Frontiers, Governors, Successors and Injunctions

[Luna Amore]

I thought Sedge had learned something from the last time they tried to force a game mechanic change on a community that didn't want it. Maybe you could try taking concerns seriously this time instead of just favoring your personal in-groups?

Knock it off and stick to the proposal instead of personal snipes.

[Wallenburg]

I thought Sedge had learned something from the last time they tried to force a game mechanic change on a community that didn't want it. Maybe you could try taking concerns seriously this time instead of just favoring your personal in-groups?

Knock it off and stick to the proposal instead of personal snipes.

You mean shut up and don't criticize the admin for letting their personal preferences drive gamewide dev work? To be clear, I don't have much of a problem with the ideas proposed here, but it's abundantly clear many do and Sedge simply isn't interested in hearing it. If this is going to be a pattern, I really don't see what the point of the public dev threads was.

[Galiantus III]

I'm not actually convinced making it easier to build a region from scratch is a good thing. There are too many recruiting for too small a pool of nations, adding more regions trying to grow into that isn't going to make it better.

Too many UCR communities is not a thing...I'm rather disappointed that's your position. Indeed, the "pool of nations" is currently substantially higher (as in over five World Assembly thousand higher) than it was ten years ago, yet minor delegates are at a ten year low. Too much region diversity has not been a problem in the past, so why would it be now? The only group that has anything to lose from more UCR communities is the current GCR power clustering, yet I would suspect that the retention would be higher because the engagement would take place closer to the ground with fewer people being seen as just another endorsement on the delegate.

1. Having too many regions competing for new players is bad for new player experience, and causes a tragedy of the commons situation for the regions involved.

2. Making it harder to found new regions is not going to harm their diversity. What harms diversity is when the game isn't retaining enough players to sustain lots of diverse regions. In fact, having too many desperate regions competing over the same players, thereby spreading the player base over inactive regions, is what actually hurts retention. If we want more interesting, diverse regions, we have to maximize game retention.

3. The statement about GCR power clustering makes literally no sense. GCR power clustering only becomes worse relative to UCRs as the number of UCR communities outpaces the population of players. If you view the clustering of power in GCRs as a bad thing, you should see it as desirable for UCR populations to be increased and concentrated in fewer UCRs.

[Sedgistan]

You mean shut up and don't criticize the admin for letting their personal preferences drive gamewide dev work? To be clear, I don't have much of a problem with the ideas proposed here, but it's abundantly clear many do and Sedge simply isn't interested in hearing it. If this is going to be a pattern, I really don't see what the point of the public dev threads was.

I read and consider every post made here. I've made 37 posts in this thread. I'm fully engaged with the debate that's happening, and the majority of my posts are responding to those who have raised concerns about the change. Some significant alterations have been in response to feedback. There's a difference between "not hearing" what people are saying and "not agreeing" with some of it.

[742]

Thinking out loud. Sorry!

Is there a reason why we shouldn't just call "Democracies" "Feeders"?
Feeders have been GCRs until now, but if "Feeders" and "Democracies" had the same rules, there would be little real need to distinguish between them.
Both have all exec power with the delegate.
Both have same influence rules.
Can GCRs set passwords? (It must be impractical, given their size, but presumably it's possible?)
Both have same influence decay
Slightly different spawning rules proposed at present, but it could be possible to unify these
10 endorsements, a Welcome TG, and no password should be easily achievable by existing GCR feeders

Embargoes would then become a much more political thing. For example, you could imagine several of the larger feeders ganging up on another to punish them for whatever recent action caused offense. (You could protest marsupial hunting by cutting off the supply of marsupials, for example)
Of course, if every feeder was embargoed, there would need to be at least one region capable of spawning nations. There would need to be some technical rule around that.
Similarly, if every feeder / democracy fell below the 10 endorsements / welcome TG / no password rule, there would still need to be a place for new nations.

There was talk about allowing Democracies to switch back to being Autocracies. That's not an option for the existing feeders.

And how will the new nation spawns get allocated amongst the regions?
With the OP plan, 50% would go to UCR Democracies. Would each Democracy have an equal probability of getting the next new nation? Or would it be weighted in some way - like by number of nations, or number of WAs?

[Kylia Quilor]

I thought Sedge had learned something from the last time they tried to force a game mechanic change on a community that didn't want it. Maybe you could try taking concerns seriously this time instead of just favoring your personal in-groups?

