Mini-GCRs

[Unibot III]

Excellent!



I don't think that's true. The creation of new GCRs in the past has always been a serious point of diplomatic interest and intrigue for UCR foreign policy. I mean, the moment Osiris/Balder were created you had 10000 Islands, Europeia, GB&I and TNI knee-deep in the politics right from the get-go - and it would probably be much more prominent in the case of venters.

(Later, Gatesville, Equilism, Unknown and Albion got involved too.)



Yay!



Ah! Well, typically in the case of GCRs, the admins will make the regions. Although in the case of The East Pacific, a player had already founded the East Pacific - and they seized the region from them.

I'm pretty sure GB&I wasn't around when Balder and Osiris were made*... do you mean the LKE?

*Disclaimer, could be wrong, thought it was shut down sooner than 2011

I was thinking the revival, but now that you mention it, I think it was EE.

[The Blaatschapen]

The specifics of which regions were exactly involved in the early day politics of Balder and Osiris are better left to Gameplay. It's interesting, but the argument stands just as well with the other regions already mentioned.

Back to the technical side of things.

[Galiantus VII]

I think a much more interesting system would be one in which the GCRs determine where 100% of new/returning nations are spawned, excluding themselves. By default all the feeders would be sending nations to each other in a balanced manner (each pacific sending 25% of new nations to the other pacifics, each sinker sending 50% of returning nations to the other two).

I'd like to re-visit this.^ The concept is like Unibot's proposal in that UCRs each control the chances of other regions spawning new/returning nations.

If we did this in concert with venters and limited transfers to other GCRs I think it would work great. The main modifications to Unibot's proposal are that (1) GCRs send 100% of their nations to other GCRs, and (2) feeders and sinkers also send to feeders and sinkers.

Consequences are that feeders and sinkers would become natural competitors in an economy of incoming nations, and venters would become the natural benefactors of conflict between the other GCRs.

Thoughts?

[Cerian Quilor]

I'm honestly not entirely sure what you're proposing Gal. It reads as two different things at the same time...

[Galiantus VII]

Feeders and sinkers send 100% of the nations they would get under the current system to other feeders, sinkers, or venters.

[Cerian Quilor]

Interesting, but I'm not sure how that helps UCRs - I mean, unlike venters, there's no room for UCRs to start staking out influence and constituencies in unclaimed lands.

[Galiantus VII]

As much as I would like to, this is not some attempt to get UCRs directly involved. I'm simply expanding on Unibot's idea. Venters remain open for UCRs to fight over initially. How does this hurt UCR participation? Are you saying you think we should build in some direct benefits for UCRs becoming involved in GCR politics?

[Cerian Quilor]

I'm saying that it doesn't really seem to serve much of a purpose, and I think proposed changes to GCRs should have a reasonable ripple effect beyond the GCRs unless they're very small ones.

[Galiantus VII]

The purpose of Unibot's proposal is to increase political gameplay in the GCRs, and my suggestion is designed to enhance that gameplay by introducing a form of counterplay between the GCRs.

I'm saying that it doesn't really seem to serve much of a purpose, and I think proposed changes to GCRs should have a reasonable ripple effect beyond the GCRs unless they're very small ones.

Can you clarify what you mean by this? I am unsure of your meaning.

[Cerian Quilor]

If the change is very small in scale (decaying influence), I don't care if it doesn't have a good ripple effect onto the UCRs. But the bigger in scale and scope that it is, the more I think it needs to effect UCRs via ripple effect, like the Venters would. And I'm not sure I see your idea adding a good ripple effect.

[Galiantus VII]

I don't think that is wholly true. Unibot asserts that under his proposal, the creation of venters would have a significant impact on UCRs. Indeed, the creation of new GCRs has always attracted UCRs and stirred up more gameplay in the past. In the first year of their creation, venters would be major centers of conflict as UCRs try to game the situation to benefit from it. But I think we can do better.

Under my proposal, the GCRs would need more interaction with UCRs. Currently, GCRs really don't have strong reasons to look outside the region for help, because their problems are overwhelmingly internal. The fun thing about venters is that their problems are primarily external. If GCRs could do things to help or hurt one another, then they would be obligated to formalize their relations with each other. For UCRs, this would have huge consequences because they could much more easily become involved in GCR politics. My proposal places GCRs in competition with each other by raising the stakes of their relations with each other. The natural result is that they are more likely to pull in third parties willing to take a side in whatever conflict arises, thereby increasing the participation of UCRs in GCR politics. This is not something I see Unibot's original proposal having the potential to do.

In practice, here's how gameplay under my proposal would most likely play out:
First, TNP TWP TEP and TSP would all cut off a large portion of new nations from the Pacific. In response, the Pacific would immediately divert all new spawns to one or two venters, or perhaps a sinker, and move in forces to try and stabilize their holdings. The Pacific would also seek help from PCR military forces in order to try and stay afloat. If any other conflict were to cause friction within the other GCRs, I expect UCRs would take sides, and the gameplay situation would gradually devolve into opposing factions headed by GCRs with UCR satilites.

