Index of Issues[h][/h]We are aware that not everyone is equally appreciative of image-based NS newspapers. As such, we’ve included the standard format mostly plain-text version of the newspaper in the spoiler below. We hope you enjoy reading this month’s issue! If you have any questions, comments, concerns, or suggestions, feel free to contact the current TNP Minister of Communications BMWSurfer.[spoiler=Plain Text]
Editor’s Note
[right]by BMWSurfer, Minister of Communications[/right]
Welcome to The Northern Lights. One of the first things I did when I joined NationStates was join the North Pacific Army. I found a supportive and fun community there, and got hooked on military gameplay. When I first became Minister of Communications, I knew I wanted to do an R/D issue of The Northern Lights, and the Ministry of Defense of The North Pacific has been very helpful throughout the writing of this issue. I am thankful for their support, and for all of the authors who contributed to this publication. I hope you enjoy reading this issue of The Northern Lights![h][/h] Note From the Minister of Defense
[right]by 9003, Minister of Defense[/right]
There is no doubt one of the largest communities on NationStates is the diverse group that we lovingly call R/Ders, or the Raiders and Defenders. Despite having small windows in which most of Raiding and Defending occurs in, no group has brought about more changes to NationStates as a whole. In these pages you will learn countless things from decades worth of combined knowledge and experience. Each article functions as a viewing glass into the exciting world of R/D. On behalf of the Ministry of Defense of The North Pacific, I am excited to share this issue of The Northern Lights with you! [h][/h] An Outsider’s Perspective: 8 Things That Helped or Hurt the R&D Metagame
[right]by 6ixDaze[/right]
6ixDaze here; most of you would remember me as Falconias, though I’ve opted to retire that name as it was something I came up with almost 17 years ago, when I created my 2nd nation in NationStates (my first nation was called D34TH… we don’t talk about that one). With that said, you’re welcome to continue to call me Falc if you prefer. I was asked if I was interested in writing an article on the R&D game for The Northern Lights. Though I have been largely out of the game for many years and continue to not have a great deal of time to dedicate to it, I can offer some observations as someone who has been a part of this meta for a very long time. In this article, I’ve outlined 8 things that – in my marginally senile opinion – either helped or hurt the raiding & defending metagame in NationStates.
#4 Hurt: Not Incorporating NationStates 2 Features (2009)
NationStates 2 was a short-lived disaster for Max Barry, as his relationship with Jolt rapidly disintegrated between the game’s launch in late 2008 and the shutdown on July 1st , 2009. The story is complicated, but the short version of it is that Jolt failed to live up to expectations and allegedly did not fulfill contractual obligations; Jolt went defunct in 2012. There was an opportunity to incorporate some of NationStates 2’s brilliant ideas into the original NationStates that would have added significant layers to the game; for example – and I don’t claim to have any great ideas about how this would have worked – but reworking raiding & defending mechanics based on military spending, which would have dramatically improved the incharacter aspect of the game and reduced the impact of waves of “puppet” nations. Instead, NationStates remained largely unchanged and NS2 was lost to memory.
#4 Helped: The Rise of the Regional Alliances (2006)
I could perhaps be biased, but I truly believe the FRA helped the metagame. The birth & success of the FRA (Founderless Regions Alliance) in 2006 paved the way for similar organizations – in both the pro-defender spectrum (i.e. the UDL), and the pro-raider spectrum (i.e. the Commonwealth – the historical one, not the current one) to dabble into “organizations” that brought regions together for a common cause & military rather than the traditional treaties & alliances. It added a layer of politics to the metagame that did not exist previously. The concept somewhat predated the FRA with the likes of the ADN (Alliance Defence Network) and the CDA (Central Defence Army), but it was not until the FRA that the concept truly became formalized as a governing body rather than just an army.
#3 Hurt: The Fall of DEN (c. 2008)
DEN, formed in 2004, was a significant part of why defenders even exist, and how intelligence came to be a major component of defender gameplay. The DEN was a mysterious organization that became known for well planned & executed raids that often used “sleepers”, or nations that were faked to look like native nations. This tactic even predated the introduction of Influence that made sleepers a meta strategy; DEN was truly ahead of its time. DEN also were the one of the very few organizations to successfully “eject-raid” the Rejected Realms; the tactic involves massing endorsements in an unrelated region, followed by a mass-ejection by the Founder to instantly deploy a mass-endorsed nation into a region where ejections are not possible, leaving the incumbent delegate hopeless to retain power unless defenders are ready and waiting. DEN’s creative methods and shroud of secrecy necessitated improvements to defender intelligence and began an era of espionage. When DEN began to decline about 12 years ago and raiders like General Franks and Of Crazed became less active, it had a noticeable impact on the necessity of defender intelligence.
