NDay11 Development Thread

[Haganham]

Megafactions like ANAL, JEFF, Deadline Dodgers - or, to use a bit of a throwback, UPPERCUT - literally wouldn't be able to function at all, since they were based out of headquarters regions named after their faction.

We would just open an embassy with the host region for the event

[Varanius]

Couple of thoughts, feelings, etc, regarding the current discussions:
- Big ups on faction preview. Can't imagine it'd be that hard to make happen, but it would be a very solid quality of life change for faction management.
- Completely agree that if we're going to stick to the double N-Days (though I have to note I'd be fine with just one a year and would probably prefer that if anything) there should be some sort of variety to it.
- Also support getting rid of that stupid 1 nuke targeting nonsense. I've played both on the side of and against HotA and I'm confident saying it's a bullshit spam mechanic from every side of the occasion.
- I maintain that I do not think weakening the effectiveness of puppets would be a worthwhile or fair change, that's what Z-Day is for. Given the absolute mountain of scripts available for puppet management and keybinding, there's no reason to artificially limit what players are capable of doing with sufficient dedication. I ran 750 puppets all with completely publicly available technology, and my output was comparable to some of the lower half horsemen. That being said, if that's what it would take to get rid of the captchas I'd support it in a heartbeat. Seriously, every year I get bogged down by a thousand captchas (often literally) I genuinely wonder why I bother playing the game at all.
- I don't feel particularly strongly about cross-faction shielding cost. I honestly don't care much about it whether it's for shielding allies or Westinor trolling the leaderboard, and I'm not sure why I would care, but that also means I'm not opposed to messing with it.
- The mass departure from factions has always been a cheap and scummy tactic that I've found to not really be in the spirit of the event. The whole point of the thing is coming up with a faction, living by it, and dying by it. I'm not sure if I think it's so bad there should be technical intervention but I wouldn't shed any tears.

[Opiachus]

Other than Bikini Atoll, you should only be allowed to join a faction if it's based out of your region or a region you have embassies with.

Embassies take too long to construct for this change to have allowed my alignment this N-day. I found out about N-day, pre-registered with Grand Coalition, and set up an embassy between my personal region and Grand Coalition Control Room to be able to post on the coalition RMB, but the embassy didn't finish constructing until hours into the event.

[Haganham]

- The mass departure from factions has always been a cheap and scummy tactic that I've found to not really be in the spirit of the event. The whole point of the thing is coming up with a faction, living by it, and dying by it. I'm not sure if I think it's so bad there should be technical intervention but I wouldn't shed any tears.

I think the fact that getting destroyed has a significantly reduced effect on score is an effective technical intervention.

[Artoznik]

4. Make the two N-days different. I like having the event twice a year, but I think it's too much for some people. I think it might be cool if the two N-days were a little different. So September N-day is N-day classic, and February N-day is *Insert cool thing here*. Maybe the 2nd event has a different theme but same mechanics. D&D theme it's magic missiles instead of nukes, nations as Wizards (military), Cleric (strat), Rouge (Intel), Bard (Eco). Or a mechanical change for that N-day to spice it up.

heck yeah!!! this would make it so funn!!!!

this might be a dumb request or already exist, but what if there was a faction RMB? Like a FMB. Not everyone has the same communication devices and telegramming people kind kf takes a while.

It'd also be nice for us to see who in our faction and our faction only was online. Obviously it might be difficult for others if you can see if OTHER factions' members are online, but not your own… right?

THIS. This this this this this!
The faction RMB (FMB?) would've solved a lotta problems that my faction had, with us not all able to be on discord and stuff.

there could also be things where every time the faction description board thing gets updated, it sends out an "alert" (or something like that) for other nations so they actually remember to check it...

[Aadhiris]

4. Make the two N-days different. I like having the event twice a year, but I think it's too much for some people. I think it might be cool if the two N-days were a little different. So September N-day is N-day classic, and February N-day is *Insert cool thing here*. Maybe the 2nd event has a different theme but same mechanics. D&D theme it's magic missiles instead of nukes, nations as Wizards (military), Cleric (strat), Rouge (Intel), Bard (Eco). Or a mechanical change for that N-day to spice it up.

heck yeah!!! this would make it so funn!!!!

