Chicken Overlords and game health

[Quebecshire]

I think we need to have a serious conversation about Chicken Overlords and the puppet spamming in question taking place there.

To my knowledge, the nations in the region hold no gameplay purpose (cards, r/d, etc). As far as I'm aware, they exist solely to inflate the size of the region. The region is currently more than 10,200 nations large, with the founder expressing interest in meeting/exceeding 13,000 nations. If the nations cease to exist, there is concern that they will crash the site, similar to how the closure of embassies in The Embassy caused issues.

Chicken Overlords already takes longer than any region to update, which is kind of ridiculous for the r/d scene, and while I'm not cards expert, I believe this poses complications and concerns for future cards stuff. While I don't have the highest hopes that any action to resolve this will be taken, I think it's becoming more of a nuisance to the health of the game from a technical/practical standpoint.

I think the players and ideally site staff should finally address this issue and it's technical-problematic nature in a serious fashion.

[Flanderlion]

I think this is a more moderation than technical solution, but it belongs here as it has site stability implications.

Limit nations to 1k per player. Yes, it is unenforceable (and nothing needs to happen if someone has 1.2k), but it means that in cases like this mods can just puppet sweep if they get to 10k etc. Number of players this might effect is 10ish if that.

Cards needs to be sorted too though so the optimal playstyle isn't requiring as many puppets as you can hope to manage. I have a thread re that for what I regard is the best solution, but most of the other suggestions seem to fix the puppet problem (albeit with other consequences).

[The Python]

Wait, what rule did they break again?

[Quebecshire]

Wait, what rule did they break again?

If this was an issue of a clear cut rule violation, I would have posted a moderation report, not a technical thread.

[The Python]

Wait, what rule did they break again?

If this was an issue of a clear cut rule violation, I would have posted a moderation report, not a technical thread.

Then what the fuck do you seek to accomplish? A puppetsweep? In that case, again, can you point me to what rule was violated?

[Agraelia]

If this was an issue of a clear cut rule violation, I would have posted a moderation report, not a technical thread.

Then what the fuck do you seek to accomplish? A puppetsweep? In that case, again, can you point me to what rule was violated?

Why are you coming off so hostile? And if you read the posts above you wouldn't have shown such ignorance in the question your repeating. The OP has already shown that they haven't broken any rules explicitly, but rather a rule shall be made to combat what their actions are. That a region failure by the Chicken Overlords could hurt Nationstates from a technical standpoint.

[South His Majestys most loyal kangaroos]

Then what the fuck do you seek to accomplish? A puppetsweep? In that case, again, can you point me to what rule was violated?

Why are you coming off so hostile? And if you read the posts above you wouldn't have shown such ignorance in the question your repeating. The OP has already shown that they haven't broken any rules explicitly, but rather a rule shall be made to combat what their actions are. That a region failure by the Chicken Overlords could hurt Nationstates from a technical standpoint.

There is essentially no chance of Chicken Overlords failing like that. There will be no mass CTE. Besides, Chicken Overlords is not the largest region at this point and it certainly isn’t the fastest growing. The sinkers has grown by around 1000 nations in just one day, quite possibly by hundreds more, which I’m sure would have a bigger effect on the technical side than Chicken Overlords. In about a months’ time, there will be a massive CTE of nations founded/refounded from 8th September onwards, but there’ll be no such CTE from Chicken Overlords.

[Outer Sparta]

If this was an issue of a clear cut rule violation, I would have posted a moderation report, not a technical thread.

Then what the fuck do you seek to accomplish? A puppetsweep? In that case, again, can you point me to what rule was violated?

The OP didn't say there was any rule broken, they just raised the question and a potential alarm in the instance of mass CTEs that happens if the person operating those puppets are inactive for a long period of time. Frankly, operating over 10k puppets would be a potential bubble that would burst if they all happen to CTE at the same time. And those puppets aren't even card farmers, which makes them more pointless other than to inflate a region's nation count as much as possible.

[Bears Armed]

Then what the fuck do you seek to accomplish? A puppetsweep? In that case, again, can you point me to what rule was violated?

The OP didn't say there was any rule broken, they just raised the question and a potential alarm in the instance of mass CTEs that happens if the person operating those puppets are inactive for a long period of time. Frankly, operating over 10k puppets would be a potential bubble that would burst if they all happen to CTE at the same time. And those puppets aren't even card farmers, which makes them more pointless other than to inflate a region's nation count as much as possible.

