NationStates

This would be distinct from deleting a country. When you delete a country, the national government and all entities under it are entirely gone. When you disband a country, only the national government is gone; the regional governments are still around. There are multiple ways a "disband" button would work depending on the type of country being disbanded:

(1) For confederations, roleplaying as the collective entity would become impossible due to its disbanding. Instead, you are forced to roleplay as one of the regional entities in the confederation. Also, your title gets a "former" prefix. For example, "the Confederacy of [BLANK]" would become "the Former Confederacy of [BLANK]".

(2) For federations, moderate to strong control over the regions would become impossible. However, very weak control of regions is possible. This is somewhere in between confederacy-level and region-level control. Also, your title gets a "former" prefix. For example, "the Federation of [BLANK]" would become "the Former Federation of [BLANK]".

(3) For unitary states, the current government is overthrown. For this, a full redo of the initial questionnaire must be done. However, neither the population nor the title change. For example, "the Republic of [BLANK]" could become "the Republic of [DIFFERENT_BLANK]".

(4) For colonies, the current government is overthrown, but there is a 50% chance that the head of the region in which the colony resides becomes the sole government ruling the colony. For example "the Colony of [BLANK]" could become "the Colony of [DIFFERENT_BLANK]", or it could become "the [TITLE] of [HEAD_OF_REGION] (Colony)".

One might this dismiss as a useless addition, but it would have some uses:

(1) If you feel like you messed up in making your nation and your nation is so far from your ideal of perfect but you do not want to start over, a disband button would let you start over if you are roleplaying as a unitary state.

(2) If you feel like you have too much control over your people, a disband button would let you be more hands-off if you are roleplaying as a federation.

(3) If you feel like you have to deal with too many people from fewer backgrounds, a disband button would greatly reduce the number of people you have to protect if you are roleplaying as a confederation.

One might be confused as to what exactly would classify as a a colony, a unitary state, a federation, or a confederation. Here would likely be the classification:

Colonies: Colony, Protectorate, Fiefdom, Dominion, Incorporated States

Unitary States: Republic, Kingdom, Empire, Commonwealth, Principality, United Kingdom, People's Republic, Democratic Republic, Sultanate, Holy Empire, Theocracy, Most Serene Republic, Queendom, Constitutional Monarchy, Dictatorship, Matriarchy, Emirate, Grand Duchy, Free Land, Community, Disputed Territories, Armed Republic, Nomadic Peoples, Oppressed Peoples, Borderlands, Rogue Nation

Federations: Federation, United States, United Socialist States, Democratic States, Allied States, Jingoistic States, Federal Republic

Confederations: Confederacy

States with custom titles would have to choose their own classification.

Would this be a feature for only mods to do? Or anyone?

Sounds interesting, I have some cringy old nations I’d love to disband. Would you make it so that the nation name becomes unreserved?

Nooooooooooooooo wrote:Would this be a feature for only mods to do? Or anyone?

Everyone would be able to do this. You would only be able to do it on your own country (unless you are an administrator, who can do it on anyone).

I would like this idea, but only for using on only your (player's) nations.

This is confusing. What do you mean by [DIFFERENT_BLANK]? Would the nation name change? It would affect other dispatches, in which [BLANK] is mentioned.

Nooooooooooooooo wrote:This is confusing. What do you mean by [DIFFERENT_BLANK]? Would the nation name change? It would affect other dispatches, in which [BLANK] is mentioned.

If you are a unitary state, you can change the country name, but you do not have to. It would affect changes in which [BLANK] is mentioned.

Levy wrote:Sounds interesting, I have some cringy old nations I’d love to disband. Would you make it so that the nation name becomes unreserved?

If the nation is a unitary state and if you change its name, the name would become unreserved if you disband it.

Free Ravensburg wrote:I would like this idea, but only for using on only your (player's) nations.

You would only be able to disband your own country unless you are an administrator of NationStates.

Strana Land wrote:

Nooooooooooooooo wrote:This is confusing. What do you mean by [DIFFERENT_BLANK]? Would the nation name change? It would affect other dispatches, in which [BLANK] is mentioned.

If you are a unitary state, you can change the country name, but you do not have to. It would affect changes in which [BLANK] is mentioned.

Does it mean mentions surrounded by [nation] tags? Or every single mention? In my case, there would obviously some RMB posts that would be taken out of context by changing "Nooooooooooooooo!" to to "[something else]!" Also, with something so drastic as that, it would also mean that demonyms would have to be changed, as well as ones mentioned in factbooks, which would cause huge problems for lots of nations, especially me, because my demonym is "Noon."

Nooooooooooooooo wrote:

Strana Land wrote:
If you are a unitary state, you can change the country name, but you do not have to. It would affect changes in which [BLANK] is mentioned.

