NationStates Jolt Archive

I don't intend to be a thorn in the side of the moderators: you guys have a tough job to do and I don't want to make that any harder with this suggestion. However, I started playing in NationStates in March of '03, and eventually decided to be on vacation mode for a while. I was deleted sometime in '04 because I had been away for more than 2 months, unfortunately. This is understandable and, at the time, I couldn't get my nation back. When I checked this site a few days ago to find that I could reclaim my nation, I was overjoyed. I got my nation back and began using it immediately. However, I soon discovered a problem: many nations created both at the same time as mine and after mine had much larger populations. While my nation wallowed in the 3 billion region, nations created months after mine had close to 6 billion citizens.

In the pursuit of attaining an international equilibrium and acknowledging a timeframe 'seniority', I would prefer for the game to 'catch up' a nation's population upon their rejoining. Obviously, my motives at proposing this change are mainly personal. However, I do feel that it gives the game a kind of ceteris paribus and rewards long-time players.

Obviously, the downside of this proposal is that nations who could potentially join up and then neglect their nations for years could become superpowers just by signing up once and then never checking-in again. However, what are the chances of people joining up so that they can come back 2 years later? Furthermore, how different is a 2 year period than signing in for 1 second every 2 months (on vacation mode)?

I feel that this is a fair plea for a change to the game, but I'd like to reiterate that it's only a suggestion. Maybe there are flaws in such a suggestion that I'm not aware of. Any ideas on the validity, justification, or benefit of such a change to the game?

Isn't restoring dead nations illegal in NationStates? Or did I misread your post?

No. It's possible to request to moderators that a dead nation be restored if you can prove previous ownership of said nation.

when your nation dies, its population doesnt increase, It stays the same when you died, and when you restore the nation, it will be the same population as when you left it.

if it died when it was 3 billion, and some of your friends who started at the same time continued to play, there population would surpass yours since your nation's population cant grow if it is deleted.

Edit: Spelling errors.

The reward for being here early shows up in your forum posts (Join Date: Mar 2003) and in theory in your XML feed (Founded date, but yours is zero). The reward for signing in at least once every 60 days since your founding is a huge population. It's not a measure of when you joined the game, it's a measure of your continuous commitment to the game.

I don't see seniority as anything more than bragging rights for continuous play. Certainly no one seriously plays their six billion nation as growing at the same rate as a 50 milliion nation. It's a marker, that's all.

I'm not aware of your earlier history, which preceeded my own, so I might be biased towards continuous play. I haven't paid attention to my own population in months (oh look, I'm over 4 billion! Gee!), so obviously it's not a major factor for me. Still, I think granting you additional population despite your two years away from the game is cheating those who have been here all along.

We don't change population for anyone else, for any other reason. I see no outstanding reason to start now.

Hmm... I guess you have an understandable perspective. Maybe this would be somewhat of a marginalizing favoritism ignoring loyalty to the game...