Gameplay and Security Council Tech Development

[Sedgistan]

I'm now running the development for Gameplay and the Security Council. In short that means I'm making the decisions on what gets passed to the admin team to code. This doesn't mean we're going to get 20 new features coded by Violet per year - but by saving admin from having to be involved in these discussions, and by having a method for determining what changes get passed to her for coding, we'll get more new features implemented.

Gameplay covers "regional gameplaying" in this case: for nation management and issues see this thread; for gameside communications see this thread. Events and "minigames" will have their own thread soon. There will be overlap in cases; if you're not sure where your idea goes, then ask. For World Assembly changes that affect both the Security Council and General Assembly, post in both this thread and the GA one.

Before we go any further, I want to make clear that the Bad Faith standard is being imposed in this thread. You are expected to post in good faith. If your post is in bad faith, it will be removed and I will call you out. In particular, the following is not welcome - questioning why I'm running it (I am, deal with it), dismissing this all as a waste of time (if it is, there's no need for you to post; also I wouldn't be putting my time into this unless I was confident we'll get features out of it), sniping between factions (whether raiders vs defenders, UCRs vs GCRs, non-gameplayers vs gameplayers), complaining about the SC and GP being in the same thread (they overlap, but I know there are different communities; the overlap is too significant to warrant separate threads).

How this thread works:

If you want to suggest a change, please post a new thread for it. Then make a post in this thread summarising the idea, and including a link to your thread. Extended discussion on changes belongs in the separate threads, not here.

Implemented Changes

• Declarations Security Council proposal category - implemented 9th July 2021
• N-Day faction pre-registration/joining - implemented 10th August 2022 (note: this was prior to Events getting a separate DM role)
• Frontiers/Strongholds - implemented 18th April 2023
• Support for SVG banners (nations and regions) and region flags - partially implemented for regional flags only 21st Feb 2024

Changes Awaiting Coding (priority order)

1. Confirmation required if leaving a passworded region or region that you are Delegate of
2. Display list of nations that a WA member has endorsed (no recent tech thread)

Changes Under Consideration

• "Make the Secretary-General meaningful"
• Regional government enhancements - Elections, Legislation, Treaties
• Region Finder page
• Revamp of WA pages
• More meaningful Polls
• Reducing feeder banjection influence costs

Parked Ideas (rejected or not intending to progress at present)

• Four updates per day
• Regional Happenings ban changes
• Changing banjection rates
• Expulsion SC category

Putting my cards on the table:

Both Gameplay and the SC have stagnated. One of the great things about NS is player creativity, but there's only so far that can get when the game is unchanged in years. GP needs new features to play with, and the SC needs new resolution categories.

Big concerns for me are on the relative size, and stability, of game-created regions.

I do not view the current D/R imbalance as something that needs a technical solution - it's a reversal of the situation last year and unrelated to anything admin has done; however I would like to see the system changed to favour occupations, with those made more meaningful (and yes I mean with a chance of permanent conquest). But that would be tricky to balance against the wants of those uninterested in participating in this side of things.

Those of you who know me will realise what I'm getting at - the "Democracy / Autocracy" change that has been bandied around for a few years, most recently by Flanderlion. I won't go into details, but I currently view a variant of this as my main goal (see summary of benefits here and add on "Provides a potential method of permanent conquest"). I will post a new thread for this in the near future.

I continue to view making the Secretary-General position meaningful as a relatively easy change to implement that adds a new level of politics to the SC.

Finally, aside from reducing their size, I would like to do something to address the stability of GCRs. There's a fine balance to strike with ensuring communities can continue to flourish in them, but it's gone too far the other way - 6 month influence decay did not achieve its ends. I am only spitballing here, but perhaps a shorter period of influence retention, or warzone-esque bans would address this - though the latter may be too drastic and kill communities.

EDIT: I'm open-minded on changes though. What I've laid out above is not set in stone.

[Gibraltarica]

The best thing you can do for reducing the stability of GCRs and stagnancy in gameplay will be what has already been suggested for years: reduce the number of nations that spawn in GCRs, and have nations spawn in other regions. It has been suggested in the following ways, as far as I remember:
1. A decent portion of nations still spawn in GCRs, but some spawn in large and active UCRs
2. More feeders (sinkers have the opposite problem to what the feeders do right now, though it may superficially seem similar: feeders have too many new nations, proportionally, sinkers have too few).