[Cerian Quilor]

You're assuming they'd all in unison target The Pacific, and that many UCRs would work with the NPO. The NPO has a history of not playing nice with others, but it also is very unlikely, at this point, that the rest of the GCRs would act against the NPO like that.

Shifting around which GCR gets what feeding doesn't come with any inherent link to affairs beyond the GCRs - whereas venters will have that, as GCR creation has been proven to pull in the ambitious

[Unibot III]

I would support something, a different plan, as an addition to the venter structure, which removed some 'power distance' between GCRs and UCRs. Over the years, francoism started seeping into the folk culture of all of the feeders - so whereas sinkers tend to work with UCRs a lot, feeders are bit more removed, a bit more isolationist from UCRs. TNP's relationships were more or less an aberration - a result of TNP being the historical 'ideological rival' (that's not exactly the word) to the NPO among the feeders. A consequence of that isolationism, that exceptionalism, is that feeder foreign policy tends to be quite predictable and dull and slow to change; they keep a distance from UCRs and rarely provoke arguments between feeders. TSP's diplomatic fallout with the NPO, TEP and TWP over SPPR and BLT and the dead-on-arrival TSP-TWP war are the only prominent cases of feeder infighting in recent memory since, say, 2008.

It would have to be an incentive for feeders to work with UCR partners which didn't feel diminutive to GCRs; it's frankly not very right to go around changing how GCRs have worked for over a decade just to cause trouble. It would have to be a game feature that was a bit more subtle and added, rather than subtracted to GCRs. I'll think on it...

[Galiantus VII]

I don't know what Francoism is. Do you have a link I can go to and read up on it?

There are so many possible ideas we could be considering right now. We should not be focusing so much on the ideas themselves as much as the desired outcome of the ideas, because if we can clearly define the outcome we want then we can craft a system to arrive at that outcome. It would be much better for NationStates as a game if we don't rush to the first solution we see, but rather evaluate ideas and generate new ones with the intent of achieving a common, clearly laid out goal.

From our discussion so far, here are the parameters I have seen. Our new system:

• Must lower the power stability currently found in feeders and sinkers
• Must incentivise interaction between GCRs and UCRs
• Must make GCR infighting a more feasible possibility
• Must NOT significantly alter the roles of feeders and sinkers

That's definitely not a complete or fully thought out list, so amending the list is fully intended.

My perception has generally been that UCRs are so much smaller than GCRs that the existence of only a few UCRs actually matters to GCRs. UCRs can't offer GCRs anything, nor can they take anything. Given that sinkers are comperable in size to some of the largest UCRs, I think the size and power difference has been the greatest influence in isolating the feeders almost entirely from the UCRs. So any mechanic which could be used to reduce the size of GCRs (like venters) is an option to discuss thoroughly.

I will be thinking of solutions of my own as well. Should we open another thread for a more general discussion of other possible changes to make?

[Unibot III]

Errr, just give me some time. I'll think on it...

[Belschaft]

Relevant to this discussion, from a random chat on Discord;

"[2:02 AM] Belschaft: I wouldn't mind changing up the way the Warzones worked, or adding new PvP GCR's
[2:02 AM] Belschaft: Maybe one where the Delegate can't eject/ban people, only the RO's they appoint can
[2:02 AM] Escade: What would PvP look like? As in within the GCrs or against each other?
[2:03 AM] Escade: It would also just be interesting to have reasons for the GCRs to unite that didn't have to do with coups
[2:03 AM] Escade: Like aliens
[2:03 AM] Belschaft: And then once a month reset endorsements/influence to zero at major/minor depending on the region
[2:03 AM] Belschaft: That way there'd be a fight for the Delegacy, as whoever got it first couldn't just lock it down - they'd have to wait X hours before they could use the RO powers
[2:04 AM] Belschaft: So it would be a monthly capture the flag kinda thing
[2:04 AM] Escade: That seems cool, a monthly reset
[2:04 AM] QuietDad: Would be great lol
[2:04 AM] Escade: I made a thread on the forums you should add that to it
[2:04 AM] Belschaft: You'd never want to base a government there, but the various GP armies would fight over it
[2:04 AM] Escade: Right well I think I called it "colonies"
[2:05 AM] QuietDad: I see TRR getting a whole lot of new members hours before a reset
[2:05 AM] Escade: They do need to add a new mechanic to the game that doesn't allow for stagnation tbh
[2:05 AM] Escade: its gotten a bit same old same old
[2:05 AM] Belschaft: It'd be a start of month event, essentially
[2:06 AM] Belschaft: Code some kind of score counter, which would track which region has taken them the most number of times
[2:06 AM] Belschaft: Maybe they can only have one embassy, and at the end of the month when it resets wherever it's set to gets a little trophy"

[Galiantus VII]

I think I have an idea you might like, Unibot. It's really just a combination of ideas put together, but I think it might be what we are looking for.

