Military Gameplay and Game Mechanics - A Primer

[Unibot]

Running it here would solve the problem of having a biased forum administration, but we would need a posting-restricted subforum only for designated delegates, and/or some very active mod work to keep it from turning into a (pardon me, Ballotonia) Free4All. I could imagine it mushrooming very quickly into a fully functional interregional body that would need either an off-site forum or a permanent home here where it wouldn't take over the whole of the Gameplay forum. We're not talking just about a summit, after all, but about the appeals, investigation, and enforcement aspect that would follow. We'd need a charter or constitution, a place to hear appeals, a military cooperation center, and an Intel division... the last two of which could almost certainly not be hosted here.

I think a first summit could be run on the shiny new forum, and then have subsequent meetings in another forum as the adminstration becomes more defined?

I'm not prepared to anoint defenders as amateur moderators. Which is why we're having this discussion about the motivation of defenders. There's no role for defenders if all they want to do is be mods.

There must be a gap between what the game allows and what defenders consider "right." If there isn't, everyone in the game is either a defender or a griefer. There would be no way to conduct any kind of invasion that might interest a defender, except to break the game rules, in which case you risk having your account deleted. And there would be no real need for defenders to do anything even then, because mods could handle it more effectively anyway.

I don't see anyway forward if the only acceptable solution for defenders is to outlaw invasions.

The reason why I suggested that such a summit would need mod/code support is because of the possible changes that could come out of the meeting. However I think the concept of the summit has changed which the progress of the forums (or I read it wrong at 3o' clock in the morning or when ever ). This would be an offical summit that the rules for raiding/ defending, liberating, hawking - whatever, could be established concretely to give meaning again to defenders - because isn't that one of the main points to this essay, that defenders have lost their meaning with the advent of regional influence.

With defenders moralized and ready to go, the see-saw momentum between defenders and raiders should be put back into motion. No mod enforced would be needed.

[Mayor For Life]

All interesting ideas.

I have no objection to decaying passwords – just as our nations CTE without activity – why not make a region password visible to locals after so many days, then CTE after another period? There would need to be some mechanism for “refreshing” it however. Password decay would make the taxidermy of regions (put them on our raider wall as headless trophies) more maintenance intensive – and might make regions potentially more vulnerable to being retaken if not maintained.

One of the reasons overall NS numbers may have languished in my rarely humble opinion is the paucity of new nation issues. Some folks LOVE that part of NS and it isn't the least bit interesting to endorse cheese as political dissent repeatedly. I know dozens of nations who have proposed what appears to me to be perhaps hundreds of new issues. Last I checked, after all these years are we are at Issue 230-something. I know it isn't “we” - it's you – and the work is non-trivial, but for a while there there were no new issues at all and in my mind I could imagine thousands of nation founders clicking “dismiss all issues” when “my choice to dangle” repeated for the fifth time.

I have a significant problem with the notion that there is or should be some morality – or potentially pejorative political philosophy – attached to game code. Raiders aren't “bad” and defenders aren't “good” and neither is their conduct – it's just one way to play NS. As a nation founder I can allow voting or outlaw it, encourage international connections or build walls around my borders, have the biggest military in NS and no schools, have children violating curfew shot on sight: none of that is immoral, it's game play. The key is that I choose that: no one imposes it except by the limitations of the dilemmas themselves, which I can opt out of. My nation, my choice. It's fine for nations to associate in regions according to political philosophy – that's all part of the culture of regions. Treachery and duplicity are currently part of regional politics – because those are political tools.

Completely disagree with Unibot about defenders having lost meaning (the logical extension of which is that raiders have, too). Some of my best friends are defenders and they love a good campaign, brandish their ribbons proudly in off site forums, and look forward to the next raid. It isn't game code that they win more often than not: it's the success of their community organizing and the failure of raiders to outwit them in building powerful coalitions. I think Kandarin's suggestion of moving the “major update” time is a good one – and there's no reason I can think of it couldn't be rescheduled (moved) every 4 months or so: this is an international game. Make it interesting by moving it around the globe once in a while.

What is sometimes neglected when folks advocate “ban region founders” and “eliminate influence” is clarity. I think decaying influence is an interesting concept – just don't know how it might work. Eliminating founders and regional influence places an immense value on that precious WA membership – something many players in my region are uninterested in – and would vastly increase the multying incentive to the extent that enforcing that rule might replace the old griefing nightmare of yore. It can be done – a knucklehead (now CTE'd) in my region was busted for it – months after he started.