#3 Helped: Influence (2006)
I believe the introduction of influence in 2006 and the many changes to it since have helped the overall meta-game. Keeping in mind that the original intended purpose of NationStates was to own a nation that seeks out endorsements to run a region, it seemed to violate the in-character narrative of NationStates to allow a new delegate unlimited power instantly. The “Invasion Griefing” rules that were in place prior to Influence did little to stop griefing of regions and were a set of constantly moving goalposts. Influence greatly reduced the workload and power of game moderators.
#2 Hurt: Liberation Resolutions (2009)
As a defender, I of course appreciate the security blanket that Liberation Resolutions provide once invaders put a password in place and seek to refound a region; but in my opinion, these resolutions also seem to violate the in-character narrative of NationStates by offering the Security Council a tremendous power in regions that may or may not be even in-character aligned with the objectives of the SC. It also benefits defenders so greatly that in my opinion it diminished too greatly the powers of so-called “Imperialist” raiders who sought to raid & keep regions permanently. A great deal of the “fear” for defenders was alleviated, and now the course of action is for defenders, after conceding defeat, gripe to the Security Council enough to get the game to intervene. It’s a sad display of weakness, as a defender, to be quite honest. There are two alternatives to these Resolutions that in hindsight could have been considered; (1) only allowing a Founder to install a password, or (2) making the Influence required for a password so staggeringly large that raiders would have had to hold the region for months with large numbers in order to install a password.
#2 Helped: GCR Coups (Various)
Our feeder friends will likely be unpleased to read this, but historically, GCR (game-created region) coups have vitalized the R&D metagame to extreme levels. I have vivid memories of some of the most spectacular coups of all time; the Crimson Order coup of The North Pacific in 2008 comes to mind as a specifically dramatic event that drew in both defenders & raiders into the zany world of feeder politics. Gatesville’s failed coups of feeder regions, while futile, were enough of a threat to necessitate the mobilization of defender forces. Overall, when there is a clear & present danger to the autonomy of a rightfully elected feeder or sinker government, it drives activity in the game through the roof.
#1 Hurt: Trigger-Accurate Updates (2012)
I am sure to rouse disagreement among many, especially those that enjoy tag-raiding and tagdefending, but the process of triggering and being able to time updates to the second has completely destroyed the art of spotting. This was changed in 2012, and has been tweaked and enhanced since. Yes, someone with extensive dossiers and an understanding of game mechanics can follow a tag-raider into a region, but the abilities of defenders to detect a raid and get the 30-60 seconds necessary to defend it, and likewise the ability of raiders to detect an incoming liberation, have been crippled and rendered large-scale spotting nearly completely useless. Raiding & defending has now become a game of cat-and-mouse and rarely, if ever, is there a possibility for a successful “defence” – it almost always requires a lengthy liberation.
#1 Helped: Minor Update (2009)
Evil Wolf started a popular thread in 2005 to complain that people on the east coast of North America had an awful update time (1:00 AM EDT normally; server load had pushed the update of some regions to as late as 4:00 AM EDT). After 4 years, a 2nd update was added, colloquially referred to as the “minor update”, exactly halfway between “major” updates. This allowed people in virtually any time zone on the globe to easily be online for at least one update per day. This allowed people to have a healthy sleep schedule, surely, right? Haha… Thanks for reading! -6ixDaze [h][/h]The Security Council – What Role does it Play?
[right]by Owenstacey [/right]
The Security Council is a group of established members in The North Pacific’s community that monitors the region’s security to ensure that TNP is protected from any potential threats that it could face from rogue forces. Other GCRs have groups that do similar things to that of the Security Council, for example TEP have Viziers. Currently made up of the Vice Delegate and 10 security councilors, the council has for a long time worked tirelessly to ensure the safety of the region and the protection of the values at the heart of our region. The Security Council plays an important role within TNP for a long time and, while there have been some calls for reform, there can be no doubt that the Security council will remain an important part of the TNP community for many years to come.
One of the Security Councils most important roles within TNP is the work that it does within the citizenry. The main way that this takes place is through the Vice Delegate’s check for citizenship. This check is conducted by the Council to ensure that any prospective citizen does not pose a security threat to the region. This is an important role for the Security Council within the region because it gives them the ability to shut down any potential threats before they are able to gain any influence inside of the region. As well as this, a side effect of the Vice Delegate check is also that it gives the Security Council exposure to all new citizens. This can be beneficial for the Security Council and aid them in their work because any enthusiastic new citizens would see the work of the Vice Delegate check and can lead them to get more involved with projects such as the WADP. Therefore, the work of the Security Council in the citizenry is so important as a first line of defence in regional security and boosting their exposure to the benefit of their gameside projects.
