Eliminating the Difference between Feeders and Sinkers

[Zaolat]

This has probably been discussed before somewhere.

The Feeders and the Sinkers both spawn nations. The former new nations and the latter old revived nations. It's acknowledged that the Sinkers have a population disadvantage from the Feeders. The Rejected Realms and the Warzones would remain the same and not be affected by this change due to their special natures.

Pros:
-Feeders and Sinkers both would benefit from New and Revived nations.
-Sinkers won't have to recruit from the Feeders to make up for it's disadvantage.
-Sinkers will gain a natural population boom.

Cons:
-Population of the Feeders will take a hit to balance out Lazarus, Osiris, and Balder.
-Feeder or Sinker identity as separate types of GCRs will be defunct individually. Given they've been merged mechanically.

I cannot think of any more pros and cons at the moment. I think this is the best way forward so far and they're only different based on new vs revived nations in the first place, imo might as well fuse them together into one mechanic instead of two one reason different mechanics.

[Dyanae]

-UCRs will have a pool of 8 GCRs to recruit from that's more effective than only 5.

Hate to nitpick, but it'd end up being just as effective, if not less. Any stamp efforts would still be spread across the same volume of newcomers; the particular region they spawn in is almost irrelevant- most campaigns being targeted at the new: tag anyway.
~derps

[Zaolat]

-UCRs will have a pool of 8 GCRs to recruit from that's more effective than only 5.

Hate to nitpick, but it'd end up being just as effective, if not less. Any stamp efforts would still be spread across the same volume of newcomers; the particular region they spawn in is almost irrelevant- most campaigns being targeted at the new: tag anyway.
~derps

Sigh, nvm. I've been drinking a bit.

[Parhe]

This has probably been discussed before somewhere.

The Feeders and the Sinkers both spawn nations. The former new nations and the latter old revived nations. It's acknowledged that the Sinkers have a population disadvantage from the Feeders and recruiting from Sinkers is less efficient compared to recruiting from Feeders. The Rejected Realms and the Warzones would remain the same and not be affected by this change due to their special natures.

Pros:
-Feeders and Sinkers both would benefit from New and Revived nations.
-Sinkers won't have to recruit from the Feeders to make up for it's disadvantage.
-UCRs will have a pool of 8 GCRs to recruit from that's more effective than only 5.
-Sinkers will gain a natural population boom.

Cons:
-Population of the Feeders will take a hit to balance out Lazarus, Osiris, and Balder.
-Feeder or Sinker identity as separate types of GCRs will be defunct individually. Given they've been merged mechanically.

I cannot think of any more pros and cons at the moment. I think this is the best way forward so far and they're only different based on new vs revived nations in the first place, imo might as well fuse them together into one mechanic instead of two one reason different mechanics.

Since this is in Technical. . .

Why is this an issue, does TNP or other Feeders have too many nations for the website to handle? Why do the Feeders even need more nations or a population boom? They are larger than most regions, even most GCRs, and many much smaller regions have active communities, so I do not see that as an issue. I don't see your third "Pro" as an actual benefit to anymore; does this actually benefit anyone or the community as a whole besides Sinkers? It sounds detrimental, if people consider a larger population good, for the Feeders, which outnumber Sinkers in number of regions and number of nations, just whatever for UCRs and their communities, and more work for whomever is stuck implementing the changes.

[Zaolat]

This has probably been discussed before somewhere.

The Feeders and the Sinkers both spawn nations. The former new nations and the latter old revived nations. It's acknowledged that the Sinkers have a population disadvantage from the Feeders and recruiting from Sinkers is less efficient compared to recruiting from Feeders. The Rejected Realms and the Warzones would remain the same and not be affected by this change due to their special natures.

Pros:
-Feeders and Sinkers both would benefit from New and Revived nations.
-Sinkers won't have to recruit from the Feeders to make up for it's disadvantage.
-UCRs will have a pool of 8 GCRs to recruit from that's more effective than only 5.
-Sinkers will gain a natural population boom.

Cons:
-Population of the Feeders will take a hit to balance out Lazarus, Osiris, and Balder.
-Feeder or Sinker identity as separate types of GCRs will be defunct individually. Given they've been merged mechanically.

I cannot think of any more pros and cons at the moment. I think this is the best way forward so far and they're only different based on new vs revived nations in the first place, imo might as well fuse them together into one mechanic instead of two one reason different mechanics.

Since this is in Technical. . .

