New CTE and no more nation sharing

[Old Hope]

CTE - A nation ceases to exist after 4 years without either of these actions:
-Answering an issue
-Moving a nation
-Refounding a nation
-Founding a nation
-Endorsing a nation
-Unendorsing a nation
-Anything else that causes the nation to generate regional happenings, excluding passive regional happenings caused by the system or other players(Being endorsed, hit by zombies/cure missiles, ranking changes...).

Voluntary sharing of nations is now forbidden.
Currently shared nations need to be assigned to one person only.

This would fix a lot of problems.
Trophy regions would eventually open again if the founder has moved on.
Regions would be opened up again instead of protected by a bot from a long-inactive founder.
Regions would be incentivized to share founder nations to circumvent this, so it is now forbidden.

[New Kowloon Bay]

I feel like it would be quite challenging to even attempt to stop voluntary nation sharing.

And I don't quite understand how this would open up trophy regions, with the new 4-year CTE, does that not mean a bot can just sit in the region, do nothing and still keep it locked up?

[Old Hope]

I feel like it would be quite challenging to even attempt to stop voluntary nation sharing.

Not that challenging. A big punishment(DEAT or DOS for the first offence, DOS for the second) would be more than enough to stop voluntary nation sharing. It would be difficult to detect with certainity(and it should be punished only when it's clear-cut), but if someone slips up that the founder nation is shared then all of these players are in very big trouble.

[New Kowloon Bay]

I feel like it would be quite challenging to even attempt to stop voluntary nation sharing.

Not that challenging. A big punishment(DEAT or DOS for the first offence, DOS for the second) would be more than enough to stop voluntary nation sharing. It would be difficult to detect with certainity(and it should be punished only when it's clear-cut), but if someone slips up that the founder nation is shared then all of these players are in very big trouble.

So are you banning all voluntary nation sharing or voluntary founder-nation sharing?

[Sedgistan]

This isn't feasible. Mods don't have the tools, time or interest to enforce a prohibition on nation sharing.

[Kingdom of Englands]

This is a horrible idea, including voluntary founder-nation sharing, which is super important to the structure of how my region functions.
The Founder account for my region is only shared between me and someone else to prevent total dictatorship, it is only used sparely.
It helps the other NS user use RO power for the founder account in case they are not an RO, as I am always RO in the region.

I would also take a guess that hundreds of users of NS share founder accounts, why punish users for playing the game in a legal way?

[Hiram Land]

CTE - A nation ceases to exist after 4 years without either of these actions:
-Answering an issue
-Moving a nation
-Refounding a nation
-Founding a nation
-Endorsing a nation
-Unendorsing a nation
-Anything else that causes the nation to generate regional happenings, excluding passive regional happenings caused by the system or other players(Being endorsed, hit by zombies/cure missiles, ranking changes...).

Voluntary sharing of nations is now forbidden.
Currently shared nations need to be assigned to one person only.

This would fix a lot of problems.
Trophy regions would eventually open again if the founder has moved on.
Regions would be opened up again instead of protected by a bot from a long-inactive founder.
Regions would be incentivized to share founder nations to circumvent this, so it is now forbidden.

I definitely do not like the 4-year part. That's frankly too long. What if someone wants to forget/leave NationStates - there is no delete button so we're left with CTE'ing. If you are going on a vacation or need a break there's vacation mode which extends the time a nation can continue to not CTE.

[Nordic Peoples Reich]

As someone who has a growing empire of trophy regions myself, I can promise you that I wouldn't let this happen to my puppets. I can move them in and out of a captured region and still keep the region under my control, as long as I'm smart enough to not do it right before an update. Also I could always just create new puppets whenever I wanted to. In other words, this suggestion wouldn't really change anything other than leading to fresh occupier puppets being created every so often.

And promoting a DOS punishment over nation sharing is just ridiculous

[WayNeacTia]

If a solution was ever begging for a problem to come along, this would be it....

[Old Hope]

CTE - A nation ceases to exist after 4 years without either of these actions:
-Answering an issue
-Moving a nation
-Refounding a nation
-Founding a nation
-Endorsing a nation
-Unendorsing a nation
-Anything else that causes the nation to generate regional happenings, excluding passive regional happenings caused by the system or other players(Being endorsed, hit by zombies/cure missiles, ranking changes...).

Voluntary sharing of nations is now forbidden.
Currently shared nations need to be assigned to one person only.

This would fix a lot of problems.
Trophy regions would eventually open again if the founder has moved on.
Regions would be opened up again instead of protected by a bot from a long-inactive founder.
Regions would be incentivized to share founder nations to circumvent this, so it is now forbidden.

I definitely do not like the 4-year part. That's frankly too long. What if someone wants to forget/leave NationStates - there is no delete button so we're left with CTE'ing. If you are going on a vacation or need a break there's vacation mode which extends the time a nation can continue to not CTE.

That'd be in addition to normal CTE.

[Old Hope]

As someone who has a growing empire of trophy regions myself, I can promise you that I wouldn't let this happen to my puppets. I can move them in and out of a captured region and still keep the region under my control, as long as I'm smart enough to not do it right before an update. Also I could always just create new puppets whenever I wanted to. In other words, this suggestion wouldn't really change anything other than leading to fresh occupier puppets being created every so often.

