NationStates Jolt Archive

I apologize if this doesn't belong on this forum; I didn't see any N00b Help or anything similar.

I'm getting rapidly more and more confused about this game and how to play it. Here are my main issues:

1) Nation description. Is this completely random? Is there any way to edit it? Also, how reflective of your nation is it, and what does it change based on? My nation, in the course of 8 hrs. of sleep and one formalized issue position on nothing divisive, rewrote its entire description and changed from a Capitalist Paradise to a Non-Offensive Centrist Democracy, and I got downgraded in two categories, from Thriving to Good (Economy) and Excellent to Good (Political Freedoms). My description got an income tax, doubled my population, took out several chunks of description and left others, and cut off some of the little blurbs about my issue decisions. Wtf is this???

2) Extra traits of your country. Constitution, imports/exports, item-by-item spending, and just various national characteristics - are they real, or just made-up, and is there any way to change them? When people talk about this and that feature of their country - is there actually a way to control or set that, or is it just an individually recorded RPG-style list of traits people do or do not do on their own time and paper?

ANSWERED

3) Names of countries - I know I've seen nation names that weren't on that drop-down list; obviously custom-written stuff. On the other hand, I don't remember seeing a "write your own" option. Is there some kind of privilege system? "Get big/old enough, and you get editor's scissors" kid of thing?

ANSWERED

4) Rankings - where exactly do these come from? To be rankings, they have to be based upon numerical values, such as military spending - can I observe these values? How do I tell what my spending on this or that is? Can I control it, outside of issues? Also, how much of it is decided by issues? I logged on today and went from 3rd to 5th in regional ranking in defense spending, when I decided on an issue last night to spend extra money on defense and law enforcement. I was also newly ranked in the Most Politically Apathetic Population category - what's up with that? Was I just randomly assigned that? I know I didn't do anything to foster it.

5) Other countries - Can you trade with them? Be attacked or invaded by them? When you trade with them, is this anything related to the account user? Is invasion something you can do anything about? Basically, is there any interaction between nations outside of the U.N. that involves the user?

ANSWERED

1) Nation description. Is this completely random? Is there any way to edit it? Also, how reflective of your nation is it, and what does it change based on? My nation, in the course of 8 hrs. of sleep and one formalized issue position on nothing divisive, rewrote its entire description and changed from a Capitalist Paradise to a Non-Offensive Centrist Democracy, and I got downgraded in two categories, from Thriving to Good (Economy) and Excellent to Good (Political Freedoms). My description got an income tax, doubled my population, took out several chunks of description and left others, and cut off some of the little blurbs about my issue decisions. Wtf is this???

your nation description is decided by how you answer the issues your given, your government type, economy, etc are also changed based on how you answer them.
The reason some parts of your nation description are cut off is because it only shows a few of your most recent decisions, thats also where the extra stuff came from


3) Names of countries - I know I've seen nation names that weren't on that drop-down list; obviously custom-written stuff. On the other hand, I don't remember seeing a "write your own" option. Is there some kind of privilege system? "Get big/old enough, and you get editor's scissors" kid of thing?

when you get to 500 million population you can choose your own custom title for your nation


5) Other countries - Can you trade with them? Be attacked or invaded by them? When you trade with them, is this anything related to the account user? Is invasion something you can do anything about? Basically, is there any interaction between nations outside of the U.N. that involves the user?

trade + wars are both roleplayed in international incidents forum, there is a way to invade regions via UN nations (i'd suggest reading some of the stickies for help with that :) )

alot of stuff for detailed statistics for your nation you can either find from the nationstates xml feed, or from other websites dedicated to nationstates such as NSeconomy (example printout from it: http://nseconomy.thirdgeek.com/nseconomy.php?nation=the+yi+ta)

Thank you very much. That helps illuminate some things. When you were talking about the description, though....do you know why mine so suddenly and drastically changed, literally overnight? If it wasn't for the name and flag, I'd swear I'd logged in to the wrong country. The changes don't seem to reflect my decisions either.

