NationStates

Personally I am fully in favor of this change, and will probably be making a Frontier myself, just because it sounds like fun for my evil scheming little brain. The colonies and alliance politics alone are interesting enough, let alone the steady stream of new players I can befriend.

Sedgistan wrote:Updated the OP with the following under Frontier -> Stronghold: "If the Delegate position changes hands during this process, then an additional 3 days are added to the transition time period." This is there to prevent last-minute snipes that cannot be countered.

Why only three days? It's better than allowing last minute snipes, but it still greatly benefits raiders taking the region as it's not long enough to pass a Preseve proposal.

The process isn't meant to be foolproof. Use of a password should be the primary means of protection, or calling in support to pile endorsements on the Delegate. I feel the transition period is long enough already - I know a lot of us measure time in NS in years, but for most online games 2 weeks is a damn long time - and I don't want that dramatically extended. The 3 days allows some time to rectify the situation via R/D means, without being overlong.

For name changes how about;

Confederation; a more or less permanent union of countries with some or most political power vested in a central authority. (more democratic)
Empire; a sovereign state made up of several territories and peoples subject to a single ruling authority, often an emperor. (more autocratic)

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And an idea of how to make an initial assignment of what region they get founded in can come from a decision matrix formed during the choices in nation-creation where;

Nation type; Anarchic Libertarian Capitalist Liberal Centrist Conservative Socialist Authoritarian Tyrannical
History; Violent segregationists, undiscovered tribe, sackers and salvagers, isolationist, pioneers, refugees, wranglers, survivors, pilgrims

Bash that against a list of tags that regions select to define themselves and it would help in sorting. You would need some sort of allotment so it is somewhat balanced in making assignments.

(maybe Authoritarian, Violent Segregationists might not do too well in a region that is modeled after the Woodstock music festival or a weeb sanctuary)

Nyxonia wrote:For name changes how about;

Confederation; a more or less permanent union of countries with some or most political power vested in a central authority. (more democratic)
Empire; a sovereign state made up of several territories and peoples subject to a single ruling authority, often an emperor. (more autocratic)

As has already been pointed out several times in this thread, Founders do not automatically act autocratically: There are certainly regions with Founders, among those that would choose 'Stronghold' status, that are at least as democratic in practice as your definition of 'Confederation'... and whose residents would reject the idea that they are 'Empires', considering that label extremely inappropriate.

Autocracy/empire would be a very poor label for a region like Europeia.

I think Nyxonia wasn't fully caught up with the debate. The Frontier/Stronghold names for the two region types have been settled on for a while now.

What isn't settled?

As per my last substantial post what's set out in the OP is settled, which is why this has progressed to the next step (internal discussion, then will go on admin's to-code list).

I remain open to an alternative name for Preserve/Preservation resolutions, but there hasn't been a solid alternative suggested yet.

Bears Armed wrote:

Kepler-0085 wrote:We should have a third option to stay as we are now, it could be the default one and named the "Camp" Like a mix between Frontier and Stronghold

That was considered originally, but was dropped as the rules for the currently-planned two types were developed. 'Stronghold' basically gives us/you everything that "as we now are" does, plus the possibility of Founder's appointing successors, so what advantage would your suggested third option have over that?
And you might want to check all the definitions of the word ''Camp'...

(I mean't camp as a temporary point of position in war not a concentration one.)
Oh ok
I also like Lord Dominator's and The Stalker's idea!

I may have overlooked the answer, but if a founder of a stronghold gets mod-deleted, would succession still kick in?

All Wild Things wrote:I may have overlooked the answer, but if a founder of a stronghold gets mod-deleted, would succession still kick in?

Presumably yes, unless the successor is also hit (and provided there is a valid one).

Correct.

Sedgistan wrote:As per my last substantial post what's set out in the OP is settled, which is why this has progressed to the next step (internal discussion, then will go on admin's to-code list).

I remain open to an alternative name for Preserve/Preservation resolutions, but there hasn't been a solid alternative suggested yet.

I suggest keeping that name. It fits.

Is there a tentative timeline of when this will be put in place?

Sedgistan wrote:As per my last substantial post what's set out in the OP is settled, which is why this has progressed to the next step (internal discussion, then will go on admin's to-code list).

I actually view this as a good thing- it means there's a good chance it'll actually happen instead of dying in committee. I'd prefer many other ideas, but the change is better than the status quo, so kudos for pushing it forward.

So admin has come back with an overwhelming positive on the project. There are a few bits that warrant further discussion; from smallest to largest:

1) "Preserve" remains a poor name for an SC category. Anchor? Embed? Fortify? Gird? I offer some casual mod abuse to someone's nation (e.g. custom extremely long pre-title) if they come up with a better term that gets adopted.

2) I talked about renaming Founders to Governor. Violet's suggestion was to have both. In her words: "I quite like Governor. [...] it's probably best to keep the term Founder as well -- e.g. Governors are also either a Founder or a Successor. "Founder" would no longer automatically mean the nation had executive power, but would be more of a historical honorific. Active Founders should keep their slot on region pages, even if they're no longer Governor." I think this is relatively uncontroversial, but please let me know if otherwise.