My region has been cited as a “growing” place and it's not because were are a cult of personality – I play Mayor as a doddering old fool. Not much of stretch, actually. It is growing because it's a playground for nation founders who want to play NS “their way” - whatever that is – and find like minded others and populate a community within our region to do just that. We just facilitate what makes them want to log in next time and provide one other thing: security. Because, to paraphrase one of those passionate players on our forum – some nations founders “are” kids and he doesn't want them coming in and busting up a place he has helped to build for his own amusement just because some kids enjoy busting stuff up.

An essential part of what I consider influence: we vote with our feet. In the absence of a region password, nations come and go as they please and in a monumentally important way vote for the place the region they call home. My region never had an election: no one is interested. If there was a big “let's have a constitution and parliament and regular elections” movement in my region, I'd support it. Heck, I wish I could get someone excited about the WA in my region. But what has worked is to let them find what interests them and encourage that, not try to make them play my way.

Referring to a region as “undemocratic” because it has WA Delegate access to Regional Controls off might be considered a way to inject a kind of pejorative label we do not assign to nations. Democracy ain't religion. It is one, but only one, way to run a NS nation or an NS region – it isn't the “right” way and other ways aren't “wrong.”

If a region was a nation then technically I am a totalitarian dictator and my citizens have no rights. But – and I hope I speak with some caffeinated clarity here: AFAIK a region isn't a meta-nation whose nations are citizens. The nations in my region have freedom to come and go as they please. They don't want to be part of a military or some meta-political process. They just want to play. Doesn't make them superior in any way to nations who raid or defend or camp out at the WA. Or - and this is my point - inferior, either.

Reducing options may reduce the number of players who now enjoy them.

[Unibot]

One of the reasons overall NS numbers may have languished in my rarely humble opinion is the paucity of new nation issues. Some folks LOVE that part of NS and it isn't the least bit interesting to endorse cheese as political dissent repeatedly. I know dozens of nations who have proposed what appears to me to be perhaps hundreds of new issues. Last I checked, after all these years are we are at Issue 230-something. I know it isn't “we” - it's you – and the work is non-trivial, but for a while there there were no new issues at all and in my mind I could imagine thousands of nation founders clicking “dismiss all issues” when “my choice to dangle” repeated for the fifth time.

Well talk to Sirocco - the issue editor, but he's been working pretty hard to bring new issues into the game at the moment (having added a few in past month or so). I agree the more issues the better - it's just these things take time to get the quality we expect for our issues.

Completely disagree with Unibot about defenders having lost meaning (the logical extension of which is that raiders have, too). Some of my best friends are defenders and they love a good campaign, brandish their ribbons proudly in off site forums, and look forward to the next raid. It isn't game code that they win more often than not: it's the success of their community organizing and the failure of raiders to outwit them in building powerful coalitions.

I was sort of leapfrogging that argument from this essay.

I think one of the things that bugs me with the game is the power of the WA over a region. Why is a WA Delegate the only democratically elected leader allowed to use the regional controls? I've suggested this before, but a second delegate (a regional delegate) who would be elected through whatever method the region chooses - could potentially shake things up.

The regional delegate and the WA delegate would both have the regional controls, and they would both have to pay influence costs. However unlike the WA delegate, the Regional Delegate's influence would be calculated using how long he/she has stayed in the region, as opposed to endorsements.

In this hypothetical bicameral world, there wouldn't need to be a founder, as those regions that practice isolationism would have collected so much influence from having a regional delegate that just sits there - that I'm sure they could defend a raid easily.

The Regional Delegate wouldn't be a position easily raided because there would be several ways to vote him into power that wouldn't allow for a raider to sneak into power easily. As well because the RD is dependent on residency history and not endorsements - its not really a smart position to take over compared to the WA delegate.

And yes, the RD's primary job would be to answer Regional Issues as opposed to the WA delegate's job to vote on proposals. , I'm making a bumper sticker that says "I luv Regional Issues", too much?


Is there no way to resize pictures using BBCode?

[[violet]]

Another proposal for your comments: a "Liberation" category of World Assembly Resolution. If passed, it removes the password from the nominated region.

Could be used to deal with situations like France. Liberated regions would not be able to password-protect for as long as the resolution stands.

[Unibot]

Another proposal for your comments: a "Liberation" category of World Assembly Resolution. If passed, it removes the password from the nominated region.

Could be used to deal with situations like France. Liberated regions would not be able to password-protect for as long as the resolution stands.

What a strange proposal? I like strange....

I feel like new categories like that could bridge the gap between the forum players (the WA regulars) and the game players, which is nice and should be done when we got the forums in our backyard now - of course it would cause an outcry from alot of WA regulars who are use to shouting "metagaming" at such a proposal (but ah well, they could use a little shake-up ).

I wonder if this might even strengthen the community a bit more... by giving them something to fight for, and talk about - sort of hyperinterventionism at its best. Which is neat because the effect of the WA has always been on the nation, to focus on regions as well is genius.

