Frontiers, Governors, Successors and Injunctions

[Archinstinct]

Can jump points and puppet dumps become frontiers?

[Unibot III]

It will continue to be the case that having a password set, or being in the process of transitioning to Stronghold stops spawnings, as will a lack of WA residents or a population of over 5,000 nations.

Other factors that will affect spawning rates include length of time the region has existed (strongly favouring those that have been around at least a week, with some tapering benefits for older regions) and verified Delegate endorsements (different boosts at different levels). Inactivity (deliberately undefined) and lack of welcome TG set will reduce the rate of spawns drastically.

The above buffs/debuffs to the rates aside, spawnings will be shared equally between Frontiers. The factors above are also designed so the numbers can be tweaked at a later stage if desired.

1. Would it take less, more, or equal influence to password a frontier than it would be to transition it? I don’t get why you’ve set up an obvious shortcut to a forced transition. (I recognize that eventually the WA could get around to passing a WA resolution.) Passwording the frontier would be a faster way of cutting off growth than forcing a transition.

2. If WA endorsements increases allocation size, you’re making regions bigger for being big. It’s circular.

3. What do you imagine military gameplayers will be doing in this new F/S reality on a day to day basis? Like are they just spending most of their time protecting small frontiers from big frontiers? Will defenders really be interested in spending their time protecting UCRs that may be consciously trying to disrupt big UCRs? It’s a complete realignment of R/D around a mercenary-esque game.

4. The proposal has never really addressed leeches where Frontiers flop back to Strongholds once they’re satisfied with their growth. The whole idea is that regions take on risks, they get rewards, but if they take on risks, grow, then limit that risk… they’ve scooped up free nations and don’t contribute anything long term back to NS.

[The Blaatschapen]

Can jump points and puppet dumps become frontiers?

The first is a purely a player made distinction. The latter is a player added tag.

So why shouldn't they be able to?

[All Wild Things]

It will continue to be the case that having a password set, or being in the process of transitioning to Stronghold stops spawnings, as will a lack of WA residents or a population of over 5,000 nations.

Is the 5,000 nation limit a new thing? I don't recall seeing that earlier.
My initial assumption is that any frontier hitting close to 5,000 is going to start on a marsupial hunting spree. If a nation wasn't endorsing the delegate, and wasn't an active member of the community, then you'd boot them to make room for someone else. So potentially you end up with an inflated nation count in TRR. In practice, it will probably not be significant, but worth considering anyway.

[Galiantus III]

It will continue to be the case that having a password set, or being in the process of transitioning to Stronghold stops spawnings, as will a lack of WA residents or a population of over 5,000 nations.

Other factors that will affect spawning rates include length of time the region has existed (strongly favouring those that have been around at least a week, with some tapering benefits for older regions) and verified Delegate endorsements (different boosts at different levels). Inactivity (deliberately undefined) and lack of welcome TG set will reduce the rate of spawns drastically.

The above buffs/debuffs to the rates aside, spawnings will be shared equally between Frontiers. The factors above are also designed so the numbers can be tweaked at a later stage if desired.

1. Why stop spawns if a region has more than 5,000 nations?

2. I'm concerned any meaningful relationship between WA count and spawn rate (beyond meeting a relatively low minimum) will have a stabilizing effect, by (a) solidifying the strongest frontiers, and (b) discouraging frontiers from engaging in military gameplay. Is there a sufficient reason to have this connection? And if so, what is the general relationship we can expect?

3. I've always thought of the welcome TG requirement as the on/off switch for region spawns: If an otherwise qualified region wants spawns, they put up the welcome telegram. If they want to stop spawns (as may be the goal of an invading force), they remove it. Treating it as a debuff sort of changes that. I don't feel strongly one way or the other, but I am curious if an easy shut-off was deemed undesirable behavior behind the scenes, and this is the fix, or if this just a natural result of conforming to [violet]'s feedback.

4. How much potential variability in spawn rates are we looking at from region to region, relative to the default? Are we talking no more than 50% up or down from the default? Or are we looking at some frontiers getting multiples of the default weight?

[Thousand Branches]

Question, is the OP up to date on recent changes? I was looking for exact info on stuff but I’m not sure if the information up there is still fully accurate (I only ask cuz it hasn’t been updated in about two months).

[Old Hope]

Posting in brief (I will update the OP at some point but it is not pressing) - the waiting period for Frontiers to spawn nations is gone; that was a suggestion from admin as mentioned a page or two back, who wanted more granular control over nation spawn rates rather than a strict on/off.

It will continue to be the case that having a password set, or being in the process of transitioning to Stronghold stops spawnings, as will a lack of WA residents or a population of over 5,000 nations.

