Ideas for next year's Z-Day

[Kaiserholt]

My idea would be for an option to Opt Out.

That way my national happenings wouldn't be clogged with 23912 "[Over invested moron] struck Casspira with a zombie thing, infecting a million people".

But then you'd miss the 30k+ "[Over invested fool] struck Casspira with a cure missile thing, de-infecting a million people" notifications.

[Kakastania]

My idea would be for an option to Opt Out.

That way my national happenings wouldn't be clogged with 23912 "[Over invested moron] struck Casspira with a zombie thing, infecting a million people".

I totally agree.

[Casspira]

My idea would be for an option to Opt Out.

That way my national happenings wouldn't be clogged with 23912 "[Over invested moron] struck Casspira with a zombie thing, infecting a million people".

But then you'd miss the 30k+ "[Over invested fool] struck Casspira with a cure missile thing, de-infecting a million people" notifications.

Good...?

[Cascadiuh]

Get rid of the Recaptcha so i can use my puppet armies.

[Holy Marsh]

ANy buff to the Pro-Zombie side has to come with buffs to the Anti-Zombie side. If no one does anything a region will already fall to zombies, and the two available options- Cure and Military- have serious drawbacks. Cure takes a while to have a good regional impact while military forces help reduce the spread but are reduced in effectiveness rapidly. In order to succeed, Anti-Zombie forces already have to coordinate on a mass scale to counter an active zombie empire threat, and it only takes 1-2 savvy Zombie Empires to crush a region's chance at long-term victory in a region of 85-90 people since the majority don't participate.

Military: If you select this option, in addition to the TZES, the nation inflicts a percentage of casualties it suffers during a horde attack back at the zombie empire. Comparing size of the nations and the level of Horde vs TZES. This gives a good passive defense buff to military nations that builds over time. As is, any smart zombie player will ignore them at first and strike nations who are curing anyway. By the time military nations are being targeted, it is because the region is going to fall anyway. Giving this defensive buff means that later on their defenses can inflict terrible losses on attackers, giving zombie empire more incentive to spread their targets and strike them early.

At the same time, a low-level strike team sent against a high-level zombie empire should have the chance to do very little, say ten percent of normal effectiveness, and reset the superweapon clock to 2:00. This slows down the strikes and makes high-level zombie empires hard targets.

Regionally, military nations should impact general infection rate as they keep tight control over borders.

Cure: Cure is how you win the game and zombie players who want to defeat a region target cure nations. Cure nations play a risky game because it is darkest right before dawn, and any slight budge can doom them. Every year I have seen my cure nation just about disabled entirely right before we manage to get the cure out and about. They should have a passive buff where even before the cure is discovered they are able to rescue some as survivors. This can be that they aren't actually cured, but are effectively controlled as subjects and are no longer active threats. The missiles should have a bigger impact on non-Zombie Empire nations as they are actively seeking aid, and less effective against Zombie Empires as they are actively trying to prevent it from happening.

Zombie Empire: I think they are generally fine. TZES should have a chance of doing little but military nations can cause significant defensive casualties. Cures win the game but impact you directly less. The changes they have made the past two years have seriously buffed the Zombie Hordes so I think they're honestly fine.

[Evaropi]

I would like to suggest that the efficiency of anti zombie measures is dependent on the nation's stats.
Exterminate depends on "Defense Forces" and "Law Enforcement"
Cure depends on "Scientific Advancement" and "Health Care"

...or something like that.

Yeah, 100% with that. That sounds great.

[Communist Zombie Horde]

Get rid of the Recaptcha so i can use my puppet armies.

You still can. Recaptcha only stops bots

[Evaropi]

I would like to suggest that the efficiency of anti zombie measures is dependent on the nation's stats.
Exterminate depends on "Defense Forces" and "Law Enforcement"
Cure depends on "Scientific Advancement" and "Health Care"

...or something like that.

Yeah, 100% with that. That sounds great.

[Pan-Asiatic States]

Not even sure if the mods can hear us lmao

[Erithaca]

The ability to send superweapons to embassy regions would be nice.7

[CrazyPea]

Make it go for a whole week

[Holy Marsh]

Here is an idea, and one that benefits all: In the census report, we can currently click to see zombies, dead, survivors, and percentage of zombies. What about the categories of "Cure Selected", "Military Option Utilized", "Embraced the Zombie Horde", and "Undecided"? That would aid communication in larger regions quite a bit to help pick and choose targets.

[Techolandia]

My idea would be for an option to Opt Out.

That way my national happenings wouldn't be clogged with 23912 "[Over invested moron] struck Casspira with a zombie thing, infecting a million people".

Maybe instead of an option to opt out, which would allow nations to be targeted if they haven't logged in to opt out yet, nations don't acquire zombies, can't be targeted, and don't count for a region's zombie stats until they've selected an option. This would put regions with a large percentage of nations who don't log in every day at less of a disadvantage.

[Holy Marsh]

It would likely imbalance it too much against the zombies if that was the case.

[Techolandia]

It would likely imbalance it too much against the zombies if that was the case.

There have already been complaints that the zombie hordes are overpowered.

Put somthing in place to prevent zombie spam, and lower the amount of zombies a horde makes, it takes 8 clicks of the zombie extermination units to bring down 1 click of the horde.