With that many nations involved, isn't there a fairly high likelihood that they're being maintained by a programme rather than manually, which would make CTEing less probable?

[Comfed]

The OP didn't say there was any rule broken, they just raised the question and a potential alarm in the instance of mass CTEs that happens if the person operating those puppets are inactive for a long period of time. Frankly, operating over 10k puppets would be a potential bubble that would burst if they all happen to CTE at the same time. And those puppets aren't even card farmers, which makes them more pointless other than to inflate a region's nation count as much as possible.

With that many nations involved, isn't there a fairly high likelihood that they're being maintained by a programme rather than manually, which would make CTEing less probable?

Almost certainly being maintained by a script that uses the autologin shard.

Which adds another idea to the pile: make api private commands not count towards CTE activity requirements

[Outer Sparta]

The OP didn't say there was any rule broken, they just raised the question and a potential alarm in the instance of mass CTEs that happens if the person operating those puppets are inactive for a long period of time. Frankly, operating over 10k puppets would be a potential bubble that would burst if they all happen to CTE at the same time. And those puppets aren't even card farmers, which makes them more pointless other than to inflate a region's nation count as much as possible.

With that many nations involved, isn't there a fairly high likelihood that they're being maintained by a programme rather than manually, which would make CTEing less probable?

Most definitely, but I've never worked with such software and commands so I wouldn't know how it necessarily works.

[Bears Armed]

I've never worked with such software and commands so I wouldn't know how it necessarily works.

Ditto, actually. My only training in programming used the 'BASIC' language (and a room full of terminals connected to a mainframe) back in the second half of the '70s...

[Doge Land]

The OP didn't say there was any rule broken, they just raised the question and a potential alarm in the instance of mass CTEs that happens if the person operating those puppets are inactive for a long period of time. Frankly, operating over 10k puppets would be a potential bubble that would burst if they all happen to CTE at the same time. And those puppets aren't even card farmers, which makes them more pointless other than to inflate a region's nation count as much as possible.

With that many nations involved, isn't there a fairly high likelihood that they're being maintained by a programme rather than manually, which would make CTEing less probable?

I'd say it's a 100% likelihood. I suspect someone just runs the program and then it goes through and logs into all the nations.

Why are you coming off so hostile? And if you read the posts above you wouldn't have shown such ignorance in the question your repeating. The OP has already shown that they haven't broken any rules explicitly, but rather a rule shall be made to combat what their actions are. That a region failure by the Chicken Overlords could hurt Nationstates from a technical standpoint.

There is essentially no chance of Chicken Overlords failing like that. There will be no mass CTE. Besides, Chicken Overlords is not the largest region at this point and it certainly isn’t the fastest growing. The sinkers has grown by around 1000 nations in just one day, quite possibly by hundreds more, which I’m sure would have a bigger effect on the technical side than Chicken Overlords. In about a months’ time, there will be a massive CTE of nations founded/refounded from 8th September onwards, but there’ll be no such CTE from Chicken Overlords.

> Chicken Overlords is not the largest region at this point and it certainly isn't the fastest growing

I was doing some conlanging a few days back and had the API running in the background to send recruitment telegrams, and then I checked the program and it was sending recruitment tgs to only wombles for like 30 minutes. I guess API woes.

And this is technical, not Gameplay. CO is the largest region in terms of nation size.

> The sinkers has grown by around 1000 nations in just one day, quite possibly by hundreds more

Sinkers? You mean feeders? And as a TSP native, I can tell you that we do not get 1000 nations in one day. Maybe during Drewpocalypse (the first one) but... no. CTEs offset that amount by a lot. Our population is usually stable and only deviates by around 500-1000 from a center point, usually.

> In about a months' time, there will be a massive CTE of nations founded/refounded from 8th September onwards, but there'll be no such CTE from Chicken Overlords.

Why specifically September 8th? It might have something to do with N-Day but I'm not sure...

If this was an issue of a clear cut rule violation, I would have posted a moderation report, not a technical thread.

Then what the fuck do you seek to accomplish? A puppetsweep? In that case, again, can you point me to what rule was violated?

Calm down. I know you're a CO native-ish and that you're getting defensive about one of the regions you're in falling but I suspect people in this thread are just still pissed about the Best Nation Game.

Also, it might be that people don't want to open the top regions by population tab and see a puppet ""storage"" region. I mean, there are big puppet storage regions on the top regions page, but at least those puppets have a purpose. Puppet not justified = Puppet need not exist.

