Gameplay and Security Council Tech Development

[Sedgistan]

I love the idea of an Ejection / Expulsion category. It seems an obvious power for the WA to have.

However, I'm concerned it would overall have a negative impact on the game, being used as a force for stability and stagnation by targeting more controversial players who try to do things differently. In particular, I could see it putting an immediate end to any GCR coup, or being used to disrupt prominent invasions.

[Lenlyvit]

With regards to the security council & new categories, while we're at it:

I'd love to see an "Eject" category, where the Security Council can vote to revoke a nation's status as a World Assembly nation. I know this almost certainly will not be implemented, but it would certainly be a more looming threat over individuals that the Security Council as an entity would like to punish.

Some issues I potentially see: Would they be banned from rejoining so long as the resolution is extant, or would it simply be an ejection (e.g. banjection vs. ejection from the WA)? I'm more inclined towards the latter, though I understand that it would certainly be less than ideal to have a resolution that does one thing upon passage and then is just empty, without really serving an active purpose nor having reason to be repealed.

It would only be utilized on rare circumstances, but I like the politics it could bring to the table - and it could certainly encourage some of the SC roleplaying that I think declarations will help bring.

Ironically, I suggested that very same idea almost three years ago. The other ideas there might be worth looking at too.

[Flanderlion]

With regards to the security council & new categories, while we're at it:

I'd love to see an "Eject" category, where the Security Council can vote to revoke a nation's status as a World Assembly nation. I know this almost certainly will not be implemented, but it would certainly be a more looming threat over individuals that the Security Council as an entity would like to punish.

Some issues I potentially see: Would they be banned from rejoining so long as the resolution is extant, or would it simply be an ejection (e.g. banjection vs. ejection from the WA)? I'm more inclined towards the latter, though I understand that it would certainly be less than ideal to have a resolution that does one thing upon passage and then is just empty, without really serving an active purpose nor having reason to be repealed.

It would only be utilized on rare circumstances, but I like the politics it could bring to the table - and it could certainly encourage some of the SC roleplaying that I think declarations will help bring.

Ironically, I suggested that very same idea almost three years ago. The other ideas there might be worth looking at too.

I very much like the idea of changed influence gain for commend/condemnations.

Preserve I also like.

Supervisor a bit meh on - seems fair enough though.

The password one should require a password on the region - be literally the opposite of a liberation.

Monitoring I like. Document feels already done with declarations, and the bits not covered feels covered by dispatches.

I'm against the stabilisation, removal of nations from the WA (makes IC sense but as discussed earlier would be terrible for the game), and I think anything that edits the amount of votes regions can have, as it feels like it can snowball.

The more categories/resolutions there are, the more there is the need for a certain wise elected leader to have the ability to reorder the proposal queue. I also don't think new proposal types should come out until the activity wave of declarations slows down.

[Wabbitslayah]

If you feederize the sinkers, and sinkerize the feeders, you can set rules and boundaries in the system that weight out where are nations generated, so that the populations eventually can nornalize (as much as they will)

But in reality, NOTHING will solve the issue of "Why does people choose to be here not there?". People will be people with or without changes.

Exactly this. Unless spawn rate voodoo is intentionally done to favour specific GCRs over time they will all naturally even out equally across for spawns. Any other number variations aside from the voodoo will be because of CTE, ejects, and regional efforts to retain or recruit foreign nations. Which I think overall is a better option to have than not having it. There is no downside other than feeders not exclusively being feeders and sinkers not exclusively being Sinkers. Which is not a good reason. At this point of their existence, why the heck not? I also think it's a better alternative then adding new feeders/sinkers whatever. If 8 GCRs then end up too massively large somehow equally then a new GCR could be made.

@Sedge, is this a viable option to implement?

[Unibot III]

I’m not sure I really get the value in removing the distinction between feeders and sinkers — the con is you’re fundamentally removing a cultural aspect of NSGP (feeder/sinker) — the pro is sinkers get 30 nations more day and feeders get 20 nations less a day — we’re talking about redistributing a 100 nations daily. I don’t think there would be a strong mechanical impact, especially when this redistribution is mapped over regions that are already *very* stable.