As well as the work with the citizenry offsite, the Security Council do have a big role to play gameside. The biggest form of this role gameside can be seen from the focus and importance of the endotarting that is undertaken by the Security Council. In this sense, the Security Council works to keep their level of endorsements high to act as a buffer between the Delegate and any potential rogue endorsement threats. This buffering role undertaken by the Security Council is particularly important within TNP because of the lack of an endorsement cap. This cap on endorsements for non-security council members is common in most regions in Nationstates and is mostly used to keep a large buffer on endorsements to ensure their region’s safety. This is particularly interesting because TNP is the most populous region in the game, so the Security Council’s efforts to ensure that there are no threats to the in-game delegacy by rogue entities shows how important of a role their play in protecting the delegacy and how good they are at this role, with TNP widely being considered one of the safest regions in NS. This lack of endorsement cap also enforces how important the Security Council’s role is in monitoring endorsement gathering because it does mean that regular TNP residents can gather large endorsement levels whilst still ensuring the delegacy is protected.
As well as endorsement monitoring, a large amount of the Security Council’s role in-game comes in the form of helping growth of endorsement and influence levels of all TNP residents through projects and events like the WADP. The WADP, or World Assembly Development Program, is a joint campaign between the Delegate and the Security Council aimed at increasing endorsements across the region. By increasing the level of endorsements throughout the region which makes the region safer from the threat of rogue delegates and offers awards and achievements for its participants. This is a clear example of the Security Council using a variety of methods to increase the safety of the region, which is their core role within the ingame community.
Interestingly, until recently, it would not have been out of place to say that the Security Council’s role was one that was mainly behind the scenes but that impression has changed quite a lot in recent times. A very good example of this is the current in-game delegacy transition from Prydania to TlomzKrano. This is because, usually, the Security Council’s role in the transition tended to focus on sending telegrams to residents to encourage them to endorse the new delegate. However, more recently, the Security Council has become a lot more hands on with things like endorsement events that gave out cards if the incoming delegate got a certain level. This is going to encourage more people to endorse the incoming delegate quicker. As well as this, for the first time, the Security Council took over the delegacy from the outgoing delegate in order to further their role of regional security. This was done in the belief that it was more in line with the legal requirements and the spirit of the region and ensured that a member of the SC held the delegacy until the elected delegate could take the in-game delegacy. This shows that the Security Council have attempted to go further in their role of regional protection and ensure that the serving delegate is still subject to the will of the RA and suggests that the Security Council is always trying to find new ways of carrying out their role within the region in a more efficient and successful way.
However, whilst the Security Council has played an important role within the governance of TNP for a very long time, in recent times, there have been people asking some important questions about the Security Council which will eventually need to be answered. One of the big calls for reform in recent times has been that the Security Council needs to be more transparent. This could have been seen in the ‘Government Officials Achieving Transparency Act’ which was introduced to address past concerns that some Security Councilors may not have been open about what they do behind closed doors. Whilst this bill was vetoed by the Delegate, a similar bill was passed, which would have alleviated some concerns. However, there are still some concerns at the lack of disclosure in regards to discussion threads that have come from the Security Council which has raised some concerns recently. Therefore, there is still work that needs to be done by the Security Council to make themselves more transparent to the citizenry to allow people to fully understand the role that the Security Council continues to play in TNP today.
Finally, another question that has begun to be raised in recent times is what role each individual Security Councilor actually plays within the Council as a whole. This question, which has been raised in the discussion thread for various Security Council applicants in the Regional Assembly, has never truly been answered by any of the existing members of the Security Council. Most people that are accepted to the Security Council are long-term members of TNP that have committed a lot of time and effort to the region and have usually been elected to positions such as Delegate or Vice Delegate by the citizenry. However, whilst it is clear that all successful applicants to the Security Council are worthy of their place, it does not clear up the question of what the Security Council looks for in applicants. Do they look at whether the member deserves their place generally, or do they look for an applicant that offers the council something that they do not currently have on the Council? However, this question is unlikely to ever be properly answered, so it will probably remain fairly unclear as to what role each individual Councilor plays within the workings of the Council.
Therefore, to conclude, the Security Council’s role within The North Pacific does seem to be heavily focussed on regional security and protecting the region from any threats that it faces. However, whilst there are still questions being raised regarding the transparency of the Council and the role that each member plays within it, there is still going to be some shroud of secrecy surrounding the goings on of the Security Council. Therefore, the only way to truly discover the role that the Security Council plays within TNP would be to establish yourself as an important part of the region’s community and earn yourself a place on the Security Council.
[h][/h] How to Start a UCR Army: For Dummies!