Does it mean mentions surrounded by [nation] tags? Or every single mention? In my case, there would obviously some RMB posts that would be taken out of context by changing "Nooooooooooooooo!" to to "[something else]!" Also, with something so drastic as that, it would also mean that demonyms would have to be changed, as well as ones mentioned in factbooks, which would cause huge problems for lots of nations, especially me, because my demonym is "Noon."

Only mentions in [nation] tags would be changed. Demonyms would have to be changed manually.

Strana Land wrote:

Nooooooooooooooo wrote:Does it mean mentions surrounded by [nation] tags? Or every single mention? In my case, there would obviously some RMB posts that would be taken out of context by changing "Nooooooooooooooo!" to to "[something else]!" Also, with something so drastic as that, it would also mean that demonyms would have to be changed, as well as ones mentioned in factbooks, which would cause huge problems for lots of nations, especially me, because my demonym is "Noon."

Only mentions in [nation] tags would be changed. Demonyms would have to be changed manually.

Oh dear God, that would be such a nightmare. This might be easier to do if NS introduced a find+replace feature, however.

I don't really get the point of this idea. If you don't like what your nation has become then make a new one. It's as simple as logging out and hitting the new nation button. If you want to split it up into "regions" for roleplay, you make new nations that represent those regions. This proposal sounds very confusing and messy.

Nooooooooooooooo wrote:

Strana Land wrote:
Only mentions in [nation] tags would be changed. Demonyms would have to be changed manually.

Oh dear God, that would be such a nightmare. This might be easier to do if NS introduced a find+replace feature, however.

Would you consider Nooooooooooooooo a unitary state or colony? If not, you would not have to worry about that because disbanding a federation or confederation would do something different.

Strana Land wrote:

Nooooooooooooooo wrote:Oh dear God, that would be such a nightmare. This might be easier to do if NS introduced a find+replace feature, however.

Would you consider Nooooooooooooooo a unitary state or colony? If not, you would not have to worry about that because disbanding a federation or confederation would do something different.

I'm a federation.

Sodoran Alesia wrote:I don't really get the point of this idea. If you don't like what your nation has become then make a new one. It's as simple as logging out and hitting the new nation button. If you want to split it up into "regions" for roleplay, you make new nations that represent those regions. This proposal sounds very confusing and messy.

Here are some situations in which it could be useful:

(1) If you do not like how your country turned out but you do not want to start from square one

(2) If you want more control over your country than a region would provide but less than a confederation

(3) If you would rather govern only a small part of a confederation but do not want to start from square one

Strana Land wrote:

Sodoran Alesia wrote:I don't really get the point of this idea. If you don't like what your nation has become then make a new one. It's as simple as logging out and hitting the new nation button. If you want to split it up into "regions" for roleplay, you make new nations that represent those regions. This proposal sounds very confusing and messy.

Here are some situations in which it could be useful:

(1) If you do not like how your country turned out but you do not want to start from square one

(2) If you want more control over your country than a region would provide but less than a confederation

(3) If you would rather govern only a small part of a confederation but do not want to start from square one

Would you be able to keep your countries population, factbooks, forum posts, etc?

Strana Land wrote:

Sodoran Alesia wrote:I don't really get the point of this idea. If you don't like what your nation has become then make a new one. It's as simple as logging out and hitting the new nation button. If you want to split it up into "regions" for roleplay, you make new nations that represent those regions. This proposal sounds very confusing and messy.

Here are some situations in which it could be useful:

(1) If you do not like how your country turned out but you do not want to start from square one

If you're too lazy to make a new nation, then I don't know what to say, tons of people make new nations for roleplay purposes.

(2) If you want more control over your country than a region would provide but less than a confederation

What do you mean by "control"? Reading the original post, it doesn't really elaborate on that and just says something about the people you control.

(3) If you would rather govern only a small part of a confederation but do not want to start from square one

What does "governing a small part" mean? This proposal is very vague. Does it affect issues and how you get them?

Lastly, why should anyone support this? People roleplay in different ways, implementing it in one specific way that could affect your nation sounds a bit unfair and risky from the admins' standpoint.

Factbooks, dispatches, RMBs, and forum posts work fine for everyone else. I don't see any compelling reason as to why this is a good idea besides someone being too lazy to create new nations.

Levy wrote:

Strana Land wrote:
Here are some situations in which it could be useful:

(1) If you do not like how your country turned out but you do not want to start from square one

(2) If you want more control over your country than a region would provide but less than a confederation

(3) If you would rather govern only a small part of a confederation but do not want to start from square one

Would you be able to keep your countries population, factbooks, forum posts, etc?