THIS. This this this this this!
The faction RMB (FMB?) would've solved a lotta problems that my faction had, with us not all able to be on discord and stuff.

there could also be things where every time the faction description board thing gets updated, it sends out an "alert" (or something like that) for other nations so they actually remember to check it...

That's another great idea.
I also kind of like the idea of themed N-Days, that'd be interesting to see .

[Numero Capitan]

scattergun thoughts on some of the things raised here:

- cross faction shielding cost felt consequential this time and factions were actively making different strategic/political choices because of it, half decided against it, half shielded anyway, I think the current balance is perfect on that basis tbh.

- captchas: were actively driving away people from n-day (and in some cases NS as a whole), intentionally making the game more tedious makes no sense at all

- puppets vs WAs: my impression is that WAs feel very consequential and keep players engaged even if they playing with a single nation so I think the balance is probably right here right now, but if staff are considering rebalancing further then buff WAs rather than nerfing puppets, intentionally making the event less fun for certain players is counter-intuitive (as above)

- points: liked the changes this time around, think I agree with Chingis on the faction kick tactic too

- single nuke launches: meh, if people want to waste their time doing that idc, but understand the admin concern

- varied n-days: keeping one in the classic format and adding an experimental aspect/twist to the other sounds fun and will keep things fresh and create an evolving innovation/strategic challenge for the big factions

- faction rmb: don't love it, not sure why factions can't just create a region/rmb to organise from if necessary and just becomes a moderation challenge for those who don't want/need it, particularly with rogues and other factions intentionally joining your faction for shenanigans because they think they're being clever/sneaky (you're not, we see you, we just don't care enough about you)

[Artoznik]

those are some pretty fair points about the FMB idea. Just for the sake of adjusting and thinking of a system that would work:
For moderation, maybe you could have it so they can simply shut the FMB down for those who don't need it?
Either way, I think "spies" are going to exist no matter what. And I guess that's why Bikini Atoll exists…
I guess this could also be annoying to create in the first place, but at least personally I don't want to have to separately telegram tons of people again.

Should there be some system for faction officers to see who wants to join their faction? Like a waiting list, basically. Unless if that already exists.

(I'm just spitballing ideas and then adjusting them when needed honestly)

[Aadhiris]

- faction rmb: don't love it, not sure why factions can't just create a region/rmb to organise from if necessary

Our faction had this, the problem is that a lot of our planning and stuff was constantly spied on. Our leader can't get discord and I'm (I had to lead my faction overnight for like 5 hours because EVERYONE WAS ASLEEP) using NS on a school laptop most of the time, so it's kind of a problem for us.

[Haganham]

- I maintain that I do not think weakening the effectiveness of puppets would be a worthwhile or fair change,

I agree with this. For context I was running 22 nations in this event, and really it was the WA nation that was doing the heavy lifting. None WAs barely produce enough to be worth managing.
Could I squeeze out more with more puppets, maybe, but I can't run many more and finish targeting by the time it takes the first to be ready, so it would mean diminishing returns.

I think the balance between puppets and WAs is in a fair spot.

- faction rmb: don't love it, not sure why factions can't just create a region/rmb to organise from if necessary

Our faction had this, the problem is that a lot of our planning and stuff was constantly spied on. Our leader can't get discord and I'm (I had to lead my faction overnight for like 5 hours because EVERYONE WAS ASLEEP) using NS on a school laptop most of the time, so it's kind of a problem for us.

I'm curious how you think a faction RMB that won't have spies would work.

[Sedgistan]

A faction RMB was considered a few years back, before Chingis was on board, and dismissed, because it would impact on the forum replacement work. When that project is finally finished, faction RMBs would be much more feasible, but they're not an option before then.

[Evil Mother]

Oki so my thoughts on this aren’t original but I’d like to voice my support for several of the things mentioned and maybe expand on them a little bit!

- No Captchas has made this NDay by far the most enjoyable one I’ve ever participated in. I was so close to rage quitting the years before because it would literally take me 5 hours to add 300 nations to a faction not to mention the additional brain strain it entails and that I’d presume gets amplified in my good old neurodivergent brain (answering this many captchas is essentially doing an ADHD diagnosis test for literal hours on end and while I am aware that my brain is my own problem I do think that accessibility should always be a goal that is kept in mind).