[right]by Robespierre [/right]
A Message from the Author:
Greetings, all! My name is Robespierre,
Over the course of the past number of years, I’ve had the privilege of leading a handful of regional militaries for both user-created regions (UCRs) and for a game-created region (GCR).
As the North Pacific’s Minister of Defense from September 2019 until January 2020 under then-Delegate McMasterdonia, as well as a Deputy Minister of Defense from May 2020 until September 2020 under then-Minister of Defense Rom, I consider my ongoing service to the North Pacific Army to be among the highest profile things I’ve done in gameplay.
That being said, in today’s article I’m excited to share with you my outlook on how you can best start a UCR military of your very own and what steps you ought to take in order to make it a success.
Everything expressed herein is my own opinion, but nonetheless I hope that you’ll find this advice to be somewhat useful and relevant to your goals as either a regional founder or as someone who’s working on behalf of a regional government.
With the introductions out of the way, let’s get right into it![/i]
Step 1: Originality Overcomes
There are a lot of regions out there who could be enjoying all of what gameplay has to offer but instead, they’re stuck inside watching the Black Hawks sour or the Grey Wardens liberate the innocents from the overarching evil menace above.
It may seem as though I’m stating the obvious when I say this but one of the foremost reasons why these regions haven’t yet branched out and explored the world of R/D is because they’ve either A.) Lacked someone with the time and work ethic to commit to it or B.) Have region members who simply aren’t interested in engaging with that portion of the game and interacting with some of the politics involved in GP.
In order to gain a grasp on how to start a UCR army, I think that it’s also important for you to understand why you might want to, the benefits and risks of doing so, and what could stand in the way of your region and world domination through R/D. Thus, I present you with the following:
- Firstly, your regional identity will factor heavily into whatever type of military force that you field. If the entire premise of your region’s foreign policy is to promote democracy abroad, ensure sovereignty for all, and further the noble cause of [insert ideological objective here] then it wouldn’t make much sense to align your organization with raiders and progress with that intent.
Conversely, if your region is all about projecting power using both soft and hard influence then perhaps going down an imperialistic route may make the most sense for your region. Whereby you “colonize” other regions and make them your protectorates or forcibly enter into agreements with them where they submit to you region’s will and promise subservience in exchange for assured defense.
A lot about R/D can, in effect, include RP elements. Just take a look at the lore that TGW is built around or at some of the posts that TBH makes in their thread on NS forums. Whatever you do, try your best to do it well and make sure that you have people in your region who are willing to put in the effort to make your military a success.
Set realistic goals relative to your organization’s size, celebrate small victories, recruit from within, and utilize having a regional military as a way to add activity and enjoyment to your region. Be original! One of the chief benefits of hosting and leading a region’s military is that you’ve provided your region’s members with an activity to indulge in and cooperate with one another through.
There will only ever be one military that can call themselves the Black Hawks and proudly state that they are “the most feared military organization in NationStates!”
There will only ever be one group of wolves like Lone Wolves United who can boast as “the legendary crasher region” and claim that it’s “For Your Protection.”
Do something else, don’t be a carbon copy! Make up your own theme or, better yet, choose a style that’ll help other identify with what your region is all about when it’s not being showcased on the battlefield. A regional military can be used in many ways and, in most instances, it’s seen as an extension of the region that it belongs to.
Once you have a concept in mind and aren’t worried about emulating those who have come before you, that’s when you can truly start on the path to forming a regional military that you can be proud of.
Step 2 - Be Professional
When you’re first starting out in gameplay, more specifically in R/D, it’s important to understand your place in relation to other military organizations on NationStates so that you don’t accidentally run the risk of stepping on anyone’s toes.
Whether you’re starting up your own region’s military as the founder or volunteering your time to develop someone else’s regional military, you have to understand that you have no reputation yet, no pedigree of sorts to rely on, and that there’s a good chance that not many people will know who you are.
For now, that’s okay. I want to let you know that it’s okay to make mistakes and that nobody is expecting your region to start doing amazing things right off the bat. Hell, even more, well-established militaries that have been around for years and years go through various periods of highs and lows, and your startup force will likely be no different.
Feel free to experiment a little and play around with your organization’s structure, ranks, theming, and approach to operations. What’s important for you now, at this stage anyway, is that your region finds its footing in the vast world of gameplay and that you start building relationships with allies and like-minded organizations through this medium.
Above all else: be professional! Seriously, it’s that simple, and you’d be surprised with how much of a difference it can make when your military is interacting with foreign commanders from abroad and scheduling joint operations to be conducted sometime in the future.
If you say that your region is going to be present on a given day for a specific operation at a certain time, then be there.