On the flip side, if all game changes must be approved by a small group of players who have interests varying from maintaining the status quo or hyper-focused on growing small UCRs... nothing in NS will ever substantially change. There's a natural bias for doing nothing. Disruptive changes are, by definition, going to make some angry.

That being said, major disruptive changes in NS have tended to improve the game in the long run. Influence did that. The creation of the Security Council did that. There's never going to be a perfect change that has buy-in from all GP influencers. That doesn't mean game devs just shouldn't do anything. The opposition to this idea is mostly offering small changes around the edges, and focusing on recruitment overhauls or adding feeders that would only push problems down the road.

Except that the problem being addressed here is Feeder size and gameplay dynamism. So other ideas would address feeder size, and to be perfectly honest, this idea won't do much to increase gameplay dynamism - you're either going to see a small handful of very stable Gateways (best suggestion I've seen, admittedly) or a ton that get very few nations and don't last. Plus, recruitment is a problem for everyone who isn't a Feeder or Sinker, and D/A would do absolutely nothing to help regions recruit. Which means more gateways, which means less nations to each, and then the whole idea just... doesn't work.

This isn't actually going to do what you think.

[Galiantus III]

@742

I think the main benefit to keeping feeders separate from gateways (I'm just going to run with that term) is it maintains an area of stability. The feeders simply get 10% of all new nations regardless what they do. They have no mechanical incentive to fight each other. What's fun about the gateways is they can increase spawns by eliminating each other. But regardless what chaos happens there, the feeders will remain.

The fact that feeders can't switch was one of my arguments against allowing it. I don't just think that because feeders are subject to a rule means gateways should be subject to the same rule. I'd like to see what happens without switching first, and only add it if needed.

Starting out I think a simple SHARE = 50% / GATEWAY POPULATION formula is fine. If that doesn't encourage much conflict between gateways, some other system can be added.

[Kylia Quilor]

The biggest issue here - until Sedge can actually give us some definites on the aspects of this that have yet to be decided (total WA numbers, can you undemocracy a democracy through invasion and how does that work, what happens to existing founderless regions that don't want to be democracies and getting random nations in that may not fit theme [certain RL political ideologies, or regions that are dedicated to speaking a non-English language, etc] but thus have no one to appoint successors, so they're losing out on both ends)

Until we actually get some details on what Sedge actually wants with those, this whole thing is even more theoretical than it already is, and gauging where this will go is impossible. We can only guess in the vaguest senses - which let Sedge safely dismiss anyone he disagrees with.

[Refuge Isle]

or adding feeders that would only push problems down the road.

Ten or more years is an acceptable amount of time to push the problem down the road. This is an odd critique since you recently advocated for resetting the WA under a similar argument.

[Flanderlion]

So I listened to Europeia's Mixlr broadcast on this (https://mixlr.com/ebc-radio/showreel/a- ... o-analysis). Wouldn't recommend (just as a bit of thread reading/audio levels being radically different between people) but despite that they did have a good discussion/raise some points (even though I'm not with their conclusions).

So essentially, there seemed to be a belief that it was partially to address recruitment, or help new regions. It's not, and it's not. It changes spawning, but not recruitment. It's not for new regions, but regions that are established enough to meet the criteria, then they've got the option to cast aside their improved security, or stick with it depending on what the region decides.

Despite this, there were some good points, and other stuff I felt was worth commenting on:

The number of WAs being 10 being too low -- I agree, I think it should be 20.

Regions likely to switch to multilateral governments over multiple regions -- seems good for GP imo.

Taking vs Creating democracies, whether players will take over or just create more -- good points/analysis, but don't sound like like an issue, sounds like the aim of the update, those decisions/drama.

Talked about funnelling regions -- I think they both overestimated their ability to persuade players to move from one region to another, and also it's kind of a good thing, gives a 'safe' region vulnerability that they'll care about if taken, e.g. St Abby for the NPO a few years back, or WZEU for Equilism.

Recruitment issues, that site staff don't appear to have accurate info about recruitment etc. Also touched on too many recruiting for too small a pool and how the recruitment page is a good idea. -- good points, seemed to be less relevant to this specific feature though. My view is higher barriers to recruitment would be ideal.

'Changing long term where nations are to UCRs as nations found and mature" -- sounds like the aim - to rebalance UCRs and GCRs.

'Force GP into RP regions that haven't previously been involved' -- they're opting in. So it's not forcing, they're choosing.

There was some good commentary on card farms - although someone seemed to be somehow thinking lots of raw nations would qualify them to be a frontier/gateway, while it is still WAs. Then digressed into the bloat of card farms -- still think Codger's idea is the best way to solve that long term but again not super relevant to this.