Both, to me, would be agreeable, and the second one especially would create a boom in gameplay activity.

Also, Koth's faction proposal is also pretty good. As far as I can tell, Violet canned it because it was too hard to work on, and a lot of people in GP are still upset about that. viewtopic.php?f=15&t=453207

[Sedgistan]

I'll address this one straight off, as I know it's been discussed a lot:

2. More feeders (sinkers have the opposite problem to what the feeders do right now, though it may superficially seem similar: feeders have too many new nations, proportionally, sinkers have too few).

More feeders is the least imaginative idea around to address GP stagnation. Yes, it adds a temporary burst of activity. Yes, it dilutes individual feeders' influence. But it does nothing to address the GCR/UCR imbalance, and it's a temporary activity solution. Its main appeal is that it is simple to implement. As such, I would only see it as an option if admin had no time for coding a better GP solution any time soon. I would be disappointed if that's the route we had to go down.

[Gibraltarica]

I'll address this one straight off, as I know it's been discussed a lot:

2. More feeders (sinkers have the opposite problem to what the feeders do right now, though it may superficially seem similar: feeders have too many new nations, proportionally, sinkers have too few).

More feeders is the least imaginative idea around to address GP stagnation. Yes, it adds a temporary burst of activity. Yes, it dilutes individual feeders' influence. But it does nothing to address the GCR/UCR imbalance, and it's a temporary activity solution. Its main appeal is that it is simple to implement. As such, I would only see it as an option if admin had no time for coding a better GP solution any time soon. I would be disappointed if that's the route we had to go down.

Absolutely agreed, but I'm not expecting too much.

[Custadia]

Finally, aside from reducing their size, I would like to do something to address the stability of GCRs. There's a fine balance to strike with ensuring communities can continue to flourish in them, but it's gone too far the other way - 6 month influence decay did not achieve its ends. I am only spitballing here, but perhaps a shorter period of influence retention, or warzone-esque bans would address this - though the latter may be too drastic and kill communities.

Setting aside questions about whether perceived GCR stability is a result of technical conditions or personal failures amongst the small sample of perpetrators in recent years, I think you ought to explain in more detail how the solutions you proposed-increasing influence decay or introducing a warzone style system-are intended to work.

[Flanderlion]

I'm pretty much on a similar page to OP post, and have discussed at length elsewhere the specific stuff.

I don't think the stability stuff is really worth pursuing as like, the less stable GCRs are, the less likely any of them will rock the boat. GCRs are going to naturally tend toward stability, as the unstable ones will vanish quicker and the stable ones stay longer.

[Bormiar]

I’m against the idea of giving the WA SecGen more power, as it doesn’t get elected enough and it’s bought through stamps. It couldn’t possibly become politically significant.

What I am interested in is a commendemn badge. There are plenty of players who will never get either badge because they’ve done too much on the other side to flip the coin. A commendemn will allow for some entertainly written resolutions about players who we can’t currently write about. Examples include AMOM, Tim, Cormac, Darkesia (?), Westwind (his commendation gets attacked).

I’m also interested in the ability to make a target that’s not a region or nation. In the past, symbolic resolutions have been made that commend/condemn a region named after the thing, but there’s really no need for that. Also, it’s a way to push in commendations/condemnations for nations that no longer exist.

[Davelands]

Make CGRs all like TRR. No ban ability.

This way if someone speaks out against the Oligarchy in power they can't simply be made to disappear.
TRR should be OK with new natives coming from the UCRs but that would have to be monitored.

[Graintfjall]

Setting aside my befuddlement that permanent conquest is now a desired outcome given it was a desire to prevent/undo permanent conquest that begat the entire SC mess in the beginning, kudos to Sedge for a very clear and well organized OP. Hope the other development threads follow a similar pattern.

May as well pitch my recurrent suggestion: permit people who do not wish to be Commended to opt out.