Creating new GCRs in my view is more likely to generate activity, because the nations are being funnelled into new communities forming, with additional activity taking place as a result of players trying to pigeon-hole a GCR into their sphere of influence.

As for ‘destabilizing’ feeders and sinkers…

Some thoughts.

- ‘The easier you make it to take the delegacy of a region, the easier you make it take it back.’ This proviso makes it difficult to implement a change to the game that doesn’t result in a stable equilibrium.
- To respond to ‘over-stability’, you need to establish what’s driving stability — is it because it’s too difficult to accumulate endorsements under surveillance? Is it because Regional Influence restricts your ability to carry a coup through opposition?
- Overstability is not good, but regular instability can be unproductive — a failed state isn’t carrying out any of its usual integrative operations.

I find a lot of proposals about GCR stagnation are misplaced. Like term limits — is there a real problem with incumbents? I know there used to be a real problem with it (Kandarin, Loop, Fudge) where GCRs were linked to particular personalities. Maybe NES? But nowadays what’s contributing to stagnation more seems to be ‘managed’ regions where GCRs split the executive from the delegacy — and regions use the delegacy as a placeholder for a highly vetted, nothing official (presidents, monarchs etc.) to avoid rogue delegacies. Term limits wouldn’t really impact this practice. But in today’s NS, rogue delegacies were the only way GCRs were couped.

How might GCRs be ‘un-stagnated’ for lack of a better word? You may find no direct mechanical change is needed — other changes like Declarations may create non-linear spin-offs — if you find ways to get GCRs talking again, conferencing, associating with one another and other regions, forming pacts and groups etc. these developments spiral into new activity.

You want ways to get NSers to play the game again. To get involved meaningfully in conflicts and crises and efforts to reconcile differences. Challenges in R/D, for instance, can mean challenges in the rest of NSGP for instance — it shouldn’t be ignored that people complaining about R/D stagnating is simultaneously occurring as people complain about politics stagnating and GCRs stagnating — they’re all connected. Stability isn’t always linearly connected to the changes that end up making the biggest difference.

I might re-suggest that some kind of war system may be especially helpful in renewing things in GCRs and broadly across NS. But the question in my mind is what war in NSGP would look like?

[Jar Wattinree]

I might re-suggest that some kind of war system may be especially helpful in renewing things in GCRs and broadly across NS. But the question in my mind is what war in NSGP would look like?

Tie it to stats. Suddenly, nations with gargantuan Defense Forces, Manufacturing, and Arms Manufacturing stats now have a use for them. NSGP, a minor part of the game, and the rest of the game are suddenly united. Everyone wins. Except for those who haven't been answering Issues.

[Les Claypool]

I’m not sure I really get the value in removing the distinction between feeders and sinkers — the con is you’re fundamentally removing a cultural aspect of NSGP (feeder/sinker)

While Feeder/Sinker is apart of identity, I don't buy it's as fundamental as you think. At the end of the day, those regions, primarily are defined by other factors for their culture. Democracies, Authoritarianism, Raider, Defender, Other alignments, Community itself, Political relations, etc. Only one region I feel is culturally heavily impacted by it's mechanic, and that's The Rejected Realms. Which in the proposition is excluded from becoming a Feeder and/or Sinker (the latter in terms as how the other 3 work if we are to consider TRR a sinker as well).

I do not believe for the other Feeder/Sinker GCRs that they'll be culturally impacted enough by merging the mechanics, they'd still operate how they operate. What would happen is spawning will equalize across them.

EDIT: This is wabbitslayah, forgot I logged into another puppet. Oops.

[Unibot III]

I might re-suggest that some kind of war system may be especially helpful in renewing things in GCRs and broadly across NS. But the question in my mind is what war in NSGP would look like?

Tie it to stats. Suddenly, nations with gargantuan Defense Forces, Manufacturing, and Arms Manufacturing stats now have a use for them. NSGP, a minor part of the game, and the rest of the game are suddenly united. Everyone wins. Except for those who haven't been answering Issues.

