights" from "being able to password and kick" influence. Or more precise, seniority in the region as a whole as opposed to influence of UN nations...does that make any sense, it's late here..

[[violet]]

All you need to do now, is park a puppet in a region, let it gain influence (all you need to do is log in once every 60 days) and when you feel it's been there long enough, slam a WA membership on it and you have enough to kick a load of people out and password the place. It's no effort at all and you can grief a region, no problem at all.

That's a very slow way to gain Influence... any native with even a single WA endorsement will be earning it faster than you. I wouldn't think you'd be able to kick any of them out upon gaining Delegacy, at least for a while.

Edit: Sorry, I forgot to actually address your suggestion. Influence as it exists is the best measure we have of nativity. It's an automatic metric of how much the region you're in "belongs" to you. I can't think of any better way to judge that, although if you have one, let me know.

[[violet]]

Here's another proposal I'd like Gameplay feedback on: an idea called Regional Absorption. It would essentially be a new type of regional invasion game, like this:

Nations in the region "Australia" decide they want to conquer the region "New Zealand." Australian invaders pile into New Zealand and seize the Delegacy. The Delegate of Australia (remaining behind) clicks a link in Region Control to attempt to "Absorb" New Zealand, and the new invader Delegate of New Zealand clicks a new link that says yes to the Absorption.

As days pass, nations get sucked from New Zealand to Australia. This can be canceled at any time by either Delegate. But if nobody stops it, then after a while all residents of New Zealand are absorbed into Australia.

The main difference to the traditional invasion game would be that rather than attempting to eject nations from somewhere, you're trying to bring them to somewhere. Since the invasion can be halted by gaining power in either the region being Absorbed or the one doing the Absorbing, invaders would need to hold a power base somewhere, rather than roaming around homeless and attacking from nowhere.

[Errinundera]

There is a fundamental split in NationStates that is, in my view, unresolvable.

1. Raiders / Defenders want to interact with non-raiders / non-defenders. The OP makes that point clearly. The reward for raiding is doing it to players that don't want it. The reward for defenders is to protect the victims.

2. Non-raiders / non-defenders do not want to interact with Raiders / Defenders. Period. They want to be left alone.

You cannot reconcile the two. Encourage raiding and people will leave NationStates. Simple as that.

Anyway. Some questions on absorption.

1. Could nations join regions in the process of being absorbed?
2. Could absorbed nations relocate to their old region while it is in the process of being absorbed?
3. When the absorption process has been completed, can a nation re-found the absorbed region?

Finally, some comments about "trophy" regions. Some region have trophy names. No two ways about it. A region called "America" would be lusted after by all sorts of people. My region, Forest, is also a trophy name. It's why I and my fellow natives have nurtured it over several years. If you want to develop an environmental region, you could hardly choose a better name. We don't need to advertise ourselves. Enviromnentally minded nations find us. It also make us a target. We got around that by re-founding the region.

If Forest were absorbed I would imagine that those of us who didn't get jack of it would start a new region and then slowly develop it. Till the next invasion / aborption. It's not an appealing prospect.

[Numero Capitan]

Here's another proposal I'd like Gameplay feedback on: an idea called Regional Absorption. It would essentially be a new type of regional invasion game, like this:

Nations in the region "Australia" decide they want to conquer the region "New Zealand." Australian invaders pile into New Zealand and seize the Delegacy. The Delegate of Australia (remaining behind) clicks a link in Region Control to attempt to "Absorb" New Zealand, and the new invader Delegate of New Zealand clicks a new link that says yes to the Absorption.

As days pass, nations get sucked from New Zealand to Australia. This can be canceled at any time by either Delegate. But if nobody stops it, then after a while all residents of New Zealand are absorbed into Australia.

The main difference to the traditional invasion game would be that rather than attempting to eject nations from somewhere, you're trying to bring them to somewhere. Since the invasion can be halted by gaining power in either the region being Absorbed or the one doing the Absorbing, invaders would need to hold a power base somewhere, rather than roaming around homeless and attacking from nowhere.

Its an interesting idea, would completely change the dynamics of the military game. However i have a number of concerns/questions...

- If influence supposedly legalised griefing, at least to some extent, then this would encourage griefing. Never has griefing reaped so many benefits.

- Would there still be an eject button, for getting rid of unwanted individuals. I don't think many armies would like to start absorbing the enemy into their region?

- Would feeders be included? This would present a ridiculous advantage to anyone controlling a feeder, but that might make feeder politics even more interesting and draw people back into them. Newly created nations would have next to no influence cost to absorb into your region as it stands which would make recruiting useless.

- Surely you're not going to force natives to stay in their invaders region? They must have the option to move every time or they'll just scrap that nation and start over. Similarly resistance movements would puppet flood their regions to waste invader influence by being absorbed and then moving straight back out the invader region.

- It swings the game very heavily in favour of invaders. How can a defender region function if all newly created nations are being absorbed by invading forces? It'd become increasingly harder for defenders to keep regions on their side as well because invading would be too beneficial. That would kill the defender/invader conflict and part of what has made it work so well has been the rivalry between invaders and defenders.