Other factors that will affect spawning rates include length of time the region has existed (strongly favouring those that have been around at least a week, with some tapering benefits for older regions) and verified Delegate endorsements (different boosts at different levels). Inactivity (deliberately undefined) and lack of welcome TG set will reduce the rate of spawns drastically.

The above buffs/debuffs to the rates aside, spawnings will be shared equally between Frontiers. The factors above are also designed so the numbers can be tweaked at a later stage if desired.

So basically, to shut down a frontier all you have to do is to drown them in puppets?
That does not sound good.

[Haganham]

Posting in brief (I will update the OP at some point but it is not pressing) - the waiting period for Frontiers to spawn nations is gone; that was a suggestion from admin as mentioned a page or two back, who wanted more granular control over nation spawn rates rather than a strict on/off.

It will continue to be the case that having a password set, or being in the process of transitioning to Stronghold stops spawnings, as will a lack of WA residents or a population of over 5,000 nations.

Other factors that will affect spawning rates include length of time the region has existed (strongly favouring those that have been around at least a week, with some tapering benefits for older regions) and verified Delegate endorsements (different boosts at different levels). Inactivity (deliberately undefined) and lack of welcome TG set will reduce the rate of spawns drastically.

The above buffs/debuffs to the rates aside, spawnings will be shared equally between Frontiers. The factors above are also designed so the numbers can be tweaked at a later stage if desired.

So basically, to shut down a frontier all you have to do is to drown them in puppets?
That does not sound good.

5000 is a lot of puppets to shut down one frontier

[Galiantus III]

5000 is a lot, and it is extremely unlikely these regions will get that large naturally. My personal guess (until my question is answered) is that the goal is to prevent puppet-amassing regions like Chicken Overlords - and puppet storage regions in general - from capitalizing on this mechanic as a means of growth. I say that because the restriction is extremely generous:

1. Feeders are exempt from the limitation; though it is possible one or two may shrink to around that size after frontiers are added.

2. Some frontiers will certainly make it into the thousands of nations, but the vast majority will never come close. Getting near 5000 will be difficult.

3. If a frontier does approach that size, they can just start ejecting inactive, low influence, non-WA member nations. It isn't a meaningful cost to influence, and. And if the size is a result of puppet flooding, that is against site rules and staff can address it.

4. It isn't a hard limit. All that happens if a region hits the 5000 nation threshold is new nations no longer spawn there. If the region is a puppet storage, this isn't anything to be concerned about. If the region is the most powerful region in the world, this is a very small problem that will sort itself out after some nations CTE.

5. The only way for this to be a serious problem is if the bulk of the 5000 nations is comprised of individual players actively engaged in the community. And if that is the case, we are talking about a region several times more powerful and successful than any region to ever exist. Such a community would also necessarily have the resources to colonize every frontier, and prevent the creation of more frontiers than they could manage. At that point, preventing new nations from spawning in the homeland of this mega-empire is more a matter of making the game, well, a GAME again.

[Lord Dominator]

Personally, I think 2k or even 1.5k is a much better limit, as it also limits the ability of existing regions (or future ones) from having all the rewards with about as much risk as a Feeder.

For reference, 2k would stop a XKI size region from receiving spawns virtually all the time (that is, it’d turn off and on fairly frequently) while Europeia would lose out during site population surges. 1.5 would stop XKI nearly entirely, bump Europeia to the frequent on/off, and Europe and TCB to the only during surge times.

This is of course assuming a decent number of spawns, and that they actually choose to receive them, but I think it’s worth considering lowering that upper threshold (honestly, 2.5-3k works decently probably, 1k only if you really want to discourage megaregions).

[Archinstinct]

Spotted something, I had to ask. If Custodian thing isn't being implemented, how does it affect the "frontier to stronghold" transition for founderless regions since the explanation for it says that relied upon the custodian thing to work so founderless regions don't have to take a convoluted path to getting a new founder? Does nobody give a shit about that anymore?

[Bernie]

I've always really liked the idea of the warzone regions, and I'm bummed they're always dead. It's probably been asked before but it would be cool if they were made frontier status which cannot be revoked.

[Archinstinct]

I've always really liked the idea of the warzone regions, and I'm bummed they're always dead. It's probably been asked before but it would be cool if they were made frontier status which cannot be revoked.

Wouldn't that be the same as making them a de facto feeder?

[Bernie]

I've always really liked the idea of the warzone regions, and I'm bummed they're always dead. It's probably been asked before but it would be cool if they were made frontier status which cannot be revoked.