- having varied Ndays is a truly wonderful idea. Spicing up the February Nday by making it magic themed would be so much fun!!!! Especially because NS doesn’t really have any magic-themed events so far and I think a magical Nday would just add a lot of exciting new possibilities for experimentation and exploration, hell id love to design the icons if youd need someone to hahaha. As a European I also agree with changing the start time of Nday, having it start in the middle of the night literally sucks so hard, maybe a way to balance it out would be to have one Nday start earlier and then the other one start at the current time (or maybe 1 or 2 hours earlier)

[-Abrahamia-]

I found the event boring and frustrating to be honest. The huge factions would always win against the smaller ones by bombarding them with targets. I know it’s already been acknowledged but this discrepancy made me not want to play. What hope does a 35 nation faction stand against one with over 3,000 members?

Also, what is the deal with nations targeting you even after you sign off? The only way to not be targeted is to leave the faction. It took me an hour trying to leave because I kept getting targets. The funny thing is, the targets were stuck on “READY”! I felt like I was being held against my will by an AFK player!

I would suggest that nations cannot be targeted once they log off. Because this event does not seem very inclusive to players who have a busy life or who sleep.
I think the puppets are a big issue, too. It allows players to bypass any limits by creating hundreds of puppets. This seems like cheating to me. This once again does not seem fair to players who want to play the event with just their one or two nations.

It seems like an unpopular opinion, but I was fine with the Captcha. Removing Captcha should not enable players to cheat by making the process more expedient. I believe we should still have the Captcha but make some adjustments.

[Socialist Platypus]

I found the event boring and frustrating to be honest. The huge factions would always win against the smaller ones by bombarding them with targets. I know it’s already been acknowledged but this discrepancy made me not want to play. What hope does a 35 nation faction stand against one with over 3,000 members?

Also, what is the deal with nations targeting you even after you sign off? The only way to not be targeted is to leave the faction. It took me an hour trying to leave because I kept getting targets. The funny thing is, the targets were stuck on “READY”! I felt like I was being held against my will by an AFK player!

I would suggest that nations cannot be targeted once they log off. Because this event does not seem very inclusive to players who have a busy life or who sleep.
I think the puppets are a big issue, too. It allows players to bypass any limits by creating hundreds of puppets. This seems like cheating to me. This once again does not seem fair to players who want to play the event with just their one or two nations.

It seems like an unpopular opinion, but I was fine with the Captcha. Removing Captcha should not enable players to cheat by making the process more expedient. I believe we should still have the Captcha but make some adjustments.

The real question, is, does the faction that has 35 nations deserve to be able to stand a chance against one that has 30000 members. I do understand the frustration behind it, but realistically, in a game that is about building factions and thus depends a lot of who you manage to get to join you, it would be very strange to have very small faction have a real shot at winning against way more nations.
You can have some very strong mid sized faction with very few puppets masters if you do well in terms of organisation, will you have a realistic chance to end up at the top of the leaderboard? Probably not, will you be able to have an impact and even have a chance to survive with proper diplomacy? Yes 100%.
Those big factions exists through the efforts of those who organised them, and I feel like it'd be unfair if anyone could just come around create a 10 nation faction and compete toe to toe with people who grouped up to create a 1000 nation faction. Even if I get where you are coming from.

I did go to sleep very early in the event and just left my nations in the faction. The game was designed to be played in a way where you simply aren't meant to just leave and join back, although it is something you can do. Target locking is an intentional game mechanic. Although I can see the frustration when it comes from player who do not fire their nukes.

Being someone that had to face Captcha at the start of this event those were just a hell to navigate sometimes taking 5s to even get through one. They were just horrible and very much not fun to deal with.

[Chingis]

I understand and empathise with the frustration, but the desire to be able to win as a small group of people and the desire to use minimal puppets to do so is, generally, contradictory.

If everyone was on an equal playing ground with the amount of effort that they are allowed to put into the event, the larger factions (e.g. the several-hundred-member ANALs and JEFFs) would win by default (which people seem to dislike). If individuals were allowed to put in more effort and thus offset the minimal effort of others (the current meta), people seem to complain that its not fair that we don't cap the amount of effort someone can put into the event because they themselves don't want to put in that much.