- I assume this will only include founderless regions? I can see that killing the military game completely by culling the available founderless regions left to invade.

- How will the game mechanics work out which nations to absorb when. I can see someone gaining the delegacy and then seeing all the WAs holding them in place being the first to be absorbed back into their home region and so they lose the delegacy straight away.

- Will absorbtion simply use up all their influence every day? That'd make it impossible for them to select who to eject if they're a security threat.

- You post didn't sound like it but perhaps you had a manual system in mind. This would work better at least because it would avoid several of the problems mentioned above. But I'd suggest a better option would be the power to choose what region you eject nations into (keeping a default eject button that sends them straight to TRR or protecting regions at update would be impossible if you had to choose the location every ejection.)

[Unibot]

My concern with maintenance cost is it might force all passwords to be temporary--that is, regions currently using it to keep themselves safe will be unable to afford to continue doing so.

True, but there would still be a founder to implement a password - that way it would drain his influence dry but it wouldn't matter. A delegate however is a raidable position and therefore a perpertual password is a concern. For regions without a founder however, I fear they may be left in the dark ... unless of course they can "absorb" a region with a founder - and gain a founder without a name+populance+WFE Change.

I also really like the sound of the absorbing feature - however there are questions to be asked of such a implementation. People that are actually experienced in such a atmosphere as raiding/defending would know better than me if absorbiving is a good route to go.

[The Bear Islands]

My concern with maintenance cost is it might force all passwords to be temporary--that is, regions currently using it to keep themselves safe will be unable to afford to continue doing so.

True, but there would still be a founder to implement a password - that way it would drain his influence dry but it wouldn't matter. A delegate however is a raidable position and therefore a perpertual password is a concern. For regions without a founder however, I fear they may be left in the dark ... unless of course they can "absorb" a region with a founder - and gain a founder without a name+populance+WFE Change.

Founders don't pay influence to use the Regional Controls.
And how could a region with an active Founder, able to repel attacks, be forcibly absorbed?

(Oops! Posted while logged in as a puppet: this is Bears Armed...)

[Thandryn]

You cannot reconcile the two. Encourage raiding and people will leave NationStates. Simple as that.

I disagree, raiding and defending makes the game far more exciting and if you look at some of the most high profile battles scores of nations get involved and if you have several major confrontations every once in a while interest would be greatly increased

[Somewhereistonia]

You cannot reconcile the two. Encourage raiding and people will leave NationStates. Simple as that.

I disagree, raiding and defending makes the game far more exciting and if you look at some of the most high profile battles scores of nations get involved and if you have several major confrontations every once in a while interest would be greatly increased

For you it may be more exciting, but role-players (at least the majority of them) do not want anything to do with raiding/defending. Many people would strongly consider leaving if their role-play regions were continually invaded. It would be an annoyance, not something that creates interest.

[Starblaydia]

For you it may be more exiting, but role-players (at least the majority of them) do not want anything to do with raiding/defending. Many people would strongly consider leaving if their role-play regions were continually invaded. It would be an annoyance, not something that creates interest.

^^ This ^^

[Numero Capitan]

You cannot reconcile the two. Encourage raiding and people will leave NationStates. Simple as that.

I disagree, raiding and defending makes the game far more exciting and if you look at some of the most high profile battles scores of nations get involved and if you have several major confrontations every once in a while interest would be greatly increased

That wasn't what was being suggested by the author I don't believe. Currently NS is coded in favour of natives because of the influence rules and raiders have to adapt to that. The changes [violet] suggested would tilt the balance in favour of raiding (eg, if you raid you can expand your region) which would make raiding an even bigger pain for the majority of players who dont want to be involved with that side of the game.

I believe that you can't alter the balance to favour raiders too much because it makes it unsustainable. Raiders rely on a decent flow of founderless regions, natives to oppress (or the warzones would be used a lot more), and for it to be immoral in game terms in order to spark a response and encourage defending, thus sparking the actual "conflict" that raiders originally strive for. Without that they'd just be moving around like gypsy's.

That could be a slogan "Defenders: we turn the gypsies into invaders".

[Naivetry]

Great thread! Thanks for sharing this, Naivetry.

Anytime. Ballotonia covered a lot of what I would have said in clarification, but let me see what I can do to fill in the gaps.

Before it was clearly stated that it was illegal to empty a region in the course of an invasion. Now that's legal to do. Legalizing it ended the moral argument in the favor of the invaders: it's ok for them to do such a thing.

This game allows all kinds of actions that may or may not be OK, depending on your point of view. The most obvious example is how a Delegate should be elected: is it OK for a Delegate to eject anyone who gains more than a certain number of endorsements? Personally, I think no: that is an abuse of power. I also think a nation should be democratic, not a dictatorship. But the game allows you to do whatever you like. The absence of an endorsed set of values is a major part of NationStates.