Why is this an issue, does TNP or other Feeders have too many nations for the website to handle? Why do the Feeders even need more nations or a population boom? They are larger than most regions, even most GCRs, and many much smaller regions have active communities, so I do not see that as an issue. I don't see your third "Pro" as an actual benefit to anymore; does this actually benefit anyone or the community as a whole besides Sinkers? It sounds detrimental, if people consider a larger population good, for the Feeders, which outnumber Sinkers in number of regions and number of nations, just whatever for UCRs and their communities, and more work for whomever is stuck implementing the changes.

1. N/A
2. That's the opposite of what would happen.
3. Read post above yours.
4. It definitely benefits Sinkers, but in the end levels out and makes 8 of 9 GCRs that aren't warzones equal.

[The North Polish Union]

This has probably been discussed before somewhere.

The Feeders and the Sinkers both spawn nations. The former new nations and the latter old revived nations. It's acknowledged that the Sinkers have a population disadvantage from the Feeders and recruiting from Sinkers is less efficient compared to recruiting from Feeders. The Rejected Realms and the Warzones would remain the same and not be affected by this change due to their special natures.

Pros:
-Feeders and Sinkers both would benefit from New and Revived nations.
-Sinkers won't have to recruit from the Feeders to make up for it's disadvantage.
-UCRs will have a pool of 8 GCRs to recruit from that's more effective than only 5.
-Sinkers will gain a natural population boom.

Cons:
-Population of the Feeders will take a hit to balance out Lazarus, Osiris, and Balder.
-Feeder or Sinker identity as separate types of GCRs will be defunct individually. Given they've been merged mechanically.

I cannot think of any more pros and cons at the moment. I think this is the best way forward so far and they're only different based on new vs revived nations in the first place, imo might as well fuse them together into one mechanic instead of two one reason different mechanics.

Since this is in Technical. . .

Why is this an issue, does TNP or other Feeders have too many nations for the website to handle? Why do the Feeders even need more nations or a population boom? They are larger than most regions, even most GCRs, and many much smaller regions have active communities, so I do not see that as an issue. I don't see your third "Pro" as an actual benefit to anymore; does this actually benefit anyone or the community as a whole besides Sinkers? It sounds detrimental, if people consider a larger population good, for the Feeders, which outnumber Sinkers in number of regions and number of nations, just whatever for UCRs and their communities, and more work for whomever is stuck implementing the changes.

I'd say its more of a political stability issue. Sinkers simply don't have the same number of 'new' nations that feeders have and so their government's tend to be unstable. On the other hand, the Pacifics have tended to have extremely stable governance.

The political effect of this would probably be to somewhat increase Sinker stability and decrease Feeder stability, which in my opinion would probably at least somewhat shake up the stagnant Feeder governments.

If you're not interested in that aspect of GP, then this change wouldn't effect you much at all.

Also, while I think this would be a great idea, I don't understand Zao's logic about benefit to UCR recruitment. The total number of founded and refounded (recruitable) nations on any given day won't change at all.

[Zaolat]

Booze logic. I removed it.

[Galiantus VII]

I think this would be interesting to see for the first year or two after implementation, but I think you're asking for a lot of stagnation after that. Basically, if you take the same volume of nations being founded and send them to three more regions, it's not going to make a huge difference to the feeders, but it will make a huge difference for the sinkers. Let me explain:

Currently, each sinker gets ~20% of all new nations, and each sinker gets ~33% of all restored nations. Now the number of nations being restored is about half as many as are created new. So if we are using units where one unit is the number of nations currently starting out in feeders, then sinkers each have ~0.5 units, and the number of those units available to feeders and sinkers cumulatively is ~6.5. If we now take and distribute all incoming nations between the feeders and sinkers, each region now receives about ~0.8 of a unit. For feeders, that is a modest 20% loss in incoming nations. However, for sinkers, this is a 60% increase in incoming nations.

Edit: I just realized I had a math error when I divided the total number of restored nations between the sinkers, but it doesn't make a huge difference to the overall outcome. Basically, if there is a 5:3 ratio of nations founded to nations restored, this change makes no difference in the volume of nations sent to each feeder/sinker (8/8 = 1). However, as that ratio approaches a 5:0, we see this change having a stronger effect on all eight regions (5/8 = 0.625). But no matter the exact numbers, sinkers will always be effected more by the change than feeders are, due to there being three sinkers to divide the change by, versus five feeders to divide the change by.