ANy buff to the Pro-Zombie side has to come with buffs to the Anti-Zombie side. If no one does anything a region will already fall to zombies, and the two available options- Cure and Military- have serious drawbacks. Cure takes a while to have a good regional impact while military forces help reduce the spread but are reduced in effectiveness rapidly. In order to succeed, Anti-Zombie forces already have to coordinate on a mass scale to counter an active zombie empire threat, and it only takes 1-2 savvy Zombie Empires to crush a region's chance at long-term victory in a region of 85-90 people since the majority don't participate.

Cure: Cure is how you win the game and zombie players who want to defeat a region target cure nations. Cure nations play a risky game because it is darkest right before dawn, and any slight budge can doom them. Every year I have seen my cure nation just about disabled entirely right before we manage to get the cure out and about. They should have a passive buff where even before the cure is discovered they are able to rescue some as survivors. This can be that they aren't actually cured, but are effectively controlled as subjects and are no longer active threats. The missiles should have a bigger impact on non-Zombie Empire nations as they are actively seeking aid, and less effective against Zombie Empires as they are actively trying to prevent it from happening.

Zombie Empire: I think they are generally fine. TZES should have a chance of doing little but military nations can cause significant defensive casualties. Cures win the game but impact you directly less. The changes they have made the past two years have seriously buffed the Zombie Hordes so I think they're honestly fine.

Also, there have been requests to add a second pro-zombie option, which would further help the zombie side.

Maybe a way for pro-zombie nations to still be pro-zombie even after all their zombies are gone...? No idea how balanced this would be, but I can make two points for it:

1. Currently pro-zombie nations get not just zombies, but also tactical zombie elimination squads. The latter here doesn't make sense... why would a pro-zombie nation train such people? Pro-zombie nations want to spread zombies, and killing zombies doesn't exactly spread them.

2. A few works of fiction that had zombies had humans who supported the zombies. A notable one I can remember was in Z-nation, and had a church that worshipped zombies (which they called "the ressurected".) They sent human followers to other survivor camps in an effort to sabotage attempts to stop infection, and in extreme cases, they'd commit suicide inside other camps in order to break quarantines. (As their suicide would cause them to ressurect as a zombie.)

So my suggestion is to give pro-zombie nations "tactical zombie terrorism squads" (name pending) instead of tactical zombie elimination squads. These units would not directly turn humans into zombies, but would increase the infectivity of existing zombies, while also killing a portion of the existing humans in the nation they're targeted at. Highly upgraded ones could also turn other nations pro-zombies just like some zombie units can, but they'd need to be level 4 or 5 perhaps?

How balanced it would be? I can't say. It's possible the numbers would need careful tweaking as well; obviously if they are too effective, it'd ruin the balance entirely. I just thought it made more logical sense, and add an interesting element. Feel free to implement or ignore entirely.

ZomZom Empires could form alliances and coordinate a Horde Equivalent to Cure. ie, study how to improve the infection.

[Holy Marsh]

It would imbalance it because being able to stealth-infect sleeping giants is a key reason small numbers of zombie empires (who statistically are the smallest of three factions by a good margin, the other two of which are allied against them) can actually win the long game of regional infection in a region with any semblance of active or organized anti-zombie activity. The game is imperfect but a massive change like locking off nations who don't choose options makes it almost unwinnable. Not only that but it may actually make it impossible to ever completely infect a region. You can always ignore the event and many do. All that change does is more or less guarantee one side winds regardless of other changes.

[Hurjaki]

There should be an own statistics page for Zday. Like the stats on the nation's main page, but seperated. The normal NS stats which are just updated every day are useless for Zday, the hourly updated ones are the only ones really helping.

[Stellar Colonies]

Moving it to the weekend might not make it be during the holiday itself, but it would certainly be more convenient and easier for a lot of NS'ers to participate if it was.

[Techolandia]

Moving it to the weekend might not make it be during the holiday itself, but it would certainly be more convenient and easier for a lot of NS'ers to participate if it was.

Maybe it can be during the entire week of Halloween.
If the event lasts an entire week, the virus might be able to mutate several times throughout the event, gaining features such as airborne transmission and cure resistance later in the week. One thing that could happen is that the virus initially cannot attack nations that have not chosen an option yet, but after a few hours, it acquires the necessary mutation, thus nerfing the zombie empires slightly while still giving them a decent chance at victory.

[Pan-Asiatic States]

Make it go for a whole week

Yes. So Z-Day RPs can thrive during the actual celebrations themselves.

Hey, now that I realize it, since Z-Day is 33 Hours, that technically makes it Z-Day-and-9-Hours.

[The Democratic Nation of Unovia]

Here is an idea, and one that benefits all: In the census report, we can currently click to see zombies, dead, survivors, and percentage of zombies. What about the categories of "Cure Selected", "Military Option Utilized", "Embraced the Zombie Horde", and "Undecided"? That would aid communication in larger regions quite a bit to help pick and choose targets.

I agree with Holy Marsh on this one.

[Techolandia]

Maybe nations' icons can also reflect how advanced their chosen superweapon is. For example, nations researching cures who haven't developed the Mk I yet have an empty Erlenmeyer flask, nations that have developed the Mk V have a full (or possibly bubbling) Erlenmeyer flask, and nations that have developed the Mk II or so could have a partially-full Erlenmeyer flask. A similar thing could be done for exterminator icons and horde icons.

[New Periapsis]

Add the ability to have vaccination/cure programs for yourself so you can convert your own zombies into survivors.

[Oturia]

Maybe you should nerf the OP zombies
They are so much better, no research needed, and they get spammed like hell.
To get rid of a zombie spam nation I got to exterminate the entire population.

[Estado Novo Portugues]

The larger a nation's military and law enforcement, the harder it is to infect the population.