Wouldn't that be the same as making them a de facto feeder?

My understanding is a feeder would still get significantly more incoming nations than a frontier, and still has influence cost, so no?

[Haganham]

I've always really liked the idea of the warzone regions, and I'm bummed they're always dead. It's probably been asked before but it would be cool if they were made frontier status which cannot be revoked.

Wouldn't that be the same as making them a de facto feeder?

warzones have other mechanical differences. It might be interesting if warzones could act as a frontier whose foundings could be hijacked by other regions causing them to found in that region instead. This was suggested for feeders a while back as a way to reinvigorate gameplay. It would give players a reason to fight for control over warzones, making them actual warzones.

[Unibot III]

Is a “Preserve” category undermined if a Frontier founder is ejected/banned from the region?

On a related note, my original thinking was the more the site relies on stats to favour allocation (e.g., big regions get bigger shares), the more stabilizing this proposal will be, because it provides less incentive to “choke” out upstart Frontiers.

Thinking more about it, I stand by this assessment because to do anything destructive in a Frontier, you need a lot of endorsements to generate influence.

If you’re bringing in an invasion force, those pilers are going to contribute endorsements that inflate the region’s metrics, accelerating its allocation.

Invasions would have to be short. More like drive-by shootings, where you do the damage you want to, then leave quickly. Since new nations, prior to update, don’t cost any influence to eject, they’ll be the biggest target for frontier attacks.

One of my concerns with the F/S proposal is how it will impact Military Gameplay. In that it’s largely shutting down one area of activity, and I am not sure it’s sufficiently replacing that area of activity with something that is big enough in scope, and analogous enough in an ethical sense.

Will, for instance, defenders want to spend their time defending frontiers? It’s kind of like going from being a charity to being a small business insurance provider: similar concept, but different motivations. Will invaders want to spend all their time crushing small frontiers and doing the bidding of larger, independent frontiers? It seems to take an existing political-organizational imbalance between invaders & independents and make it worse.

My gut instinct says that’ll be the big impact of F/S, in that R/D will be really shaken up, some people will leave, and it’ll take years to recover those resources and rebuild a compelling sense of what R/D is, without the traditional founderless dynamic. I’m recalling what happened as a result of Gameplay because of Regional Influence especially.

It’s possible defenders may come to regard the F/S proposal as a destructive game change, and see their work to protect frontiers as a way to protect new nations and ensure they have a good first experience in NationStates. Effectively that flips the “Problem of Evil” on its head by saying, yeah god did this, but god isn’t good. The problem though is then you kind of have a new generation of defenders living in the past, perma-campaigning for a reversal of the F/S change, in the same way that past defenders fought ‘Regional Influence’ for years and years and years…

[Leutria]

Founderless regions will still exist, there will just be fewer of them. Any stronghold where the founder CTEs without a successor will be like the founderless regions of today. I am quite sure there will still be lots of small regions being founded with the founder CTEing without ever appointing a successor (or where the sucessor CTEd before they did). If fact, if there was a concern over having enough targets, I could see people "preserving" regions by putting a nation in before the founder CTEd. I am sure a lot of regions alive today are only alive because of one or two nations kept around with a login script.

[Unibot III]

Founderless regions will still exist, there will just be fewer of them. Any stronghold where the founder CTEs without a successor will be like the founderless regions of today. I am quite sure there will still be lots of small regions being founded with the founder CTEing without ever appointing a successor (or where the sucessor CTEd before they did). If fact, if there was a concern over having enough targets, I could see people "preserving" regions by putting a nation in before the founder CTEd. I am sure a lot of regions alive today are only alive because of one or two nations kept around with a login script.

It’s not just the quantity of founderless Strongholds but the quality. One of the problems of today’s Military Gameplay is the pool of viable targets has shrunk, there are less founderless regions, and the remaining founderless regions are oftentimes so dead to not warrant substantive antagonization… it’s no fun if there are no active natives to cheese off.

F/S takes this dwindling pool of smelly old carcasses and makes it smaller in the long term, and even smeller and greyer. The assumption is there will be oodles for R/Ders in Frontiers to do in lieu of traditional GP, but I’m skeptical of that.

[Galiantus III]

@Unibot

When it comes to R/D in frontiers, I think some players will involve themselves, and others will primarily focus on traditional gameplay. Where things are bound to get interesting is imperialists and independent militaries. Frontiers are really well structured for factionalized, imperialist gameplay.

