(A01) Intro to NS I, Class 1

Monte Ozarka

Monte Ozarka

TNPer
Hello, students, and welcome to Intro to NS I!

Introduction

As you may have figured out already, NationStates is a fairly simple game on the surface. You log in, answer issues, check regional rankings; rinse, repeat. Your population goes up, your UN rankings change, and so does your regional rankings. So, for such a simple text-based game, why are there people who have stuck around and been addicted to it for years and years? Surely, there has to be something more to it?

The answer is that there is and there isn't. There's very little more to the game technically. Here's what you can do in-game: answer issues, submit new issues, make and receive telegrams, move regions, join the United Nations (and answer UN issues, endorse other nations, and try to become UN delegate), found your own region, and talk on the Regional Message Board. That's really not much, when you think about it. However, with a bit of creativity, you can make your NationStates experience so much more. Out of the very limited game mechanics that we have to work with, players have managed to extract out a very rich, full, and varied game.

For example, from the regional structure, players have developed regional governance. From the United Nations, players have similarly developed a basis for military force. With military force comes invading and defending, and with that comes the backbone for inter-regional politics and the various intrigues that are attached to it.

The above focuses on the gameplay aspect of NationStates (i.e. what you do in-game), but many other creative nations have collectively formed a vibrant roleplay community. Since this game is based on players controlling individual nations, national roleplays are especially popular. International events, wars, domestic intrigue, arms sales, sporting events, and more are acted out every minute by players from all across the NationStates world.

All this and more exist widely throughout this game. My purpose in teaching this course will be to introduce them to you and help you maintain your enjoyment of this game. :)

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While I make the finishing touches on the first lecture, please introduce yourselves. Class participation is encouraged, as is generally being chill. "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy." :lol:

The syllabus for the class is attached in the next post.

Quick links:
Syllabus
Lesson 1
 
Syllabus:
A01 Introduction to NationStates I

Instructor: Monte Ozarka
Office hours: Uh...anytime. Personal message me on these forums.

Meeting times: Sundays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays. Lectures will be posted in the evening (Pacific time), and discussion can continue indefinitely.
Course description: In this course, I will be teaching you about the technical aspects of NS and giving you an overview of the many things that you can take do in NationStates.

Grading information: Your grade will be based by and large on a final exam that will be administered beginning the evening of Thursday July 5th. It will last for exactly 72 hours, based on the time that I send the actual exam. Furthermore, I will be giving bonus points based on class participation in both asking and answering questions. Please refer to the final grading information here.

General topics to be covered: Technical how-to's of nation management, the United Nations, answering issues, creating a new nation, roleplay, governance, and invading/defending.

Class schedule
Unit 1: The nuts and bolts of NS
  • Class 1 (June 17): Introduction and nation management

  • Class 2 (June 19): Issues

  • Class 3 (June 21): The United Nations

  • Class 4 (June 24): Game rules and technical help
Unit 2: Beyond issues--Expanding your NS world
  • Class 5 (June 26): NS forums and roleplay

  • Class 6 (June 28): Creating a new nation or region

  • Class 7 (July 1): Invading and defending

  • Class 8 (July 3): Governance, politics, and espionage

Final exam: The format of the final exam is still yet to be formalized. However, expect a few knowledge-based, scenario-based, and short answer questions.
Click to expand...
 
Lecture 1: Nation Management "WTF do these links do?"

Our first lecture will be about the technical aspects of nation management--essentially, what buttons do what and how your nation relates to the NS world. This may not be the most interesting lesson in the world (and is rather lengthy, to boot), so feel free to simply skim or skip what you know already. (Also, if the number of pictures is killing your connection, let me know so I can go ahead and change it.)

I made a nation...Holy crap, where am I?
Relax. Your new nation got randomly spawned in one of the game-created "feeders"--The Pacific, The East Pacific, The North Pacific, The South Pacific, and The West Pacific. Every nation starts out in one of these five regions. (There are a few other game-created regions out there, but you don't need to know about them yet.)

A nation will always be part of a "region". It can be a one-person region, sure, but as far as game mechanics go, your nation must always be in one. You can move around regions as much as you like, but some regions are password-protected.

Before we can talk more about the nation, let's get acquainted with the controls...
 
Learning to get around

Logged out
First, you have to pull up the NationStates page. Here's what you'll see when you're not logged in:

NS_login_markedcopy.gif


(NOTE: From here on out, I'll refer to stuff in the left-hand frame as "(left)" and those in the right as "(right)".)

