NationStates Jolt Archive


Aeropag Winter Olympics Bid Thread

New Manhattan
19-02-2006, 06:31
http://www.thirdgeek.com/2006/nsolympics/aeropagw1-can-small.png
(full-sized emblem (http://www.thirdgeek.com/2006/nsolympics/aeropagw1-can.png))

Media Guide to the Aeropag Winter Olympics Bid

From the warm, breezy air to the clear blue sea to the massive skyscrapers filling every last meter of space on the island, Aeropag is perhaps the last place people think of as a center for winter sports. But when local businesses became determined to earn the Captializt Olympic Committee’s favor in hosting the first Olympic Winter Games, nothing could stop them, not even a well-planned bid from the mountain metropolis of 소코지토 도시 (Sokojito Dosi).

The core of Aeropag’s bid to host the Games is a massive floating platform, similar to the existing structure on which Aeropag International Airport was built. On this platform, nearly twice the size of Aeropag itself, artificial terrain will take shape, turning a giant flat piece of metal into a ski resort. Of course, some of the “land” will remain flat, to allow reuse of the Olympic Village, Media Village, hockey rink, and several other key facilities. The ski slopes, on the other hand, will be recycled for the construction of office buildings.

Even with their budget of nearly XAU 50 000 000 (USD 27 600 000 000), the COC couldn’t afford to go with entirely new construction. Instead, the Orange-Green Bowl, the only sporting facility on the island, will be renamed Aeropag Olympic Stadium and used for the opening and closing ceremonies. In a similar cost-saving effort, the hockey rink will become a dual-use facility, becoming a new home for the Aeropag Penguins football (soccer) team, who currently share the Orange-Green Bowl with the Aeropag Hurricanes.

In contrast to the strong Capitalizt tradition of always seeking an opportunity for financial gain, an Olympics hosted in Aeropag would display the opposite principle—the sponsors of the bid are willing to spend tens of millions of gold ounces on making the Olympic experience as complete as possible for the media, the athletes, and the spectators, with no return on their investment in sight. They have gone to great lengths to end the stereotype of the Unified Capitalizt States as a nation of people who care more about their profits than their happiness, and to show the world that Aeropag is a place where both compassion and the Olympic spirit are strong.

The Olympic Winter Games will act as a showcase for advanced Capitalizt technology, showing the world the power of a free society. Nowhere else in the world can athletes relax on the beach just minutes after completing a difficult ski run. It will also stimulate the dying culture of the Jativans, the original inhabitants of Aeropag and the other Jativan Islands. By nearly tripling its land area and giving it enormous publicity around the world, it will stimulate the growth of Aeropag, making it a major center of commerce not just within the Unified Capitalizt States, but internationally as well.

A map of the venues to be used by the bid (http://www.thirdgeek.com/2006/nsolympics/aeropagmapa.png), a map showing the location of Aeropag within Commerce Heights (http://www.thirdgeek.com/chmap-ao.png), and a map showing the location of Commerce Heights within Atlantian Oceania (http://www.thirdgeek.com/aomap.png) are available for use in media stories about the bid. More detail about venues will be provided upon request.

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NSOC Guide to the Aeropag Winter Olympics Bid

After competing in twenty World Cups and hosting World Cup 26 (whether that’s a good or bad thing :p ), in addition to hosting a few minor tournaments like the Field Hockey World Cup, I am [too] familiar with the sports roleplaying community’s high standards in the design and use of scorinators. Rather than picking whatever constants seem to work for creating semi-realistic results, my approach to generating scores for the Olympics will be based on statistics. Similar to The Kazoo Peoples’s scorinator for timed events based on Olympic record times, three scorinators will be created for the Games—one for head-to-head matches (i.e. hockey, curling), one for scored events (figure skating, ski jumping), and one for timed events (speedskating, cross-country skiing). The constants to be used in these scorinators will vary based on the event, and the constants will be determined based on result data aggregated from the last three RL Olympics, or less if necessary (for new sports).

