Naivetry
28-03-2009, 06:00
Thought this might be useful here.
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I often see a genuine desire to provide for the military gameplay people, but very little understanding about how our game functions. The most important thing to realize is that military gameplay lives or dies on minor details in the game mechanics... tweaking one thing here or there can destroy communities overnight, as Influence did. Conversely, changing one thing here or there might have the potential to revive communities from the ashes... but none of the changes that have occurred in the last 3 years have benefited the military community in any way, so that's pure speculation. :p
I am speaking as someone with command experience in the NS military as a defender (please, please do not call me a raider - that's like saying everyone who owns a gun, including the police, is in the Mob), although it is not my primary focus in the game. I am a proponent of preserving the military element because it was the origin and remains the underlying source for all NationStates power politics - by which I mean the rise and fall and interrelationship of regional communities, not the passage of WA legislation. These, then, are the basics, and they are absolutely foundational. I hope that this overview will help to remove some of the fundamental misunderstandings and misleading assumptions about the military game that generally plague people who have not participated in it themselves.
A. Definitions
1) Invasion - nations moving into a region in order to control the WA Delegacy
2) Liberation - an invasion that aims to return the WA Delegacy to the "natives"
3) Raider - someone who invades in order to exert their own control over a region
4) Defender - someone who invades in order to preserve or return "native" control
5) Native - someone who resides in a region and considers it home (highly contested definition)
B. Mechanics
1. Update - NS updates twice during the day. The major update occurs from 2-4 am EST, depending on the region. This is the only time when the WA Delegacy changes, and so all military activity leads up to this hour.
2. The Numbers Game - Who controls the WA Delegacy is determined only by who has the most endorsements at update. This is the biggest reason why WA multying is illegal. Because WA multying is illegal, success in the military game depends upon cooperation, planning, and coordination. Well-developed military organizations have complete ranking systems, a chain of command, special awards and conditions of promotion, training materials, scheduling, and division of labor within the army itself. Even given these elements, the essential thing is, in the end, simply to outnumber your opponent. The drop in NS population has therefore had a devastating effect on the excitement of the military game as battles that were formerly orchestrated nightly on the scale of hundreds of players have dropped to encounters with 5-10 people - on a really good evening.
3. Influence - Each WA Delegate has an amount of Influence to spend. Influence is gained primarily by gathering endorsements, and secondarily by remaining in the same region for a long time. Nations gather Influence much more slowly in a large region than in a small region. If you move to a new region, you will very quickly lose all of the Influence you had accumulated in your old region. Influence allows you to eject or banject (eject and ban) nations, and institute passwords. You can never be certain exactly how much Influence you have left to spend.
4. Eject, banject, passwords - It costs the Delegate more Influence to banject nations than simply to eject them. It costs the Delegate more Influence to eject a nation the more Influence that nation has. It costs more Influence to set an invisible password than to set one that is visible to nations in the region. Once the Delegate runs out of Influence, he is out of Influence until after the next update. If an attack is launched on the region while the Delegate is out of Influence, the Delegate can do nothing to stop it. Any region is safe, however, so long as it has an active Founder. The Founder can eject and ban nations without cost, and so for as long as the Founder remains, no community is ever in danger of total annihilation.
C. Tactics
1. Time is of the essence - If you are a raider, you will have the greatest chance of not being spotted and prevented from taking a region if you move into a region very close to update. If you are a defender, you will have the greatest chance of succeeding in a liberation if you move into a region very close to update. If the raider delegate is awake during update, he will be watching for movement into the region and will banject new nations before their endorsements can be counted.
2. Switchers - Because of the possibility of being banned by an active raider delegate, defenders have developed a tactic that allows them to switch between WA nations almost instantaneously (rather than waiting for 24 hours), without ever having more than one in the WA at the same time. This is a vital tactic for defenders who are attempting to liberate a region, so that they can have a second chance during the same night if their first attempt to liberate a region fails.
3. Puppets - Defenders quickly figured out that raids could be spotted and prevented by tracking raider nations. Raiders responded by creating dozens of puppets and using them as "clean," disposable nations. Once a puppet has participated in a raid, it is "dirty," and is typically not used again. These puppets drop WA status (so that WA status may be shifted to another puppet) and are normally left to CTE. Some may, in fact, never be used. If absence of nation activity is a good sign of such puppets, approximately 30-60% of the nations 4-7 days old and still residing in the Pacifics consist of puppets of this kind.
4. Mobility - Due to a desire to conceal one's identity as a raider or defender from the other side, the vast majority of raider/defender WA nations never reside in their home regions. Raider organizations sometimes retain ties to on-site regions, and sometimes they do not. It should be stressed that, aside from advertising their organization more easily, there is no real reason why raiders should base themselves out of a region at all.
