Suggestion: Puppet Tick Box in Nation Creation Screen

[The Nation of the People of the Nation]

Not sure if this has been proposed before, but thought I would bring it up now.

Especially with everyone making 250 card puppets, recruitment has been very hard as of late. Many of these puppets aren't being created with NS++ as they might have been a few years ago and thus don't have recruitment telegrams turned off by default, very few people turn them off after creation as well. This doesn't just waste stamps on telegrams no one will ever open, but makes it hard to conduct manual recruitment research as well as the numbers of successful recruits are down from where they were before 50% of new nation creations were puppets.

To solve this would it be possible to have a "This is a Puppet" tick box on the nation creation screen that blocks recruitment telegrams by default?

[Giovanniland]

I presume a lot of people wouldn't want to click yet another button when creating nations, due to just laziness or even to tamper with recruitment on purpose. Unless this is somehow enforced (and that would be pretty hard) I don't see why this would be useful.

[Pluvie]

I presume a lot of people wouldn't want to click yet another button when creating nations, due to just laziness or even to tamper with recruitment on purpose. Unless this is somehow enforced (and that would be pretty hard) I don't see why this would be useful.

I could easily see getting past the original problem if by marking a nation as a puppet, you could also attach it to a main nation and advertise that somewhere on the nation

[Giovanniland]

I presume a lot of people wouldn't want to click yet another button when creating nations, due to just laziness or even to tamper with recruitment on purpose. Unless this is somehow enforced (and that would be pretty hard) I don't see why this would be useful.

I could easily see getting past the original problem if by marking a nation as a puppet, you could also attach it to a main nation and advertise that somewhere on the nation

That would probably need even more extra steps to confirm you're only marking a nation as a puppet of your main nation: mark as a puppet, type your main nation name, and presumably enter the main nation's password. This reminds me of the 'account' mechanic that people sometimes suggest, in which one would group all their nations into a single place and makes it easier to identify, but if I recall correctly admins have said that it would need a big overhaul of the way the site works.

[Frisbeeteria]

you could also attach it to a main nation and advertise that somewhere on the nation

At some point there will probably be a Master Account (presumably your main nation) and then all your other nations under it, so you could switch between puppets without logging out and in constantly. That said, it will effectively require a complete rebuild of the core game engine to add that ... so I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for it.

[GruffyRichard and HillbillyBob]

I just save all my puppet names and passwords to my computer and do routine checks on them. It takes about 60 seconds to complete the check

[Refuge Isle]

Not sure if this has been proposed before, but thought I would bring it up now.

Especially with everyone making 250 card puppets, recruitment has been very hard as of late. Many of these puppets aren't being created with NS++ as they might have been a few years ago and thus don't have recruitment telegrams turned off by default, very few people turn them off after creation as well. This doesn't just waste stamps on telegrams no one will ever open, but makes it hard to conduct manual recruitment research as well as the numbers of successful recruits are down from where they were before 50% of new nation creations were puppets.

To solve this would it be possible to have a "This is a Puppet" tick box on the nation creation screen that blocks recruitment telegrams by default?

This might also be useful to have nations skipped in card snapshots to cut down on the millions of unwanted switcher commons

[Jar Wattinree]

Not sure if this has been proposed before, but thought I would bring it up now.

Especially with everyone making 250 card puppets, recruitment has been very hard as of late. Many of these puppets aren't being created with NS++ as they might have been a few years ago and thus don't have recruitment telegrams turned off by default, very few people turn them off after creation as well. This doesn't just waste stamps on telegrams no one will ever open, but makes it hard to conduct manual recruitment research as well as the numbers of successful recruits are down from where they were before 50% of new nation creations were puppets.

To solve this would it be possible to have a "This is a Puppet" tick box on the nation creation screen that blocks recruitment telegrams by default?

This might also be useful to have nations skipped in card snapshots to cut down on the millions of unwanted switcher commons

Now this is an idea.

[The Unified Missourtama States]

This might also be useful to have nations skipped in card snapshots to cut down on the millions of unwanted switcher commons

I don't like this idea, I love the commons, don't try to mess with card creation, please.

[Authoritaria-Imperia]

I presume a lot of people wouldn't want to click yet another button when creating nations, due to just laziness or even to tamper with recruitment on purpose. Unless this is somehow enforced (and that would be pretty hard) I don't see why this would be useful.