3) Qualifying for spawnings in a Frontier region; the big question. Violet dislikes the prescriptive nature of the requirements I've set out (see the OP) -- they suit what established gameplayers (most of us here, myself included) think would be the best way to run a region, but it's potentially stifling. Violet is not so bothered if some Frontiers are crap - we don't need to protect players from their own poor actions, and if new players end up in a bad region, they're at least receiving lots of telegrams telling them of the better places they could be moving to.

Her view was a less binary system (currently it's: 1) not qualified, no spawns OR 2) met lots of qualifications, receive equal share of spawns) -- instead one where all Frontiers receive a basic level of spawnings, but can increase the flow through various qualifying factors. I had assumed this would be more complex to code, but I'm told it's not all that much more, and gives us a lot more flexibility, especially for tweaking in the future. So roughly, every new Frontier could receive spawns, but a boost for such things as:

• Having a welcome TG set.
  [*}No pw (or a pw closes the throttle, and you get no spawns).
• Existing for more than a couple of weeks.
• Having more than 10 verified endos on the Delegate.

Because it's more granular, we can favour all sorts of stuff, e.g. medium sized regions over tiny or gargantuan ones, possibly active RMB over less active ones.

What I'm asking here, is what aspects of a region do you think should result in more or less spawns? If you can give numbers too, that's helpful.

My recommendations for a replacement for “preserve” would be one of four:

“Secure” (Ex: “Secure The West Pacific” or “Secure Refugia”)
“Fortify” (Ex: “Fortify The West Pacific” or “Fortify Refugia”)
“Safeguard” (Ex: “Safeguard The West Pacific” or “Safeguard Refugia”)

And for a slightly different idea that I like nonetheless:

“Sustain” (Ex: “Sustain The West Pacific” or “Sustain Refugia”)

EDIT: And a thought for the 3rd question, perhaps something relating to rmb activity? Also it would be really cool if there was some connection between spawns and the featured region of the day

I think the term you guys are looking for is injunction - “Injunct XXXX” - because you’re obstructing liquidation, like an assets freeze. But “Enjoin XXXX” is a more common form for injunction as a verb. I’m not saying these are particularly sexy terms… but that’s what the resolution is doing, it’s an injunction.

There’s no metric you can apply for nation allocation that won’t either be: a) cyclical or b) manipulated or abused. The worst thing, for instance, you could do would be to tie nation allocation to, say, RMB activity because you’ll just encourage spam.

What you could do however is “venterize” your frontiers by having the allocation being dynamically set by other players as a part of a political arrangement — either being set by GCRs as in my Venter proposal, or by some other group — I don’t entirely know how an alternative might work.

Generally speaking though if the allocation is based off a metric, it will be abused or satisfied superficially or contribute to rentierism or a “Matthew Effect.”

If you base allocation around international support of some kind, the process will be inherently political.. frontiers will have to bargain and jockey to other regions for preference.


EDIT: one more thing I’ll say about “venterizing” frontiers is it prevents a surplus of frontiers from undermining the value of the allocation … because creating a frontier with a dozen friends would be no guarantee that you’d actually receive any share at all, you would need some kind of political or contractual relationship with other institutions. I think it would inherently make the Stronghold/Frontier proposal actually work better, and result in better outcomes for NS.

1: A word that is sticking with me is “Entrench”, it just sounds solid.

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2: No objections, I can see why keeping the original Founder name makes sense.

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3: I think an active poll could be a good idea for a small boost. Something that offers new nations something more once they’ve answered their issues/read telegrams/and so on.

1. A few ideas: 'Conserve' (seeing as it is maintaining the status quo), 'Maintain' (same reason), 'guarantee', 'ensure' (both for keeping the region's type the same as it was before), or possibly 'sustain' which has been suggested earlier.

2. Full support, it makes so much sense. No objections.

3. WA endorsements on the delegate? They are the only thing that can't be exploited by regions for political gain. Otherwise, I'd say that I'm fine keeping it the same as what was originally proposed.

I really like the new system, actually. Having multiple levels of nation spawns seems like a really good way to avoid large regions making colonies, and to generally balance things out. However, large regions (measured by delegate endos) should be receiving more, not less, than medium sized regions. This allows better nation retention on NS thanks to the larger community, and will help direct nation to more one-size-fits-all type regions rather than niches that may or may not fit their needs. It also will significantly boost the ability of large UCRs to be on a similar level with Feeders, which is a big part of the update's appeal.

Because my position on the proposed changes somewhat defers from XKI's, I'll just note that all the above stuff is my own view and does not represent the official position of XKI.

While I don’t have specific name thoughts right now, I do think it worthwhile to suggest everyone try to suggest ones that are both intuitively descriptive but don’t imply an inherent usage.

I like those ideas.

Maybe “Embargo”, “Proscribe”, “Limit” or “Restrict” for the SC resolution? Because it’s preventing the region from doing something?

Or maybe in keeping with the safeguard theme, “Insure”?

I now propose Stasis