There may not be an officially endorsed set of values, but the code itself creates an implied set of values that the politicians have to work with. That was the real brilliance of Francoism. Francoism identified the Feeders as the means of production (the source of the new nations which all other regions must possess in order to survive). It found a compelling political expression for the game-coded reality, and that's why it struck a chord with and inspired such loyalty from a very talented group of players.

Similarly, the game gives all power to dictate regional policy either to the Founder, or to the nation with the most endorsements - the one with the most "popular support." And every political debate centers not on differences of opinion about whether or not a Delegate should be able to eject a nation that gathers more than X endorsements, but about what counts as the popular support that gives him the right to do so - the vote and oversight of the citizens on the off-site forum, or simply the support of the WA nations on-site.

You can ignore that coded set of values for a while - you can say, for instance, that Francos Spain is a dictator and doesn't really have popular support, because he's just banning all his opposition. But at the end of the day, you have to deal with the fact that there are more native nations supporting him and his regime, whether from fear or from indifference, than you can gather to overthrow him. And that's why, even after an incredibly convoluted and drawn-out Cold War scenario, the ADN finally was forced to drop its opposition to the PRP/NPO...

The only way I can make sense of your argument is if you're saying Defenders should be unofficial moderators. That is, we should say that behavior X is illegal, but also make it possible to do it, so when somebody does, Defenders can oppose it in the name of the game itself. But that seems a little weird, and is not my understanding of how they operate.

That was how we operated, however - it's how we saw our mission, and that's what lent it urgency. The raider/defender conflict could become very personal and intense. The spy game, in particular, begged all kinds of questions about the line between game and reality. Players would adopt alternate RL identities, work their way into the trust of other players and become their "friends" on a forum by portraying themselves as someone they were not, only to betray the people they had befriended by leaking information on their military activity. That's a hard position to justify morally in the best of situations... and it's practically impossible to justify it if the argument is just about which side you're on in an impartial game. A purely in-game conflict cannot support the passion that drove people to do the out-of-game things they did - from spying, to keeping your phone next to your bed so your commanding officer could call you at 4 in the morning if you were needed to help stop an invasion. Only if RL rules are being broken can you even begin to justify RL betrayal. Only if RL rules are being broken can most people even justify losing sleep over the cause.

It seems to me there's a clear moral argument for Defenders: "Regions belong to the residents, and invaders have no right to it." What's wrong with that?

It has no basis in coded reality. It may and often does have a basis in RL conviction, but when you're looking at the choice between staying up another two hours or going to sleep, that RL conviction founders pretty quickly on the rock of It's Just A Game. And who are we to impose our RL convictions on other people, after all?

Those of us who care about political gameplay are consummate metagamers - because politics must address the whole of reality. We deal with getting real people to take real actions; you can't overlook inconvenient facts or arguments when you're trying to convince someone else to do something for you. And one very inconvenient fact is that the game code of conduct as embodied in Influence excuses the things we'd like to condemn - particularly, the destruction of a community by emptying out a region. We can either acknowledge our coded irrelevance and leave, as many of us did post-Influence, or we can acknowledge our coded irrelevance and explicitly defy it by taking it upon ourselves to impose a better, truer standard based solely on our RL convictions and in defiance of the moral ambiguity written into the game code.

What are some examples of the "real outrages" you refer to? Gimme some details.

I think he meant regions with communities in them being emptied out completely.

1) She.
2) Yes. Feudal Japan and France are the two examples I've used, both significant communities destroyed within the last year. I pointed out Feudal Japan because we had an embassy with them, and I would've contemplated murder to be able to return their region to them; France because it's an example of the failure of Influence to protect against region destruction. Feudal Japan could have been prevented by changes in Influence like the decaying password, which is why I would support that idea. But the raiders in France banned everyone in a single update. They must have been in there for months; but that sort of wait is no obstacle to people who are motivated by RL patriotic imperialism, not in-game thrills.

That happened a lot more before Influence than since.

Military activity of all kinds is down since Influence, but that's okay. The problem here is not the volume of activity. The problem is that people aren't getting away with it because of an oversight on the part of defenders or the mods. They're getting away with it because it's legal and there's nothing we can do about it. We don't come here to report it, because it's legal. We can't stop it, because the people doing it know how to work the system. Influence in that sense behaves as an anesthetic as well as a sedative - damage is still being done to the body, but the pain signals are being blocked on their way to the brain.

If you're referring to invasions conducted by the relatively few well-known invader groups, then okay, maybe 95% of them got opposed. But we had 10,000+ regions, and there was a huge amount of smaller-scale region crashing that never made a defender group's radar. A lot of it was conducted by players who probably didn't even consider themselves invaders, had never heard of the invader and defender organizations, and were just having fun with the game. I'm not saying defenders failed, just that it's impossible to expect otherwise. If a three-nation region got crashed, how could defenders even know about it?

