by Max Barry

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We Were Offline And It Was Dark And Cold

by Max Barry
Tue, 27 Dec 2022

I'm not sure if you noticed but the site was unavailable for four and a half days just there. It wasn't great, to be honest. Here's the story:

What's Working

Almost everything should be back and working fine, with no data loss.

What's Not Working

  • Trading Cards bids & asks: The major casualty of this episode, apart from the sleep and sanity of admins, is bids and asks on Trading Cards. We're not able to safely restore these. This means you will need to re-set any bids and asks you had before.

What's Different

We kicked back the Cease To Exist (CTE) timer: for a limited time, nations now cease to exist after 35 days of inactivity, not 28.

We temporarily suspended processing of World Assembly resolutions and proposals, so some of those are still there even though voting should have closed. This will resume in about 48 hours.

What Went Wrong

We scheduled downtime to replace a disk at end-of-life. We took a backup of the relevant system, powered down, and our host attempted to clone the disk. We then had a glorious 30-minute period where everything was running again, before we lost power and experienced a hard crash.

Since then, we've been piecing together data from various sources & backups. This was challenging because they were in different states.

What Might Be Weird

Some things were skipped, because they weren't running during downtime: There were no daily updates, no World Assembly resolution passing, no inactivity warning emails, and so on. This will get back to normal soon.

Thank You For Your Patience

Thanks for standing by, and welcome back!

A huge shout-out to our admins, especially The Royal Confederacy of Eluvatar, for the back-breaking toil of getting this site breathing again. If it was up to me, I would have just rolled everything back two weeks and it would have been chaos. Thank Eluvatar it's not like that.

Update: Due to popular demand! You can help buy Eluvatar dinner.

NationStates Turns 20 Today

by Max Barry
Sat, 12 Nov 2022

20th Anniversary Highlights

I mean hooooooly crap. TWENTY YEARS. For perspective, the web itself is only 33.

Here are some things that didn't exist when NationStates launched: MySpace, Digg, World of Warcraft, Facebook, XBox Live, iTunes, Skype, Firefox, Chrome, iPhones, Reddit, Twitter, Wordpress.

NationStates began in a time where any idiot could make a website and people would go check it out, because there weren't many to choose from. In 2002, I was that idiot, learning to code from a book, hacking the site together, and emailing a few friends. Then they told a few friends, and almost immediately, it was in the newspapers, even the New York Times, because that was newsworthy back then, some dork's website.

Almost all the web sites from 2002 are now gone. And like a geriatric who's outlived his contemporaries, I marvel at the simple fact that we are still freaking here. Everyone thinks you can put up a site and it will just hang around forever because that's how the internet works, but that's not true at all, not even for the dumbest, most static pages like THIS IS TIM'S WORLD WIDE WEB PAGE, UNDER CONSTRUCTION, COOL STUFF COMING SOON, because sometime in the last twenty years, Tim's web host got bought out and shut down, taking Tim's dancing baby GIF with it, and now, at best, there are a few snapshots filed away in an internet archive.

Sites that do things, interactive sites, like this one, are hard to keep alive. They have so many ways to die. I'm incredibly proud that NationStates is here twenty years and eight million nations later, with as many players as ever. That's magical. I credit:

  • Not selling the site. I came close. In retrospect, the buyer would have spent 12 months squeezing users for money before everyone left.

  • Moderators. Oh my god, moderators. They do so much, every day, for nothing, and without them, the site would almost immediately become somewhere you wouldn't want to visit. Some mods have been here from the beginning. Many have clocked up over a decade. So much is thanks to mods.

  • The community. I can't even explain this because I don't fully understand it. I made a site where you could create a nation and talk to people. The community did everything else, i.e. turned that into something interesting, with political intrigue, relationships, lore, rules; basically the vast majority of what makes NationStates worth your time. This includes regional leaders, ordinary nations, World Assembly Delegates, admin, Roleplay Mentors, Founders, dispatch authors, World Census trophy chasers, forum regulars, forum irregulars, anyone who's taken the time to explain something to someone new to the site, card traders, everyone.

  • The people who buy Site Supporter, Postmaster, Postmaster-General, and Telegram Stamps. Most people don't, and that's totally fine, but the lights wouldn't have stayed on without those who do.

  • Managing the tech stack. All the tech from 2002 is slow, insecure, missing essential features, and three thousand times harder to work on that what's available today. It also can't be replaced without losing 20 years of bug fixes. So far we have managed to steer a path between killing the site from negligence and killing it from overly ambitious upgrades. And we keep adding features! To a 20-year-old codebase! Written in Perl!