Or even answer any issue. You are still active, this isn't the problem. The problem are old founder accounts by people who no longer play, not old founder accounts by those who do.

[Catalonia 2070 RP]

As someone who has a growing empire of trophy regions myself, I can promise you that I wouldn't let this happen to my puppets. I can move them in and out of a captured region and still keep the region under my control, as long as I'm smart enough to not do it right before an update. Also I could always just create new puppets whenever I wanted to. In other words, this suggestion wouldn't really change anything other than leading to fresh occupier puppets being created every so often.

Or even answer any issue. You are still active, this isn't the problem. The problem are old founder accounts by people who no longer play, not old founder accounts by those who do.

So you mean that even if you logged in every 28 days to stop yourself from CTE'ing, if, after 4 years, you hadn't done anything aside from logging in you'd CTE?

[Old Hope]

Or even answer any issue. You are still active, this isn't the problem. The problem are old founder accounts by people who no longer play, not old founder accounts by those who do.

So you mean that even if you logged in every 28 days to stop yourself from CTE'ing, if, after 4 years, you hadn't done anything aside from logging in you'd CTE?

If you hadn't done anything aside from anything doable by bot.

[Frisbeeteria]

I have done none of these things in the last 4 years, despite being very active on the site for almost 2 decades. I guess I'm now dead.

Now tell me how I can distinguish between someone who shares a nation from someone who, for example, routinely travels for family, school or business. I'm waiting.

[Kandorith]

Well, I guess all my puppets are CTE'd then I guess because they are only used to generate a compendium on a fantasy world and the entire region has no WA delegate, no RMB activity, no WA nation, etc.

And this is exactly why this is a bad idea.

Not to mention nation sharing is used for multiple things which in no way violates any rules.

[Old Hope]

No nation sharing is out.
CTE is out.

How about: A founder that had no activity beyond that what could be fully automated for 4 years becomes an inactive founder. Inactive founders lose executive status. Founders soon to be marked inactive get notified via telegram, notices, and if enabled, mail.

[Haganham]

A much simpler solution would be a change to script rules - logging into a nation is now a restricted action. That way people who want to lock down a region would actually need to manage their puppets instead of just keeping a script running once every other month.

[Refuge Isle]

CTE - A nation ceases to exist after 4 years without either of these actions:
-Answering an issue
-Moving a nation
-Refounding a nation
-Founding a nation
-Endorsing a nation
-Unendorsing a nation
-Anything else that causes the nation to generate regional happenings, excluding passive regional happenings caused by the system or other players(Being endorsed, hit by zombies/cure missiles, ranking changes...).

Voluntary sharing of nations is now forbidden.
Currently shared nations need to be assigned to one person only.

This would fix a lot of problems.
Trophy regions would eventually open again if the founder has moved on.
Regions would be opened up again instead of protected by a bot from a long-inactive founder.
Regions would be incentivized to share founder nations to circumvent this, so it is now forbidden.

I feel like the majority of nation sharing has nothing to do with keeping a founder alive, but is more primarily used by people running government representative accounts like The First Warden, The Northern Light, TSP Foreign Office, Europeia Dispatch Office, and The League Foreign Affairs. And that's just me scanning the trending dispatches page.

A much simpler solution would be a change to script rules - logging into a nation is now a restricted action. That way people who want to lock down a region would actually need to manage their puppets instead of just keeping a script running once every other month.

I agree that this is a more targetted solution.

It would also cause Chicken Overlords to CTE, so full support of course.

[United Calanworie]

A much simpler solution would be a change to script rules - logging into a nation is now a restricted action. That way people who want to lock down a region would actually need to manage their puppets instead of just keeping a script running once every other month.

So also removing every single private command endpoint from the API?

[Bears Armed]

I feel like the majority of nation sharing has nothing to do with keeping a founder alive, but is more primarily used by people running government representative accounts like The First Warden, The Northern Light, TSP Foreign Office, Europeia Dispatch Office, and The League Foreign Affairs. And that's just me scanning the trending dispatches page.

There are some for official roles in the 'NS Sports' sub-forum as well, for example NSWC Signups.


Old Hope's posts are usually more sensible & better-written than this: Could that nation have been hijacked?

[Old Hope]

A much simpler solution would be a change to script rules - logging into a nation is now a restricted action. That way people who want to lock down a region would actually need to manage their puppets instead of just keeping a script running once every other month.

Yes of course! That's an excellent idea!

[United Calanworie]

Also I really wanna know why the heck you came up with this idea -- as far as I'm aware, there hasn't been a substantial issue with puppets/nation sharing in... a very long time, outside of issues that could be dealt with by a better mechanism of trading card pack delivery.

[Scottish Republic]

I don't like this idea due to the fact that many regions, including my own, are structured with a shared Founder Account.

[Grishahakkaverchynot]

Shared founder accounts and region holders are the biggest enemies to your ideas. And I happen to hold some regions. Very opposed.

[WayNeacTia]

I don't like this idea due to the fact that many regions, including my own, are structured with a shared Founder Account.

Which is a horrible idea....