What if instead of it being another button, it were part of the url? Like the page could be "https://www.nationstates.net/page=create_nation/nation=puppet" or something, and that would lead to the exact same dialogue but with a puppet label added automatically. It could even be turn-off-able in settings later for if you really wanted the label removed or something. True, it wouldn't be easily enforceable, but would it have to be? It could just be a courtesy used by card farmers to help out recruiting regions…

This might also be useful to have nations skipped in card snapshots to cut down on the millions of unwanted switcher commons

I'm with TUMS on this one — puppet cards are fun! Even if there're kinda a lot of them…

[Refuge Isle]

I don't like this idea, I love the commons, don't try to mess with card creation, please.

I'm with TUMS on this one — puppet cards are fun! Even if there're kinda a lot of them…

The question is, does the average NS player, not just the couple dozen cards power players with novelty puppet collections. Were I a new player and I opened a pack of cards where it's five numbered card farms with default flags, I would probably say the minigame isn't really all that interesting. Presuming S3 ever arrives, there will be massively more farms than there are at present, too.

It's worth thinking about.

[Authoritaria-Imperia]

The question is, does the average NS player, not just the couple dozen cards power players with novelty puppet collections. Were I a new player and I opened a pack of cards where it's five numbered card farms with default flags, I would probably say the minigame isn't really all that interesting. Presuming S3 ever arrives, there will be massively more farms than there are at present, too.

It's worth thinking about.

Granted. But I think a blanket "no puppet cards!" change would be overkill; there'd probably have to be a set of rules in place. Like maybe a rule only applying to cards with default game flags, certain types of activity, etc., and with a check-box so that a genuine player mis-tagged as a puppet can tag themself correctly.
Actually, that sounds kinda workable when I say it out loud. It'd certainly eliminate stuff like the Wombles and "Card Farmer WXYZ", and if the owner of those nations decided they really wanted to have cards for all those, said player could go in and personally tick all those tick-boxes for each nation.

But I'm veering off-topic here; the thread is about recruitment telegrams. I think it'd be great if we could stop recruitment stamps from getting wasted on puppets.

[United Calanworie]

Why is everyone going at this like it needs to be a rule? Just add the tickbox, and a bunch of people will use it. Maybe some won't, sure, but the people who do will help cut down on the chaff for recruiters.


As a matter of practice, I turn of recruitment telegrams ASAP, because I don't want to see them come in and have to dismiss them. It's annoying. I'd happily take a tickbox to turn them off, especially if I was going to do it anyways.

[Comfed]

Not sure if this has been proposed before, but thought I would bring it up now.

Especially with everyone making 250 card puppets, recruitment has been very hard as of late. Many of these puppets aren't being created with NS++ as they might have been a few years ago and thus don't have recruitment telegrams turned off by default, very few people turn them off after creation as well. This doesn't just waste stamps on telegrams no one will ever open, but makes it hard to conduct manual recruitment research as well as the numbers of successful recruits are down from where they were before 50% of new nation creations were puppets.

To solve this would it be possible to have a "This is a Puppet" tick box on the nation creation screen that blocks recruitment telegrams by default?

This might also be useful to have nations skipped in card snapshots to cut down on the millions of unwanted switcher commons

Yes. This. Switcher common cards are terrible.

[Brilliantly]

Not sure if this has been proposed before, but thought I would bring it up now.

Especially with everyone making 250 card puppets, recruitment has been very hard as of late. Many of these puppets aren't being created with NS++ as they might have been a few years ago and thus don't have recruitment telegrams turned off by default, very few people turn them off after creation as well. This doesn't just waste stamps on telegrams no one will ever open, but makes it hard to conduct manual recruitment research as well as the numbers of successful recruits are down from where they were before 50% of new nation creations were puppets.

To solve this would it be possible to have a "This is a Puppet" tick box on the nation creation screen that blocks recruitment telegrams by default?

That will be a good idea/thought because puppets are annoying because they are created for a purpose.

[Galiantus III]

This is just a splint for the real problem: large-scale puppet creation is incentivized. The in-game benefits for creating tons upon tons of puppets need to be eliminated, including for card farming and parts of R/D. If someone still wants to create tons of puppets that's fine, but it should not be a necessary part of play.