Re: nation description

http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=460287

2) Extra traits of your country. Constitution, imports/exports, item-by-item spending, and just various national characteristics - are they real, or just made-up, and is there any way to change them? When people talk about this and that feature of their country - is there actually a way to control or set that, or is it just an individually recorded RPG-style list of traits people do or do not do on their own time and paper?

It's generally made up, but loosely based on your official statistics provided by the game.

In response to part of your third question, all data about your nation may be found at http://www.nationstates.net/cgi-bin/nationdata.cgi/nation=NationName (replace NationName with your nation)

2) Extra traits of your country. Constitution, imports/exports, item-by-item spending, and just various national characteristics - are they real, or just made-up, and is there any way to change them? When people talk about this and that feature of their country - is there actually a way to control or set that, or is it just an individually recorded RPG-style list of traits people do or do not do on their own time and paper?

Check out something like NSEconomy and other calculators. These are unoffical though.

2) Extra traits of your country. Constitution, imports/exports, item-by-item spending, and just various national characteristics - are they real, or just made-up, and is there any way to change them? When people talk about this and that feature of their country - is there actually a way to control or set that, or is it just an individually recorded RPG-style list of traits people do or do not do on their own time and paper?
Some of these stats can be found using calculators such as NSEconomy (http://nseconomy.thirdgeek.com/) or NSTracker (http://nstracker.retrogade.com/). As for constitutions, detailed factbooks and breakdowns of military forces etc., those players must create on their own time.

4) Rankings - where exactly do these come from? To be rankings, they have to be based upon numerical values, such as military spending - can I observe these values? How do I tell what my spending on this or that is? Can I control it, outside of issues? Also, how much of it is decided by issues? I logged on today and went from 3rd to 5th in regional ranking in defense spending, when I decided on an issue last night to spend extra money on defense and law enforcement. I was also newly ranked in the Most Politically Apathetic Population category - what's up with that? Was I just randomly assigned that? I know I didn't do anything to foster it.
For UN Rankings, these are determined every day based on a number of variables: economic rating, private sector, military spending, etc. plus a lot of secret ones that only the Moderators (and me of course, being the omnipotent and omniscient Ruler of the Multiverse ;)), so they're not very easy to explain. As for military spending, only by answering issues can you increase that. To find out how much you spend, check on one of those calculators, or if you want to make up your own budget stats (like me) you can, just keep them realistic.

Hope this helps a bit.

~The Libertarian Concordance of Czardas~
Supreme Ruler of the Multiverse
Occasional Newbie Aid of NS (whenever I remember)
NS General Sarcazm Master
Slayer of Enemies, &c.

Re: nation description

http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=460287

I had the same thing, but didn't think too much of it, since it wasn't serious enough to matter.

On the other hand, what's just happened to me is like waking up to find that your race has changed, you've shrunk by a foot, you've gained 20 lbs., and you have an advanced case of leprosy. If there are any mods around, I'd really like to know how my entire nation changed completely in a way I didn't decide on, literally overnight.

Also, the new description is self-contradictory as well as drastically changed. I'm a "socially progressive nation notable for its complete lack of social welfare." Riiight...:rolleyes:

If there are any mods around, I'd really like to know how my entire nation changed completely in a way I didn't decide on, literally overnight.

kat is a mod so that link is maybe a good bet for a start :)

Issues often have suprise consequences that you didnt expect, so that could be why theres a change between what your decisions might have been meant to say and what your nation actually does say now

Thank you very much. That helps illuminate some things. When you were talking about the description, though....do you know why mine so suddenly and drastically changed, literally overnight? If it wasn't for the name and flag, I'd swear I'd logged in to the wrong country. The changes don't seem to reflect my decisions either.
When you have a new nation (say, below 50 million population), the daily issues and your responses to them affect your country far more than they do when you're nation is bigger (say, over 1 billion population).
Also, the options you choose for issues may have effects that you wouldn't necessarily expect. Don't try and second-guess issue effects. The issue editors here are crazy people.