New Reports page (beta)

[Mallorea and Riva]

Your reports page by default can show you everything that happens to every nation in the game? Kinda doubt it. Also, look at my broader commentary.

How do you think I made my version. I used the original reports page. So yes, it can too show you everything.

Yeah I know how you made yours. That's not what Mahaj and I were discussing.

so anytime someone makes a technological advancement we make it available to everyone, thereby spurring more technological advancement, thereby forcing admin to make it available to everyone. Repeat ad infinitum.

This is a feature and not a bug. Normal people call it "Progress".

Nowhere did I say it was a bug. It is obviously a feature. Thank you for your input.

[Henri Matisse]

FFS, do endorsements really need to be on there?

Whatever happened to the "tools for dictators" policy?

Now even the most clandestine endo-tarting has been neutered.

People can hit the API to scan endocounts every second, and now not only can the scriptmonkey and the delegate do it, but every bored pleb can keep a look out too.

Can you at least attach a "nuke" button to every large founderless, so if by some miracle of God someone captures it they can be rewarded for their effort?

WHY R U DOING THIS?

This plus the influence changes (which will only lead to tighter caps/not really change anything) and the delegate time-out or whatever... all I see is some severe impediments to the invading game.

Time to rewrite the rule books raiders, ADMIN wants no invading from you!

Instead of update times and tag raiding, it's time for IRC chats and election rigging!

Perhaps this is the "politicization" of raiding that [violet] herself mentioned as an aim before. We will see how happy defenders are about it when raiders smarten up and move from the in-game battlefield to the offsite-forums, because the message is clear.

Stealth invasions are impossible in a game world where all the information is available to everyone, all the time. Seriously, this is the kind of feature that would make Unibot cream his pants.

THAT'S NOT A GOOD THING, DAMMIT!

[Afforess]

FFS, do endorsements really need to be on there?

Whatever happened to the "tools for dictators" policy?

Now even the most clandestine endo-tarting has been neutered.

People can hit the API to scan endocounts every second, and now not only can the scriptmonkey and the delegate do it, but every bored pleb can keep a look out too.

Can you at least attach a "nuke" button to every large founderless, so if by some miracle of God someone captures it they can be rewarded for their effort?

WHY R U DOING THIS?

This plus the influence changes (which will only lead to tighter caps/not really change anything) and the delegate time-out or whatever... all I see is some severe impediments to the invading game.

Time to rewrite the rule books raiders, ADMIN wants no invading from you!

Instead of update times and tag raiding, it's time for IRC chats and election rigging!

Perhaps this is the "politicization" of raiding that [violet] herself mentioned as an aim before. We will see how happy defenders are about it when raiders smarten up and move from the in-game battlefield to the offsite-forums, because the message is clear.

Stealth invasions are impossible in a game world where all the information is available to everyone, all the time. Seriously, this is the kind of feature that would make Unibot cream his pants.

THAT'S NOT A GOOD THING, DAMMIT!

I'm tired of the same worn out arguments. Violet didn't aim to break raiding. I already made real time happenings possible. Violet is simply improving what I already did. Quit complaining that the admins are trying to break the game and realize that players already had this information for weeks and it didn't ruin anything.

[Henri Matisse]

It's fine when a handful of people have it.

Now everyone has it, all the time, 24/7.

There is a difference, see telegram recruitment.

It was all fine and dandy until people started handing out once coveted scripts.

Now when every new nation gets founded, it's a telegram shit-storm.

Maybe, you should take your excessive technophilia elsewhere, Afforess. The only tired arguments are your own, Mr. EVERYONE WHO DISAGREES WITH ME IS A LUDDITE.

I don't want to be a part of your brave new world, and judging by your thinly veiled threats, I think your contributions here have eclipsed an earnest desire to be helpful and are now simply tools for your own self-aggrandizement.

Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egotism.

But alas Captain Technology, you haven't developed a mind reader yet, for the purposes of enhancing communication, of course....

So like I say, you're going to reduce meaningful GP takeovers to the drama of electioneering, and most people will just end up going native anyway.

Snore.

[Smoya]

I think I have fallen in love.

Good job. I like it.

[Henri Matisse]

Where I said tag raiding, I meant stealth raiding, btw.

Tag raiding has always been the suck.

But anyway, this goes beyond current scriptmonkey capabilities.

It boggles my mind why Sedgistan for example, who could never have couped TSP if this tool was around (because some dumb casual/defender would have noticed him tarting everyone) would sign off on this.

Edward, you make me cry.

[Ballotonia]

So they'll just jam F5 or whatever to refresh the content thereby avoiding the delay? Is that correct?