[Sedgistan]

Setting aside my befuddlement that permanent conquest is now a desired outcome given it was a desire to prevent/undo permanent conquest that begat the entire SC mess in the beginning,

It's a desire only for regions that explictly opt-in to that risk, as "Democracy" types in part of that wider change, rather than being desirable for all regions.

May as well pitch my recurrent suggestion: permit people who do not wish to be Commended to opt out.

Would something that clearly displayed the recipient's opposition to an at-vote C/C of them on the WA/SC page go some way to addressing that?

[Sedgistan]

Setting aside questions about whether perceived GCR stability is a result of technical conditions or personal failures amongst the small sample of perpetrators in recent years, I think you ought to explain in more detail how the solutions you proposed-increasing influence decay or introducing a warzone style system-are intended to work.

Will do, but not in this thread. That was the least certain of my trio of ideas.

I’m also interested in the ability to make a target that’s not a region or nation. In the past, symbolic resolutions have been made that commend/condemn a region named after the thing, but there’s really no need for that. Also, it’s a way to push in commendations/condemnations for nations that no longer exist.

Would that have to be a C/C, or would a free-form "Statement/Declaration" type category do the job?

[Graintfjall]

May as well pitch my recurrent suggestion: permit people who do not wish to be Commended to opt out.

Would something that clearly displayed the recipient's opposition to an at-vote C/C of them on the WA/SC page go some way to addressing that?

I suppose it's better than nothing but a much simpler option would just be to not permit it to go to vote in the first place.

[Comfed]

Let nations spawn in warzones, and take away their ban ability - they could still eject.

And the WASC President idea is a good idea imo, as long as steps are taken to reduce the reams of campaign spam.

[Nakarisaune]

Have nations spawn in UCRs/GCRs, but give them a quiz like in the nation creation page to decide which UCR! (Or have it as a separate page that new nations are directed to?)

Let nations choose what kind of community they want, out of a selection of the existing tags. Let them pick a focus, with checkboxes, from things like 'Government', 'Roleplay', 'World Assembly', 'Chat', with a sentence of blurb under those.

I think this one's kind of important: let them pick an activity level! From 'frantic' regions, with more than one RMB post a minute, to 'sedate', with one a week. This in theory would stop the most active/spammy regions from sucking up all the new nations, stop people getting overwhelmed, and give small, less active regions a genuine chance.

UCRs can opt in (through Democracy mode? and with a minimum WA membership) and provide a recruitment blurb, and select one or two primary focuses (to prevent them just spamming everything to get as many new players as possible).

Then the new players can be either randomly assigned to a region that best fits their choices, or given two or three to pick between, perhaps with recruitment blurbs written by the UCRS.

[Sedgistan]

I've seen chat elsewhere about recruitment and whose responsibilities that fit under. It's one of those that crosses borders, so is both Gameplay and Communications. If you're looking at changes within the TG recruitment system, that's really under Comms rather than here.

There's the potential of another (optional) page in the nation creation process that focuses on getting nations into the right region, which I currently envisage as maybe being a part of the Democracy / Autocracy idea (i.e. your options would be limited to "Democracy" regions and feeders).

[Bormiar]

I’m also interested in the ability to make a target that’s not a region or nation. In the past, symbolic resolutions have been made that commend/condemn a region named after the thing, but there’s really no need for that. Also, it’s a way to push in commendations/condemnations for nations that no longer exist.

Would that have to be a C/C, or would a free-form "Statement/Declaration" type category do the job?

A Statement/Declaration category makes perfect sense to me. There’s no longer the absurdity of doing something like “Condemn Quorum Raiding”. It’s just a statement that outlines the SC’s opinion on something, which would probably make it a real political body, addressing current events as they come up— like speaking out against a region’s particular invasion. With no badge involved.

It also might help outline what the SC is, as we could pass declarations of things like commendability or writing conventions.

That Declaration idea actually makes me really excited.

[Sanctaria]

Would that have to be a C/C, or would a free-form "Statement/Declaration" type category do the job?

A Statement/Declaration category makes perfect sense to me. There’s no longer the absurdity of doing something like “Condemn Quorum Raiding”. It’s just a statement that outlines the SC’s opinion on something, which would probably make it a real political body, addressing current events as they come up— like speaking out against a region’s particular invasion. With no badge involved.