You see some different-colored asterisks up there. When you're on this screen, each member of an asterisk color pair takes you to the same place. Redundant, I know, but whatever. Let's take a look at their various functions.
  • "Login" (left)/"Log In" (right): Either of these will log you in. Your nation name is not case-sensitive.
  • "CREATE A NATION" (left)/"Create a Nation" (right): This takes you to the nation creation page. I assume that all of you already have a nation, but if you haven't created a nation yet, we'll be going over nation creation in greater detail in a later lecture, but I'll be happy to go over it with you now via PM or IM.
  • "HOME" (left): Takes you to this exact same page.
  • "THE WORLD" (left)/"See the World" (right): Takes you to a page where you can see world rankings and random daily World Factbook Entry. You can also search for nations and regions by name on this page.
  • "UNITED NATIONS" (left): Takes you to where the United Nations does its business. You can see the current issue up to vote here.
  • "NEWS" (left): This is a page with news from Max Barry and the admins.
  • "FAQ" (left)/"How to Play" (right): Some answers to questions that new players often have.
  • "ABOUT" (left): A short description of NationStates.
  • "FORUM" (left): Takes you to the official NationStates forums, hosted by Jolt Gaming.
  • The stuff beneath the login box: These are the latest threads to be posted in in the Jolt forums.
 
Logged in

When you're logged in, the page will look somewhat different. Let's use my TNP nation as an example. Obviously, the text will be different for your nation, but everything is still in the same places. You'll recognize some things that you filled out when you made your nation:

NS_nation_top_markedcopy.gif


The nation's name, motto, and flag are all chosen by you. Everything else is automatically generated by the game. Your national animal and currency are also embedded within the "National Description" near the end.

Furthermore, you'll notice that the left-hand fram has changed a bit. Once again, we see Max's love of redundancy. Everything marked with the same color asterisk leads to the same place.

NS_nation_markedcopy.gif


Let's go over the things that changed:
  • "<NATION>", i.e. "MONTE OZARKA" (left): This takes you back to your nation's page.
  • "<REGION>", i.e. "THE NORTH PACIFIC" (left)/"<Region>" (right): This takes you to your region's page.
  • "ISSUES" (left)/"You have <Number> outstanding issues!" (right): Issues affect your UN rankings up above. Use this to mold the characteristics of your nation, and watch it change!
  • "TELEGRAMS" (left)/"You have <Number> telegrams!" (right): Telegrams are messages from other nations. You can only have 15 telegrams at a time in your box, so remember to clean it out occasionally.
  • "DOSSIER" (left)/"View Dossier" (right): This is a handy way to keep track of other nations. Add nations to the dossier to find them easily without searching.
  • "SETTINGS" (left): Lets you change your nation and game settings. Uh, not much more to say.
  • "LOGOUT" (left): Logs you out of your nation. And bakes you a cookie. (Not really.)
 
Settings

All of these should be pretty straightforward, but let's go ahead and take a look at the Settings page:

NS_settings_markedcopy.gif


The first box that I labeled "National Pretitle" is where you choose how your nation is styled, i.e. "The United States...", "The Republic...", etc. Until you hit 500 million in population, you have a drop-down menu of possible options to choose from. Once you do, you get to make up your own, if you so wish.

The email address that you enter into "E-mail" is where all your NS-related announcements will go. If you wish to post on the official NS forums or join the United Nations, you must put down a valid email address, as there is an email confirmation step involved.

Under "New issues", you can choose how often you wish new issues to be submitted to your nation for decision. Keep in mind, though, that your nation only keeps up to five issues at a time. We will be going more into issues in the next lecture.

If you have "Vacation Mode" checked, your nation doesn't receive any new issues for the duration, and your nation is deleted for inactivity after 40 days rather than the typical 14 days. This is a good thing to have checked if you don't particularly care about issues or if you're lazy about logging in.

On this page, you can change your national motto, currency, animal, and flag to your heart's content. Just remember to stay within the rules. Therefore, keep away from profanity, sex, and Nazi swastikas in not only the text fields but also your flag. Game rules will be covered in a later lecture.

Make any changes as needed, and click "Update Settings".
 
Regional page

There's a lot of info on this page, but everything should be pretty self-explanatory. When you're in the region, you will be ranked in the regional UN ranking each day, and you will be able to post on the RMB and endorse people in the region (when you're in the UN--more on that in a later lecture). At the top of the page, you'll see:

NS_region_top_markedcopy.gif


And further down, you'll see this.