We know about it now, so I assume people knew about it then... I've defended my share of those regions. It's about as fun as watching paint dry, and I must say it's hard to feel you've made a difference when you check in on the natives a month later and find they're all about to CTE without having left so much as another message on the RMB. If you know what you're looking for and where to look (WA happenings...), or if you're as puppet-crazy as some of us are, it's really not a problem to find those, though. The crashers in question usually do not have the first clue about how update works or anything else, so they're easy to mop up if anyone cares to. It's just that more competent invasions of larger regions have always taken defense priority. Before the griefing rules were abolished, that was a no-brainer. The small-time crashers could be reported, if they emptied a region illegally. Now, if they empty a region, it's legal... so defenders can pride themselves on preventing that, if they can gather a group of troops dedicated enough to play mod for a group of nations that may never notice the difference.

1. Players broke the rules without realizing it. If you were a highly experienced player, you could wade through the 8,000-word Rules Sticky. But the vast majority of players are not highly experienced, and it was unrealistic to expect them to find and read those rules.
2. The rules governing relied on a subjective interpretation of "native." It was therefore sometimes impossible to know with certainty whether what you were about to do was legal or not.
3. Moderators were constantly accused of bias or corruption whenever they made decisions one party or the other disagreed with
4. Invaders frequently destroyed regions, which dismayed players who had built them up over months or years. (While the invasion of a region alone was not necessarily a bad thing, its total destruction was.) Even liberation by defenders (which happened only in response to highly visible invasions) could not change the fact that many of the natives ejected would not come back.

I know that Influence did solve some problems, but others it just buried. The problem I have is not with Influence itself, but that, as Kandarin was saying, Influence was a very imperfect substitute for even the imperfect protection offered by the mod-enforced rules. He mentioned passwords, but in my mind the real problem is regional destruction by ejecting and/or banning the natives. (Passwords simply make that destruction easier to execute at leisure.)

The root of that problem is that subjective interpretations of "native" were replaced by a coded interpretation which can be subverted with tremendous ease... as below.

All you need to do now, is park a puppet in a region, let it gain influence (all you need to do is log in once every 60 days) and when you feel it's been there long enough, slam a WA membership on it and you have enough to kick a load of people out and password the place. It's no effort at all and you can grief a region, no problem at all.

That's a very slow way to gain Influence... any native with even a single WA endorsement will be earning it faster than you. I wouldn't think you'd be able to kick any of them out upon gaining Delegacy, at least for a while.

Edit: Sorry, I forgot to actually address your suggestion. Influence as it exists is the best measure we have of nativity. It's an automatic metric of how much the region you're in "belongs" to you. I can't think of any better way to judge that, although if you have one, let me know.

That's the problem. We can't judge nativity objectivity, because ultimately it's a subjective judgment on the part of the player behind the nation. Naivetry will never leave Equilism, and I as a player will not be going anywhere else, either. But I've got puppets permanently parked in a number of other regions... several of which have never held WA status in the region but have a much higher Influence than I'll ever have in Equilism: Duckspeaker in Equilism, vs. Instigator, Dealmaker, Enforcer, and even one Dominator. The game would count those puppets as natives... I'm the only one who can tell you they really aren't. Granted they've been there in most places for a year or more... but that seems to be what the conquerors did in France.

Personally, I'm in favor of swinging the balance back a little toward the invasion game. But not all the way to the pre-Influence days, so if you want change, we need to find a compromise.

This is where my biases as a politician take precedence over any lingering attachment I feel to the raider-defender dynamic. If we can't find some RL angle on it to draw people's attention, like a player-elected Griefing Investigation Committee (I know, I know... but I had to mention it again ), then the conflict between raiders and defenders will remain a mildly amusing sidenote in which I have only a practical interest. Military action will always remain important to regional politics, but we will never again see the great ideological battles fought between allied groups over whether or not someone had the right to do X to a region. The game says whatever is possible is in accordance with the rules, and only if we're willing to write our own rules and impose them on everyone else will that change. And there is the great contradiction that has alienated most of the political players from the defender camp - how can defenders claim to protect freedom based on the idea that a region belongs to the natives, while dictating how other people are allowed to play in a game that belongs to all of us as equal players?

Meanwhile, the part of the game I really care about, the politics, will continue to die in the absence of a highly invested community and the genuine, metagamed conflict that sustained it. This is why, if we cannot reintroduce any 'metagame' element (even keeping Influence, but reinstituting some basic rules against region destruction and an appeals court summoned by getting WA Delegates to sign a petition... anything), I will abandon any attempt to salvage the military game. Tweaking aspects of code to make raiding harder or easier won't change the politics or ideology of it. By all means, those who have ideas should introduce them, because anything that makes the military game more exciting is worth it for those who can ignore or overcome their self-contradiction... but where the ideology is lacking is where I personally lose interest.

And that's when I turn to Broadcast Zones to give me something more to work with as a politician.

On the topic of absorption... it's an interesting idea, but would take the military game in a completely new direction, further away from the old raider/defender dichotomy. Ballotonia and Numero are quite right - even regions that weren't previously interested in raiding because they didn't see the point might be enticed by the prospect of using it as a combination of rescue (of those poor, vulnerable Founderless regions...) and recruitment tool.

[Unibot]

Founders don't pay influence to use the Regional Controls.
And how could a region with an active Founder, able to repel attacks, be forcibly absorbed?