5. Intel - Because of this deadlock over tactics on-site, a complicated spy-game developed. Since the advent of Influence and the drastic depopulation of the military gameplay community, this Intel game is practically dead. From the defender side, it consisted of multiple levels - anything from tracking suspected raider puppets to adopting a false identity under which to join a raider forum. Once defender agents had worked themselves into positions of trust within the raider hierarchy, the organization's raids could be subtly undermined, their members identified in any attempts to counter-infiltrate, and eventually the whole raiding group might be dismantled.
D. What's the Big Deal?
1. Raiders - I assume raiders enjoy raiding for the thrill of transgression/power, the challenge, and the bragging rights. A raid that is not advertised on the WFE is pointless. A raid conducted where no one else cares to control the region is also pointless. And finally, a raid that doesn't have the potential to shock is pointless... in fact, the bigger the shock value, the better. Raiding pushes the boundaries of what is acceptable; raids are about seeing what you can get away with. This is why Influence killed the raiding game - it said that anything raiders could do, they would now by default get away with. And so many of the raiders who liked the momentary thrill of transgression left, and the griefers - the people who played for permanent control and the total destruction of regions - remained, with a guarantee that no mod would interfere with them again.
2. Defenders - Until the advent of Influence, defenders almost universally saw themselves as the protectors of NationStates in a very black-and-white world. Raiders took away a nation's right to live in peace, and a region's right to self-determination. This was morally unacceptable, and raiders were often ostracized from the larger political world where peace was the primary desire. Still today, defenders fight because raiders fight first. They have no raison d'etre except to prevent raiders from wielding power over others. Defenders do not, and never have, fought competitively with raiders as if conflict were an end in itself. They fight as protectors. They fight for ideals. Therefore, it is impossible to maintain the raiding/defending game in a designated 'war is okay here' area - witness the epic failure of the warzones. If war is okay, the defenders have no motivation to stop it (and then the raiders have no reason to raid if they're not going to get a rise out of people, and so on in a vicious cycle). This is why Influence killed the defending game - it declared the moral argument meaningless. Might makes right in NS. The defenders still around are simply in denial of the very clear game rules, that anything you can do to a region, goes.
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Forgive me in advance for linking to this from every other post in Technical. ;)
--------------
I often see a genuine desire to provide for the military gameplay people, but very little understanding about how our game functions. The most important thing to realize is that military gameplay lives or dies on minor details in the game mechanics... tweaking one thing here or there can destroy communities overnight, as Influence did. Conversely, changing one thing here or there might have the potential to revive communities from the ashes... but none of the changes that have occurred in the last 3 years have benefited the military community in any way, so that's pure speculation. :p
I am speaking as someone with command experience in the NS military as a defender (please, please do not call me a raider - that's like saying everyone who owns a gun, including the police, is in the Mob), although it is not my primary focus in the game. I am a proponent of preserving the military element because it was the origin and remains the underlying source for all NationStates power politics - by which I mean the rise and fall and interrelationship of regional communities, not the passage of WA legislation. These, then, are the basics, and they are absolutely foundational. I hope that this overview will help to remove some of the fundamental misunderstandings and misleading assumptions about the military game that generally plague people who have not participated in it themselves.
A. Definitions
1) Invasion - nations moving into a region in order to control the WA Delegacy
2) Liberation - an invasion that aims to return the WA Delegacy to the "natives"
3) Raider - someone who invades in order to exert their own control over a region
4) Defender - someone who invades in order to preserve or return "native" control
5) Native - someone who resides in a region and considers it home (highly contested definition)
B. Mechanics
1. Update - NS updates twice during the day. The major update occurs from 2-4 am EST, depending on the region. This is the only time when the WA Delegacy changes, and so all military activity leads up to this hour.
2. The Numbers Game - Who controls the WA Delegacy is determined only by who has the most endorsements at update. This is the biggest reason why WA multying is illegal. Because WA multying is illegal, success in the military game depends upon cooperation, planning, and coordination. Well-developed military organizations have complete ranking systems, a chain of command, special awards and conditions of promotion, training materials, scheduling, and division of labor within the army itself. Even given these elements, the essential thing is, in the end, simply to outnumber your opponent. The drop in NS population has therefore had a devastating effect on the excitement of the military game as battles that were formerly orchestrated nightly on the scale of hundreds of players have dropped to encounters with 5-10 people - on a really good evening.