It also might help outline what the SC is, as we could pass declarations of things like commendability or writing conventions.

That Declaration idea actually makes me really excited.

Oh I think this is an excellent idea. I think a problem with C&Cs is they've become more-so rewards (even Condemnations are rewards for nations that RP "evil" really well). Having a category where the SC can call out problematic behaviour or something in an IC manner without the awarding of badges (which some would wear with pride) might be more realistic. Good idea, and hopefully not too difficult to implement.

[Bormiar]

A Statement/Declaration category makes perfect sense to me. There’s no longer the absurdity of doing something like “Condemn Quorum Raiding”. It’s just a statement that outlines the SC’s opinion on something, which would probably make it a real political body, addressing current events as they come up— like speaking out against a region’s particular invasion. With no badge involved.

It also might help outline what the SC is, as we could pass declarations of things like commendability or writing conventions.

That Declaration idea actually makes me really excited.

Oh I think this is an excellent idea. I think a problem with C&Cs is they've become more-so rewards (even Condemnations are rewards for nations that RP "evil" really well). Having a category where the SC can call out problematic behaviour or something in an IC manner without the awarding of badges (which some would wear with pride) might be more realistic. Good idea, and hopefully not too difficult to implement.

Exactly!

My idea is that things which wouldn’t merit a C&C (because of the badge), say, the recent controversy over Force or the rash actions of a GCR delegate, would now become fair game for the SC.

[Tinhampton]

Would something that clearly displayed the recipient's opposition to an at-vote C/C of them on the WA/SC page go some way to addressing that?

I suppose it's better than nothing but a much simpler option would just be to not permit it to go to vote in the first place.

Much was made in the Meaningful SecGen thread about the possibility for the SC President/SecGen to veto a certain number of SC resolutions per term for any reason. Perhaps nations who are nominated for Commendations or Condemnations could similarly exercise veto power over those.

[Bears Armed]

As has already been mentioned in some recent threads about GCR/UCR imbalance, one of the better methods for addressing this might be to give UCRs a better recruitment method as well as the current systems.
I suggest that the game's welcoming TG for new nations should be given a section -- a fairly prominent one -- that says something along the lines of

Your nation has been created in one or another of the game's five 'Feeder' regions, but is does not have to remain there. Unless you blocked Recruitment Telegrams very quickly after creating this nation you almost certainly will have received a number of invitations to join various regions, but that shows only which ones managed to get their messages through most rapidly rather than necessarily ones that would be to your taste. Among the methods that you can use to search for regions that might suit you & your nation better are:

1. To obtain a list of Regions that place emphasis on a particular concept, go to the 'Tag Cloud' on this page and click on the name of that concept.
2. To obtain a list of Regions with a particular word in their names, go to the 'WORLD' page and type that word into the box at the top right-hand corner before clicking on the 'Search' button [i.e. the one marked with a looking-glass] next to this.
3. Check through this [url = (one that does not yet exist)]searchable list of brief regional descriptions[/url] to see whether any of those regions suit your taste.

This would be accompanied by (1) a change in coding (as already suggested more than once, by various players, in this forum...) limiting regions to no more than 10-12 tags each & barring their use of both members from any conflicting pair of tags (e.g. both 'fascist' & 'anti-fascist') so that they can no longer try to game the Tags system by claiming to b everything at once; and (2) the creation of the list mentioned in method '3': The latter would be a locked thread in the 'Gameplay', preferably stickied too, containing c. 5-10 pages of reasonably short regional descriptions (one per post) selected for posting by the Mods from among those submitted by the relevant regions' leaderships (via GHR?) in order to provide a reasonable range of possibilities... Regions old & large enough that they would probably not collapse & leave the newcomers "homeless" again in the near future, but not so large that newcomers would find it hard to make themselves noticed by other residents (or so large that they don't really "need" this help), not just 'puppet dumps, and with examples from a reasonable balance of rival ideologies and other basic themes (no outright Nazis, obviously, but also not the most extreme representatives of other ideological schools neither: I think it would be best to show only [slightly, at least] more moderate examples at first, and leave it to each player themselves to decide whether they want to search further outwards from there...).