Thats not what I was talking about, Bears. [Violet] said he/she was worried that regions who were genuinely attempting to keep isolated with a password would be screwed in the advent of a decaying password - I suggest that regions would still have founders who don't pay influence costs, however agreeded that regions that are founderless are in a bit of a pickle unless they could somehow absorb with a region that has a founder? Does that make sense?

[[violet]]

There is a fundamental split in NationStates that is, in my view, unresolvable.

1. Raiders / Defenders want to interact with non-raiders / non-defenders. The OP makes that point clearly. The reward for raiding is doing it to players that don't want it. The reward for defenders is to protect the victims.

2. Non-raiders / non-defenders do not want to interact with Raiders / Defenders. Period. They want to be left alone.

You cannot reconcile the two.

That's undoubtedly true, but there's a third group between the two, holding the majority of our players. Those people either have no opinion about the invasion game, are mildly in favor or against it, or don't think they like it until they find themselves in it, then quite enjoy it.

I have no interest in forcing people in Group 2 to play the invasion game. My ideal situation is one in which Group 1 has a fun invasion game, Group 2 is immune to it, and everybody else is somewhere in the middle.

Anyway. Some questions on absorption.

1. Could nations join regions in the process of being absorbed?
2. Could absorbed nations relocate to their old region while it is in the process of being absorbed?
3. When the absorption process has been completed, can a nation re-found the absorbed region?

I don't want to get into the nitty-gritty of the Absorption idea yet, because I'm really still trying to get a general feel for the whole area. I'm more interested in what people think about the basic concept than the practical detail. But:

• Yes, nations could move freely between regions during an Absorption. (And do anything else they currently do: eject, password-protect, TG, etc.) But as time passed, unless it was stopped, it would eventually reach a point where all nations in the region being Absorbed would be relocated at once.
• The Absorbed region is not destroyed, just emptied. Any nations could then move back into it.
• I think Feeders would need to be excluded.
• Regions with Founders would not be excluded, but would not be possible unless the Delegate has access to Region Control. If the Delegate does have access, the Founder could override her, as with any other Delegate action.

Need a breather before tackling Naivetry's post...

[Numero Capitan]

So are you saying that instead of it slowly moving nations you would have to "charge it up" and once you managed to accumulate enough influence you could move everyone?

Would natives be able to see that the region was undergoing absorbtion and where to? How about a/the progress bar?

And can you clarify what the region that nations would be being absorbed into would have to do. Would the founder have to initiate the absorbtion, approve it or could it just happen (with this option invaders could just turn it on its head and move large amounts of troops into a region at the press of one button to take the delegacy)? Could a delegate do this also?

The other suggestion that caught my eye on the previous forum, suggest by evil wolf I think was that there should be an influence bar instead of ambiguous terms such as "ejecting but not banning Numero Capitan will consume a moderate amount of influence" so that people know exactly how much is being used. What is the possibility of that?

[Unibot]

The other suggestion that caught my eye on the previous forum, suggest by evil wolf I think was that there should be an influence bar instead of ambiguous terms such as "ejecting but not banning Numero Capitan will consume a moderate amount of influence" so that people know exactly how much is being used. What is the possibility of that?

Though I swear I read and listed every idea I could find on that NS World Adjustment thread, Evil Wolf might have suggested something of the latter. (Updates list...)

I'm thinking this cosmetic idea could really tie in well with my decaying password concept.

[Naivetry]

Need a breather before tackling Naivetry's post...

Yeah, er... sorry. <_<

*gets carried away*
-----
I think people are curious about the details of absorption because what it will do for us really does come down to the very small details of code... what loopholes there would be to exploit, etc.

[[violet]]

The only way I can make sense of your argument is if you're saying Defenders should be unofficial moderators. That is, we should say that behavior X is illegal, but also make it possible to do it, so when somebody does, Defenders can oppose it in the name of the game itself. But that seems a little weird, and is not my understanding of how they operate.

That was how we operated, however - it's how we saw our mission, and that's what lent it urgency.

If that was the case, why not just call for the mods every time? My understanding is that in the majority of cases, both invaders and defenders operated within the rules. (Or, at least, within their interpretation of the rules).

It seems to me there's a clear moral argument for Defenders: "Regions belong to the residents, and invaders have no right to it." What's wrong with that?

It has no basis in coded reality.

You're saying, "We can't argue with code," but isn't that what you did pre-Influence? The code allowed behavior you opposed, and you fought against it.

I guess you mean rules, rather than code, since pre-Influence the two did not align. (Although, as per above, I have trouble with the idea that defenders only ever acted as moderators). So what if I declared: "Influence is broken. No nations should be able to move into another region unless the natives want there. Unfortunately I can't fix the code." I don't believe that would galvanize defenders into action.

I see many valid practical arguments about why the invasion game has been stifled by Influence. But this moral argument, that even if I fixed all the practical problems, it would make no difference because defenders have no reason to oppose invaders, I really struggle with.