3. Influence - Each WA Delegate has an amount of Influence to spend. Influence is gained primarily by gathering endorsements, and secondarily by remaining in the same region for a long time. Nations gather Influence much more slowly in a large region than in a small region. If you move to a new region, you will very quickly lose all of the Influence you had accumulated in your old region. Influence allows you to eject or banject (eject and ban) nations, and institute passwords. You can never be certain exactly how much Influence you have left to spend.
4. Eject, banject, passwords - It costs the Delegate more Influence to banject nations than simply to eject them. It costs the Delegate more Influence to eject a nation the more Influence that nation has. It costs more Influence to set an invisible password than to set one that is visible to nations in the region. Once the Delegate runs out of Influence, he is out of Influence until after the next update. If an attack is launched on the region while the Delegate is out of Influence, the Delegate can do nothing to stop it. Any region is safe, however, so long as it has an active Founder. The Founder can eject and ban nations without cost, and so for as long as the Founder remains, no community is ever in danger of total annihilation.
C. Tactics
1. Time is of the essence - If you are a raider, you will have the greatest chance of not being spotted and prevented from taking a region if you move into a region very close to update. If you are a defender, you will have the greatest chance of succeeding in a liberation if you move into a region very close to update. If the raider delegate is awake during update, he will be watching for movement into the region and will banject new nations before their endorsements can be counted.
2. Switchers - Because of the possibility of being banned by an active raider delegate, defenders have developed a tactic that allows them to switch between WA nations almost instantaneously (rather than waiting for 24 hours), without ever having more than one in the WA at the same time. This is a vital tactic for defenders who are attempting to liberate a region, so that they can have a second chance during the same night if their first attempt to liberate a region fails.
3. Puppets - Defenders quickly figured out that raids could be spotted and prevented by tracking raider nations. Raiders responded by creating dozens of puppets and using them as "clean," disposable nations. Once a puppet has participated in a raid, it is "dirty," and is typically not used again. These puppets drop WA status (so that WA status may be shifted to another puppet) and are normally left to CTE. Some may, in fact, never be used. If absence of nation activity is a good sign of such puppets, approximately 30-60% of the nations 4-7 days old and still residing in the Pacifics consist of puppets of this kind.
4. Mobility - Due to a desire to conceal one's identity as a raider or defender from the other side, the vast majority of raider/defender WA nations never reside in their home regions. Raider organizations sometimes retain ties to on-site regions, and sometimes they do not. It should be stressed that, aside from advertising their organization more easily, there is no real reason why raiders should base themselves out of a region at all.
5. Intel - Because of this deadlock over tactics on-site, a complicated spy-game developed. Since the advent of Influence and the drastic depopulation of the military gameplay community, this Intel game is practically dead. From the defender side, it consisted of multiple levels - anything from tracking suspected raider puppets to adopting a false identity under which to join a raider forum. Once defender agents had worked themselves into positions of trust within the raider hierarchy, the organization's raids could be subtly undermined, their members identified in any attempts to counter-infiltrate, and eventually the whole raiding group might be dismantled.
D. What's the Big Deal?
1. Raiders - I assume raiders enjoy raiding for the thrill of transgression/power, the challenge, and the bragging rights. A raid that is not advertised on the WFE is pointless. A raid conducted where no one else cares to control the region is also pointless. And finally, a raid that doesn't have the potential to shock is pointless... in fact, the bigger the shock value, the better. Raiding pushes the boundaries of what is acceptable; raids are about seeing what you can get away with. This is why Influence killed the raiding game - it said that anything raiders could do, they would now by default get away with. And so many of the raiders who liked the momentary thrill of transgression left, and the griefers - the people who played for permanent control and the total destruction of regions - remained, with a guarantee that no mod would interfere with them again.
2. Defenders - Until the advent of Influence, defenders almost universally saw themselves as the protectors of NationStates in a very black-and-white world. Raiders took away a nation's right to live in peace, and a region's right to self-determination. This was morally unacceptable, and raiders were often ostracized from the larger political world where peace was the primary desire. Still today, defenders fight because raiders fight first. They have no raison d'etre except to prevent raiders from wielding power over others. Defenders do not, and never have, fought competitively with raiders as if conflict were an end in itself. They fight as protectors. They fight for ideals. Therefore, it is impossible to maintain the raiding/defending game in a designated 'war is okay here' area - witness the epic failure of the warzones. If war is okay, the defenders have no motivation to stop it (and then the raiders have no reason to raid if they're not going to get a rise out of people, and so on in a vicious cycle). This is why Influence killed the defending game - it declared the moral argument meaningless. Might makes right in NS. The defenders still around are simply in denial of the very clear game rules, that anything you can do to a region, goes.
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Forgive me in advance for linking to this from every other post in Technical. ;)