If you make a commitment to help out with an ally’s delegacy transition, then don’t leave them hanging and make sure to order your troops in.
Make your military presentable despite its small size and treat any sensitive information with care. What’s important in the early stages is not what you’re doing so much as how you are doing it.
By being professional and running a well-organized, well-disciplined organization, you are building up that kind of reputation for your region and that’s a reputation that you’ll want going forward regardless of the size o your force or the number of pilers that you’re able to offer.
Step 3 - Laying a Foundation
Alright. So you’ve come up with an idea for what you want your regional military to be and you’re in the right mindset to act professionally in your approach to R/D.
That’s great! Way to go! But now it’s time to actually apply that and make your vision a reality. So, what can you do? Where do you start? What does the setup process look like?
Well, truth be told, it varies depending upon what model your region prefers. Here are some basic structures that are commonly implemented (Note: You can use these for ease of reference, but by no means must you follow them!):
- The actions of your region’s military are regulated by regional law and/or your region’s government. (i.e. A Ministry or Department in your region’s government is tasked with the management and running of your military and thus members are subordinate to a Minister/Secretary/President/Delegate who holds a chain of command position similar to being the Commander-in-Chief)
• For this setup, maybe your region’s laws require that your President/Prime Minister/Delegate or executive-equivalent official delivers an address on the establishment of a regional military. If so, do this and make sure that you have a way of assigning responsability to some recognized authority.
- Your regional military is independent of your region’s government and is free from direct political interference. Maybe your region’s Delegate/President/Prime Minister/etc. doesn’t have the final say on the military’s actions and a particular person in your region takes up the role of commander instead.
• If you’re using this model, then make sure that your military’s commander isn’t entirely new to R/D as well and that they at least have some previous experience leading. One region that this setup is true for is the Rejected Realms, where the actions of the Rejected Realms Army, a defender military, are internally-regulated by a High Commander.
- Your region was created for the sole purpose of being a military in it of itself and interactions with R/D are its primary activity. In this sense, there isn’t really so much a regional government as there is a High Command or Command Council that dictates what direction the region goes in.
• If this is you, then maybe you’ll want to seek out experienced gameplayers who have the time to dedicate to your region’s military and are willing to involve themselves in such an integral capacity to be in your High Command.
Step 4 - Balancing Formality & Fun
Remember how I said that one of the chief benefits to having a military for your region is that you’re providing another activity for your region’s members to engage in? Yeah, that’s where this step really comes into play.
The question is: How do you get them to become interested in this new aspect of your region and how can you conscript them into your military?
Now, obviously you’re going to want to draw attention to the fact that your region now has its very own military and you surely want to drum up some curiosity as to what that will look like when properly staffed.
There are a number of ways you can do this, but perhaps a more flashy and fancy way of going about things is to have someone in your region who’s good at graphic design or handy with vexillology create some propaganda-esque graphics for you.
These can be patriotic posters (think “Uncle Sam wants YOU!”), dispatch headers, seals, logos, coats of arms… whatever fits your region’s theme. These graphics should include common colours to keep up with consistency and uniformity, and maybe you want to feature these graphics in a regional newsletter via dispatch or forum announcement.
If you don’t have anyone who you know is good with graphics in your region, then don’t let that deter you! Type out these messages in text, lure your region mates in with a themed story or a grand vision. The goal here? Make it fun and don’t let formality be the enemy of that fun.
Generally speaking, you should have some sort of application process to join your region’s military. Whether it’s a short questionnaire that requests details like their nation name, their WA nation name (if applicable), their Discord username, and past experience they may have, or a simple “Are you a citizen?” and “Why do you want to join?” Keep your organization’s recordkeeping up to date. That’ll enable you to have more fun venturing out with region mates during updates if you’re not caught up in a mess of paperwork.
Step 5 - Staff Sufficiently
And finally, yes: the long awaited final step!
You’ve come up with an idea for your regional military, you’ve geared yourself towards a more professional mindset, you’ve examined the various types organization models, and you’ve learned about how to attract interest and conscript willing members.
Lastly, in closing, it’s time to briefly talk about staffing and ranks within your military, and you have a great degree of flexibility afforded to you in this regard.
If you’d like to base your military’s chain of command off a real-world army/navy/air force, then go for it! If you want to create theme-specific roles that tie into your region’s lore or values, then that’s also a solid option. Whichever route you go, make sure that you are putting people in positions where they can succeed.
Don’t make someone who doesn’t know how to trigger an operation’s leader.
Likewise, don’t make a newbie gameplayer a General in your organization. I know, everybody wants to be on top, but you should really focus on building your force around the talents of the members you have available to you until you get a concrete system and set way of doing things in place.