If you are a colony, unitary state, or federation, you would keep your population, factbooks, and forum posts. If you are a confederation, you would keep factbooks and forum posts, but your population would be divided by a random number greater than 1.

Sodoran Alesia wrote:

Strana Land wrote:
Here are some situations in which it could be useful:

(1) If you do not like how your country turned out but you do not want to start from square one

If you're too lazy to make a new nation, then I don't know what to say, tons of people make new nations for roleplay purposes.

(2) If you want more control over your country than a region would provide but less than a confederation

What do you mean by "control"? Reading the original post, it doesn't really elaborate on that and just says something about the people you control.

(3) If you would rather govern only a small part of a confederation but do not want to start from square one

What does "governing a small part" mean? This proposal is very vague. Does it affect issues and how you get them?

Lastly, why should anyone support this? People roleplay in different ways, implementing it in one specific way that could affect your nation sounds a bit unfair and risky from the admins' standpoint.

Factbooks, dispatches, RMBs, and forum posts work fine for everyone else. I don't see any compelling reason as to why this is a good idea besides someone being too lazy to create new nations.

"Control" meaning the things you get to do being the owners of a nation/region. In a former federation, you will still have control over some aspects of the nation, such as the national symbols, currency, flag, and the occasional issue (about 1/20 of the issues would go to the desk of the national government instead of the local government, so you get to decide on 5% of the issues you would normally get). Plus, there would be a stricter limit on the number of factbooks you can make, going from 25 factbooks in a normal federation to 5 factbooks in a former federation.

"Governing a small part" does not really mean anything, but it will be reflected in one statistic: population. If you become a former confederation, you loose a portion of your population due to not governing a certain amount of people who would have been governed. For example, a confederacy with a population of 10G could disband, and the former confederacy (as which the player is roleplaying) would have a population of 1G; the other 9G people are no longer governed by the government as which the player is roleplaying. In a former confederation, you still roleplay as you would.

This would be useful for people who do not want to have to regain support after forming a new nation. Disbanding a nation would not delete any forum messages or any endorsements; it would only make you re-take the questionnaire. Disbanding a nation, unlike starting a new one, would enable you to keep whatever positions of power you may have.

Strana Land wrote:

Nooooooooooooooo wrote:This is confusing. What do you mean by [DIFFERENT_BLANK]? Would the nation name change? It would affect other dispatches, in which [BLANK] is mentioned.

If you are a unitary state, you can change the country name, but you do not have to. It would affect changes in which [BLANK] is mentioned.

If I recall correctly, changing a nation name would be impossible in the way the game is currently coded, because the nation name serves as identifier. If it could be changed, all references to it (not only in dispatches, but also in forum/rmb posts, etc) would break.

Furthermore, I don't see how this feature would be worth so many coding by the admins. If the concern is that you didn't like a nation after founding it, simply create a new one and after 28 days of not logging in the old one (60 if vacation mode) it will cease to exist. If the concern is about roleplaying a government change, you can simply create a factbook about said change. Many people ignore parts of their original NS nation (such as ignoring stats) so it can fit better with what they want to roleplay.

This seriously feels like a solution in search of a problem that literally doesn't exist.

Gandoor wrote:This seriously feels like a solution in search of a problem that literally doesn't exist.

When you’re right, You’re right.

Also, while this entire idea is bad and definitely in the 'never gonna happen' realm of ideas, I just gotta point one more thing out for the OP (cause it's more useful to point out all the problems with bad ideas rather than just going 'THIS IS BAD. NOT GONNA HAPPEN'):

Strana Land wrote:"Governing a small part" does not really mean anything, but it will be reflected in one statistic: population. If you become a former confederation, you loose a portion of your population due to not governing a certain amount of people who would have been governed. For example, a confederacy with a population of 10G could disband, and the former confederacy (as which the player is roleplaying) would have a population of 1G; the other 9G people are no longer governed by the government as which the player is roleplaying. In a former confederation, you still roleplay as you would.

Strana Land wrote:If you are a confederation, you would keep factbooks and forum posts, but your population would be divided by a random number greater than 1.

Population is one element of this game that will never be touched, no matter what. The admins have been clear whenever there have been suggestions to lower everyone's populations to more 'realistic' numbers, whenever there've been suggestions to set custom populations, etc. Your population serves as the indicator for how long your nation has been active for and (outside of temporary events like zombies or nukes), there is literally a 0% chance they'll release any sort of feature that lets it be altered in any way.

Holy Pointless Complications, Batman!

Gandoor wrote:This seriously feels like a solution in search of a problem that literally doesn't exist.

Correct. Nothing I've seen here has any chance of being implemented.