[Region Locking] Something needs to be changed.

[Gest]

Some variance would be reasonable but the 12hr window some defenders want is unreasonable.

[Galiantus]

Furthermore, I'd like to suggest that '/template-overall=none/', be made a game-skin that can be set. I'd have all my defender puppets set to use it. Raiders could also use this tactic for faster ejection/banning speeds.

I have no idea what this means. Can you please explain?

[Rich and Corporations]

Suggestions:

Require the WA to take at least 36 hours to recognize a nation's new address, until then, they can't receive endorsements.
Require the WA to take at least 12 hours to recognize a nation's new address, until then, they can't give endorsements.
Have a stats page showing region growth (by number of nations as a percent). This would be an excellent red-flag to see a region growing by 1500%.
Allow for the creation of immigration quotas (regions can't grow by 10% of number of nations per day), but only by established members of the region can create the quota.

[General Halcones]

Do you really want to destroy the invader-defender game? That would almost destroy the entire game!

Any changes to this will destroy any chance defenders have at liberating. I say, get used to it, stop moaning, and adapt. Look up to Unibot as an example.

[Improving Wordiness]

@ Unibot
I call bullshit on that Unibot. Todays raids were under 2 seconds. Unless you already know what region is being hit you cannot get into the region in time.
@ Halc
Adaptation is fine but please keep in mind while you are all for it you seem very much against any change that would force you to adapt at all Halc

I do agree with Gest, some variance would be reasonable but the 12hr window is unreasonable.

Oh and Thank you to Halc for providing an easy list for me to put here. These regions were taken during update today. Quite obviously something needs to be changed when invaders are able to take this many regions in one update. (mind you this was only two players switching WA constantly)

The Coalition of the Willing
Tatooine
Channel9
United Assassination Emirates MkII
Hyrcania
Union of Spanish Nations
Melonesia
Happy valley of contentment
Silver Coast
Byonds Ragtag Group of Fools
Grand Hawaii
Savorn
The Republic of Independent Nations
Third Echelon
Ponychan Nations
That Place
The Neoliberalist Union
The United Sovereign States of Valhalla
Iraq
Nukeland
The Pangaea
Sumer
Monty Pythons Flying Circus
LittleFallsBlows
Illuscinora
Juice Nations
Continent of Pwned
The Beautiful Empire of Heinz 1869
Left Wing
Peoples Revolutionary Party
Swungdash
The Union of Bacon Baconist Republic

[General Halcones]

We raiders have been forced to adapt many times actually, with all the changes you defenders have campaigned for. Some of these changes you propose will just destroy the game - no adaptation would even be possible. In your case, there are answers. Just look a little harder, and you'll find ways to beat us.

You also have to realise that taking that many regions in one update is not at all easy - it takes days of preparation and only happens when the conditions are optimal. Compare to our previous tallies of 14 and 16 hits. 32 is merely a rare peak. Perhaps if we achieve 30+ every time, you'll have reason to get anxious.

For now, I just suggest you ignore us, like you always do, and pretend nothing is happening. Alternatively, you could start thinking of ways to better your game.

Best of luck Wordy.

[Unibot II]

A Tuesday morning for most North Americans is a horrible time to expect lots of defenders ready to defend regions -- I know I, for one, had classes. The fact that a, what, group of two or three individuals (?) cleaned up with tagging does not really surprise me when I doubt they faced much opposition. My strategy nowadays is: defenders need to greatly outnumber raiders to be successful. Whereas there exists no real hard quota for raiding unless the number of defenders establishes a quota: a group of two or three raiders can still clean up and do a lot of damage if there isn't enough defender intervention.

All in all, I think your facts aren't really important, Wordy -- 10000 Islands is absolutely useless against tag-raiding regardless of the good timing of the raiders. All Halcones and his crony needs to do is attempt one region and let you be successful. TITO will do what it is always does: throw every soldier they have at the first sighted threat that meets their standards, then grimly watch (without switchers available), Halcones and his friends, raid two dozen other regions after your one salvaged region. In other words, if you want to fight tagging -- you need switchers. Which is why I am advocating for safer switching.

Likewise, I think defenders should be pushing for greater recruitment of European players and building up their minor update staff and capabilities. The addition of the Minor update into the R/D world hasn't caught on as quickly as some had hoped -- it was used for extraordinary liberations mostly and cleaning up detags from the night for a long-time. Staff of defender institutions are still often dominated by North Americans, who aren't around as much around during the minor update. Which leaves the minor update, understaffed and undeveloped administratively. I think there's also some bureaucratic problems with development in trying to cover both updates, since defender institutions often push their resources mainly into one update: UDL and TITO on the major, FRA and RRA on the minor. These are usually the updates that simply the institution's staff (especially officers) are most available for. Sticking to one update for the most part is politically more comfortable -- I don't think it's responsible however, so I know the UDL will push for greater presence during the minor and major updates as well as respond to the greater usage of the minor update by raider groups. None of this requires admin intervention, it requires tactical, political and administrative policies changes institutionally.