Starting a UCR army can be tough at first but it can also be a very rewarding experience. Make sure that you’re prioritizing fun and the enjoyment of your members. NationStates is a game and games are meant to be played. Take yourself seriously enough to where other organizations can be reasonably expected to take you seriously, but don’t take yourself too seriously to a point where it distracts from the fun of it.
Hopefully these five steps should give you some perspective as to how to start your own region’s military as a UCR. If you found this helpful, that’s great! Here’s to hoping your region’s military is the next formidable foe on the battlefield! o7
[h][/h] Retire With Grace
[right]by Souls [/right]
Hi. Souls here. Y’all haven’t heard a lot from me recently - that’s because I pretty successfully retired. But I promised to write this a ways back, so what better a topic than, well, retirement?
Everyone’s time comes on this site. Whether that’s in the context of a region, a type of Gameplay, or the site as a whole, we (almost) all move on eventually. Not only does this come on the back of your own personal reasons, but it’s also an inherently good thing for your beloved surroundings, when done right. What I implore you, the public, to do, is to retire with grace when the time comes.
There are, very very generally, three types of retirements we commonly see.
1) The Sudden.
The infamous GP retirement. Suddenly, with fanfare, “goodbye.” Often followed by “They’ll be back.” Often, but not always, a hallmark of an unhealthy relationship, and/or holding on for too long.
2) The Fade.
Where did so and so go anyways? They never really “retired,” just showed up less and less until they were gone.
3) The Transition.
“Hey, I aim to retire in so and so weeks/months. I’ll be around after that, but I’m handing over my responsibilities.”
Number 1 is often, but not always, a hallmark of an unhealthy relationship, and/or holding on for too long. It leaves people in a lurch, and like many kinds of going cold turkey, is prone to failure. If it’s what you have to do, it’s what you have to do, but it’s not really preferable. Number 2 also leaves people in a different sort of lurch. Maybe they never got to say goodbye, or never know when to consider you actually gone. Many times, it includes certain resources or knowledge that’s just lost along with you, or rendered inaccessible. Number 3, which I advocate on, focuses on communication and handoff, and helps to ensure your community survives you. Room for new blood and new leadership, new mistakes and new learning, is vital to the ongoing success of communities.
So how does one go about this? The first step to successfully transitioning in the smoothest manner is to accept that your time will, and perhaps has already, come. That, eventually, you’ve become “the armchair.” And that’s okay! Grandpa in the armchair with his stories is a valuable store of knowledge. But that stage should be the stage at which you acknowledge your status of “heading towards retirement,” and begin to act accordingly. The next step is to begin to plan when, what, and how you’ll make the handoff to those that are actually doing the daily work around you. Maybe you’re aiming for a few months out, maybe a few weeks. But it’s important to set a date, even if that changes - and more important to set expectations. Your goal here is to move towards a support role, officially, if you intend to stick around. To be a resource for knowledge, maybe even maintain some infrastructure, but surrender your say in how things are run, because you know you’re not doing the work reliably anymore. This can be a hard transition after sometimes years in management, but that’s where those explicit remaining responsibilities and roles being defined helps significantly. By discussing, actively, what will still be expected of you, if anything, your role becomes firm again. Then, it’s time to pull the trigger…not too much fanfare, okay? It’s easier because it’s not goodbye - just stepping back to a supporting role.
In the end, it’s better to embrace effective retirement than to be a dead log in the way of the river flowing. It is better to be an effective supporting resource than to be slacking in the occupation of a role that asks for much more. It breeds less resentment among your more active peers, and clears the air for others to step up. Don’t fear the armchair. Embrace it for what it is: Soft, helpful retirement, which allows you to move on with your life and hobbies, without abandoning your friends and community. It’s natural to move on. It’s unnatural to remain an empty facsimile of what you used to be, out of some imagined shame and idea that being such is somehow better than just admitting your glory days are past.
Retire, with grace.
[h][/h] Technology in Raiding and Defending
[right]by Chingis [/right]
When I joined NationStates back in 2015, scripting was very much exclusive to the few remotely capable coders/developers that were dedicated enough to commit time and energy in order to enhance the performance in a metagame that is not optimised or largely catered to by the game that hosts it. These tools were incredibly exclusive and had incredibly limited effectiveness in what they did. Most were years old and virtually untouched from the day they were deemed to be “stable enough”. I have insufficient knowledge to discuss the full history of old R/D tools and their developers so I won’t delve too deep in that. Rather, I’ll start my story with my arrival in the R/D scene in late October 2015. At this point in time, tool usage in R/D had stagnated to a complete standstill, and virtually no new innovation was seen from either side. The defenders had their own set of tried and true tools, while raiders made do with a tool developed by Halcones a year or two before his DoS.