I think the end result with frontiers will be the emergence of two loose factions: one based on an ideology of mutual protection, the other based on imperialism and colonialism. Both factions will have a strong imperialist/independent foundation, but the first will be colored by the influence of defenders, and the second by raiders. However, I think frontier players will ultimately see themselves differently to stronghold players. There will definitely be conflict and cooperation between frontiers and traditional raiders and defenders, but I think we'll see participation in the frontier game as a different category than raider or defender. It will probably look something like how gameplay deals with feeders now.

[Unibot III]

I should temper my point by adding that I don’t think R/D won’t adapt, my thought though is that adaption may be more painful than players are assuming, and it could take a long time, with very bad turnover, and displacement. My first hand experience is that R/D basically has to die off completely before it can change and adapt to meet such a big, systemic reform like F/S. And that gradual degradation of everything - resources, morale, knowledge - is cumulative. It takes a lot of strong willed people to pull things back on track towards something productive.

I think F/S is going to make a lot of people irrelevant that are relevant now, because you’re upending one order and trying to replace it with another.

I don’t think R/D will just break apart into new factions or movements quickly, maybe not at all — that may be where it is headed in five years, but it won’t happen for a while. People are people. They’ve got ingrained motivations and values and experiences. I suspect defenders will try to continue as they have, but over a long while, update will become less and less about helpless founderless regions and more and more about a handful of frontiers that have their own internal security regimes and their own politics - perhaps even enemy alignments. Invaders will find independent partners more interested in attacking frontiers rather than strongholds, but the opportunities for occupations will be more limited with frontiers … this will put even more pressure on a already strained relationship because they’ll have to question if they’re raiders or are they just useful tools for independents?

People don’t just wake up and say “I guess the old way of doing things is done,” no, they hunker down trying to do the same thing until people just start leaving, the spark is gone - and you don’t really recognize the problems until it’s in the rear view mirror.

I suspect Sedge knows what I’m talking about as we were AC’s at a similar time in the FRA.

Perhaps I’m talking nonsense, but I think I’m basing my view here on a relevant experience. I mean, I remember when Military GP was dead-dead, when neither side could field three updaters without a fair amount of notice. The real nadir. I think it had a lot to do with changes that had occurred in 2006-2007 and the difficulty of coming to terms with it.

Out of all the “big ideas” for NSGP, I think this idea, F/S, in a subtle way will rock R/D the most in terms of restructuring what it is, why it exists, what it does, but it’s not clear to me that the pain that R/D will suffer is for something that is worth it. Some UCRs get a bit bigger, GCRs get a bit smaller. We could do that without blowing up Military Gameplay if we really wanted to.

EDIT: I realized rereading this blurb that it probably needs some context for people who haven’t been playing NS for twenty years. Founderless regions used to be very common and established at one time, and defending was non-controversial like being anti-spam is, every region is anti-spam. So an alliance between UCRs around mutual defense made sense at one time and lots of regions were willing to join. Fast forward five years later though and founderless regions were uncommon and generally weak, and defending was considered partisan, controversial. Convincing UCRs to join a mutual defence alliance was difficult and fraught with problems, it limited the ability of defenders to grow because they were so focused on keeping their eight deadweight regions in their own alliance. The “ADN” model was broken and defenders needed something different. And when WA Liberations were introduced, suddenly the endorsements that feeder and sinker regions had were of vital strategic importance, and you started to see WA skills valued in GP, GCRs were more and more in vogue, and WA Authors had votes in their eyes. I wonder to what extent the Cold War was a spin-off of a necessity for votes and a fight between IntFeds and NatSovs, pre-existing rivalries, that NSGP had internalized as its own. Dharma and the IntFeds jumped heads first into the defending world; NatSovers (Mousebumples, Dourian, and others) broke off into the independentist world and played a role in building W.A.L.L. This is all to say that when your ‘model’ of what military gameplay is, is forced to change by necessity, it can take a long time, the results aren’t clear, players will feel displaced/irrelevant etc.

[Porflox]

Well, in a post F/S world, one thing's basically for certain- there will be a wave of defender-aligned regions transitioning to unaligned/raider as defending others will no longer be profitable, particularly for larger regions. Why would a region defend another region if they are in direct competition for valuable recruitment? The calculations might be different for smaller regions as they don't have the impenetrable endo-walls for protection (or maybe they'll be forced to combine together to become a super-ucr, whether they like it or not for the sake of protection and improved spawn yields), but defenderdom will surely wither as a result of the update.

[Archinstinct]

Warning to Mods/buyer beware; while this update will undoubtedly promote activity, it's going to exacerbate the toxicity/abusive bullshit already present in this game's community. I expect to see at least one of the top regions be severely punished if not dismantled within a year of this coming out due to severe misconduct and breaking of game rules.