Yes. And since that's already how the current Report function works, the new feature doesn't make any difference in that regard whatsoever.

Because really I'm looking at this right now I cannot think of anything else to add to it to make it more overpowered. Yikes. We don't want the game to be dominated by scripts, so anytime someone makes a technological advancement we make it available to everyone, thereby spurring more technological advancement, thereby forcing admin to make it available to everyone. Repeat ad infinitum.

Making all events available is something that happened a long time ago, this merely makes it less cumbersome.

FFS, do endorsements really need to be on there?

Whatever happened to the "tools for dictators" policy?

Please provide a link to an official statement about such a supposed policy.

Now even the most clandestine endo-tarting has been neutered.

People can hit the API to scan endocounts every second, and now not only can the scriptmonkey and the delegate do it, but every bored pleb can keep a look out too.

It boggles my mind why Sedgistan for example, who could never have couped TSP if this tool was around (because some dumb casual/defender would have noticed him tarting everyone) would sign off on this.

Using a dossier having a 2500 nation limit, anyone who cares about observing endotarting could always have caught it. Easily. A dossier with a bunch of WA nations in ones feeder of choice would remain good for months on end in catching any endotarter. Only effort required is the time and effort to set it up: either manually going through the region to dossier all WA nations (ugh), or use a script to intersect the output of http://www.nationstates.net/cgi-bin/api ... &q=nations and http://www.nationstates.net/cgi-bin/api ... &q=members and dumping the result into a dossier. The latter step being of course way easier, and thus an advantage for people ho know how to script. And there are less optimal approaches which also function well, like simply dumping any random 2500 region members into ones dossier. For example, The Pacific has 4000 nations, so using a random sample of 2500 will catch any endotarter.

Sedge managed to coupe TSP because they were seriously sleeping at the wheel. There's nothing sneaky about endotarting in a feeder.

Normal people call it "Progress".

Maybe, you should take your excessive technophilia elsewhere, Afforess. The only tired arguments are your own, Mr. EVERYONE WHO DISAGREES WITH ME IS A LUDDITE.

I don't want to be a part of your brave new world, and judging by your thinly veiled threats, I think your contributions here have eclipsed an earnest desire to be helpful and are now simply tools for your own self-aggrandizement.

Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egotism.

But alas Captain Technology, you haven't developed a mind reader yet, for the purposes of enhancing communication, of course....

Both of you, cut that out.

Ballotonia

[Mallorea and Riva]

So they'll just jam F5 or whatever to refresh the content thereby avoiding the delay? Is that correct?

Yes. And since that's already how the current Report function works, the new feature doesn't make any difference in that regard whatsoever.

If it didn't make any difference then it wouldn't have been implemented. The difference is obvious, players no longer need to dossier nations or create a script. Everything is now right there for them, delivered on a platter.

Because really I'm looking at this right now I cannot think of anything else to add to it to make it more overpowered. Yikes. We don't want the game to be dominated by scripts, so anytime someone makes a technological advancement we make it available to everyone, thereby spurring more technological advancement, thereby forcing admin to make it available to everyone. Repeat ad infinitum.

Making all events available is something that happened a long time ago, this merely makes it less cumbersome.

Yeah, intel gathering was so cumbersome. Can I get an automove button that moves my nation a split second before update? Triggering and clicking the mouse at the right time is way too cumbersome. Come on, the information is already available, might as well make it incredibly easy.

As far as everything else, regarding your statements about how scripts already made all of this possible, that the super dossier made all of this possible, etc: that is my point. You extend the WA happenings, then you extend them to absurd lengths, then you create super dossiers, and now this. I understand that we are on an unstoppable march towards automated gameplay, but don't expect me to be happy about it. Don't tell us that you assured [violet] that this tool changes nothing because of a delayed refresh which can be entirely avoided.

[Henri Matisse]

I encourage all to join me in my quest to clog the endorsement report in protest of this overbearing aggression.

And by the way, Ballo only thinks there is no way to be sneaky about endotarting because his idea of GP subtlety is remote controlling one hundred puppets. I'm telling you there are ways against what you have mentioned, what you are doing is overkill.

Like Mall said, it's on a silver platter number 1, and number 2, now even the laziest person has better tools than what used to be reserved for a tiny elite.

Big difference.

[Afforess]

I encourage all to join me in my quest to clog the endorsement report in protest of this overbearing aggression.

And by the way, Ballo only thinks there is no way to be sneaky about endotarting because his idea of GP subtlety is remote controlling one hundred puppets. I'm telling you there are ways against what you have mentioned, what you are doing is overkill.