I do, however, stand by my comments that safer-switching and if at all possible, that picture-less-version of NS becoming a skin.. would be non-partisan suggestions that would help improve Military Gameplay.

[Improving Wordiness]

@ Halc
Please back up your claims of game changes that have been implemented that help defenders.

@ Unibot
Safer switching? I do not see how that will help? I believe it is already quite safe. Talk to Halc if you are unsure how to do this safely.
I do believe that posting some information here does help administration see what is being referred to as a Tag Run. I do not expect them to be sitting watching one update so my post gives a good example of what change is needed.
When invaders can take that many regions in one update the balance is long gone.
Certainly UDL can push for more presence in what ever update you want. I stand by my statement that less than 2 seconds to defend a region is totally unacceptable.

[Unibot II]

Safer switching? I do not see how that will help? I believe it is already quite safe. Talk to Halc if you are unsure how to do this safely.

1. Halc's main was deleted, 2. If switching is safe -- why aren't you switching regularly to defend? I specifically remember a TITO Knight explaining the "no switcher" policy to me as being a policy put in place to prevent accidental rules-breaking. With a founder that was (unjustly) deleted for an infringement of a well, kind of silly rule to be honest, I can absolutely understand why 10ki would want to emphasize prevention of rules-breaking.

[Improving Wordiness]

Funny how you try to turn this around to be a switcher problem. Sometimes all that is needed is one WA nation in order to stop a raid. I do not believe we will be running short of WA nations any time soon so that desperate measures are needed such as switching WA constantly.
First thing is attending to the fact that there is no time to move in to begin with. You are putting the Cart before the Horse Unibot.

[Unibot II]

First thing is attending to the fact that there is no time to move in to begin with. You are putting the Cart before the Horse Unibot.

Showing a list of thirty regions and going "LOOOK AT ALL THOSE REGIONS, ADMIN!".. is totally disingenuous when you know as well as I do, that even if it was easier to defend those thirty regions to do so you'd need to switch like.. thirty times during update!

You do not currently switch more than once an update, so the fact they take any number beyond one is irrelevant in regards to you.

If switching was safe and more legitimized by the game: would TITO consider using switchers? Yes or No?

[General Halcones]

Sorry to but in - switching is perfectly safe - veteran Black Riders have well over 50 switchers and switch within seconds, and never have problems. Also, my main nation was not deleted for any of those reasons.

[Crushing Our Enemies]

If switching is safe -- why aren't you switching regularly to defend? I specifically remember a TITO Knight explaining the "no switcher" policy to me as being a policy put in place to prevent accidental rules-breaking.

Eist has a different rationale:

Invading a dozen regions in an single update is ridiculous.
<snip>
TITO does not use switchers because defending more than one region in an update not only facilitates this behaviour, it encourages it.

[Andacantra]

Switching is fairly safe, yes, but it's still unsafe enough that I find myself scouring every possible nation of mine that might have WA on an all to frequent basis. Some way of knowing that I've not screwed up would be nice - I've never had a WA nation ejected by the way - because right now it's a major concern that you just forgot to hit "resign" properly before you switched, as you may have a lot of other things to worry about that update.

I'm possibly one of the worst people ever at maintaining switchers, especially long-term, but all it takes is a momentary lapse of concentration. I've nearly multi'd more than once. I've failed security checks once or twice because I last minute checked the previous WA nation and forgot to close the window.

At this particular moment in time, I'm not quite sure what to think. The fact that I've been defending for a little while now and yet I don't think I've ever taken part in a single defense against a non-noob group I think possibly says it all (although it may reflect more that I'm more of a weekday Minor update person). I'm seeing it from both sides of the fence though, and equally realise that getting times very accurate is not neccesarily easy. A little part of me wishes that on both sides the ideas of judgement and skill would come into it more, rather than just having a scripter. A little bit of extra variance would probably go a long way to improving things, but I'm not sure that I like most of the suggestions here. Most of them trample on any hope of having a non-piled raid and simply relying on speed and accuracy come the updates following the raid, as they make things number based and I don't think that that's entirely how it should be.

[Unibot II]

Sorry to but in - switching is perfectly safe - veteran Black Riders have well over 50 switchers and switch within seconds, and never have problems.

Veteran Black Riders have told me opposite stories, so you're lying or misinformed.

If switching is safe -- why aren't you switching regularly to defend? I specifically remember a TITO Knight explaining the "no switcher" policy to me as being a policy put in place to prevent accidental rules-breaking.

Eist has a different rationale:

Invading a dozen regions in an single update is ridiculous.
<snip>
TITO does not use switchers because defending more than one region in an update not only facilitates this behaviour, it encourages it.