And finally, at the bottom, you'll see a place for you to add a message to the RMB.
 
Moving regions

In order to move your nation to another region, you must first navigate to that region's NS page and then click "Move <Nation> to <Destination Region> today!" Here's where the link is on the page for The Proletariat Coalition, a region that my nation isn't in currently:

NS_move_markedcopy.gif
 
Other odds and ends that don't really fit anywhere. Plus, it's 3:30am, and I'm tired...
  • The UN Delegate is the UN nation with the greatest number of endorsements in the region. More in the UN lecture.
  • You may have wondered about "Regional Influence". It's complicated, but basically, it denotes how expensive it would be to the UN Delegate's influence if they eject you from the region.
  • Oh, by the way, the UN Delegate can eject nations from the region. More on this in the United Nations lecture.
  • You can found your own region. More on this later.
  • Regional founders can eject whomever whenever from their regions with no influence cost. "Feeders" and other game-created regions do not have founders.
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Whew! That was lengthy and kinda dense. I promise it won't be so bad in later lectures.

For today, I'd like to simply know if there's any aspect of NationStates that you're particularly interested in. (Check the syllabus for some ideas.)

Anyways, if you have any questions, feel free to ask here or in a Private Message, and I'll respond as soon as I can.
 
Wow, that was long, but good job. Anyway, Would you explain the regional influence part of kicking a nation out for me? You said how expensive to would be, but that didn't really make too much sense.
 
Nice first lecture.
I'm taking this course as a start of getting more involved in TNP and the university seemed a good place.
There was nothing wonderfully new in that lecture though it serves as a nice intro. One question though - does the dossier actually have much use ever? I've yet to do anything with mine.


About me - I've aplied to do the basic degree (AoNS) as a primer for everything that goes on here. I'm currently logged in quite often but this will unfortunately depend on my job over the summer as I'm teaching at a summer school in England in later in summer.
However the rest of the year I live in Poland. I'm
In the real world I graduated with a degree in International Relations and Security Studies hence my interest in NationStates.
 
Brooksadice:
Wow, that was long, but good job. Anyway, Would you explain the regional influence part of kicking a nation out for me? You said how expensive to would be, but that didn't really make too much sense.
Click to expand...
Good question. :) Guess now's as good a time as any to go over Influence.

Basically, the game calculates your nation's influence by doing some magical, secret math based on, as far as we know: 1) how long you've been in the region, and 2) how many endorsements from UN nations you've received. If you're the UN Delegate, it's also affected by your actions (see below). As far as I know, that magic number is then compared with the magical numbers of everyone else in the region, and you are then ranked. However, increasing in rank with regards to regional influence is very slow.

The admins refuse to release the official list of rankings, but apparently, this is the most up-to-date list based off of empirical evidence that we have (in decreasing influence level):
Regional influence rankings:
  1.  Hermit
  2. Hegemony
  3. Dominator
  4. Superpower
  5. Power
  6. Powerbroker
  7. Eminence Grise
  8. Enforcer
  9. Dealmaker
  10. Instigator
  11. Contender
  12. Negotiator
  13. Auxiliary
  14. Ambassador
  15. Diplomat
  16. Envoy
  17. Duckspeaker
  18. Handshaker
  19. Truckler
  20. Vassal
  21. Minnow
Click to expand...

The UN Delegate can take several actions that we laypeople can't: 1) kick people out of the region, 2) ban people from the region, 3) change the WFE, and 4) password-protect the region. In all the feeders (TNP included), #4 doesn't apply. We get special rules. :eyeroll:

But, all of those actions (with the exception of #3) cost a certain amount of influence. Read: It subtracts some amount off of your magical number from above. More importantly, kicking people out of the region and banning people from the region differ in cost dependent upon the influence level of the nation being kicked/banned. Let's take a look at an example:

Chodean Kal's regional influence: Handshaker
Monte Ozarka's regional influence: Minnow
Former English Colony's regional influence: Diplomat

In this example, it will cost Chodean Kal far less influence to kick/ban me than to kick/ban FEC.

Why does this matter? A Delegate can run out of influence if they use it too much, and when he does, he is little more than a sitting duck and can no longer use the powers given to UN Delegates until his influence rises again. (The influence system was designed as a way to limit the power of Delegates.) Therefore, not only is it harder to kick out a high-influence nation, it would oftentimes be prohibitively expensive to do so.