[Galiantus III]

@Unibot

I can see how what you are saying would relate to longtime R/D players, but I think you are underestimating the willingness of new blood, and imperialists both new and old.

I also think you are ignoring the immediate opportunities presented to defenders by this change. As you mentioned, founderless regions used to be more established, and that gave a strong justification for defending. However, the population of large founderless regions has thinned out over the past decade, which I think has contributed to the move from defending motivated by ideology to defending motivated by competition. I know I said I think a lot of defenders will just ignore frontiers, but I think many will also feel compelled to help in a traditional way, especially early on. A lot of the first frontier communities will be fairly ambitious and active. They will present juicy targets to raiders. Consequently, R/D conflict will be drawn to frontiers in their infancy, and in this environment traditional raiding/defending will work. Obviously things will stabilize over time, but I think any R/D players involved from the beginning will adapt. This isn't like influence which made conventional operations impossible. This is actually the reverse: this change encourages the creation of compelling gameplay targets, which will attract raiders, and defenders will follow raiders.

[The Blaatschapen]

Warning to Mods/buyer beware; while this update will undoubtedly promote activity, it's going to exacerbate the toxicity/abusive bullshit already present in this game's community. I expect to see at least one of the top regions be severely punished if not dismantled within a year of this coming out due to severe misconduct and breaking of game rules.

Any particular knowledge you have here, or is this a warning in general?

[Unibot III]

@Unibot

I can see how what you are saying would relate to longtime R/D players, but I think you are underestimating the willingness of new blood, and imperialists both new and old.

I also think you are ignoring the immediate opportunities presented to defenders by this change. As you mentioned, founderless regions used to be more established, and that gave a strong justification for defending. However, the population of large founderless regions has thinned out over the past decade, which I think has contributed to the move from defending motivated by ideology to defending motivated by competition. I know I said I think a lot of defenders will just ignore frontiers, but I think many will also feel compelled to help in a traditional way, especially early on. A lot of the first frontier communities will be fairly ambitious and active. They will present juicy targets to raiders. Consequently, R/D conflict will be drawn to frontiers in their infancy, and in this environment traditional raiding/defending will work. Obviously things will stabilize over time, but I think any R/D players involved from the beginning will adapt. This isn't like influence which made conventional operations impossible. This is actually the reverse: this change encourages the creation of compelling gameplay targets, which will attract raiders, and defenders will follow raiders.

I absolutely agree that defending has shifted over time to being "motivated by competition" because with less and less substantial targets for invasion, tag raiding has dominated the invading landscape for years, and competition and tag raiding go hand in hand: it's a very natural fit.

(And organizations geared towards competition will find themselves with even less competition, and they're already struggling with a dearth of competition now!)

However, I should note that influence did not make conventional operations impossible, the big change is it created a legal, self-moderating system for griefing ("an invisible hand"). This had the effect of 'legitimizing' invading that had previously been against the rules. More and more regions began to label themselves "neutral," in part because invading was no longer a concern for them, and in part because players started to regard defenders and invaders as "two sides of the same coin," as invading became more accepted as a legitimate part of the game.

I am less confident than you that F/S will generate compelling gameplay targets.

1) These frontiers will likely be very active UCRs, with endorsement-tracking scripts, security regimes of their own, with alliances and treaties to cool the possibility of attacks. They won't be Canada.

2) The easiest way for Military Gameplay to assist frontiers isn't to attack an enemy frontier, it's to station their own WA endorsements in an allied frontier semi-permanently as a part of an agreement with the region. You're essentially converting active soldiers into stationary militia.

3) If you are going to occupy a frontier, you need endorsements, so attacking a frontier means inadvertently increasing the target's metrics for allocation. Enemy Frontiers may prefer very short, punctuated attacks, where you just purge as much as you can and leave. The end goal of an occupation is so fraught with difficulties, my instinct is that warring frontiers will prefer 'bit-sized' attacks, where you seize the delegacy, purge, and leave.

I think Military GPers will find themselves displaced in that the decline of their subgame will be accelerated, rather than averted by the F/S proposal, and it strikes me that most frontiers will conclude the better way to grow is to focus primarily on their own growth because attacking is a lot of effort and not necessarily worth the trouble. Attacks may be directed at frontiers where there is an international consensus present that the frontier should not be receiving new nations, perhaps because the founder is blacklisted, or the region is vaguely pseudo-fascist, but these kinds of super-coalitions are just a continuation of an existing trend, where GP regions, far and wide, line up to attack the next "CoCD." There's nothing particularly dynamic or political or ideological or interesting, for that matter, about these pile-ons.