My thought is that NS War could work on a few different levels so both new and experienced players got something from a war system:

1. A notice of war is triggered very similar to embassies.
2. A state of war should unlock ‘Easter Egg’ issues about war-themed issues that nations otherwise cannot receive and it would impact those stats.
3. Non-founder executives have mobilization powers — rather than eject or banning a nation — they can mobilize any nation in their region and send them automatically into a region they’re declared war on — with Influence costs equivalent to the traditional ejections. This allows regions at a state of war with one another to invade other regions in the same way that TRR can be invaded.
4. A region that declares war has mobilization powers, but the opposite region has to also declare war (acknowledge it?) to unlock mobilization powers.
5. If you declare war, your founder cannot eject nations that have been mobilized into the region. So declaring war or acknowledging it, puts your founder out of commission as far as war is concerned.

Would this allow TSP etc. or whatever to invade Balder or Osiris or whatever? Yes, but at a significant cost to their region in terms of endorsements and influence. You’re blowing hundreds of nations…

Using war in R/D would be more difficult, because you’d need enough influence to mobilize your troops — a traditional liberation or invasion wouldn’t normally have a pointman that’s built up influence in the jump point like that — so if war was adapted at all to R/D, military gameplayers would have to get creative and innovate.

[Comfed]

I might re-suggest that some kind of war system may be especially helpful in renewing things in GCRs and broadly across NS. But the question in my mind is what war in NSGP would look like?

Tie it to stats. Suddenly, nations with gargantuan Defense Forces, Manufacturing, and Arms Manufacturing stats now have a use for them. NSGP, a minor part of the game, and the rest of the game are suddenly united. Everyone wins. Except for those who haven't been answering Issues.

And people who don’t have super militaristic nations.

[Sedgistan]

@Sedge, is this a viable option to implement?

I hold similar views to Unibot on merging the functions of feeders and sinkers - I don't see what it achieves. It's probably not that tricky a change to make (though it's not trivial), but aside from helping 3 sinker regions get a bit more active, it offers no improvement, and removes some of the uniqueness those regions have.

It warrants a thread of its own if you want to pursue it further, but that would definitely need to expand on who it benefits and how.

[Morover]

I love the idea of an Ejection / Expulsion category. It seems an obvious power for the WA to have.

However, I'm concerned it would overall have a negative impact on the game, being used as a force for stability and stagnation by targeting more controversial players who try to do things differently. In particular, I could see it putting an immediate end to any GCR coup, or being used to disrupt prominent invasions.

I'm sure there's a way to get around it leading to stagnation - there's something about it that tells me that if it's designed correctly, it will lead to more interesting aspects of activity; now, how exactly that design needs to happen, I'm unsure.

One thought I had is instead of targeting nations, there could be a resolution type that prevents a specific region from having a World Assembly delegate altogether, which could be interesting. My big issue with it is that (1) it makes it so that, realistically, only delegates can be targeted, which would prevent stuff from non-delegates who are just misbehaving. Also, it might put too much tension solely on regions, in terms of SC GP (I have no idea if that made sense but I can't think of how else to describe it).

If it's possible to get the ejection to be a category, I'd love to try and work it out because I really do think it could breathe some additional life to the SC and give it some more actual claws to fight with.

(also yes I may have inadvertently taken the idea from Len, sorry about that! All credit to them!)

[Unibot III]

I love the idea of an Ejection / Expulsion category. It seems an obvious power for the WA to have.

However, I'm concerned it would overall have a negative impact on the game, being used as a force for stability and stagnation by targeting more controversial players who try to do things differently. In particular, I could see it putting an immediate end to any GCR coup, or being used to disrupt prominent invasions.

I'm sure there's a way to get around it leading to stagnation - there's something about it that tells me that if it's designed correctly, it will lead to more interesting aspects of activity; now, how exactly that design needs to happen, I'm unsure.