NOTE: Influence does not get carried around with you from region to region. If you're a Powerbroker in a small region, you can't waltz on into TNP and stay a Powerbroker.

Some stuff on influence, if you care to wade through it:I hope that made the details a bit more clear. Either that, or you're more confused now, since no one is ever quite sure how influence works. :lol:

EDIT: Dali was quick to inform me that he could, indeed, eject anyone from the region. Oops. My mistake.
 
sam_acw:
Nice first lecture.
I'm taking this course as a start of getting more involved in TNP and the university seemed a good place.
There was nothing wonderfully new in that lecture though it serves as a nice intro. One question though - does the dossier actually have much use ever? I've yet to do anything with mine.


About me - I've aplied to do the basic degree (AoNS) as a primer for everything that goes on here. I'm currently logged in quite often but this will unfortunately depend on my job over the summer as I'm teaching at a summer school in England in later in summer.
However the rest of the year I live in Poland. I'm
In the real world I graduated with a degree in International Relations and Security Studies hence my interest in NationStates.
Click to expand...
Yeah, sorry about the lengthiness of it. I figured most of y'all knew about the stuff covered in here, but I wanted to cover the basics first.

As to the dossier, I have only ever found it useful when tracking invaders...and bad ones, at that. It can also be used as a way to keep track of UN Delegates in regions at risk of being invaded. You don't have to keep track of the region names--simply click the nation and check out the region to make sure that everything is all nice and quiet. But yeah, I've never really used it outside of defending... :/

We're glad to have you here, sam_acw. :) Hope you'll find NS to be a fun game and stick around. What are you teaching in England, if you don't mind me asking?
 
That helped for the most part, I understand it more now than before when you brought it up. Thanks for that.
 
Thanks for that.
I'm an English guy living in Poland and teaching English here - I'm heading back to teach Italian teenagers English over the summer.
 
Well, only skimmed through because I think I've got a good handle on these basics. Very well thought out. I can tell this class is going to be very..complete.

A little about me: I work part time in a bakery, and full time at a tv station. My job is centered around making sure programming plays as it should on time on the correct channel. I do alot of technical work, fixing cameras, building cables, setting up all kinds of things video related. I do some camera work and post production on the side as well. I'm very materialistic, I like having nice stuff. It causes me to be broke, but it's ok because I have nice stuff. :) No, I'm not a snob about it. I don't look down on people because they may not have some flashy jewelry or the bells and whistles on their vehicle. But I do enjoy mine. :)
 
Cool, glad to meet you all.

Speaking of baking and materialism, I have a problem. Every couple of days at home, I bake something. I also keep on buying kitchen and cleaning supplies. Also, adorable little storage devices like a decorative rustic wooden basket. I'd like to think that I'm an independent woman, but it seems that the domestic side of me is raging within me. :(

..........What kind of college student (living in a dorm, with meals provided) needs a springform pan, thermal pot, and bottle pourers (for liquor)? :shrug:
 
I don't see a problem, I see an opportunity! Baking is fun. And I'm not convinced it's a domestic woman thing. As a college age male I find the need to bake sometimes when I'm bored. I was recently sick and housebound for several days due to doctor's orders. After cleaning EVERYTHING, I turned to baking to entertain myself.

Neat storage containters, cool! You gotta have somewhere to put your baking goods!

:)
 
Great class. I wish you had started this a month ago. I figured this stuff out already, but is was a very nice presentation which will be beneficial to anyone when they first join. This was only the first class and you have to cover the basics first; I'm greatly looking forward to the rest of the course.

I'm 36 years old, fairly new to NS. I've played many strategy games and RPG games, and can see why NS is so addictive. I'm a CompTIA Certified Computer Technician from Canada. I currently work as a Sales Rep. for a tech-related company.
 
Again a great class, one which obviously involved a lengthy inspirational period around 3am. I only use the dossier to find people i telegram. Despite its apparent length this class today was very comprehensive and worth reading and also when reading it myself seemed to represent Monte Ozarka teaching skills.

What else...

Well i'm 16 and relatively middle aged by NS standards,living in S. UK (the sunnier,less rainy bit). I am in the last days of my Secondary Sch exams and plan to return 16+ to a school that has the nerve to block Nationstates. Besides that theres not much i can say in annomity.

Baking... Not really at that stage yet, though i can see myself with some bizarre material possessions eventually.
 
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