If we ever get regional issues, possible more WA categories involving regions could come around?

[Kandarin]

Another proposal for your comments: a "Liberation" category of World Assembly Resolution. If passed, it removes the password from the nominated region.

Could be used to deal with situations like France. Liberated regions would not be able to password-protect for as long as the resolution stands.

I think that the underlying problem with making Gameplay actions subject to the WA is that a majority of WA members are apathetic at best about the game. There are a number of very well-known ways to exploit this that are also very hard to beat. Putting Gameplay actions in the hands of a fickle WA, as is the case with founderless regional governance, creates some very powerful tools with some strong and often negative consequences.

Of course, exploiting the uninformed masses is populism and populism is as genuine a part of politics as anything else. Just remember that the usage of such things goes both ways. So if the "Liberation" category was implemented, the community would be able to stop things like France. However, raider-sympathetic regions would also push through resolutions to yank the passwords from regions like Haven that just want to keep out of the raiding game.

[Mayor For Life]

Like the idea of Regional Delegate, Unibot. But of course I'd like options. Could be a founder, could be elected by everyone (fire up the puppet machine!), or could be elected by the representatives from various parties. You know, representative democracy. It's been shown to be marginally successful IRL. Those reps could be elected or founder cronies - in many "democratic" regions the difference is close to nil now. My favorite: regions that advert themselves as "most democratic" and their own constitution is under offsite forum lock and key.

I'm all for preserving options and making the game more interesting.

The WA Liberation Solution - hmmm. I like [violet]'s weird idea too. Would need to be some criteria so that tyranny of the majority doesn't take hold. A region would NEED to get "unstuck" - pulling passwords off of regions that are stable and not under raider control because someone raised the battle cry of "free us from oppressors" would be no less than raiding by WA. If the idea is to make raiders defend what they take rather than taxidermy the region, I like it.

I don't want to dump on Sirocco for the absence of a flow of new issues: he's one dude and he's a mod - it's not like they have nothing else to do. I suggest there be more issue editors and some production expectation (maybe one a month?) to keep the game fresh.

[[violet]]

Just remember that the usage of such things goes both ways. So if the "Liberation" category was implemented, the community would be able to stop things like France. However, raider-sympathetic regions would also push through resolutions to yank the passwords from regions like Haven that just want to keep out of the raiding game.

Right. I'd like to hear some opinion on whether this would probably happen. My feeling is that while the WA members are largely apathetic, they still as a body vote with a pretty strong conscience. And defenders do have the moral high ground on their side (to most people). So I wouldn't expect regions like Haven to be under threat, unless the invaders were considerably cleverer than defenders.

The major benefit of this idea, to me, is that it eliminates passwords as a game-ending invasion tactic. It would mean there would always be some hope of freeing a conquered region. So in a worst case scenario, if Haven fell, it could at least be liberated.

The decaying-password idea, which seeks the same end, seems to me to have a lot more potential for collateral damage; i.e. is likely to expose a lot of currently protected regions to invasion.

[BIteland]

One suggestion that was raised by one of our long term players at the West Pacific forum was to remove founders of regions once the region had reached a certain amount of nations like 50 or 75 or 100. That way, the small foundered region can still sit back and remove themselves from the defender/invader war but once they reach a certain size they should have to defend like any other non-founded region.

[Kandarin]

Just remember that the usage of such things goes both ways. So if the "Liberation" category was implemented, the community would be able to stop things like France. However, raider-sympathetic regions would also push through resolutions to yank the passwords from regions like Haven that just want to keep out of the raiding game.

Right. I'd like to hear some opinion on whether this would probably happen. My feeling is that while the WA members are largely apathetic, they still as a body vote with a pretty strong conscience. And defenders do have the moral high ground on their side (to most people). So I wouldn't expect regions like Haven to be under threat, unless the invaders were considerably cleverer than defenders.

One thing that I've observed with the WA is that affirmative votes have a natural advantage. There is a greater inclination among the WA body to vote For a resolution than Against so long as it looks legitimate. The same applies to repeals. I am not quite sure why this is, as the opinions of the body politic in this case is hard to gauge. perhaps members tend to view the WA as an inherently progressive body. Perhaps there is a feeling that if a Resolution has made it to the floor, it is worthwhile. Explaining the flaws in a seriously flawed resolution to the voting body is extremely difficult, particularly when it looks legitimate.

The gist of this is that far more people would be voting on Liberation resolutions than could be made aware of the pertinent facts. If the WA body could be convinced to vote to deal with real grievances, it could also be persuaded to take action on false accusations. Defenders would surely do their best to spread the word about real destruction in places like France, but you can bet that invaders would do just as much to spread the word about the oh-so-terrible misrule going on in places like Haven. It takes more knowledge of the invasion/regional-politics game than most NSers are interested in gaining to tell one from the other.