One thought I had is instead of targeting nations, there could be a resolution type that prevents a specific region from having a World Assembly delegate altogether, which could be interesting. My big issue with it is that (1) it makes it so that, realistically, only delegates can be targeted, which would prevent stuff from non-delegates who are just misbehaving. Also, it might put too much tension solely on regions, in terms of SC GP (I have no idea if that made sense but I can't think of how else to describe it).

If it's possible to get the ejection to be a category, I'd love to try and work it out because I really do think it could breathe some additional life to the SC and give it some more actual claws to fight with.

(also yes I may have inadvertently taken the idea from Len, sorry about that! All credit to them!)

The expulsion could be a censure that restricted voting rights not endorsements. That way the category would have a significant impact, but it didn’t impact military gameplay.

You could censure a nation or region, bar them from voting in the WA.

EDIT: “Censure Unibot III” here we come

[Lenlyvit]

I love the idea of an Ejection / Expulsion category. It seems an obvious power for the WA to have.

However, I'm concerned it would overall have a negative impact on the game, being used as a force for stability and stagnation by targeting more controversial players who try to do things differently. In particular, I could see it putting an immediate end to any GCR coup, or being used to disrupt prominent invasions.

On the other side of that though it can be used to destabilize a stable community if targeted at a Delegate. Meaning a GCR delegate or founderless region delegate, making it easier for someone new to take over if they can plead their case to the Security Council.

[Jar Wattinree]

My thought is that NS War could work on a few different levels so both new and experienced players got something from a war system:

1. A notice of war is triggered very similar to embassies.
2. A state of war should unlock ‘Easter Egg’ issues about war-themed issues that nations otherwise cannot receive and it would impact those stats.
3. Non-founder executives have mobilization powers — rather than eject or banning a nation — they can mobilize any nation in their region and send them automatically into a region they’re declared war on — with Influence costs equivalent to the traditional ejections. This allows regions at a state of war with one another to invade other regions in the same way that TRR can be invaded.
4. A region that declares war has mobilization powers, but the opposite region has to also declare war (acknowledge it?) to unlock mobilization powers.
5. If you declare war, your founder cannot eject nations that have been mobilized into the region. So declaring war or acknowledging it, puts your founder out of commission as far as war is concerned.

Would this allow TSP etc. or whatever to invade Balder or Osiris or whatever? Yes, but at a significant cost to their region in terms of endorsements and influence. You’re blowing hundreds of nations…

Using war in R/D would be more difficult, because you’d need enough influence to mobilize your troops — a traditional liberation or invasion wouldn’t normally have a pointman that’s built up influence in the jump point like that — so if war was adapted at all to R/D, military gameplayers would have to get creative and innovate.

The specifics can be hashed out later, but I like where this is going. Naturally, passwords are going to foil these invasion attempts. How would this acquire the delegacy/overthrow the founder? Questions, questions to be answered.

Something that's also been overlooked in your analysis: card farm puppets can likely be used in the same manner, except more along the lines of a "human wave" style of attack, since building up Defense Forces (or specific stats in general) is difficult enough without the random answering to generate cards.

And people who don’t have super militaristic nations.

An irrelevant question. Stats are just numbers. Numbers are affected by your issue choices. It doesn't take much to specialize your nation to focus on a particular group of stats, and when you're far enough into answering Issues that the game engine has learned how you operate, answering Issues generally has a positive affect on stats that you don't even think would be affected otherwise, such as your Basket Weaving industry goes up when you answer an issue about rogue lumberjacks cutting down powerpoles (for some reason).

[Galiantus III]

I love the idea of an Ejection / Expulsion category. It seems an obvious power for the WA to have.

However, I'm concerned it would overall have a negative impact on the game, being used as a force for stability and stagnation by targeting more controversial players who try to do things differently. In particular, I could see it putting an immediate end to any GCR coup, or being used to disrupt prominent invasions.

On the other side of that though it can be used to destabilize a stable community if targeted at a Delegate. Meaning a GCR delegate or founderless region delegate, making it easier for someone new to take over if they can plead their case to the Security Council.