In other words, this probably would not significantly effect feeders. They are used to dealing with similar changes in the flow of incoming nations either due to chance or the time of year, and they already have good player bases to draw activity from. For them, the effects will be more gradual than sudden.

Sinkers, on the other hand, are likely to experience a much more drastic change. First of all, the influx of new nations by itself could overwhelm their governments with new and inexperienced players so quickly as to change much of the existing regional culture. The influx would also increase the ease with which someone might target a used-to-be sinker with a sleeper/coup operation. And due to the substantial increase in the desirability of controlling one of these regions, it is a safe bet plenty of opportunists would take full advantage of the situation. Of course, everything would eventually even out and whatever governments managed to play correctly would end up in charge of a collection of very large, stable regions.

--

The reason I point this out is mainly that I would prefer a game where power stability in "start regions" is relatively harder to come by than is currently the case in the feeders. Maintaining stability ought to be a reward for good gameplay and politics, rather than a natural consequence of controlling the location where new nations start. If the sinkers are unstable, that's a good thing because it provides for interesting gameplay. I would prefer a change that actually destabilizes feeders in the long-term, and doesn't affect sinkers, to a change that only temporarily destabilizes sinkers, but makes them more stable in the long term.

Edit: Also, this thread reminds me of the Mini-GCRs discussion we had early this year.

[Zaolat]

I may catch some flak for this, and I don't mean anything bad by (After all I'm involved in both Sinker and Feeders and value those regons), but I simply don't give a crap about stability and who holds what power or whatever.

Feeders will hate this idea because it lowers their population and thus part of their influence/stability, Sinkers will hate this idea because it will potentially mess with their stability to remain in control. That, I do not care about if it means making the feeders also sinkers and vice versa.

[Galiantus VII]

I like the potential for instability your idea gives, I just don't think it will have quite the effect you expect. That's all I'm saying. I'm not arging in favor of keeping things stable.

[Kylia Quilor]

I don't think this solves that great a problem to be solved, and I rather like the notion from an external view that there are regions for creation and regions for rebirth.

[Aclion]

Not gonna comment on the desirably of the change(frankly don't care) but I doubt it would effect identity too much. I mean we still have "major" and "minor" when mechanically there's not much difference between the two anymore.

[Ransium]

I might be missing something, but I think it might be helpful if you more clearly laid out the problem this change would solve. It currently seems like change for the sake of change, in which case I'm not sure if an admin would be willing to spend the time to do it.

[USS Monitor]

I might be missing something, but I think it might be helpful if you more clearly laid out the problem this change would solve. It currently seems like change for the sake of change, in which case I'm not sure if an admin would be willing to spend the time to do it.

Spread the population more evenly so the feeders don't get awkwardly huge?

There have been some other suggestions that would do that in more interesting ways, though.

[Klaus Devestatorie]

If we want GCRs that aren't completely out of the reach of gameplay mechanics except through internal conflict, we don't just need to merge feeder and sinker functions to do both things; we need a lot more of them. The target population should be no more than 1,500 to 2,000 a region. That puts delegates in the 100-200 endorsement range, depending on how hard they actually work to solicit endorsements.

The main problem is that cutting regional sizes that hard drastically reduces native intake to their own communities. That means there's not going to be many GCRs that are truly run and operated by native communities; it'll be very hard to build them from scratch. But that's not necessarily a bad thing- if there's 30-40 odd GCRs and you'd really like to try and set up a community in one, chances are, there's probably a few very vulnerable or even outright inactive ones you could try and take over.

[Parhe]

I might be missing something, but I think it might be helpful if you more clearly laid out the problem this change would solve. It currently seems like change for the sake of change, in which case I'm not sure if an admin would be willing to spend the time to do it.

Spread the population more evenly so the feeders don't get awkwardly huge?

There have been some other suggestions that would do that in more interesting ways, though.

More interesting and efficient. Assuming the nation's were spread out evenly, each region would still have well over six thousand nations. I don't know what you or others may consider awkwardly huge, but I don't feel like the line is somewhere between 6.2 thousand and 6.8 thousand-the current median for Feeders-especially when the largest UCR is only about half the size.

[Drasnia]

but I don't feel like the line is somewhere between 6.2 thousand and 6.8 thousand-the current median for Feeders-especially when the largest UCR is only about half the size.

The largest non-puppet storage/jump point UCR currently is XKI at 1158. I'm being pedantic, I know.