[Bormiar]

I suppose it's better than nothing but a much simpler option would just be to not permit it to go to vote in the first place.

Much was made in the Meaningful SecGen thread about the possibility for the SC President/SecGen to veto a certain number of SC resolutions per term for any reason. Perhaps nations who are nominated for Commendations or Condemnations could similarly exercise veto power over those.

That’s absurd. It goes against the roleplay of the SC: that condemnations are against the wishes of the condemned, and that the SC is a fully democratic institution.

Nations are notified whenever a commendation/condemnation is proposed for them. If they see it and don’t want it, they can say in the thread. Players (and probably the authors) will undoubtably respect their wishes. They can also try to get it repealed later.

I don’t know if this was always the case for Gruenberg, but I can’t imagine passing a resolution for a target that voices their opposition.

Also, I know you’re bored and want a cool new feature, but there’s no reason to give the SecGen power. They’re elected every four years (which is ridiculously infrequent for NS), they get their spot by pouring at least a hundred dollars into stamps, and the last two have been either a) a competent moralist extremist, or b) Misley (no need to explain what’s wrong with that).

[Moonfungus]

That Declaration idea actually makes me really excited.

I really like this idea too, partly because I don't wanna look at more "Condemn/Commend X" proposals whenever something remotely exciting happens in Gameplay

Full support for the Commendemn batch, it feels kinda weird to me that we can't recognize players through the SC whose legacy in this game has been too complex for a Commend or Condemn badge to fully describe it.

May as well pitch my recurrent suggestion: permit people who do not wish to be Commended to opt out.

I have a much simpler solution to this; ask people privately (in an OOC manner) whether they want to be C/Ced or not. It saves up the effort admins have to spend to include that feature and it's not hard to do.

Also if we're considering the "nations should generate in certain UCRs" idea, can I suggest that each eligible UCR go through a rigorous moderation check before it becomes a feeder, just to make sure that we don't end up accidentally spawning new players in OOC questionable regions which meet the requirements?

And I'm not exactly sure to where to put this idea considering it might overlap with Communications and it's originally not my idea (I think the original suggestion was made by Vamperiall in the NSGP Discord), but maybe put a checkbox during the nation creation process to indicate whether it's a puppet or not? Nations marked as puppets would get no recruitment telegrams from regions, which should help alleviate some pains starting UCRs have.

[Sedgistan]

Also if we're considering the "nations should generate in certain UCRs" idea, can I suggest that each eligible UCR go through a rigorous moderation check before it becomes a feeder, just to make sure that we don't end up accidentally spawning new players in OOC questionable regions which meet the requirements?

Part of the plan was to have an SC category that players could use to block undesirable regions from receiving spawnings. But also, the "Democracy" type has a non-exec founder, so can also just be invaded too...

"Commendemn" is a flat no until someone can think of a more palatable name. That won't necessarily make it a yes, but there's no way we're putting in a category with a name that bad.

[Dakota Vytherov]

Gonna +1 not making the SecGen more meaningful. This game already has enough Pay2Win with stamp recruitment, I very much dislike the idea of adding in more features that you're gonna need to buy and use stamps for to win.

I don't really know what technical changes could be made to favor destructive occupations aside from adding an influence decay to UCRs (though at a significantly less rate of decay from the GCRs) or add an influence cap somewhere.

[Bormiar]

Also if we're considering the "nations should generate in certain UCRs" idea, can I suggest that each eligible UCR go through a rigorous moderation check before it becomes a feeder, just to make sure that we don't end up accidentally spawning new players in OOC questionable regions which meet the requirements?

Part of the plan was to have an SC category that players could use to block undesirable regions from receiving spawnings. But also, the "Democracy" type has a non-exec founder, so can also just be invaded too...

"Commendemn" is a flat no until someone can think of a more palatable name. That won't necessarily make it a yes, but there's no way we're putting in a category with a name that bad.

Sanctaria suggested “citation”. It has bad connotations (like a traffic ticket), and good connotations (like an award).