Well in theory it could be used that way, but that is extremely unlikely because what is stable is more likely to be popular. So I wouldn't want something that actually expels people from the WA. However, it could be interesting to do something like what Unibot suggested with censuring regions because that doesn't interfere with gameplay too much, yet it is a very powerful stick for the SC to wield.

[Kylia Quilor]

My thought is that NS War could work on a few different levels so both new and experienced players got something from a war system:

1. A notice of war is triggered very similar to embassies.
2. A state of war should unlock ‘Easter Egg’ issues about war-themed issues that nations otherwise cannot receive and it would impact those stats.
3. Non-founder executives have mobilization powers — rather than eject or banning a nation — they can mobilize any nation in their region and send them automatically into a region they’re declared war on — with Influence costs equivalent to the traditional ejections. This allows regions at a state of war with one another to invade other regions in the same way that TRR can be invaded.
4. A region that declares war has mobilization powers, but the opposite region has to also declare war (acknowledge it?) to unlock mobilization powers.
5. If you declare war, your founder cannot eject nations that have been mobilized into the region. So declaring war or acknowledging it, puts your founder out of commission as far as war is concerned.

Would this allow TSP etc. or whatever to invade Balder or Osiris or whatever? Yes, but at a significant cost to their region in terms of endorsements and influence. You’re blowing hundreds of nations…

Using war in R/D would be more difficult, because you’d need enough influence to mobilize your troops — a traditional liberation or invasion wouldn’t normally have a pointman that’s built up influence in the jump point like that — so if war was adapted at all to R/D, military gameplayers would have to get creative and innovate.

The specifics can be hashed out later, but I like where this is going. Naturally, passwords are going to foil these invasion attempts. How would this acquire the delegacy/overthrow the founder? Questions, questions to be answered.

Something that's also been overlooked in your analysis: card farm puppets can likely be used in the same manner, except more along the lines of a "human wave" style of attack, since building up Defense Forces (or specific stats in general) is difficult enough without the random answering to generate cards.

And people who don’t have super militaristic nations.

An irrelevant question. Stats are just numbers. Numbers are affected by your issue choices. It doesn't take much to specialize your nation to focus on a particular group of stats, and when you're far enough into answering Issues that the game engine has learned how you operate, answering Issues generally has a positive affect on stats that you don't even think would be affected otherwise, such as your Basket Weaving industry goes up when you answer an issue about rogue lumberjacks cutting down powerpoles (for some reason).

If we're gonna make stats matter for gameplay in a way that doesn't come to just backing whoever can throw the most mass-produced, quickly managed puppets around, I don't think it should just be 'war' stats because that overly favors a certain kind of issue answer.

Rather, it should be based on whatever ranking the world ranking is today - i.e. the amount of 'damage' (or whatever) is based on how good a given mobilized nation is on the World ranking stat for that day. That would mean people would have to have a diverse array of mobilization puppets, and not prioritize one kind of issue answer player over others.

EDIT: Not that I actually think we should do this, but if we do, we should make this more balanced for all players, if that's the notion.

[Elegarth]

@Sedge, is this a viable option to implement?

I hold similar views to Unibot on merging the functions of feeders and sinkers - I don't see what it achieves. It's probably not that tricky a change to make (though it's not trivial), but aside from helping 3 sinker regions get a bit more active, it offers no improvement, and removes some of the uniqueness those regions have.

It warrants a thread of its own if you want to pursue it further, but that would definitely need to expand on who it benefits and how.

Every single proposal in this thread is REMOVING part of the Identity and uniqueness of one or other GCRs. The fact of the matter is that the current "stagnation" or "over stability" of the GCRs is a result of their uniqueness and identities and the way they have reached this position. If you want to alter the game significantly without affecting the uniqueness or whatever identity mumbo jumbo of the GCRs you have ONLY 2 options: adding new things (GCRs subtypes, factions, new RO capabilities) or adding new GCRs. Any other option implies change, and ALL GCRs are currently complex creatures sd a result of the configuration of ALL those things: TNPs and their uber liberal democracy, with little to no use of banjecting abolities; TSPs prime minister style of government with a delegate that technically isn't government more or less; TWP and NPo that have ingrained banjecting directly into their cultural values - the TWP whole trebuchet thing, NPO members chasing inactive puppets for purge, etc - all of them have ingrained this things in their being.