The major benefit of this idea, to me, is that it eliminates passwords as a game-ending invasion tactic. It would mean there would always be some hope of freeing a conquered region. So in a worst case scenario, if Haven fell, it could at least be liberated.

The decaying-password idea, which seeks the same end, seems to me to have a lot more potential for collateral damage; i.e. is likely to expose a lot of currently protected regions to invasion.

For the decaying-password idea to work, there would have to be a major distinction in Influence upkeep between a password that is distributed to residents and one that is not, just as there is now a distinction in the initial cost. Regions who put up passwords to fortify the safety and integrity of their community against the dangers of the outside have little to fear from distributing the password to their members. There is always the risk that a disgruntled member will turn traitor and betray the secret, but that's a problem with that specific community, not a problem with the game mechanics. Delegates that do this shouldn't have to pay much upkeep; their passwords are set in a way that is friendly to the community of nations in the region and so would not tax the influence they have within that community.

On the other hand, Delegates that set a password and do not distribute it to the population are going over the heads of the community of nations in the region, sacrificing international cooperation for their own agenda. This could be expected to seriously strain their relations with their neighbors and reduce the influence they have within the region's community of nations. They should have to pay a lot more Influence upkeep than Delegates that distribute the password.

[[violet]]

For the decaying-password idea to work, there would have to be a major distinction in Influence upkeep between a password that is distributed to residents and one that is not, just as there is now a distinction in the initial cost.

That wouldn't have saved France, though, would it? It would just force all invasions to use that as a template.

[Unibot]

The decaying-password idea, which seeks the same end, seems to me to have a lot more potential for collateral damage; i.e. is likely to expose a lot of currently protected regions to invasion

As long as they have a founder they would be fine - because founders don't have to pay influence costs.

For the decaying-password idea to work, there would have to be a major distinction in Influence upkeep between a password that is distributed to residents and one that is not, just as there is now a distinction in the initial cost. Regions who put up passwords to fortify the safety and integrity of their community against the dangers of the outside have little to fear from distributing the password to their members. There is always the risk that a disgruntled member will turn traitor and betray the secret, but that's a problem with that specific community, not a problem with the game mechanics. Delegates that do this shouldn't have to pay much upkeep; their passwords are set in a way that is friendly to the community of nations in the region and so would not tax the influence they have within that community.

That could work, Have the decaying password only for passwords that aren't shown to everyone in the region.

Like the idea of Regional Delegate, Unibot. But of course I'd like options. Could be a founder, could be elected by everyone (fire up the puppet machine!), or could be elected by the representatives from various parties. You know, representative democracy. It's been shown to be marginally successful IRL. Those reps could be elected or founder cronies - in many "democratic" regions the difference is close to nil now. My favorite: regions that advert themselves as "most democratic" and their own constitution is under offsite forum lock and key.

I had a basic outline of all of the different ways a RD could be elected. However the more, the merrier - and the more, unique regions become.

Right. I'd like to hear some opinion on whether this would probably happen. My feeling is that while the WA members are largely apathetic, they still as a body vote with a pretty strong conscience. And defenders do have the moral high ground on their side (to most people). So I wouldn't expect regions like Haven to be under threat, unless the invaders were considerably cleverer than defenders

I have a feeling that if the idea was implemented, a whole new crowd of active WA members would come in - which I was talking about. If the WA also focused on regions, as well as nations... I think the last emotion anyone would express would be apathy - It would be a community fueler.

[Naivetry]

There must be a gap between what the game allows and what defenders consider "right." If there isn't, everyone in the game is either a defender or a griefer. There would be no way to conduct any kind of invasion that might interest a defender, except to break the game rules, in which case you risk having your account deleted. And there would be no real need for defenders to do anything even then, because mods could handle it more effectively anyway.

I don't see any way forward if the only acceptable solution for defenders is to outlaw invasions.

Invasions have always been legal, and that posed no problem for defenders in terms of motivation. But they were legal only within limits. The rules never permitted the total destruction of regions, for example, even if the code did. So before Influence, defenders considered themselves to be, if not game moderators, then at least on the same side of law and order - helpful players taking care of the things the mods wouldn't or couldn't. Now, the rules do permit the total destruction of regions - and pretty much anything else, too, because the code IS the rules. It's like playing cops and robbers in a world where there are suddenly no laws but gravitation.

This puzzles me, too. It reads like a treaty, where defenders agree to turn a blind eye to the less offensive kinds of invasion, while invaders agree not to conduct particularly violent ones.