[Conservative Values]

100-200 endorsement range

Between the delegate endos in the Pacifics, the three revival sinkers, and TRR my math says there'd need to be 17 GCRs to spread that many endorsements out to get them under 200 each on average. Also, the sinkers are already in the 100-200 endorsement range and are solidly outside of the reach of update gameplay.

[Klaus Devestatorie]

100-200 endorsement range

Between the delegate endos in the Pacifics, the three revival sinkers, and TRR my math says there'd need to be 17 GCRs to spread that many endorsements out to get them under 200 each on average. Also, the sinkers are already in the 100-200 endorsement range and are solidly outside of the reach of update gameplay.

Then do more than that. I think I said 30-40; I'm dead serious about that figure.

[Galiantus VII]

From the perspective of making a good game, why should we make so many feeders/sinkers, though? I like the idea, but I feel like we should get an accurate idea what the consequences of the action will be. Here are the things I would expect from expanding up to 30-40 feeders/sinkers (keep in mind, some of these could take a while):

• Existing feeders and sinkers would maintain much of their size and significance, simply due to their history
• TRR would be the largest GCR in the game
• The largest (non-puppet storage) UCRs would be on par with the largest GCRs
• There would nearly always be a feeder or sinker open for invasion

It's an interesting picture to look at. I think it would be fun to play in that environment.

--

But perhaps here's a better question: why not just do away with feeders and sinkers entirely? Why not create a nameless, delegateless, RBM-less "region" that all new, returning, and ejected nations go to? That's what NationStates started as, essentially, and there are some compelling reasons to bring it back for new and returning players. For instance, the vast majority of players are issue-answerers who just want to stay away from regional politics altogether, yet we thrust membership in a (to them) random region upon them, when they really don't care. I would also suggest that it is actually not good that new players are introduced to the game via a player-controlled region. The site would likely be more successful if admin and the mods had more control of how new players got involved with the game, in a safe "tutorial" environment.

[Galiantus VII]

Also, just though of this:

Why not start new/returning regions in feeders/sinker regions based on their starting nation classification, or how they answered the questions during nation creation? We'd have multiple regions for the most common classifications, so there'd be a region for the Psychotic Dictatorships, several for the Inoffensive Centrist Democracies, a couple for the Capitalist Paradises, etc. I'm mainly curious to see what kind of regional politics this would result in, if it would affect anything at all.

[USS Monitor]

I would also suggest that it is actually not good that new players are introduced to the game via a player-controlled region. The site would likely be more successful if admin and the mods had more control of how new players got involved with the game, in a safe "tutorial" environment.

I think it's good that we can share some of that responsibility with regular players. There are some players who I wouldn't necessarily want as mods, but they are still knowledgeable long-time players who love NS and are totally capable of pointing n00bs in the right direction.

Or just pestering them with recruitment TGs, as the case may be... But either way I think it's a good thing that regular players have a role in welcoming people to the site.

[Ever-Wandering Souls]

snip.

I'd be interested to see you factor in some form of retention to those numbers. Anecdotally, I've always operated on the assumption that, of the same volume of new and refounded nations, less of the refounded nations are going to remain in the region they're founded in. Both regions get old players making nations with the intent to remove them, but far more of those in sinkers are coming back to go somewhere/looking for somewhere new right after coming back, andtherefore not remaining in region, while more of those in feeders are confused and will remain where they are until they get the ropes (and by that time be more likely to stay) and/or coming into the game with no intentions and are more open to remaining...or so "common knowledge" runs at least. We'd have to crunch data to be sure. But, assuming "common knowledge" is true, for 100 refounded versus 100 new founds, a sinkers can expect to keep fewer nations than a feeder, so raw volume of foundings isn't the end of the line there.

[Wordy]

I quite like the idea.
I would take it a step further and include TRR in the mix. It might need renaming though as nations spawning would not be particularly happy to be birthed in The Rejected Realms.
Warzones could become the capture point for rejected / banned nations.

[An Amphibious Equation]

The only thing I do not like is changing the RR's nature or giving it to other GCRs (though the warzones being part catchers is interesting)

People get ejected for reasons from inane, R/D, to being annoyances/troublemakers (that aren't breaking NS rules). Giving all of them rejects would wipe out a lot of the RR's population and then add in problems associated with having ban+ject buttons. Though, I guess for all GCRs except the RR, their ejections should be set to the RR.