Happy Birthday everyone.

Love,

Max.

It's 4:20 Somewhere

by The Marsupial Illuminati
Wed, 09 Nov 2022

This post courtesy of Issues Editor The Marsupial Illuminati.

The Issues Editing team is now proud to present a better model for the Recreational Drug Use World Census scale. The old model, implemented in December 2017, only considered Civil Rights when calculating a nation's score, leading to many nations being tied for first place, with older nations being ranked first by default. To promote competition and improve the simulation, a more accurate model has been devised which considers many factors in addition to civil rights. Great care has been taken to ensure that the highest-ranking nations do not share the same score. Will you be able to reach that perfect high score of 420? What delirious heights lie beyond!

Trading Cards: A Few Changes

by Max Barry
Thu, 03 Nov 2022

The NationStates Trading Card Commission would like to announce some key changes aimed at streamlining the market.

1. "Market Value"

The Commission has developed a new method of calculating card Market Value. The new method is similar to the old one, in that it aims to approximate the value of a card on the open market, but has the advantage of not being horribly gamed.

All cards are currently being reviewed under the new method, with updated values expected to filter through over the next day. This will also flow on to collectors' Deck Values.

2. Premium Sales Now Attract an Auction Fee

The Commission discovered that the auction house, which handles enormous numbers of transactions every week, brings in zero revenue, and is entirely staffed by volunteers and prisoners on work-release. In order to fund ongoing operations, the auction house now charges a modest fee on the sale of premium cards.

A "premium card" is that which sells for more than 10.00 bank, and henceforth will incur a fee of 10% of any excess. For example, a card that sells for 15.00 will net the seller 14.50, since there is an excess of 5.00, of which 10% is 0.50.

Auction fees are paid by the seller and deducted automatically. No fees are paid by buyers, nor by sellers of cards under 10.00 bank.

3. Deck Capacity

In theory, increasing your deck capacity is very expensive. In practice, collectors have amassed cards in numbers well above their nominal capacity, because the system doesn't really work.

To combat this, the Commission has made three important changes:

Firstly, it has approved an across-the-board raise in capacity for all card owners, geometrically scaled, such that nations with deck capacity of 50 are raised to 160 cards, while those who ponied up to reach a capacity of 500, for example, will find it is now 3,186. Starting deck capacity also rises from 50 to 250 cards. (Or, for Site Supporters, from 100 to 500.)

Secondly, the price of increased deck capacity has been slashed. A sliding scale still applies, but it's now gentler, so that high-rollers can afford to legitimately increase their deck capacity into the thousands or even tens of thousands of cards.

Thirdly, deck capacity will be actually enforced. At least, a little more strictly. Specifically, bids and asks will no longer be accepted from collectors in violation of their deck capacity.

The Trading Card Commission wishes to thank all traders for their patience, both previously and during these changes, and believes that a vibrant, robust market lies in our future.

Z-Day11: Re: Re: Re: Your Brains

by Eluvatar
Mon, 31 Oct 2022

As threatened, a reset of research selection has occurred. Any nations desperately trying to find a cure for their neighbors will need to revivify their efforts.

Hang in there, everybody! The dead may outnumber the living, and the zombies may outnumber the dead, but time is, well, time isn't on the zombies side!

Update: And now the dead have indeed risen, or at least most of them. Perhaps the good news is that the dead no longer outnumber the living, at least for the time being. And the enormous loss of progress in cure research... good news for the zombies, I suppose?

By the way, it might be good to remind folks that there is a way to ignore all these zombies if you like: Settings -> No Zombies. This doesn't really get rid of the zombies, but it lets you pretend they aren't there, which is close enough.

Z-Day11: Re: Re: Your Brains

by Eluvatar
Sun, 30 Oct 2022

The zombies are here! The zombies are here!

What You Need to Know

  • The zombie apocalypse will begin (click for local time)

  • It will run for 36 hours, ending

  • Zombies move between nations in the same region. This makes it important to be aware of what your neighbors are doing, as will be difficult for an individual nation to hold out in a heavily infected region. Each region will report its infection rate so that residents can make an informed choice about which are relatively safe and which are basically pools of pandemic-level z-virus.

  • You have three options:

    • Exterminate the zombies with military force. This converts them into dead citizens, who pose no further risk to the living. It is very effective when you have lots of survivors and few zombies, and less effective when your military forces have mostly been eaten. But be warned! Sometimes the dead rise again.

    • Research a cure, which helps to lower your region's infection rate. Enough nations working together can slow or stop the spread of zombies and even begin to turn infected back into survivors. However, this takes time and is most effective with test subjects and collaboration.