It was a treaty of sorts that unfortunately never went into effect (word from older players is that the ADN et al. preferred to keep their options open in matters of espionage...). There are a few things to notice about the raider agreement to leave active regions, and the defender agreement not to interfere except to supervise: 1) This is, in effect, defenders acting like moderators and raiders agreeing to abide by their joint rules. 2) It only applied to regions that didn't have a WA (UN) delegate when the raiders came in. All other regions were still fair game. For the raiders, that meant the targets fought over could still be significant ones, and they could keep inactive regions as trophies; for the defenders, it meant that they would no longer have to dedicate troops to the defense of smaller active regions, but could concentrate more effectively on preventing big attacks.

Which is a really interesting thing to arise out of gameplay, but if it actually worked -- or, more relevantly for this discussion, if it were enshrined in the Game Rules, and violations punishable by mods -- what's left for defenders to do? Aren't you putting yourselves out of a job? Or is that kind of the point: that you're winning by preventing invasions from even getting started?

That is kind of the point for defenders... As for the leaving us something to do, I think that could be solved easily enough. Gameplay prefers to self-govern, when we can - the ruling on Francos Spain started that, it's enshrined in the FAQ, and we've absorbed the lesson well enough that most of our new players couldn't even name the NS mods. Moderator action is a last resort - it's what we look to for answers to problems we can't solve on our own. Any kind of appeal would probably move through the players first, in the same way that forum issues can be identified and brought by the players to the Moderation forum. (I'd prefer for all appeals to be run through a player-elected council first, actually, but I understand the hesitation there.) Being found guilty of breaking the rules agreed upon by a council of raiders and defenders wouldn't automatically result in mod action, either. Perpetrators have a Founderless home region? Then we can take care of them ourselves. Perpetrators have a home region with a Founder? Well, we can't take care of that on our own. But if the penalty for destroying a Founderless region was simply that you lost your Founded status, then we could take over from there. And that would have a certain element of poetic justice.

Completely disagree with Unibot about defenders having lost meaning (the logical extension of which is that raiders have, too). Some of my best friends are defenders and they love a good campaign, brandish their ribbons proudly in off site forums, and look forward to the next raid.

In order to prevent it, you mean. I realize there are a number of enthusiastic defenders still out there. I was every bit as enthusiastic, until I stopped and asked myself about the principles of what I was actually doing. They're happy because they don't think about why they do what they do, and they don't need to - felt conviction is a sufficient substitute for reasoned justification. And after all, they get pretty medals. (Not picking on anyone; I have my share of defender bling as well.)

Don't get me wrong - there are potentially valid, RL justifications for defender action, but I'll be banned if any of the defenders I know can produce them in a sustained argument. They can defend others; they can't defend themselves, and most of the time they don't even bother to try. They refuse to participate in sophisticated political or ideological discourse, and so they are relegated as a group either to the role of pawns or bystanders. "See raider, stop raider" may be all some people want out of this game, but that can't support the vibrant world of interregional politics that grew out of the original conflict. Salvaging the politics will take something other than tweaks to the invasion code.

In this hypothetical bicameral world, there wouldn't need to be a founder, as those regions that practice isolationism would have collected so much influence from having a regional delegate that just sits there - that I'm sure they could defend a raid easily.

That's only if your Regional Delegate never changed, and if the RD accumulated Influence at the same rate as the WAD, despite being non-WA. That still wouldn't help the newest, most vulnerable regions - instead, it would give the raiders two possible avenues of attack, and no guaranteed defense.

The Regional Delegate wouldn't be a position easily raided because there would be several ways to vote him into power that wouldn't allow for a raider to sneak into power easily.

Create it, and they'll use it. Our whole world is built around manipulating the system. The only two things that could provide some protection would be to assign the Regional Delegacy to the nation that had been in-region for the longest, or to leave it in anarchy.

That way, the small foundered region can still sit back and remove themselves from the defender/invader war but once they reach a certain size they should have to defend like any other non-founded region.

The first result of this would be for established regions to break themselves into chunks or subsidiary states small enough to retain Founder status, while sharing a common forum. Plus, I don't think they should have to defend. They should be free to opt out as long as they take the basic precaution of keeping their Founder nation alive, just as we're free to opt out of RP.

Another proposal for your comments: a "Liberation" category of World Assembly Resolution. If passed, it removes the password from the nominated region.

Could be used to deal with situations like France. Liberated regions would not be able to password-protect for as long as the resolution stands.

Now, that is an extremely interesting idea. On first glance, I have some of the same concerns about it that Kandarin has. But if "as long as the resolution stands" means that it could be repealed like any other, then I'm all for it. Wow, am I for it.