Feudal Japan and France are the two examples I've used, both significant communities destroyed within the last year. I pointed out Feudal Japan because we had an embassy with them, and I would've contemplated murder to be able to return their region to them; France because it's an example of the failure of Influence to protect against region destruction. Feudal Japan could have been prevented by changes in Influence like the decaying password, which is why I would support that idea. But the raiders in France banned everyone in a single update. They must have been in there for months; but that sort of wait is no obstacle to people who are motivated by RL patriotic imperialism, not in-game thrills.

Yeah, I see what you mean. That's a terrible outcome: an invasion that wasn't much fun, that left nothing for defenders to do, and destroyed a region.

If you're referring to invasions conducted by the relatively few well-known invader groups, then okay, maybe 95% of them got opposed. But we had 10,000+ regions, and there was a huge amount of smaller-scale region crashing that never made a defender group's radar. A lot of it was conducted by players who probably didn't even consider themselves invaders, had never heard of the invader and defender organizations, and were just having fun with the game. I'm not saying defenders failed, just that it's impossible to expect otherwise. If a three-nation region got crashed, how could defenders even know about it?

We know about it now, so I assume people knew about it then...

Well, without wanting to get stuck in the past, the situation pre-Influence with those regions was very bad. I personally saw way too many complaints from players who knew nothing about the invasion game other than their region got toasted. If defenders had been able to adequately protect the world without mod intervention, we wouldn't have felt the need to add Influence.

The root of that problem is that subjective interpretations of "native" were replaced by a coded interpretation which can be subverted with tremendous ease

I don't think the interpretation has changed much. Pre-Influence, you could have invaded a region by spending six months there building up your native cred. The only reason you didn't was there were more exciting alternatives.

The game says whatever is possible is in accordance with the rules, and only if we're willing to write our own rules and impose them on everyone else will that change. And there is the great contradiction that has alienated most of the political players from the defender camp - how can defenders claim to protect freedom based on the idea that a region belongs to the natives, while dictating how other people are allowed to play in a game that belongs to all of us as equal players?
...
This is why, if we cannot reintroduce any 'metagame' element (even keeping Influence, but reinstituting some basic rules against region destruction and an appeals court summoned by getting WA Delegates to sign a petition... anything), I will abandon any attempt to salvage the military game.

These are good suggestions. And I know I keep harping on this, but I really don't see why you need your values handed to you. The WA is a great example: we have players combining to vote through international laws stating what should and shouldn't be legal. Now, if that body could also vote on regional invasion laws, and it passed laws against ejecting more than X natives per day, and defender groups took it upon themselves to uphold those laws, and hear appeals, etc, that would be a terrific gameplay outcome for me. But you seem to be saying that would be pointless, because the game rules would still allow illegal invasions to take place, so who are defenders to argue any different. That the only change that will actually satisfy you is if I say, "Help! The game is out of control and I can't stop these invasions!" But I can stop them. There's no way around that.

[Unibot]

These are good suggestions. And I know I keep harping on this, but I really don't see why you need your values handed to you. The WA is a great example: we have players combining to vote through international laws stating what should and shouldn't be legal. Now, if that body could also vote on regional invasion laws, and it passed laws against ejecting more than X natives per day, and defender groups took it upon themselves to uphold those laws, and hear appeals, etc, that would be a terrific gameplay outcome for me. But you seem to be saying that would be pointless, because the game rules would still allow illegal invasions to take place, so who are defenders to argue any different. That the only change that will actually satisfy you is if I say, "Help! The game is out of control and I can't stop these invasions!" But I can stop them. There's no way around that.

I think a player's summit would be a fantastic idea - but it would need to be backed up with both mod and/or code support as well enthusiasm from the players. I think if it was allowed to be run in Gameplay, with some shameless advertising of the summit done in possibly the News section or something of that nature. A World Summit? ~ would be a good way to establish some rules amongst the players - by the players? Possibly in a sort of forum-ish Quasi-WA way, Resolutions or a Charter of Raiding Conduct could be passed?

I personally believe that griefing could be taken care of with the "decaying password" feature that I talk about constantly (I apologize) - but other than that, possibly the direction we should take to fix our militaristic problems is to bring the decisions to the people! To make them step up?

I give two thumbs up for the summit - however if it ever became a reality, I would suggest it be an annual thing (if its a success). Because one of the things that kind of bugs me is that some of the community decisions of the past seem unconnected to me, because they weren't made with my approval persay... yet their incontestable because they're community decisions regardless if I wasn't there for them. If it were to be an annual summit, then everyone of all NS generations (including future generations) would always feel included with the decisions. If that makes sense.

[Naivetry]

If that was the case, why not just call for the mods every time? My understanding is that in the majority of cases, both invaders and defenders operated within the rules. (Or, at least, within their interpretation of the rules).

That's my understanding as well; granted, I wasn't playing at the time, but a vision of law-abiding raiders comes to me from reading the draft version of the griefing rules on Jolt and some of the other material I found there (see quote at bottom).