[South His Majestys most loyal kangaroos]

With that many nations involved, isn't there a fairly high likelihood that they're being maintained by a programme rather than manually, which would make CTEing less probable?

I'd say it's a 100% likelihood. I suspect someone just runs the program and then it goes through and logs into all the nations.

There is essentially no chance of Chicken Overlords failing like that. There will be no mass CTE. Besides, Chicken Overlords is not the largest region at this point and it certainly isn’t the fastest growing. The sinkers has grown by around 1000 nations in just one day, quite possibly by hundreds more, which I’m sure would have a bigger effect on the technical side than Chicken Overlords. In about a months’ time, there will be a massive CTE of nations founded/refounded from 8th September onwards, but there’ll be no such CTE from Chicken Overlords.

> Chicken Overlords is not the largest region at this point and it certainly isn't the fastest growing

I was doing some conlanging a few days back and had the API running in the background to send recruitment telegrams, and then I checked the program and it was sending recruitment tgs to only wombles for like 30 minutes. I guess API woes.

And this is technical, not Gameplay. CO is the largest region in terms of nation size.

Chicken Overlords is no longer the largest region in terms of region size. Lazarus is around 300 nations larger and is still growing.

> The sinkers has grown by around 1000 nations in just one day, quite possibly by hundreds more

Sinkers? You mean feeders? And as a TSP native, I can tell you that we do not get 1000 nations in one day. Maybe during Drewpocalypse (the first one) but... no. CTEs offset that amount by a lot. Our population is usually stable and only deviates by around 500-1000 from a center point, usually.

No, I mean sinkers, Lazarus has grown by 1700 nations in the last day or so, over 600 since in the last few hours. In fact all the sinkers have grown by at least a 1000 nations in just the last day or so and have at least 2000 more nations when compared to last week.

> In about a months' time, there will be a massive CTE of nations founded/refounded from 8th September onwards, but there'll be no such CTE from Chicken Overlords.

Why specifically September 8th? It might have something to do with N-Day but I'm not sure...

Why the 8th September? Because that is the day TNP and I believe other GCRs grew by several hundred nations. I believe that is connected to the second Drewpocalypse.

Then what the fuck do you seek to accomplish? A puppetsweep? In that case, again, can you point me to what rule was violated?

Calm down. I know you're a CO native-ish and that you're getting defensive about one of the regions you're in falling but I suspect people in this thread are just still pissed about the Best Nation Game.

Also, it might be that people don't want to open the top regions by population tab and see a puppet ""storage"" region. I mean, there are big puppet storage regions on the top regions page, but at least those puppets have a purpose. Puppet not justified = Puppet need not exist.

Well, people will no longer see Chicken Overlords as the largest, they’ll see Lazarus instead. Regardless, the largest region will still be full of puppets, just fewer puppets than before. Anyway, the puppets do have a purpose and they do exist, regardless of if you or anyone else believes it’s a good purpose. If there was no purpose to a puppet, then it wouldn’t exist in the first place.

[Honeydewistania]

Chicken Overlords already takes longer than any region to update, which is kind of ridiculous for the r/d scene

"cope"

[Parhe]

Instead of limiting the number of puppets, which makes no sense, then why not just limit the number of nations in a region, at the very least UCRs? There is no such thing as a puppet that exists for no reason.

[Quebecshire]

Limiting UCRs would be a terrible idea.

There is no such thing as a puppet that exists for no reason.

Yes, there is. Puppets can be used for events (N-Day, card farming, raiding/defending, etc) but Chicken Overlords openly admits its sole purpose is to be the "largest" region in the game. That is literally just inflating itself with useless puppets (harming the game for everyone else) for their own weird goal.

[Parhe]

Limiting UCRs would be a terrible idea.

There is no such thing as a puppet that exists for no reason.

Yes, there is. Puppets can be used for events (N-Day, card farming, raiding/defending, etc) but Chicken Overlords openly admits its sole purpose is to be the "largest" region in the game. That is literally just inflating itself with useless puppets (harming the game for everyone else) for their own weird goal.

I don't see why any UCR would need more than ten thousand or even seven thousand members. By that point, the community is diluted and no UCR is near that number of members except for puppet storage regions. If the argument is that large regions are bad for the game, then just make it so we don't have large regions.

Existing to inflate a region isn't useless. You just don't think it is important. I mean, this is just a game, it doesn't like seem more of a waste of time or resources then the other purposes for puppets.