In your case your complaints are about both at once. These two issues cannot both be solved at the same time.

Note that this is true for *every* co-operative event on NS, from Wonders to ZDay.

As I pointed out in a prior post, the real goal of a good event is not to make it balanced, but to make it fun, because no one who isn't in a huge organisation or isn't willing to put in unrealistic amounts of effort is ever winning anyway.

[Opiachus]

I understand and empathise with the frustration, but the desire to be able to win as a small group of people and the desire to use minimal puppets to do so is, generally, contradictory.

If everyone was on an equal playing ground with the amount of effort that they are allowed to put into the event, the larger factions (e.g. the several-hundred-member ANALs and JEFFs) would win by default (which people seem to dislike). If individuals were allowed to put in more effort and thus offset the minimal effort of others (the current meta), people seem to complain that its not fair that we don't cap the amount of effort someone can put into the event because they themselves don't want to put in that much.

In your case your complaints are about both at once. These two issues cannot both be solved at the same time.

Note that this is true for *every* co-operative event on NS, from Wonders to ZDay.

As I pointed out in a prior post, the real goal of a good event is not to make it balanced, but to make it fun, because no one who isn't in a huge organisation or isn't willing to put in unrealistic amounts of effort is ever winning anyway.

I really liked the Wonders event, for that one I had written a browser script that would automatically read, solve (using a "mixed integer linear programming" constraint satisfaction solver where the constraints depended on the puzzle), and fill in the Kakuro puzzles that were necessary to gather resources (I still had to manually click the submit button, the browser script did not automate any requests as I believe that is one of the script rules for events). That allowed me to get on the leaderboard and get my nation into the post-event News post without assistance from anyone else (4th largest individual resource contributor https://www.nationstates.net/page=news/ ... index.html ).

So I totally agree with you, individuals and small groups should be rewarded for putting in high effort versus lower-effort large groups. I think for me personally, it is just more difficult to write a good browser script system for co-ordinating N-day actions for a big puppet swarm, let alone creating that big puppet swarm in the first place, hence why I decided it wasn't worth it to even try (would have to create and maintain a bunch of puppets far enough in advance, write a script to do as much interaction with N-day pages as possible without sending any requests and get it right in advance of the day itself, etc.). I know some people have keybind scripts, Firefox containers, etc. but its just so much work to do it "properly"! Whereas with the Wonders Kakuro puzzles it was just the right level of effort-reward ratio I think. Or maybe I'm more passionate about coding solutions to mathematical optimization problems than just generic browser scripting...

[-Abrahamia-]

I found the event boring and frustrating to be honest. The huge factions would always win against the smaller ones by bombarding them with targets. I know it’s already been acknowledged but this discrepancy made me not want to play. What hope does a 35 nation faction stand against one with over 3,000 members?

Also, what is the deal with nations targeting you even after you sign off? The only way to not be targeted is to leave the faction. It took me an hour trying to leave because I kept getting targets. The funny thing is, the targets were stuck on “READY”! I felt like I was being held against my will by an AFK player!

I would suggest that nations cannot be targeted once they log off. Because this event does not seem very inclusive to players who have a busy life or who sleep.
I think the puppets are a big issue, too. It allows players to bypass any limits by creating hundreds of puppets. This seems like cheating to me. This once again does not seem fair to players who want to play the event with just their one or two nations.

It seems like an unpopular opinion, but I was fine with the Captcha. Removing Captcha should not enable players to cheat by making the process more expedient. I believe we should still have the Captcha but make some adjustments.

The real question, is, does the faction that has 35 nations deserve to be able to stand a chance against one that has 30000 members. I do understand the frustration behind it, but realistically, in a game that is about building factions and thus depends a lot of who you manage to get to join you, it would be very strange to have very small faction have a real shot at winning against way more nations.
You can have some very strong mid sized faction with very few puppets masters if you do well in terms of organisation, will you have a realistic chance to end up at the top of the leaderboard? Probably not, will you be able to have an impact and even have a chance to survive with proper diplomacy? Yes 100%.
Those big factions exists through the efforts of those who organised them, and I feel like it'd be unfair if anyone could just come around create a 10 nation faction and compete toe to toe with people who grouped up to create a 1000 nation faction. Even if I get where you are coming from.