Professional defenders knew when they could call in the mods and when they couldn't. Raiders might be following the rules for now, but that didn't mean their activity was okay - only that it wasn't actionable for the mods, who had to be fair to everyone. Into that gap stepped defenders, who I think felt entitled to push the basic "play nice" rules further than they thought the mods were allowed to. But with Influence, the ethic behind the rules switched from "play nice" to "we're hands off - do whatever you are capable of."

You're saying, "We can't argue with code," but isn't that what you did pre-Influence? The code allowed behavior you opposed, and you fought against it.

I guess you mean rules, rather than code, since pre-Influence the two did not align.

Right, sorry... the rules, which are now embodied in the code, rather than on the forums. Some people still do argue with it - but mostly out of force of habit, and only in action - not in the reasoned discussion on which politics thrive. I have yet to meet someone who can articulate a compelling combination of in-game and metagame ideology for defending in the Age of Influence.

(Although, as per above, I have trouble with the idea that defenders only ever acted as moderators). So what if I declared: "Influence is broken. No nations should be able to move into another region unless the natives want there. Unfortunately I can't fix the code." I don't believe that would galvanize defenders into action.

I think it would, actually - if we also knew that mod action would follow egregious infringements. That's the missing puzzle piece - consequences that take into account all the options we know the mods have available.

I don't think the interpretation has changed much. Pre-Influence, you could have invaded a region by spending six months there building up your native cred. The only reason you didn't was there were more exciting alternatives.

I was thinking about that in the 4 hours it took me to write that earlier post. I suppose that the only way to tell, in that case, would have been to combine defender intel work on the off-site forums with the sorts of tools I imagine the game mods have to track player activity across multiple nations and aliases. Fun!

Anyway, permanent conquests now manipulate the Influence rules as a matter of course. They're in a whole other category from ordinary raiders, and even if they advertise the regions they've destroyed, making no pretense to be natives after the fact, they know there will be no repercussions.

Now, if that body could also vote on regional invasion laws, and it passed laws against ejecting more than X natives per day, and defender groups took it upon themselves to uphold those laws, and hear appeals, etc, that would be a terrific gameplay outcome for me.

That would be fantastic... if it could also be enforced. It would only work, first, if raiders and defenders all agreed on a basic set of rules and policed their own. (That would not be an unprecedented idea - see quote below.) But what could be done about people who deliberately broke the laws? It's all well and good if the convicted griefers had a home region to which they were particularly attached (provided it wasn't Founded, etc.) so that the enforcers could retaliate. If they didn't... well, our options would be rather limited unless we could call for mod action at that point.

Hence... Griefing Investigation Committee. I would be completely and utterly thrilled to see it happen. There's even an old piece of history we could use as a starting point for a charter:

16 MAY 04--2004 GLOBAL SUMMIT SUCCESSFULLY CONCLUDES!!
[From the Wire Service] The 2004 Global Summit on Raiderplay and Defensive Operations was a rousing success. After attendance and participation by many of the major raider and defender alliances as well as many independent, growing regions and alliances, a tentative accord was reached through cooperation and input by the attending delegates. The following Global Summit Accord is being submitted for review and adoption by each of the participating alliances and regions:

Issue 1: Espionage As a Function of Gameplay: Espionage will be allowed to continue in its current form. The vast majority of delegates agreed to a ban on all non-military espionage and any form of espionage designed to secure regional leadership or impact the internal politics of the target region. This matter has been tabled pending further review by TITO and the ADN.

Issue 2: Professionalism During Gameplay:
All participating allliances and regions agree to state publically that raiderplay is authorized under the current NationStates rules. Defender organizations may publically denounce the the practice, but may not insult or otherwise demean raider regions or organizations which engage in the practice. TITO reserves the right to refer to the practice as "immoral," and to label those engaging in the practice as "invaders." Raider regions and organizations may refer to TITO as "Hall Monitors." No other form of detrimental or derrogatory terms are allowed.

Issue 3: Self-Liberation of Acquired Regions:

a. Target regions that do not include UN-Delegate nations (i.e., non-UN regions) may be acquired by raider organizations for training purposes only. These regions must be relinquished within 48 hours of the UN update appointing the raider delegate.

b. Target regions which are acquired may secure their liberation by demonstrating ongoing activity of at least 20% of their native UN-Delegate nations during the period of the occupation. Once a region is acquired, the raider delegate must immediately post a statement regarding the last known period of activity of all native UN nations on the Regional Message Board for public viewing. No other posts by raider forces are allowed on the RMB until the first native or defender organization acknowledges review of the information. This acknowledgement must occur immediately following the acquisition by any defender nation online at the time of the acquisition and following the activity post by the raider delegate.

c. Acquired regions which cannot show the required activity levels may be colonized by raider organizations without prospective interference by defender organizations. Acquired regions meeting the activity requirement will be released by the raider delegate within 48 hours of verification of such native activity by the observing defender organization, and will be removed from the Global Target List.

Issue 4: Spamming and Sweeping During Gameplay:
Defender and raider organizations will refrain from spamming the RMB's of home and colony regions during missions. This includes use of nations to clear the regional activity registers of home and colony regions. Raider and defender organizations will refrain from posting sensitive information on home and colony RMB's during missions which may be used to harass, annoy, invade or otherwise molest the home or colony regions.