There was some confusion about the idea, first thinking it was from the R/D summit then figuring it was from Cormac's later seperate thread. Custodian I guess is from it.

Also complaints about how dev managers have areas etc. - and saying recruitment is the sites biggest issue. Saying the idea creates lots of issues but not really expanding on that. -- I disagreed on the issues, and didn't think recruitment was the sites biggest problem - biggest issue is NPE, then card farms, then recruitment.

There was some complaints that this would be continually kicking the can down the road -- but I think if the problem is continually kicked down the road automatically without admin intervention, it seems to be fixed both for now, and in the future.

Good points about OP not being kept up to date.

Most relevant from their list of complaints imo seem to be the WA count being too low (my view is 20 instead of 10), the OP not being updated, and how the mechanics of Frontier/Gateway to Stronghold work.

--

Other points from me:

The Founder CTEing/choosing to abdicate should start a timer, not an instant switch. So if the Founder CTEs/changes their mind, they still have an opportunity before the permanent loss of their foundership.

Frontier to Stronghold should only be returning the Founder status to be whomever they were at the time of the change from Stronghold to Frontier, and have a higher cost/no password/longer time period that currently proposed. Executive can initiate and cancel.

Appointing a new Founder should be exclusively a SC resolution. Resolution targets a region, not a nation, and whoever has delegacy at the end of that time becomes Founder (prevents taking over the region without ever being in the region) . The appointed Founder would lose power if the resolution would be repealed, and would use influence for powers possibly. If feeling especially chaotic the region could be unpassworded for the resolution vote (but I think it adds complexity/problems so not worth doing). Otherwise you run into the issues of a raiding org taking over a region, then giving their nominated nation founder power, giving a game over situation for that region, irrelevant of the influence the natives have.

[Sedgistan]

The biggest issue here - until Sedge can actually give us some definites on the aspects of this that have yet to be decided (total WA numbers, can you undemocracy a democracy through invasion and how does that work, what happens to existing founderless regions that don't want to be democracies and getting random nations in that may not fit theme [certain RL political ideologies, or regions that are dedicated to speaking a non-English language, etc] but thus have no one to appoint successors, so they're losing out on both ends)

Until we actually get some details on what Sedge actually wants with those, this whole thing is even more theoretical than it already is, and gauging where this will go is impossible. We can only guess in the vaguest senses - which let Sedge safely dismiss anyone he disagrees with.

Give me your thoughts on those aspects - that's what this thread is for!

"Total WA numbers" - not sure what you mean by this? Do you mean the requirement for a Democracy to receive spawns? Currently my thinking is 10 endos on the Delegate. Other numbers have been suggested.

"can you undemocracy a democracy through invasion and how does that work" - set out here with some questions I want player feedback on.

"what happens to existing founderless regions that don't want to be democracies" - explained already; existing regions are all Autocracies/Strongholds by default, they can then switch to Democracy/Gateway/Frontier if they choose.

"but thus have no one to appoint successors, so they're losing out on both ends" - discussed at end of this post, I want player feedback on this.

If no-one gives me feedback on those kinds of questions, I have no choice other than to decide it solely myself -- which I'd prefer not to.

(Will address other replies here later as/when I have time.)

[Sedgistan]

Thinking out loud. Sorry!

Is there a reason why we shouldn't just call "Democracies" "Feeders"?
Feeders have been GCRs until now, but if "Feeders" and "Democracies" had the same rules, there would be little real need to distinguish between them.
Both have all exec power with the delegate.
Both have same influence rules.
Can GCRs set passwords? (It must be impractical, given their size, but presumably it's possible?)
Both have same influence decay
Slightly different spawning rules proposed at present, but it could be possible to unify these
10 endorsements, a Welcome TG, and no password should be easily achievable by existing GCR feeders

Embargoes would then become a much more political thing. For example, you could imagine several of the larger feeders ganging up on another to punish them for whatever recent action caused offense. (You could protest marsupial hunting by cutting off the supply of marsupials, for example)
Of course, if every feeder was embargoed, there would need to be at least one region capable of spawning nations. There would need to be some technical rule around that.
Similarly, if every feeder / democracy fell below the 10 endorsements / welcome TG / no password rule, there would still need to be a place for new nations.

There was talk about allowing Democracies to switch back to being Autocracies. That's not an option for the existing feeders.