I did go to sleep very early in the event and just left my nations in the faction. The game was designed to be played in a way where you simply aren't meant to just leave and join back, although it is something you can do. Target locking is an intentional game mechanic. Although I can see the frustration when it comes from player who do not fire their nukes.

Being someone that had to face Captcha at the start of this event those were just a hell to navigate sometimes taking 5s to even get through one. They were just horrible and very much not fun to deal with.

I was thinking more of tiers. Like medium factions could compete against other medium sized factions. And your post seems to imply that smaller factions put in less effort, which isn’t true. I’d argue we put in more effort. Instead of joining the faction that has the easiest chance at winning, we decided to create our own. And a smaller faction could have 300 members instead of 10 like in your example, it would still be pretty disadvantaged against a faction with thousands of members.

[Socialist Platypus]

The real question, is, does the faction that has 35 nations deserve to be able to stand a chance against one that has 30000 members. I do understand the frustration behind it, but realistically, in a game that is about building factions and thus depends a lot of who you manage to get to join you, it would be very strange to have very small faction have a real shot at winning against way more nations.
You can have some very strong mid sized faction with very few puppets masters if you do well in terms of organisation, will you have a realistic chance to end up at the top of the leaderboard? Probably not, will you be able to have an impact and even have a chance to survive with proper diplomacy? Yes 100%.
Those big factions exists through the efforts of those who organised them, and I feel like it'd be unfair if anyone could just come around create a 10 nation faction and compete toe to toe with people who grouped up to create a 1000 nation faction. Even if I get where you are coming from.

I did go to sleep very early in the event and just left my nations in the faction. The game was designed to be played in a way where you simply aren't meant to just leave and join back, although it is something you can do. Target locking is an intentional game mechanic. Although I can see the frustration when it comes from player who do not fire their nukes.

Being someone that had to face Captcha at the start of this event those were just a hell to navigate sometimes taking 5s to even get through one. They were just horrible and very much not fun to deal with.

I was thinking more of tiers. Like medium factions could compete against other medium sized factions. And your post seems to imply that smaller factions put in less effort, which isn’t true. I’d argue we put in more effort. Instead of joining the faction that has the easiest chance at winning, we decided to create our own. And a smaller faction could have 300 members instead of 10 like in your example, it would still be pretty disadvantaged against a faction with thousands of members.

You do put in more individual effort that some of the people joining the faction yes, but from an organisational stand point, those factions are harder to get together and have be functional. Point in case, JEFF this event who self admittedly wasn't properly able to handle it's own size.
A 300 nations faction can definitely pull some weight behind it, at least enough to be in a clean positive on the scoreboard, especially if it is a 300 WA nation region then it has the equivalent pull of 3000 none WA nations if properly handled.
West coalition was like 220 nations and popped pretty high on the scoreboard by getting strikes out while the big guys were focusing each others.

Well organised midsized faction can have way more of an impact than one would realise but definitely require some good diplomacy to get working. I definitely remember Starlight at one N-Day don't remember which one, as a faction that was smaller in tnumbers than mega factions and definitely were a faction that imposed themselves as someone you needed to recon with during that N-Day because they handled their numbers super well.

The thing is the efforts you need to put in to succeed, unless you are planning on being a one man faction, needs to start prior to N-Day in assembling the group of people that will be joining you on the adventure and your relation regarding other factions. A faction success majorly depends on the organisation at the top as well as the involvement of it's member and willingness to fight effectively. A lot of individuals that have little involvement and have out in little effort do end up joining bigger faction because others put in the ground work for them and it's easier for them to get there and making it attractive to those people is also part of the work of building an effective faction.

[Enzonar]

I think there should be options to increase production by spending production, but at a higher cost to bigger factions and reset upon leaving n day, as well as upgrading nukes to do more damage like a research bar that is for each faction which requires a lot of investment which will be difficult for larger factions since it would be harder to tell everyone to add research towards them

[Sunemia]

Ultimately a lot of the reasoning I see with many of these suggestions feels like 'we lost so you should make us stronger and not do anything to make the people who won stronger', but by that reasoning, Testlandia and Sedgistan should get 10000x production next NDay since they lost without being able to do anything this NDay. It doesn't mean that these suggestions are bad, it just makes me doubt that they are the ones that are important to the event, or that they are having the effects that people claim they are having.