[WayNeacTia]

Limiting UCRs would be a terrible idea.

There is no such thing as a puppet that exists for no reason.

Yes, there is. Puppets can be used for events (N-Day, card farming, raiding/defending, etc) but Chicken Overlords openly admits its sole purpose is to be the "largest" region in the game. That is literally just inflating itself with useless puppets (harming the game for everyone else) for their own weird goal.

Nice to see “good faith” decided to take a leap out of a window. “I don’t like something, so let’s invent some fake technical drama about it”. The creativity of it all never fails to amaze me.

[Quebecshire]

[Nice to see “good faith” decided to take a leap out of a window. “I don’t like something, so let’s invent some fake technical drama about it”. The creativity of it all never fails to amaze me.

Wayne, it's fairly easy to see the impacts of Chicken Overlords on the site's health. It is entirely possible to have either a sympathetic or critical opinion of Chicken Overlords whilst acknowledging its impacts on the site, its health, and the implications of allowing what is clearly a form of spam.

[Jar Wattinree]

[Nice to see “good faith” decided to take a leap out of a window. “I don’t like something, so let’s invent some fake technical drama about it”. The creativity of it all never fails to amaze me.

Wayne, it's fairly easy to see the impacts of Chicken Overlords on the site's health. It is entirely possible to have either a sympathetic or critical opinion of Chicken Overlords whilst acknowledging its impacts on the site, its health, and the implications of allowing what is clearly a form of spam.

Spam? What kind of "spam" does puppet proliferation cause? Cards? A subset of the game. R/D? A niche application of the game. Population bragging rights? So niche it is the only reason CO was made in the first place.

[Galiantus III]

Existing to inflate a region isn't useless. You just don't think it is important. I mean, this is just a game, it doesn't like seem more of a waste of time or resources then the other purposes for puppets.

Site admin has confirmed that "There are server issues when regions get very large." So efforts to reduce the need to have lots of puppets are welcome. In the case of puppet storage for gameplay and cards, removing the need for puppets is enough to persuade players to use fewer of them, because they only maintain those puppets as a means to another end. But if the goal is to have at least X nations in a region (where X is very large) there's no amount of negotiating player motives that will work. I don't think that is CO's precise goal (they just want to be the largest region) but there's an awful lot of overlap.

---

@topic:

CO's goal is to simply be the largest region. The exact number of nations they must maintain to keep that title isn' important, and the only reason they are considering more puppets is to keep up with the sinkers - which just got enormous due to people refounding puppets for N-day⁶. If the sinkers were smaller, the number of puppets necessary to remain the region with the most nations would also be smaller; and the same logic works for any GCRs, jump points, or card farms that get extremely large. So if we instead focus on having smaller GCRs and removing the need for puppets in other areas of the game, a lot of the problem with CO should fix itself.

That said, this ignores the possibility of other regions attempting to take the title of largest region from CO. And the incentive to do this only increases as CO shrinks. So even if we do make things easier for CO individually, we can't keep others from engaging in this competition and driving each other's numbers up.

[Sedgistan]

Then what the fuck do you seek to accomplish? A puppetsweep? In that case, again, can you point me to what rule was violated?

This was a wholly inappropriate escalation, Python. If you can't participate in a Technical discussion in a calm fashion, wait until you are able to do so before posting.

"cope"

Also not appropriate for Technical.

[Haganham]

With that many nations involved, isn't there a fairly high likelihood that they're being maintained by a programme rather than manually, which would make CTEing less probable?

Almost certainly being maintained by a script that uses the autologin shard.

Which adds another idea to the pile: make api private commands not count towards CTE activity requirements

This is an excellent idea even outside of Chicken overlord's nonsense. There are loads of regions being held as trophies by people who's involvement in the game, for years, has been not but a script logging into their nations once every other month. I've long felt that if you want to block off thousands of region names from use, you ought to at least put in the dedication to log in once in a while. Similarly, if you want to have the largest region, by filling it with loads of your puppets, fine; but put the work in to actually do it.

[PotatoFarmers]

With that many nations involved, isn't there a fairly high likelihood that they're being maintained by a programme rather than manually, which would make CTEing less probable?

Almost certainly being maintained by a script that uses the autologin shard.

Which adds another idea to the pile: make api private commands not count towards CTE activity requirements

You literally just killed all the shared regional nations. The Northern Lights for instance. The only reason why those shared regional nations work is because there is no manual login to the account, and cause it to be an accidental puppet of a user with records, etc. etc.