See my in defence of feeders post for my current thoughts on this. I don't view it as desirable to turn feeders into Democracies.

And how will the new nation spawns get allocated amongst the regions?
With the OP plan, 50% would go to UCR Democracies. Would each Democracy have an equal probability of getting the next new nation? Or would it be weighted in some way - like by number of nations, or number of WAs?

What do you think? At present my thought is "equal probability".

[Sedgistan]

Except that the problem being addressed here is Feeder size and gameplay dynamism. So other ideas would address feeder size, and to be perfectly honest, this idea won't do much to increase gameplay dynamism - you're either going to see a small handful of very stable Gateways (best suggestion I've seen, admittedly) or a ton that get very few nations and don't last. Plus, recruitment is a problem for everyone who isn't a Feeder or Sinker, and D/A would do absolutely nothing to help regions recruit. Which means more gateways, which means less nations to each, and then the whole idea just... doesn't work.

This isn't actually going to do what you think.

I don't get this reasoning - you're saying it might be this bad thing at one extreme or this bad thing at the other extreme, but dismissing the idea of it ending up with the happy medium. Why? If there are too few, there's a strong incentive for players to have a go at creating more Democracies/Gateways/Frontiers for all the spawns they get. If there are too many, there's much less incentive to create/maintain them, plus they won't grow enough and thus be vulnerable, meaning many will drop out or be destroyed. It's a self-balancing system that should result in the ideal position in-between the two extremes you've suggested, with a bit of dynamic fluctuations towards both ends that then correct as the balance between the benefits/risks changes.

[Haganham]

And how will the new nation spawns get allocated amongst the regions?
With the OP plan, 50% would go to UCR Democracies. Would each Democracy have an equal probability of getting the next new nation? Or would it be weighted in some way - like by number of nations, or number of WAs?

What do you think? At present my thought is "equal probability".

One of the ideas i've been thinking about is if we could alter the questions nations players answer at nation creation to make them more useful for predicting what sort of themes and alignments they would prefer in a region(IE: asking if it's appropriate for stronger nation to conquer their neighbors to determine not just how militaristic they are and how big their defense forces are, but how they would fall in the raider/defender alignment), as a way to help regions tailor their recruitment telegrams to focus on suitable nations and help the suggested find a region page suggest more suitable regions. If something like this were implemented it might be useful for founding's too.

[Sandaoguo]

or adding feeders that would only push problems down the road.

Ten or more years is an acceptable amount of time to push the problem down the road. This is an odd critique since you recently advocated for resetting the WA under a similar argument.

It would not take 10 years or more for new feeders to be in the same place as the existing ones. It took a handful of days for the existing GP powerhouses to take control of new sinkers when they were created. New feeders would almost immediately be controlled by the same GP elite that control the existing feeders. The politics and dynamics would be the same, just a few new regions added to the mix. And those feeders wouldn't take years to grow to the size of the others. You're vastly overestimating how far new feeders would kick problems down the road.

[Sedgistan]

The number of WAs being 10 being too low -- I agree, I think it should be 20.

I am concerned that the barriers of entry for this will be too high. Getting 11 WAs resident in a region is far from trivial, and 21 is a serious amount of work. I don't want the ability to create a qualifying Democracy to be limited solely to experienced gameplayers.

Good points about OP not being kept up to date.

Yes, yes. It will happen.

how the mechanics of Frontier/Gateway to Stronghold work.

That still needs a lot of input. I don't have a firm view on it.

The Founder CTEing/choosing to abdicate should start a timer, not an instant switch. So if the Founder CTEs/changes their mind, they still have an opportunity before the permanent loss of their foundership.

I understand this, as historically the "rights" of founders are perceived as sacrosanct. But this also undermines the message that the Successor feature potentially provides permanent security, as it would leave a period of vulnerability in between a Founder CTEing and a Successor taking up the role.

Frontier to Stronghold should only be returning the Founder status to be whomever they were at the time of the change from Stronghold to Frontier, and have a higher cost/no password/longer time period that currently proposed. Executive can initiate and cancel.

Appointing a new Founder should be exclusively a SC resolution. Resolution targets a region, not a nation, and whoever has delegacy at the end of that time becomes Founder (prevents taking over the region without ever being in the region) . The appointed Founder would lose power if the resolution would be repealed, and would use influence for powers possibly. If feeling especially chaotic the region could be unpassworded for the resolution vote (but I think it adds complexity/problems so not worth doing). Otherwise you run into the issues of a raiding org taking over a region, then giving their nominated nation founder power, giving a game over situation for that region, irrelevant of the influence the natives have.