Like Mall said, it's on a silver platter number 1, and number 2, now even the laziest person has better tools than what used to be reserved for a tiny elite.

Big difference.

Why is it so bad to make these tools available to everyone? Having the tools limited to the technical elite is wrong. Surely you don't want the future to be one where only people who know how to program can be competitive in nationstates. That would lead to a nationstates where the best programmer was the god-king and everyone else had to learn programming or be trampled upon.

Surely you don't want that.

[Dread Lady Nathicana]

I encourage all to join me in my quest to clog the endorsement report in protest of this overbearing aggression.

I encourage you all to remember that spam is bad, and it will be dealt with accordingly. And in this case, aggressively if necessary, to anyone engaging in deliberate actions to screw with the game, clog any of the processes, or otherwise create problems in order to try and get their way in an argument. Thanks.

[Henri Matisse]

Endorsing people is not illegal, if it spams your system that is your problem for wanting to report on every single endorsement that happens.

[Afforess]

Endorsing people is not illegal, if it spams your system that is your problem for wanting to report on every single endorsement that happens.

Intentionally creating spam, even with normally legal game actions, is against the rules.

[Henri Matisse]

Endorsing people is not illegal, if it spams your system that is your problem for wanting to report on every single endorsement that happens.

Intentionally creating spam, even with normally legal game actions, is against the rules.

I'm not intentionally creating spam, I'm endorsing people.

[Afforess]

Intentionally creating spam, even with normally legal game actions, is against the rules.

I'm not intentionally creating spam, I'm endorsing people.

The same could be said for moving back and forth between regions frequently. Moving your nation is perfectly legal. Doing it with an intent to spam is illegal. Same for what you are doing.

[Henri Matisse]

I'm not intentionally creating spam, I'm endorsing people.

The same could be said for moving back and forth between regions frequently. Moving your nation is perfectly legal. Doing it with an intent to spam is illegal. Same for what you are doing.

No it isn't. This was never spam before, and I didn't see a new rules change, just a new tool that spies on players like never before. So obviously, there will be some clog. It is not spam.

And what am I doing now, exactly?

Don't be a Luddite, Afforess.

This is progress.

My demonstration is finished, but you should take the point. If GPers really want to stand up to this completely imbalanced tool as well as your own personal threats, all we need is about three of them to use my methods, and your precious tool will crack.

You see, it's fun to call people Luddites until it starts messing with your business. You're not as omniscient as you think, little technophile.

[Afforess]

The same could be said for moving back and forth between regions frequently. Moving your nation is perfectly legal. Doing it with an intent to spam is illegal. Same for what you are doing.

No it isn't. This was never spam before, and I didn't see a new rules change, just a new tool that spies on players like never before. So obviously, there will be some clog. It is not spam.

I'll let the moderators decide.

And what am I doing now, exactly?

Don't be a Luddite, Afforess.

This is progress.

I guess? Your little demonstration was rather pointless considering that I already handle a much greater volume of happenings than even one person could create. You are free to kick and scream and whine and I will simply log all of your actions in my database and examine it at a later date.

My demonstration is finished, but you should take the point. If GPers really want to stand up to this completely imbalanced tool as well as your own personal threats, all we need is about three of them to use my methods, and your precious tool will crack.

Feel free to try, but I already have millions and millions of happenings logged already. I don't think a few hundred or a few thousand, or even a few tens of thousands will even cause my servers to notice. Heck you could generate a million happenings and they would keep chugging away. That's the beautiful thing about computers. They are faster than humans. When a computer processor is described as being 1 GHZ in speed, that means it can execute 1 billion instructions in 1 second of time (giga = 1 billion, 1 hertz = 1 second of time). Good luck competing with that.

This is a new era of nationstates. I'm not running tools on a dinky home computer, relying on a pathetic ISP for internet. I am running programs in the cloud, they can scale for whatever you want to throw at them.

[Henri Matisse]

I should also point out to the Dread Lady that Afforess basically threatened ADMIN and NS at large by saying that it doesn't matter who agrees with this tool, but that we have to de facto accept it because he is capable of monitoring all happenings.

I'm simply showing him others can utilize similar tools against him to break his tool.

This is what happens when you make the game all about scripts.

Scrap the overbearing surveillance and Luddite nonsense, and let's not extinguish stealth gameplay in the name of progress.

EDIT: Your server is irrelevant snoopy, if your user's can't abuse your tool then I am fine.

Afforess argument: MY TOOL IS BIGGER THAN YOUR'S!!!!!

It's nice to see you care nothing about GP balance, but you simply enjoy a fetish for unsolicited data consumption.