So, you are basically writing yourself into s corner... Or ate adamant about what you want and don't, which isn't constructive.

I'm with Uni here, most of the ideas here are misplaced. It seems more like people creating ways to enacting or executing pending desires / revenges / vendettas / dreams. This would not lead to activity, just to chaos.

Don't get me wrong, I wish I had a better fleshed out idea... But GP will ALWAYS lead to stability until there is a big bad again, that creates a dichotomy or polarization to play. And this doesn't comes from game mechanics but from the social interactions of players.

So, where do we go from there? We need to be willing to either alter the uniqueness of all GCRs or not, and work from there.

[Sedgistan]

Update on where we are now:

• SC Declarations have been implemented
• Democracy/Autocracy is the big project I want to progress on - discussion is taking place there now.
• I will revive the Making the Secretary-General Meaningful discussion in due course with where things currently stand.
• I remain interested in ways to make feeders less stable; shrinking them will help (Democracy/Autocracy is one of a number of ideas that shrinks them) but is only a partial solution. Current thinking is that decreasing GCR banjection costs is an idea worth exploring. I will put a new thread up for this at some point.
• Treaties remain of interest.
• Confirmation for leaving regions in certain conditions (Delegate, passworded regions) sounds like it has merit.
• Some sort of "help find a region" page, either in the new nation creation process and/or for use by established nations, is another idea I'd like to see developed.

There are dozens of other ideas under discussion in this forum. Just because I haven't listed them above does not mean they're dead. And the same applies to me not posting in some of them. I have a view on most changes suggested, but I like to see discussion unfolding first before posting, because I don't want my opinion to be taken as set in stone and put people off further discussion, as I can be swayed.

[Hanovereich]

I think that the SC needs more significance. For example, could it have the power to repeal GA resolutions, and we need more endorsements to become SC authors?

[Bears Armed]

I think that the SC needs more significance. For example, could it have the power to repeal GA resolutions,

Bad idea.

[Kylia Quilor]

I think that the SC needs more significance. For example, could it have the power to repeal GA resolutions, and we need more endorsements to become SC authors?

That literally makes no sense. You can already repeal GA resolutions... In the GA.

[Sanctaria]

I think that the SC needs more significance. For example, could it have the power to repeal GA resolutions, and we need more endorsements to become SC authors?

That literally makes no sense. You can already repeal GA resolutions... In the GA.

Yeah, moving the repeal of one chamber's resolutions to the other chamber when both chambers have the exact same membership achieves nothing but confusion.

[Morover]

It appears to me that, with the introduction of declarations, the compliance commission automatic telegram has been reverted to that of the GA.

For example, it started as this --

The World Assembly wishes to notify you of the passage of a resolution to Commend HumanSanity.

and is now this--

Laws have been enacted to bring Morover into compliance with the World Assembly resolution Commend Imkiville.

I have to believe that this is an unintentional change.

EDIT: as pointed out by Tinhampton, it appears that Imki also did not have their badge automatically added.

[Sedgistan]

Thanks - that has been reported in the Declarations Tech thread, which is where any other bug reports on Declarations should go.

[The Church of Satan]

How about instead of the Democracy/Autocracy idea, we try something different that will disperse some nations more without handicapping UCRs so much? I'm suggesting that three or four UCR's (I'm thinking the three or four largest non-puppet dump, non-jump point, non-card farm regions but volunteers would probably be better) become sinkers like TRR. Sure it's not handing out new nations and I know a lot of UCR's would prefer them, but it will spread the many ejected nations around. Some of them aren't fun to deal with, but some of them do actually stick around TRR and contribute to the region. Besides, TRR is the only place where ejected nations go. We can afford to spread them around. It'll bring some unwanted players, but it'll also bring some players that want to do more than spam or use racial slurs.