Interesting to note is that, while not as popularised as it is today, coding was still a fairly commonplace skillset to see amongst NS members and other elements of the game were already seeing extensive scripting - see r3n’s impressive script collection. The NS API was around in the same form as it is today and both the site itself and its scripting rules have not been touched in these last 6 years to any notable degree. In that sense, it was actually relatively surprising that R/D was not seeing any breakthroughs in scripting at the time. The reason for this as I see it is twofold.
Firstly, and above all, the R/D scene that I joined was defined by a complete lack of real motivation to improve through script-related means. This was an era that saw defending at an all-time low, for a variety of reasons that I, again, don’t consider myself aptly qualified to discuss in much depth. One thing that I do believe is important to note on this topic, however, is that the link occasionally made by some defenders between the lull in defender activity and the “illegal power” of Predator, a tool which I will discuss later, are entirely unfounded - despite its illegality the tool was entirely underwhelming in every sense of the word. This lull heavily reduced the need for any real innovation or improvement from either side - defenders simply weren’t interested in actively chasing and raiders had no competition to force them to become better - something particularly dangerous in a metagame that, outside of its IC/PvP implications, boils down to button mashing on HTML pages.
Secondly, raiders (being the only group of note to discuss in this time period) were entirely comfortable with the current processes that existed in the raiding metagame. To a large extent, this was a flow-on from the first issue - there was never any pressure to develop automated scripts to enhance the standard raiding experience, therefore nothing rose up that could challenge the current status quo, pass degrees of testing and establish itself as a staple of the raider meta. A particularly nice example of this is the tool commonly referred to as Spyglass, which has by now become an everyday R/D utensil used for virtually every tag run to set “triggers” - regions whose update flags to the raid leader where the update is currently at. Before the development of Spyglass, the creation of trigger sheets would usually be done by hand, with most raiders sparing little thought as to whether this process could be better done automatically. Likewise, I came to DEN High Command with the idea of a web-based script to assist the switching and tagging process years before I had even learned to code properly, but was met with no enthusiasm on a proposal that would 3 years later transform the understanding of a “large” hit-count beyond recognition.
Lastly, the fear of straying on the wrong side of the script rules hung heavily in the air of the 2015 R/D scene. The year preceding that moment had seen numerous script related scandals within the raider community and the relationship between the moderation team and raiding organisations seemed shakier than it had ever been before. Processes that worked existed, tools that worked existed, and no one was terribly keen to get overly experimentative. As the future would show, this was not all too misguided of a fear.
My first experience with Predator - a tool used to dynamically calculate the update time of an upcoming region during update and assist in triggering a jump into that region, came from seeing it used by Cora, a now DoS player, who ran the tool every update for the purpose of tagging with the organisation of Cimmeria, which he was in charge of at the time and one of the two regions to get deleted in the wake of the Predator punishments. As time went on and the level of trust towards me grew, I would later meet Halcones and gain access to Predator myself.
For those of you wondering what the tool was like, given it has now been 4.5 years since the bans and deletions went out, and many people are likely to have never been around anyone who used it - Predator was a python script that had been bundled into a standard windows executable for you to install. Access to the tool was given through a dropbox connection - if you did not have dropbox running and were not one of the authorised users, the tool simply would not start for you. At the time, the tool seemed unbelievably impressive, with a decently usable GUI and accuracy and speed that was not really possible to achieve with any of the alternatives at the time. However, looking back, it is easy to realise that the tool was incredibly buggy and painfully inefficient, both from a coding and from a metagame min-maxing perspective. To this day I still believe that the illegality of the tool stemmed far more from Halcones’ own incompetence as a programmer than it ever did from any malicious intent.
The revelation that the tool was illegal according to the site rules in March 2016 came as a huge shock for many in the raiding world. Perhaps not so much for the older cynics that were around to see the TBR of old, but definitely for those of us who had only joined after TBR had become nothing but a memory. I won’t go into much detail on the bans and the process surrounding them (the relevant forum thread still exists in the GP forums to this day) other than noting that my punishment amounted to a 12 month WA ban and a complete puppetsweep, leading to me taking a break from the site, community and all things NS until Feb 2017.
On my return, the metagame and its approach to scripting had changed drastically. The main driving force behind this was the return of a motivated and stable force in defending with the establishment of The Order of the Grey Wardens, which were not even remotely hesitant to leverage the full power of scripting and its abilities to gain an edge in what was quickly becoming a highly competitive R/D meta. Utilising browser-side extensions such as Breeze++ a tool that mapped page loads and button presses to keys on the keyboard, and Move+Endo, a tool that streamlined the standard defending process on larger jumps, this was a force to be reckoned with and one that fueled a lot of the passion that I put into coding raider-side scripts. It is interesting to note that I don’t necessarily see this or any of the scripts developed by other raiders as an arms race, but rather new motivation to perform above the status quo for all sides - a fresh injection of enthusiasm that stemmed from true competition if you will. Many techniques and ideas that came out of this were not even remotely script related, but rather new, fun innovations that spiced up the metagame in numerous ways.