[Kandarin]

For the decaying-password idea to work, there would have to be a major distinction in Influence upkeep between a password that is distributed to residents and one that is not, just as there is now a distinction in the initial cost.

That wouldn't have saved France, though, would it? It would just force all invasions to use that as a template.

I'm not sure about this. Do you mean that all invasions would then reveal their passwords to all nations in the attacked region? If so, then that's intended behavior; invaders could reduce their influence costs this way, but at the risk of some native who's unhappy with being invaded spilling the information to an outside force. This is also why upkeep would be reduced for a distributed password, not eliminated. The idea is that a Delegate leading a united region would be recovering enough influence to keep paying rent on the password whereas one who just burst in and is competing with the locals can't (or at least, can't while those ban-'em-all plans are still on the table). I don't know the numbers here so I don't know if a reasonable upkeep cost would actually fall below a reasonable influence recovery rate. And of course this wouldn't be an issue if the password were set by the founder, who doesn't have to pay influence costs.

As an aside, it occurs to me that (correct me if I'm wrong) the particularly offensive raids that we're trying to prevent are generally perpetrated by a very small number of very specific groups, which never do anything else in the game and are already on bad terms with moderation. I won't name names here in public (they'd just get an infamy kick out of it; I'd gladly name names in private) but you probably know who I'm talking about if you're familiar with France and the other examples that keep coming up. The majority of raiders and defenders almost never use those tactics, and when they do the targets tend to be other raider or defender regions. I know you have to operate by the book, but I can't help but think that getting rid of this tiny fringe would go a long way to get rid of the nastier invasions.

[Bears Armed]

One suggestion that was raised by one of our long term players at the West Pacific forum was to remove founders of regions once the region had reached a certain amount of nations like 50 or 75 or 100. That way, the small foundered region can still sit back and remove themselves from the defender/invader war but once they reach a certain size they should have to defend like any other non-founded region.

And if their membership dropped back below that level, as many regions' memberships have been declining lately, would they regain the right to have a Founder again?

As an aside, it occurs to me that (correct me if I'm wrong) the particularly offensive raids that we're trying to prevent are generally perpetrated by a very small number of very specific groups, which never do anything else in the game and are already on bad terms with moderation. I won't name names here in public (they'd just get an infamy kick out of it; I'd gladly name names in private) but you probably know who I'm talking about if you're familiar with France and the other examples that keep coming up. The majority of raiders and defenders almost never use those tactics, and when they do the targets tend to be other raider or defender regions. I know you have to operate by the book, but I can't help but think that getting rid of this tiny fringe would go a long way to get rid of the nastier invasions.

I didn't want to be the first person to suggest this, given that I've never been seriously involved in the Raider/Defender side of the game, but now that the possibility has been raised I will second it.

[Naivetry]

As an aside, it occurs to me that (correct me if I'm wrong) the particularly offensive raids that we're trying to prevent are generally perpetrated by a very small number of very specific groups, which never do anything else in the game and are already on bad terms with moderation. I won't name names here in public (they'd just get an infamy kick out of it; I'd gladly name names in private) but you probably know who I'm talking about if you're familiar with France and the other examples that keep coming up. The majority of raiders and defenders almost never use those tactics, and when they do the targets tend to be other raider or defender regions. I know you have to operate by the book, but I can't help but think that getting rid of this tiny fringe would go a long way to get rid of the nastier invasions.

I didn't want to be the first person to suggest this, given that I've never been seriously involved in the Raider/Defender side of the game, but now that the possibility has been raised I will second it.

I can't say I disagree; however, I would prefer to solve the problem systematically rather than singling out the players who are, after all, just doing what the coded rules allow them to.

Let's write the new rules before we punish anyone for breaking ones that don't exist...

[Unibot]

That's only if your Regional Delegate never changed, and if the RD accumulated Influence at the same rate as the WAD, despite being non-WA. That still wouldn't help the newest, most vulnerable regions - instead, it would give the raiders two possible avenues of attack, and no guaranteed defense.

I was sort of thinking that in the Regional Code it could start counting how old regions' are (in days), and then the time that a nation spends in that region would be divided by that. So new regions would have new members with strong influence in the RD position - its an expecially safe position if its a handpicked position by the founder (autocracy), thats the justification of totalitarianism.

[[violet]]

For the decaying-password idea to work, there would have to be a major distinction in Influence upkeep between a password that is distributed to residents and one that is not, just as there is now a distinction in the initial cost.

That wouldn't have saved France, though, would it? It would just force all invasions to use that as a template.

I'm not sure about this. Do you mean that all invasions would then reveal their passwords to all nations in the attacked region?