    • Embrace the zombie hordes, becoming part of the problem as you spread zombies all around your region. Eventually, of course, your hordes may run out of food and starve. This option isn't for everyone. But there's always someone.

  • Your nation may also unlock superweapons over time. Once built, they can be manually deployed against targets of your choice by visiting their nation page and hitting the appropriate button.

    • Exterminating zombies develops Tactical Zombie Elimination Squads, who can enter other nations and kill zombies there. They can also restore zombie command and control centers have been zombified to the respective government's control.

    • Researching a cure develops Cure Missiles, which can be launched at other nations in order to convert zombies into survivors. They, too, can restore zombie command and control centers have been zombified to the respective government's control.

    • Embracing the undead develops Hordes, which can surge into other nations and infect their survivors, and zombify other nations' zombie command and control centers.

    Superweapons can be deployed every 20 seconds. If you take a hit from a superweapon, the resulting chaos makes your own superweapon unavailable for a few minutes.

  • There is a Zombie Spotting page which can be used to intelligently target your superweapons.

  • The World Census will maintain some relevant zombie-related ranking scales:

    1. The Most Survivors

    2. The Most Zombies

    3. The Most Dead

    4. The Most Zombified

    (Note: Up to one hour delay is to be expected in the ordering of these scales.)

  • During Z-Day, Founders and Delegates can close their region's borders at no Influence cost, sealing themselves off the from the world, and the plaintative cries of nations seeking refuge. It seems pretty harsh. You're just sitting there watching millions of people die. But zombie apocalypses demand tough choices.

  • There will be a worldwide reset of research selection, after which nations which selected researching a cure will cease their progress until re-selected around

  • There will be a setback in research progress and many of the dead will rise again around

  • There will be a worldwide deactivation of special border controls around

The Z-Day Tally Board will track global progress during Z-Day. Good luck!

Z-Day11: Re: Your Brains

by Eluvatar
Wed, 26 Oct 2022

They say that most people don't believe something can happen until it already has. Well, I expect you can believe that a zombie apocalypse is coming this Halloween:

Zombie apocalypse begins in:

You'll be glad to know that you'll have forewarning of any sudden border reopenings, mass reanimations, or research regression. Because to know is always better, right?

N-Day7: The Cleanup

by Max Barry
Sun, 25 Sep 2022

The more things change, the more they stay the same, Momma told me, earlier today, while playing N-Day. She was pissed because her Faction was getting pancaked by Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

It was different, this year, with a genuine atomic contest, but also the same, with the ultimate victors being once again those apocalyptic Horsemen.

From our roving reporter United Calanworie:

After the show of force last year from the Horsemen, it was no surprise when they ultimately dominated N-Day7. While it was not a surprise this year, it was certainly more hard-fought. The battle between Horsemen and Potato Alliance was legendary, and certainly one for the history books. Their forces clashed many times, firing nukes in waves, rather than in staggered numbers, causing overwhelming damage to both factions. Potato Alliance took the brunt of these attacks, however, falling to dead last in the rankings multiple times throughout the event, making it all the more impressive that they finished third. Unsurprisingly, their strong third place finish is due to the fact that they led the world in shield usage, intercepting a grand total of 710,140 nuclear weapons before they could land on their targets, outclassing their closest competitor (HoTA) by nearly three hundred thousand intercepts. Nation distribution across factions was also significantly more even this year, with five factions having over 1,000 nations in them, as opposed to last year's three. This likely helped even the scales and create a closer competition this year. In the end though, the Horsemen won, beating out the second-place faction Anime Nations Against Liberals by nearly ten times their score, with a final tally of 444,575. Congratulations to the victors, and best of luck to the hazmat teams now responsible for decontaminating the world overnight.

Final scoreboard:

FactionScoreNationsRegion
1.Horsemen of the ApocalypseFlag444,5758,748 NationsUnderworld
2.Anime Nations Against LiberalsFlag45,4824,545 NationsAnime Nations Against Liberals
3.Potato AllianceFlag36,3356,815 NationsThe Potato Alliance
4.The MinotaursFlag12,028140 NationsThe Labyrinth
5.not austria?!?Flag6,9698 NationsNot Austrian Puppet Storage
6.A Walk in the ParkFlag6,60170 NationsGo West
7.The Final FrontierFlag5,556158 NationsEquity
8.you MAD bro?Flag5,1072 NationsEast Iceland
9.Anna's Secret Nuclear BunkerFlag4,68120 NationsFodlan
10.De-Escalation ForcesFlag4,16518 NationsSEVENUP

Highest Scores Per Nation (min 10 nations):