[Afforess]

I should also point out to the Dread Lady that Afforess basically threatened ADMIN and NS at large by saying that it doesn't matter who agrees with this tool, but that we have to de facto accept it because he is capable of monitoring all happenings.

I did nothing of the sort. I did not ask violet to create the reports page - I already had the information. Violet simply expanded what I had to provide it to everyone.

I'm simply showing him others can utilize similar tools against him to break his tool.

You can try.

This is what happens when you make the game all about scripts.

You are the one who thinks this information should be hidden away, only for the elite privileged. I am making information available to the masses.

It's nice to see you care nothing about GP balance, but you simply enjoy a fetish for unsolicited data consumption.

Information should be free to everyone. That is all I am trying to do here. You want to hide it and keep access only for yourself.

NATIONAL HAPPENINGS ARE PUBLIC RECORD. It is not like they are a secret. They show up on your nations page. I do not see the problem here.

[Lun Noir]

Oh this is very handy.

Thanks, violet!

[[violet]]

As far as everything else, regarding your statements about how scripts already made all of this possible, that the super dossier made all of this possible, etc: that is my point. You extend the WA happenings, then you extend them to absurd lengths, then you create super dossiers, and now this. I understand that we are on an unstoppable march towards automated gameplay, but don't expect me to be happy about it.

I understand that completely, but I think the way to prevent "automated gameplay" is to make success less reliant on being overlooked by your opponents. (There are several things we can do along these lines and several already on the drawing board.) Because we no longer live in a script-free world; we have to deal with the fact that bots crawl the site pretty much constantly, and collect everything they find. If we ignore that--if we veto a Reports page because we want it to remain hard to collate that information--then all we do is widen the divide between the people with scripts and people without. That actually encourages the shift to scripts and tools.

I don't believe we can stop the data-gathering, no matter what rules we make. For all the criticism Afforess gets, he's often only doing in public and within the rules what others have done privately and/or illegally. I have to track down and block illegal scripts, and it's painful and time-consuming and getting worse and worse. If it's possible today to publish information on the site but hide it from bots, it's not going to be possible for much longer.

But obviously stealth is an important part of the invasion game today, and the new Reports page makes life difficult. In particular it helps the casual defender, who couldn't be bothered figuring out scripts and tools, but will use this. I am aware of that, and I am a supporter of balance in the invasion game.

[Henri Matisse]

<snip>

My front yard is in clear sight of everyone that walks by.

Does that mean there should be a camera pointed at my front yard for the whole internet to see at a moment's notice?

Your only justification lies in your technical ability, you continue to ignore the ramifications on GP.

And again, I know I will not break your server, you are not grasping my point.

I don't care about your server, I care about lazy defenders or anyone else being able to use your tool to neutralize stealth GP with no effort of their own, and raiders can stop this using my methods, just as they used WA happenings clearing in the past.

My tool is bigger than your tool.

My tool is bigger than your tool.

Let's just GP be one big coding war, eh?

Or maybe you could f*** off and give a little ground, keep everything else and leave endorsements - the bread and butter of GP - alone.

[Afforess]

Thank you violet, you put it eloquently.

My front yard is in clear sight of everyone that walks by.

Does that mean there should be a camera pointed at my front yard for the whole internet to see at a moment's notice?

Yes, and I am wondering if you have heard of this thing called "Google Street View"?

Or maybe you could f*** off and give a little ground, keep everything else and leave endorsements - the bread and butter of GP - alone.

Or like, raiders could learn to evolve with the game instead of against it. Perfect reporting on happenings does not prevent sleeper nations. Perfect reporting on happenings does not mean defenders will have enough nations to respond. Perfect reporting on happenings makes false-flag operations easier, etc, etc. You're so worried about super-basic raiding being dead, but I think this is just the start of professional raiders.

[Eist]

Afforess, what you fail to understand is that raiders *need* to use the same old dirty puppets that they use every few days for the last year, and that these puppets necessarily launch from the same ol' region that updates somewhere near the end of update (but not as near as all of the major defender groups--I mean, that would be work!). Anything else would require some critical thinking skills rather than plugging some in to a calculator and pressing the move button. This is way too much to ask from this community.

[Henri Matisse]

<snip>

If you want to be a peeping tom and spy on me through my window, then I should have the right to fling my underwear in your face.

I am adapting, by using a script to optimize the speed at which I can give and withdraw endorsements, to fill your dossier with crap.

If you don't like it, I suggest you follow your own logic and pray to your pet rock.

EDIT: Google Street View is not real time, blocks out people's faces/license plates, and is not ubiquitous, so your analogy faiiiiiiiiils.

Put a live video camera outside everyone's house and that would be an apt comparison, because that is basically what you are doing here.