I am open to this (though as indicated above, undecided on how the change in this direction works). The second paragraph is basically Custodians. The downside is it doesn't allow for permanent takeover of a Democracy/Gateway/Frontier region - there is no "game over" scenario available for a successful invasion; even passwording it can be undone by an SC Liberation.* The potential for permanent "game over" conquests have historically been opposed by staff, but in my view this changes with Democracy/Gateway/Frontier regions being opt-in.

*Refounding is still possible, but something this change seeks to avoid, as it erases history.

[Porflox]

Has there been any potential suggestions/improvements on how to remove frontiers/gateways/democracies from the founding pool (I'm a bit late to the party, so sorry if I'm missing some key details)? I'm currently not inclined to support a change to permanently destroy a region, especially one that could be active. I also can't think of a good solution to the issue at the moment, though I'd definitely be open to changing my view if I find a nice way to circumvent the issue.

[Durm]

IMO a better idea would be just creation 5 more feeders (Atlantics), 2 more Sinkers (Sheev and something else), and just forgetting about changes to UCRs.

[Sedgistan]

Has there been any potential suggestions/improvements on how to remove frontiers/gateways/democracies from the founding pool (I'm a bit late to the party, so sorry if I'm missing some key details)?

There's a Security Council category "Embargo" that would prevent a Democracy/Frontier/Gateway receiving spawns. Some people have questioned the necessity of it, but for now it is still in the plan.

Taking control of a D/F/G's delegacy would allow you to turn off spawns. You then have the option to lock the region down (password) to kill it off -- unless targeted by an SC Liberation. Or the region can be destroyed/refounded.

Otherwise, if it drops below the qualifying criteria (10 endos on WA Delegate) it becomes ineligible.

[Galiantus III]

There's a Security Council category "Embargo" that would prevent a Democracy/Frontier/Gateway receiving spawns. Some people have questioned the necessity of it, but for now it is still in the plan.

If Embargo is implemented, and it is primarily used in lieu of gameplay by gateways to exclude each other, would it be removed? I'm less convinced a feature that admin put the work into coding will be removed than I am a feature that was demonstrated to be needed will be added.

[Sedgistan]

The OP has now been hopefully fully updated with where things stand at present, with remaining points of debate (of which there are several) highlighted in red.

[WayNeacTia]

Has there been any potential suggestions/improvements on how to remove frontiers/gateways/democracies from the founding pool (I'm a bit late to the party, so sorry if I'm missing some key details)?

There's a Security Council category "Embargo" that would prevent a Democracy/Frontier/Gateway receiving spawns.

I love the idea of an embargo. It would be nice if any nations would be prevented from entering a region under embargo, i.e. a SC imposed password.

[Wallenburg]

Well, the new names are confusing, not least because there's really no reason to be discussing name changes until the actual mechanics are ironed out. As to the mechanics, I really don't think adding three new SC categories is the way to go. The custodian one is especially convoluted, and is a disaster for regional sovereignty, since the WA can just hand over regions to popular R/Ders. The preserve category doesn't even make sense, since a "Stronghold" transition necessarily occurs when the founder is no longer present.

[Sedgistan]

The preserve category doesn't even make sense, since a "Stronghold" transition necessarily occurs when the founder is no longer present.

I think you're reading "Preserve" wrong. There's an exemption that prevents it taking effect if there's an Executive Founder in the region, which only applies in the limited circumstance of a foundered Stronghold opting to move to Democracy and the SC then trying to block this via a "Preserve" proposal. The exemption ensures that the Founder's ability to do that cannot be undermined by the SC.

Otherwise it will always take effect, e.g. if a historic founderless Stronghold has been invaded and the occupiers are trying to switch it over to the more vulnerable Frontier type.

[Great Algerstonia]

There's a Security Council category "Embargo" that would prevent a Democracy/Frontier/Gateway receiving spawns. Some people have questioned the necessity of it, but for now it is still in the plan.

If Embargo is implemented, and it is primarily used in lieu of gameplay by gateways to exclude each other, would it be removed? I'm less convinced a feature that admin put the work into coding will be removed than I am a feature that was demonstrated to be needed will be added.

Yeah embargo shouldn't be implemented in the first place. First of all it should be up to the mod team to delete communities if there's such an issue with communities that can't have new nations spawning in it. Leaving it up to the community is a bad idea as it could quickly spiral out of control. Embargo is NOT a good idea in the slightest.