No, I mean that invaders would think, "Now we can't password-protect before we start ejecting nations. The only way to do this is to wait in the region until we have enough influence to eject everyone at once, then password-lock it." At that point, since the region contains only invaders, it doesn't matter that you have to distribute the password to residents.

[[violet]]

Which is a really interesting thing to arise out of gameplay, but if it actually worked -- or, more relevantly for this discussion, if it were enshrined in the Game Rules, and violations punishable by mods -- what's left for defenders to do? Aren't you putting yourselves out of a job? Or is that kind of the point: that you're winning by preventing invasions from even getting started?

That is kind of the point for defenders...

That's why it's a problem for me when you want to align game rules with defender morals. I don't want to prevent invasions. I believe invasions contribute to gameplay. But I want you to want to prevent invasions.

Your ideal situation seems to be analogous to a world with gods: you want to be able to wage the fight against evil yourself, but with the moral backing of the gods. If things ever go really badly, then, you can appeal to the gods and--bamf!--one appears, and sets things right.

I can see the appeal of this if you're a defender. You're righteous, your enemies are clearly wrong, and the gods are your ace in the hole, ensuring you can never lose. But everyone else is totally screwed.

Furthermore, this requires that the gods be lazy. If they're not--if they pay attention to everything going on, and smite any evildoers they see--then before long there are no evildoers. Defenders, not being silly, learn they can snap their fingers at the first stirrings of evil, and a god will stomp around until it's cleaned up.

This is a terrific world if your ultimate goal is to rid the world of evil. But it's not a very interesting world, and not a dynamic I want to replicate here.

Gameplay prefers to self-govern [...] Any kind of appeal would probably move through the players first, in the same way that forum issues can be identified and brought by the players to the Moderation forum. (I'd prefer for all appeals to be run through a player-elected council first, actually, but I understand the hesitation there.)

I have no hesitation about that if players are enforcing player-created law, like World Assembly Resolutions. I only object to the idea of players enforcing game rules.

I hope we can discover that this is a distinction with no difference. What's OK for me is a set of game rules that provides a forum for players to develop and enforce their own laws, and gives them the tools to enforce those laws. What's not OK is putting in our FAQ, "If you play this game you must not do X," and then secretly hoping they really do X, so that we can have an interesting game, but if they do X and we don't like how it turns out, we delete them.

Don't get me wrong - there are potentially valid, RL justifications for defender action, but I'll be banned if any of the defenders I know can produce them in a sustained argument.

I do take your point that defenders would benefit from a source of moral authority. But I take issue with the idea that the only moral authority that counts is the one that comes from me. Earlier you said you'd find it motivating if I pretended the code was broken and couldn't fix it, which implies that you're happy to base your values on a lie, so long as someone in authority says it. Personally I find a more compelling defender argument in the simple philosophy that regions should belong to natives.

Another proposal for your comments: a "Liberation" category of World Assembly Resolution. If passed, it removes the password from the nominated region.

Could be used to deal with situations like France. Liberated regions would not be able to password-protect for as long as the resolution stands.

Now, that is an extremely interesting idea. On first glance, I have some of the same concerns about it that Kandarin has. But if "as long as the resolution stands" means that it could be repealed like any other, then I'm all for it. Wow, am I for it.

I might have a play with some code, see where we get.

[Todd McCloud]

Another proposal for your comments: a "Liberation" category of World Assembly Resolution. If passed, it removes the password from the nominated region.

Could be used to deal with situations like France. Liberated regions would not be able to password-protect for as long as the resolution stands.

[Violet], that brings me to another issue, actually. Are you familiar with the Macedonian Empire? I know this is a little bit of a specialized issue, but it should be brought up, I think. They own a lot of the nation-regions like Belarus, Venezuela, Chad, etc. Is anything going to happen to those regions? I mean, they've held it for a while. Would these changes affect them any, as in maybe getting that ghastly orange text off the WFE and stop them from messing with the natives?

EDIT: I'm very supportive of the above quoted proposition.

[Sirocco]

Some people sad about lack of new issues

I've got some plans lined up that should see a great deal more issues put into the game on a more regular basis, but it has to wait until my exams over (4th of June).

[Hatesmanville]

The defenders still around are simply in denial of the very clear game rules, that anything you can do to a region, goes.

And the invaders are still denying the fact that anything goes - including defending. I may have to sequestrate your testicles.

[Naivetry]

Your ideal situation seems to be analogous to a world with gods: you want to be able to wage the fight against evil yourself, but with the moral backing of the gods. If things ever go really badly, then, you can appeal to the gods and--bamf!--one appears, and sets things right.

That's actually a pretty fair description. Changing from mod-enforced rules to Influence was like being abandoned by the gods... we moved from the Heroic Age into the Iron Age, and the legends died, and the gods no longer walked among men...