The three scorinators will be web-based programs (written in PHP), and will use a database to track athletes and results. This will allow a Web site to be created displaying results and auto-generated statistics (so I don’t have to update medal tables manually :p ). This functionality may even be used to automatically generate results at preset times, reducing the role of the host to collecting RP bonuses. Of course, I haven’t written any of this yet, because it’d be a massive waste of time if I didn’t even make it to the candidate city stage. :p

Though I wouldn’t go so far as to say that manually hosting the Olympics is impossible (KP made a good effort, and Casari seems quite determined), I believe an automated approach would have a much lower risk of failure. If Aeropag is chosen as a candidate city, I will set up a demonstration (the contents of which have yet to be determined) before the host vote, so that everyone can verify that (a) the system works and (b) my scorinators produce sane results, accounting for any athlete bonuses.

To allow for better RPing, and to discourage all nations from sending the maximum number of athletes in all sports, all athletes will be required to have names. However, should any nation not want to make up names on their own, they can request that names be generated by one of the modules in my name generator (http://www.thirdgeek.com/2006/names/). Or, if none of those modules happen to fit your nation, you can provide a list of names and I’ll add a module. Don’t all jump at this opportunity at once, I only have so much free time. :p

In the field of bonuses, I will be using the RP bonus system mentioned in the main NSOC thread—a bonus for each country based on the quantity and quality of their RPs, which will affect all athletes from that country. There will also be a possible bonus or penalty for each athlete, to be set when a nation submits its list of athletes. These bonuses can be set in the form of rankings, percentages, numbers, or any other reasonably sane method, but will be normalized to whatever bonus system I decide to use in the scorinators. Regardless of the system or specific bonuses given, all nations will have the same average athlete skill and all athletes will have their bonus below a certain cap (to prevent someone from entering Alan Belmore and one hundred Abysmali athletes :p ).

Of course, if you have any questions—IC or OOC—post them here and I’ll answer them, if you agree to always correctly reference 쇼카지 (Syokaji), Ακηλαϊκά (Akelaïká), and other Capitalizt athletes with names including non-ASCII characters. And maybe even if you don’t. :p
The Kazoo Peoples
20-02-2006, 18:20
Woo! My name featured in a bid! Very nice job. Like the automated aspect of it.
New Manhattan
03-03-2006, 11:50
Several scorinators (http://www.thirdgeek.com/2006/nsolympics/code/scorinate.php) have now been completed* and made available for testing.

Scorinators for other events will follow over the next few days, as well as a preliminary schedule and further IC information about the bid.

Any comments or suggestions on the scorinators are welcome.

*Overtime and shootouts for hockey have been coded, but are not yet enabled, since the current insufficient data causes all overtime periods to end 1–0. While this would be a workable solution to tied games, I didn’t think many people would support it when a more realistic option is available. :p

edit: The test scorinator considers Test Athlete #1 to be the highest-ranked athlete (0.75 on a scale of 0.25–0.75—don’t worry, there won’t be a test :p ) and Test Athlete #20 to be the lowest-ranked athlete (0.25). The other test athletes have ranks between those extremes. I really shouldn’t be posting scorinators at 05:00…
New Manhattan
07-03-2006, 19:36
*bump* for the inconvenience of Raging Pen—er, the convenience of the voters :p
The Resurgent Dream
08-03-2006, 02:13
A question on scorination: Will the athlete bonuses and penalties only be handed out WITHIN an event or between events as well? For example, if nation X were to state that their best event was snowboarding and their worst event was bobsledding, would it be possible for that nation to have a bonus in favor of their snowboarders and a penalty against their bobsledders, in such a way that it all balanced out even?
New Manhattan
08-03-2006, 08:12
A question on scorination: Will the athlete bonuses and penalties only be handed out WITHIN an event or between events as well? For example, if nation X were to state that their best event was snowboarding and their worst event was bobsledding, would it be possible for that nation to have a bonus in favor of their snowboarders and a penalty against their bobsledders, in such a way that it all balanced out even?
Athlete bonuses are currently implemented as affecting each athlete in all events they participate in. But if you’re planning on having a combined snowboarder/bobsledder, the bonus could easily be tied to “participations” (the table that lists which athletes are in which events) instead of athletes. :p