NationStates Jolt Archive

I got a cool idea on a way to improve nationstates and I don't believe it would require too much work.

You know how when you make your nation, you are able to make a national animal, currency and motto, right? Well I was thinking, why not also be able to make a Capitol City and/or national plant/flower/tree? It could open up new doors for issues and allow for more customization of a Nation without too much work on the techs' part. It would make nations even more unique than they already are.

And of course, there are other things that you could choose (national language, colour(s), etc.) to implement, but I think having a capitol city and a national plant/flower/tree would be pretty cool and interesting.

Just a thought,
New-Quebec

Not having a set national capital has been a bit of a hinderance to issue writers, I think... all that would really be needed there would be to make a new variable. (@@CAPITAL@@)

This is a very good idea. Hack, Sal, Sirocco, anyone, any comments?

I forsee a 'no.....', but it is a good idea

Why should it be a no if it is a good idea?

And the other guy said it good, all you need is to implement a variable, an extra box in settings and a few more lines of text in the description...but it does open up new issues like "citizens in (CAPITOL) are being treated better than citizens elsewhere" and "the (NATIONAL ANIMAL) is eating all the (NATIONAL PLANT)s" and so forth.

Thinking it's a good idea,
New-Quebec

New user variables of all sorts have been raised a couple of hundred times before. Scroll down the Tech forum for a couple of months - you'll see plenty. Salusa has stated on every occasion that it's almost certainly not gonna happen except possibly in NSII.

Why should it be a no if it is a good idea?

And the other guy said it good, all you need is to implement a variable, an extra box in settings and a few more lines of text in the description...but it does open up new issues like "citizens in (CAPITOL) are being treated better than citizens elsewhere" and "the (NATIONAL ANIMAL) is eating all the (NATIONAL PLANT)s" and so forth.

Thinking it's a good idea,
New-Quebec

You obviously aren't a coder -- you don't just "add" a few lines of text add poof! it's there. Max needs to code it.

It would be fun. I like it if I could give everything a name.

1: National leader
2: Capital
3: National animal
4: Climate
5: Biggest national Holliday.
6: Biggest river.
7: Kind of housing the leader has (Palace or mansion)
8: Gender of your leader.
9: Character of your leader.
10: title of your leader.
11: Currency.
12: Most important national product.
13: List of enemies and alliances.

It is highly unlikely that any new fields will be added.

It would be fun. I like it if I could give everything a name.

1: National leader
2: Capital
3: National animal
4: Climate
5: Biggest national Holliday.
6: Biggest river.
7: Kind of housing the leader has (Palace or mansion)
8: Gender of your leader.
9: Character of your leader.
10: title of your leader.
11: Currency.
12: Most important national product.
13: List of enemies and alliances.

9, I don't understand, 12 is already used as the nation's top industry and 13 would be very difficult. The others, however, should be (fairly) simple; it's just an extra variable. Of course, this means whoever changes these must add a reference to the variable for every government type, add new references in the current issues and input spaces to type variables in nation creation and options. So, it'd be easy to do, but time-wasting.

'Course, having a Capital City makes trouble for those who don't actually have multiple cities. One of my puppets is so.

EDIT: Of course, it'd be MUCH easier just to keep it to a role-playing issue. Thusly so, it is obvious what action will be taken.

That's right. None.

9, I don't understand, .

Your leader could be violent, sad, funny, methodic, or anything. It helps in RP.

People also like to know if your leader is religious, or a warmonger :cool:

Quite honestly, I think everything on that list except 2 and 3 are a bit of overkill...

But in any case, it really can't be all that difficult. I know it is harder than simply typing in "Add a national capitol", but the code already exists for the other variables... so in theory, all one (specifically Sal or [violet]/Max) would have to do would be to copy the existing code for, say, currency, and change a few words... right? (Sorry if I am being naive, but I write programs for people on my graphing calculator (yes, I'm a bit of a geek), and I do that exact thing to speed up writing almost duplicate parts of the programs.)

9, I don't understand, 12 is already used as the nation's top industry and 13 would be very difficult. The others, however, should be (fairly) simple; it's just an extra variable. Of course, this means whoever changes these must add a reference to the variable for every government type, add new references in the current issues and input spaces to type variables in nation creation and options. So, it'd be easy to do, but time-wasting.


It would be easy to do, but not time-wasting, unless you consider nationstates a complete waste of time, in which case, nothing is worth doing.

However, to make it more interesting for those who do play it, I believe some of these would help spice up gameplay, especially for those who don't want to roleplay and just want to stick with regular nationstates.

As for the list:

1: National leader - Would be interesing, but no effect
2: Capital - What I suggested, and adds issues
3: National animal - Is already done
4: Climate - Is ok, and adds some issues, but not overly good
5: Biggest national Holliday. - Adds some issues, but not overly interesting
6: Biggest river. - Adds some issues and some interest
7: Kind of housing the leader has (Palace or mansion) - No effect, in my opinion
8: Gender of your leader. - Why?
9: Character of your leader. - Should just be left to roleplay, and is determined anyway by what you do with issues
10: title of your leader. - Roleplay
11: Currency. - Is already done
12: Most important national product. - Is already done
13: List of enemies and alliances. - Should be left to roleplay, but a box where you could make a list of them would be good, and peopel visiting your nation would be able to click on "Allies" or "Enemies" to see who is on each list.


Overall, I don't think it requires so much work that is not worth doing, and it adds extra spice to the game. I still think it is a good idea, and worth doing.

New-Quebec

Quite honestly, I think everything on that list except 2 and 3 are a bit of overkill...

But in any case, it really can't be all that difficult. I know it is harder than simply typing in "Add a national capitol", but the code already exists for the other variables...
And then add it to have a dozen or a hundred pages, and then build the database links, and then wait for the 100,000 live nations to update while leaving room for the 900,000 retired nations should they decide to come back, and then build in some code so that if it gets left blank it doesn't screw up the formatting of those pages, and then ...

I don't know coding; but if it was as easy as you say, Sal or [violet] could have done it one of the other 150 times it's been asked. Soemthing as apparently simple as adding a menu link to Telegrams had to wait until they rebuilt the game on Jolt. That tells me there are complications beyond my knowledge or imagination.

I've read some of the PHP and XML discussions in here, and nothing in it looks all that easy to me. I'm admin on another forum, and our lousy 1000 members and little MySQL database are quite a bit of trouble to update and keep refreshed. I'd let it drop.

Overall, I don't think it requires so much work that is not worth doing, and it adds extra spice to the game. I still think it is a good idea, and worth doing.

New-Quebec

I didn't mean it as nation variables, but more like a CIA report. Gender and Title is important, since the leader of my nations (All of them) is a Highpriestess and a Queen. It is hard to form alliances, if you don't know how to name someone. The full title of my leader is: "Queen, Highpriestess of Corinthe." The name is Carinthe, and the character is melangolic, because of the death of her mother. These things don't have to influence the data, but it tells people how to treat, and adress our leader. In case of wanting to roleplay (That is what we do here), it is very important to know. Our leader is peaceful, so you don't have to expect a full-out attack in war roleplay.
It doesn't have to generate calculations, but it is good to know, and gives your nation's leader a personality. Nothing more than that. More of that; Our national language is not English, so we take it as a insult if a party points our spelling mistakes out, while that party never bothered to learn our own language. That happens often, and doesn't help in forming alliances.

All of that is roleplay stuff. Changes to the core coding of the game are highly unlikely to happen.