Rather than send old returning nations to the sinkers, send nations back to the region they CTEed in (provided it still exists, and provided it isn't passworded, of course). This is what lots of people do already, because the first thing returning players usually want to do is check up on their region-mates.

But we can't just take away the sinkers' population base, so let's make them feeders. I know this won't really match the theme of their names, but a shift like this would balance GCR power a bit without significantly changing the way they operate.

We would also utilize venters. Venters would work exactly as you have outlined, but they would also recieve any returning nations unable to refound in their original region. So venters would always be more valuable than non-Feeders/non-Sinkers, but their main source of new nations would be politics with the (now 8 ) feeders.

Finally, nation creation would receive another feature. Next to the "create nation" button, new nations would be shown the name of the region their nation was going to be created in. By default the target region would be a GCR, but clicking on the listed region would expand a menu to search for another region to create the new nation in. New players wouldn't have to understand what a region is in order to begin, and returning players could more easily create lots of puppets in desired locations.

[Cerian Quilor]

You're underestimating the value of recruitment among refoundeds

[Galiantus VII]

Well of course you could still send recruitment telegrams to refounded nations - it's not like that would change.

[Flanderlion]

I liked the original idea, but now it's kinda morphed into something different I'm not so for with weird influence, weird rules etc. The choosing what percentage of new nations goes into each one was simple, but now it's kinda too complex. Status quo if we could please. If we have to change, I'm now undecided.

[Unibot III]

I liked the original idea, but now it's kinda morphed into something different I'm not so for with weird influence, weird rules etc. The choosing what percentage of new nations goes into each one was simple, but now it's kinda too complex. Status quo if we could please. If we have to change, I'm now undecided.

It's quite literally the same idea using influence instead of nations. I swear to god I'm writing Sherlock here. "Just go back to solving cases, please."

There are no new "rules" at all. It's just the venters have lower and manipulable influence costs versus the other GCRs. That's it. If I were to pursue the original idea with TRR also distributing nations - that's where things would get weird (since you could potentially have rejected nations ending up in the region they were ejected from.)

[Flanderlion]

I liked the original idea, but now it's kinda morphed into something different I'm not so for with weird influence, weird rules etc. The choosing what percentage of new nations goes into each one was simple, but now it's kinda too complex. Status quo if we could please. If we have to change, I'm now undecided.

It's quite literally the same idea using influence instead of nations. I swear to god I'm writing Sherlock here. "Just go back to solving cases, please."

There are no new "rules" at all. It's just the venters have lower and manipulable influence costs versus the other GCRs. That's it. If I were to pursue the original idea with TRR also distributing nations - that's where things would get weird (since you could potentially have rejected nations ending up in the region they were ejected from.)

The influence changes were what I referred to with rules - because sometimes it was fixed and other times it was variable where other regions picked it. Also Sinkers aren't big atm. and generally aren't active enough that we should be taking away part of their activity for new regions. Both involving TRR and sinkers and the associated rules kinda seem like it's trying to include them rather than actually focusing on fixing a problem.

[Unibot III]

It's quite literally the same idea using influence instead of nations. I swear to god I'm writing Sherlock here. "Just go back to solving cases, please."

There are no new "rules" at all. It's just the venters have lower and manipulable influence costs versus the other GCRs. That's it. If I were to pursue the original idea with TRR also distributing nations - that's where things would get weird (since you could potentially have rejected nations ending up in the region they were ejected from.)

The influence changes were what I referred to with rules - because sometimes it was fixed and other times it was variable where other regions picked it. Also Sinkers aren't big atm. and generally aren't active enough that we should be taking away part of their activity for new regions. Both involving TRR and sinkers and the associated rules kinda seem like it's trying to include them rather than actually focusing on fixing a problem.

It is trying to include them. Not including them I think would quite a bore. TNP-TEP-TSP would raise their numbers on roleplaying democratic venters, NPO-TWP would raise their numbers on authoritarian venters - so presumably three venters would be roleplaying democratic venters and one of them authoritarian. And participating militarily wouldn't necessarily be in any of the venters interests - because it would divide TSP from TNP/TEP or vice versa, and divide TWP from NPO.

So you'd have a pretty stable political formation within the venters because it's a pretty stable set of circumstances in the feeders.

You add the sinkers into the mix and it's a party. Two invader regions, two defender regions. Boom. Let the games begin.

[Canton Empire]

What does Admin think?

[Unibot III]

What does Admin think?

No idea but I can't imagine from the silence that it's positive.