Issues 5 & 6: NS-Mod Reports and Review of Alleged Violations of the GS Accord: Defender and raider organizations agree to address alleged violations of NS rules and this Accord occuring during missions in a neutral forum prior to the submission of any reports or complaints to NS Hosts. This issue was approved by the majority of participating delegates, but is awaiting further review by the ADN and TITO.

The tentative Global Summit Accord, if adopted, will be a landmark agreement in the history of NationStates. All attending delegates expressed satisfaction with the Global Summit, and were enthusiastic about the progress made. For more information, please visit the Global Summit forum at http://globalsummit.proboards3.com/index.cgi.

We will bring you more on this amazing story as it develops.

[Naivetry]

I think a player's summit would be a fantastic idea - but it would need to be backed up with both mod and/or code support as well enthusiasm from the players. I think if it was allowed to be run in Gameplay, with some shameless advertising of the summit done in possibly the News section or something of that nature. A World Summit? ~ would be a good way to establish some rules amongst the players - by the players? Possibly in a sort of forum-ish Quasi-WA way, Resolutions or a Charter of Raiding Conduct could be passed?

Running it here would solve the problem of having a biased forum administration, but we would need a posting-restricted subforum only for designated delegates, and/or some very active mod work to keep it from turning into a (pardon me, Ballotonia) Free4All. I could imagine it mushrooming very quickly into a fully functional interregional body that would need either an off-site forum or a permanent home here where it wouldn't take over the whole of the Gameplay forum. We're not talking just about a summit, after all, but about the appeals, investigation, and enforcement aspect that would follow. We'd need a charter or constitution, a place to hear appeals, a military cooperation center, and an Intel division... the last two of which could almost certainly not be hosted here.

I give two thumbs up for the summit - however if it ever became a reality, I would suggest it be an annual thing (if its a success). Because one of the things that kind of bugs me is that some of the community decisions of the past seem unconnected to me, because they weren't made with my approval persay... yet their incontestable because they're community decisions regardless if I wasn't there for them. If it were to be an annual summit, then everyone of all NS generations (including future generations) would always feel included with the decisions. If that makes sense.

I see where you're coming from, but unless substantial coding changes had occurred from one year to the next, I doubt that a revisitation of the issue would yield any change, as long as the same older tier of players was taking part.

[[violet]]

Now, if that body could also vote on regional invasion laws, and it passed laws against ejecting more than X natives per day, and defender groups took it upon themselves to uphold those laws, and hear appeals, etc, that would be a terrific gameplay outcome for me.

That would be fantastic... if it could also be enforced. It would only work, first, if raiders and defenders all agreed on a basic set of rules and policed their own. (That would not be an unprecedented idea - see quote below.) But what could be done about people who deliberately broke the laws? It's all well and good if the convicted griefers had a home region to which they were particularly attached (provided it wasn't Founded, etc.) so that the enforcers could retaliate. If they didn't... well, our options would be rather limited unless we could call for mod action at that point.

I'm not prepared to anoint defenders as amateur moderators. Which is why we're having this discussion about the motivation of defenders. There's no role for defenders if all they want to do is be mods.

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.

[[violet]]

Griefing Investigation Committee.

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. 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?

[BIteland]

Here's another proposal I'd like Gameplay feedback on: an idea called Regional Absorption. It would essentially be a new type of regional invasion game, like this:

Nations in the region "Australia" decide they want to conquer the region "New Zealand." Australian invaders pile into New Zealand and seize the Delegacy. The Delegate of Australia (remaining behind) clicks a link in Region Control to attempt to "Absorb" New Zealand, and the new invader Delegate of New Zealand clicks a new link that says yes to the Absorption.

As days pass, nations get sucked from New Zealand to Australia. This can be canceled at any time by either Delegate. But if nobody stops it, then after a while all residents of New Zealand are absorbed into Australia.

The main difference to the traditional invasion game would be that rather than attempting to eject nations from somewhere, you're trying to bring them to somewhere. Since the invasion can be halted by gaining power in either the region being Absorbed or the one doing the Absorbing, invaders would need to hold a power base somewhere, rather than roaming around homeless and attacking from nowhere.

I think this idea really has merit, there would have to be a suitably long time between invasion and full absorption (say two weeks or more) this way invaders will have to really commit to an operation if the want to take the region, and also it will give the inhabitants a decent chance to repel the invaders. Also this feature would have to be independent from founders (meaning a founder can't interfere with the absorption) or all this will do is kill of the last remaining vestiges of combat game.

Also it might be a good idea to create a function that could reverse a merger eg, Australia takes over New Zealand and fully absorbs it, however, Australia is then taken over by Iceland, and the new delegate can decide to recreate New Zealand, or if after Australia fully absorbed New Zealand and then found that since most of its humorous lexicon was made up of sheep joke which were now lost to the world forever, the delegate could then decide to reform New Zealand.