I have no hesitation about that if players are enforcing player-created law, like World Assembly Resolutions. I only object to the idea of players enforcing game rules.

I hope we can discover that this is a distinction with no difference. What's OK for me is a set of game rules that provides a forum for players to develop and enforce their own laws, and gives them the tools to enforce those laws. What's not OK is putting in our FAQ, "If you play this game you must not do X," and then secretly hoping they really do X, so that we can have an interesting game, but if they do X and we don't like how it turns out, we delete them.

Hmm... this hasn't been my understanding of the way the WA works; but the WA does seem to be going all kinds of new and fascinating places these days, so let me talk it through. If we wrote a WA Resolution outlining a definition of region destruction, and said that the penalty for it was to lose your region's Founded status, and mandated the creation of a joint raider-defender group to hear appeals... we could get moderator action on convicted offenders once they'd been duly reported? This would be breaking those rules against metagaming about four ways, as things currently stand - talking about specific regions, talking about game coded terms, requesting moderator action, and actually creating a functioning committee. (Personally, I think all this would be fantastic, but I have a feeling the WA regulars would violently disagree.)

Personally I find a more compelling defender argument in the simple philosophy that regions should belong to natives.

And that level of simplicity is fine if you don't care to tackle the political world. Once you step into gameplay politics, you can't just stop with saying, "Regions should belong to natives." You have to be able to defend your viewpoint in the broader court of public opinion (which, in the gameplay world, contains a number of people who definitely disagree with you). You have to be able to give a reason why regions should belong to natives, rather than, say, simply to the person with the Delegate's seat.

Raiders can appeal to the game code to justify what they do, because the code itself is not ideologically neutral. It could've taken a case-by-case vote of regional residents, for instance, to eject someone from the region - but it doesn't. That decision is the Delegate's or the Founder's alone. Defenders may counter with RL arguments about democracy. But at that point, raiders will pull out their silver bullet - this isn't real life, so why should anyone care what defenders think about democracy? Maybe Joe Raider really agrees that democracy is the best thing going in RL, but this is Just A Game, and geez, why can't Bobby Defender lighten up? After all, isn't Joe Raider just making the game more exciting for everyone?

In order for defenders to counter that and continue defending on the old model, we have to say the coded ideology is wrong, our ideals are superior to the game design, and we're now going to do our best to dictate how everyone else can play.

Or we can accept that the world of NS is neither as simple nor as black and white as our RL ideals, and try to get at the heart of the issue, which is a good deal more complex, and has to do with how in-game regional sovereignty is defined. Why are invasions objectionable? What actual harm do they do? Why should we care? There are shades of grey to raiding activity when you consider it from the broader metagame perspective, as we politicians must. But shades of grey make bad rallying cries, which is why the politicians have lost interest in defending.

And I understand your points, which is why I'm not looking for a solution enshrined in the FAQ. My region is currently formulating a new military policy to justify defending in grayscale; we'll see how that goes. But for better or for worse, the days when invading was a polarizing political issue are gone. I'm just here to explain why.

I might have a play with some code, see where we get.

Ooh.

EDIT: Returned a lost 'e' to Regions.

[Crazy girl]

Alright, I'm just skimming (too lazy to read it all right now) but just wanted to comment, since I was a defender under the old rules.

I have seen plenty of invaders kicking our butts simply following the rules. Plenty of invaders not getting into trouble with the mods.
Also, there is the fact that defenders need invaders. Without invaders, there would be no defenders. The main problem really, with the old rules, was that there were too many (I think, I never had a problem with them, heh) and the concept of what is a native, which admittedly was a very large grey area (I think Hack still remembers the headache called italia)

The only time we would need the mods, is when someone would break the rules. And by the old rules, there was no definition of defenders. There were only invaders. Yes, us the defenders, were also invaders. Bound by the same rules.

Personally, I think the discussion on the invasionrules forum was cut too short and I'd like to see it continue with current players from both sides, but I realise influence is not going away.
I gave it a chance, I really did..but I just don't like it.

Under the old rules, invaders could hold a region for long if they wanted, but now they just need to hold it long enough and they can legally grief it. It is happening to regions already.

And as an addendum, I also don't like the fact that you can only use your endorsement once per update. I know what triggered this, but it means we can only play once a day in one region. And if you're not careful and update hits you, you're pretty much useless. While in the old days, we'd chase invaders around, or liberate 4-5 regions per update.


Just ignore me, a little rant from a fossil a la back in the old days everything was better

[Quintessence of Dust]

Oh dear, I missed all this till now. If there's an informal vote tally, please add one to the "unutterably opposed" column when it comes to adding a Liberation category.