It's less "we lost so you should make us stronger and not do anything to make the people who won stronger" and more "we lost because we fought against 9,500 puppets in a trenchcoat, and it's very difficult for a alliance with ~8k nations to win against one with 12k, so you should make us (?) stronger."

Ultimely the root cause is that N-Days are won more by the numbers of puppetmasters avaliable than by effort/coordination. The last 3 N-Days corrobate this: when there were more puppetmasters avaliable for ANAL/JEFF/Starlight and less for HotA, the coalition smoke HotA to the ground and where there weren't, HotA smoke everyone to the ground and was able to nuke anyone without any repercussions (and even enforcing a no-fly zone; that was kinda funny, i will give that to y'all)
I'm not sure how to ''fix'' this; maybe the problem is that people are tired and two N-Days by year is just too much.

[Socialist Platypus]

It's less "we lost so you should make us stronger and not do anything to make the people who won stronger" and more "we lost because we fought against 9,500 puppets in a trenchcoat, and it's very difficult for a alliance with ~8k nations to win against one with 12k, so you should make us (?) stronger."

According to Altys (one of Anime's leader) the number on paper were Anime Jeff favoured due to the WA buffs and HotA having very little of them while both HotA and Jeff had a lot more of them. However, HotA nations were much better handled at the end of the day with them not being able to make as much use of their force as they thought they would be able to. Notably on Jeff side which had a lot of nuke reserve that was never used for example, and gave up relatively quickly on defending.

[Numero Capitan]

Ultimely the root cause is that N-Days are won more by the numbers of puppetmasters avaliable than by effort/coordination. The last 3 N-Days corrobate this: when there were more puppetmasters avaliable for ANAL/JEFF/Starlight and less for HotA, the coalition smoke HotA to the ground and where there weren't, HotA smoke everyone to the ground and was able to nuke anyone without any repercussions (and even enforcing a no-fly zone; that was kinda funny, i will give that to y'all)
I'm not sure how to ''fix'' this; maybe the problem is that people are tired and two N-Days by year is just too much.

This factually isn't correct, ANAL had the same number of puppetmasters (and combined with JEFF had significantly more), the HotA puppetmasters just put in more effort and had a better strategy. ANAL command bet on cross-shielding costs having a meaningful impact on HotA's efficiency, and they bet wrong.

It's not some structural issue, when they got their strategy right they won and when they got it wrong they lost.

[Sunemia]

Ultimely the root cause is that N-Days are won more by the numbers of puppetmasters avaliable than by effort/coordination. The last 3 N-Days corrobate this: when there were more puppetmasters avaliable for ANAL/JEFF/Starlight and less for HotA, the coalition smoke HotA to the ground and where there weren't, HotA smoke everyone to the ground and was able to nuke anyone without any repercussions (and even enforcing a no-fly zone; that was kinda funny, i will give that to y'all)
I'm not sure how to ''fix'' this; maybe the problem is that people are tired and two N-Days by year is just too much.

This factually isn't correct, ANAL had the same number of puppetmasters (and combined with JEFF had significantly more), the HotA puppetmasters just put in more effort and had a better strategy. ANAL command bet on cross-shielding costs having a meaningful impact on HotA's efficiency, and they bet wrong.

In N-Day 10, ANAL/JEFF/Starlight had 11.5k nations combined and HotA-KHAN had 9.2k. By N-Day 11, they had 8k and 10.5k each (both by the start of the event.)

Even if you compare by the end of the event (accounting for the ~2,500 expelled from JEFF), there's a even larger gap. How can this be interpreted as anything else than HotA having substantially having more puppetmasters than last N-Day and the coalition less? Starlight, for exemple, went from 1,600 nations last N-Day to 44.

[Numero Capitan]

Because both factions have put out stats showing exactly how many puppetmasters they had for this event, so we don't need your janky maths

[Sunemia]

Because both factions have put out stats showing exactly how many puppetmasters they had for this event, so we don't need your janky maths

Yeah if ANAL had 15 puppetmasters with 300 puppets each
and HotA had 12 with 800 each, which faction could possibly have a advantage? Everyone knows that Hota has a order of magnitude more of puppets. Stop deflecting