That's just ... well, pathetic. Under that logic, defending one region in an update facilitates raiding at least one region an update.

Fact is: raiders will raid, no matter if defenders are around. People like Halcones are happy littering NationStates thirty regions an update with no one stopping them -- evidence: see today. So you can either show up to defend, or you leave a native region undefended. There is no ultimate encouragement or "facilitation" of raiding done by trying to stop them. A group of five defenders from the United Defenders League can usually block about a third of a tag-raid night successfully, if TITO was on the prowl that'd probably move the game more towards an even 50-50.

[Sedgistan]

I do, however, stand by my comments that safer-switching and if at all possible, that picture-less-version of NS becoming a skin.. would be non-partisan suggestions that would help improve Military Gameplay.

There was a thread this year in the Technical forum on switching and making it safer - I think it was bumped fairly recently. The admins were receptive to those ideas, so it'd be worth dragging it back up again to see if consensus could be reached (there were two competing ideas).

As for the skin suggestion, that also probably warrants a separate thread. The problem with these large "brainstorming" threads is that ideas get lost in them as the discussion covers far too many ideas in far too little detail. They're great for coming up with ideas, but if there's one you want to pursue, it really needs a dedicated thread.

[General Halcones]

Veteran Black Riders have told me opposite stories, so you're lying or misinformed.

Ok, well just me then. I never have problems. Not sure who has told you they struggle. It is very easy to be able to hit resign properly, just make sure to check that the resignation message comes up. So simple, so safe.

[Improving Wordiness]

Variance is what is needed. I wonder if the top 5 or 10 largest regions were shuffled would this help? I mean a continual shuffle but only for the largest. It would cause a ripple effect and would be unpredictable however not extremely so. The region order list would still need to be removed though.
Invaders would still be able to predict a fairly close update time as would liberators.

[General Halcones]

Stop trying Wordy. Accept that this is the game now. Adapt like Uni and his cronies have.

[Wopruthien]

What Wordy is getting at, it doesn't matter if TITO had a hundred switchers and tried to defend ever region at update, it cannot be done if you have at most a 2 second window.

I've defended against TBR/TBH and TNI in these tag raids, and the most recent being TNI vs FRA/UDL we managed to stop 4 out of the 8 raids but that is because TNI aren't as precise as the other two raider groups. They usually leave a window of 3-5 seconds which is just enough to be able to get some sort of defence in for the most part. The 4 victories by TNI, 1 was done via a well worked decoy, and the other right at the start of update, the other two were lost by the time my the region page had loaded the region/s were already taken. Not quite sure how we are able to defend against that.

I can also say it is not very appealing or enticing for new defenders, refreshing every second on your reports page for 66 minutes+ as the moment you have a lapse in concentration or fail to refresh for 5+ seconds the raiders have already struck. And this is just raiding by 2 people. If 3 raider groups decided to all hit different targets all on the same night/update not a chance in hell defenders would be able to do anything as we are too busy looking at the reports page to notice anything else going on at update.

[Frattastan]

Stop trying Wordy. Accept that this is the game now. Adapt like Uni and his cronies have.

Adapting/evolving is no longer possible, because the game mechanics don't allow it.
As we've said in the previous nine pages of this thread. Unless by "adapt" you "accept defeat".

I know you'd like us to stop trying and advocate tech changes, but in this thread we moved on from the "No problem. Defenders have to adapt, or die off!" part, and it has been acknowledged that something is to be done. And it will be done.

Now to discuss possible solutions and reach a consensus on them.
This thread in particular is about "region locking", ie introducing an arbitrary, unpredictable variance/uncertainty window for each region, although several suggestions have been put forward, here or elsewhere.

They are only rough concepts, and can be improved upon. Or you can suggest new ones.
Given that it is very likely that something will be changed at some point in the future, perhaps you should do that - and propose/support the solution you would like the most - instead of spending your time to try and put us off.

[Mallorea and Riva]

I can also say it is not very appealing or enticing for new defenders, refreshing every second on your reports page for 66 minutes+ as the moment you have a lapse in concentration or fail to refresh for 5+ seconds the raiders have already struck. And this is just raiding by 2 people. If 3 raider groups decided to all hit different targets all on the same night/update not a chance in hell defenders would be able to do anything as we are too busy looking at the reports page to notice anything else going on at update.

Frankly I don't see this paragraph as containing actual problems.

[Eist]

A group of five defenders from the United Defenders League can usually block about a third of a tag-raid night successfully...

Damn you, Unibot! I just spat my morning coffee all over my computer.

[General Halcones]

I think you need to change your methods, defenders. Have a jolly good think about it, and I am sure you'll see ways to could combat us. I know that is difficult for you guys.

[Sedgistan]

I think you need to change your methods, defenders. Have a jolly good think about it, and I am sure you'll see ways to could combat us. I know that is difficult for you guys.

Not a helpful comment. Cut it out.