On the raider side, there had been a few attempts to reconstruct something similar in nature to Predator in the form of tools such as 20xx, as well as new tools that streamlined the manual nature of assigning triggers and calling them, one of which in particular - Spyglass, is still widely used today. The effects of Predator could still be very heavily felt in 2017, with minimal trust for any sort of automated triggerbots or non-open source scripts in general. Organisations and people, for understandable reasons, were incredibly cautious of all things code. Obviously, no one wanted the same fate as DEN, which was deleted for its part in the predator scandal, and the raider community, in general, was very worried about how continued infractions would affect the future of R/D as a metagame.
I, on the other hand, had no such moral dilemma. Newly un-banned from the WA and without a region to tie myself down to, I set about putting into motion an idea that had consumed me for many months during the duration of my ban. In that year I had begun to learn coding and with a passable proficiency in Java, 17 year old me created what was effectively the first prototype of something quite groundbreaking. The tool in question, which I dubbed ‘Kimchi’, did roughly everything that Predator was capable of back in 2015, but integrated into a Discord bot, with all of the additional powers and options which come with that. It worked successfully at the time, and I ran it for a small joke organisation called Canterlot, which I founded with a friend. This would one month later lead to a rather controversial piece of SC literature which, while repealed, remains permanently inscribed in the records of passed resolutions. The tool, however, was no Predator. It was slow, inaccurate and in exchange for the added benefit of not having to spend any time setting triggers, it simply could not hold up to the script-boosted speed of the TGW chasers. This led to my second project - Miso.
Miso was groundbreaking for me in that it became the first script written by me that surpassed the bar of Predator while remaining entirely site legal. For an incredibly long duration of time, it became the founding stone on which the organisation of Lily was built - an autonomous, accurate and lightweight triggerbot that took away all of the hassles of setting triggers and boasted manual-level accuracy as well as endless customizability. It was this tool that was originally used to beat the single-update tagging record, setting it at a nice 407 up from a 112 achieved by Predator with roughly similar resources at its disposal. This was later blown out of the water by a number of 576, run on my third and final triggerbot that I dubbed ‘Buzzy Bee’, this time written in Python and flaunting above-human levels of accuracy in predicting update times, even without access to the main site.
This success was very much supplemented by browser-side extensions that effectively remapped the way the site worked in order to best gear it towards our specific metagame. I won’t go into too much detail on those but will point out the endless potential that browser-side scripts have in a game which was designed and streamlined for a very different purpose to what the different metagames use it for, be it R/D or cards. Such scripts allow you to change the direct user experience in order to optimise the game as if it was written specifically for those very metagames - something that changes the way you play and experience NS at a core level.
With 2017 soon to be 4 years ago, we can see many new trends appear in the scripting world of NS. The popularisation of coding in our society is ever-present, and the effect of that is being felt with every new year, as more and more young people with coding skills join the site, with fresh ideas and new skills. The fear felt from Predator is slowly but surely dissipating through many different avenues. New players who were not around to understand why some older people still mistrust code are fresh and eager to try new stuff, fueled by the competition they feel in a rejuvenated and far more welcoming R/D metagame. Rising trust in those who write code has also played a large factor here. People like me, Vincent Drake and Roavin, as well as the tools we write, have been around for long enough to start accumulating more trust and credibility, as well as becoming more of an everyday norm in the world of R/D. Just the other week I was asked to run my tool for the Liberty Gala, so that people from defender regions, including XKI - a region in which I am banned for my R/D alignment, could do a detag run. No demands to see my code were made. No questions of legality were raised. This does not mean that it is safe to trust and use any NS code you see or are given, but it does mean that we are moving towards an NS where talented young coders feel safe and supported in creating, fueled by their passion for innovation and competition.
The author, though retired, is not gone, and can be reached on Discord Fauxia for your questions, comments, and complaints. Though he’ll probably check GP at least once when this is published, for old time’s sakes.
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[small]The Northern Lights: Beauty in Truth
Publisher: TlomzKrano :: Executive Editor: BMWSurfer
The Northern Lights is produced by the Ministry of Communications on behalf of the Government of The North Pacific and is distributed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs externally and by the Ministry of Home Affairs internally. Except where otherwise indicated, all content represents the views of the Government of The North Pacific.
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