FactionRegionScoreScore Per Nation
Anna's Secret Nuclear Bunker Fodlan 4,681 234.1
De-Escalation Forces SEVENUP 4,165 231.4
The Nuclear AOE The Alliance of Eros 1,556 155.6
Stellamare Compact Astral Sea 2,360 147.5
West Atlantic Nuclear Treaty West Atlantic Organization 955 95.5
A Walk in the Park Go West 6,601 94.3
The Minotaurs The Labyrinth 12,028 85.9
Palatine Palatine 2,078 79.9
The Sliding Legion The Slide Countries 1,898 61.2
Horsemen of the Apocalypse Underworld 444,575 50.8

Global stats:

  • 833 factions were created.

  • 37965 nations joined a faction.

  • 4,511,089 nukes were targeted.

  • 3,852,554 nukes were launched.

  • 2,226,205 nukes were shot down.

  • 1,627,430 strikes occurred for 1,358,453 radiation.

This is fewer strikes than normal but way more of everything else, largely because of a defensive masterclass from Potato Alliance.

A special shoutout to our servers, too, which also get nuked every N-Day, but keep ticking along. Our load stats, that's the real destruction.

Thank you for participating in N-Day7!

N-Day7: The Clock Ticks

by Sedgistan
Tue, 20 Sep 2022

The Doomsday Clock is apparently just 100 seconds from nuclear disaster, but here we like to give you a little more time to prepare. This weekend, N-Day returns, and with it an opportunity to toss fiery nukes at your mortal enemies (or friends, if that's your thing).

Nuclear resolution begins in:

Click/tap here for your local time:

OVERVIEW

N-Day is an opportunity for nations to come together and exchange nuclear weapons in a fiery Armageddon of mutually assured destruction.

To Participate

  1. Once registration opens, you can create or join a Faction. Nations outside a Faction can't attack or be attacked. You can join a Faction when you're ready and leave when you're not (to stay safe).

  2. When the event begins, nations will be assigned a random Specialty and begin to accumulate Production. You will now be able to spend Production, fire nukes and deploy shields.

  3. Watch your nation automatically generate Production. Use Production to build Nukes and Shield.

  4. Launch Nukes at other nations and use Shield to shoot down Nukes that are launched at you.

Tactics

The simplest way to play N-Day is to join whichever Faction seems most fun and start targeting Nukes at its enemies while shooting down anything incoming. Your Faction page's icon bar shows everything you need to know, including who's targeting anyone in your Faction, and who your fellow Faction members are targeting.

Attacking: Step by Step

  1. On your Production screen, spend some of your Production to build Nukes. These go into your Stockpile.

  2. On another nation's Nuke page, click/tap the TARGET button and select the number of Nukes to use.

  3. Once Targeted, it takes 10 minutes for your Nukes to reach a READY state (3 for Intel Specialists). Note that your Targeted page is public: All nations can see who is targeting whom.

  4. When your Targeted Nukes are ready, click/tap LAUNCH.

  5. Your Nukes are now categorized as Launches for you and Incoming for your target. Launched Nukes take 3-5 minutes to reach their target. When they do, they earn Strikes for you and inflict Radiation on the target, which reduces their rate of Production. This also earns Score for your Faction and reduces the enemy Faction's Score.

Defending: Step by Step

  1. On the Production screen, spend Production to build Shield.

  2. Find Launched Nukes to destroy. Your top priority is any Incoming Nukes launched at you. Secondarily, you may wish to target Incoming Nukes on anyone in your Faction (see your Faction's Incoming page), and also keep an eye on Targeted Nukes that may threaten you or your Faction in the near future.

  3. Click/tap DESTROY to deploy 1 Shield per Nuke.

Strategy

Strategically, it may be wise to avoid attacks on nations or Factions until you are confident of obliterating them, since this eliminates the possibility of counter-attack. Smaller-scale attacks, which damage but don't destroy an enemy, can lead to an escalating series of grudge-related nuclear exchanges.

On the other hand, targeting an enemy can be an effective warning. And it takes Nukes 10 minutes to be ready to launch, so you can't leave it too late.

Scoring

Each Nuke that reaches a target causes Radiation damage, which reduces the target's rate of Production generation and counts as a Strike for the attacker.

A Faction's Score is calculated by

RADIATION_GIVEN - (0.25 * RADIATION_TAKEN)

Duration

N-Day lasts for 24 hours, after which point, an Arms Control Agreement means that no Nukes can be launched. (In-flight nukes can still land, however.)

The "winner" is the Faction with the highest score; if, that is, nuclear war can be said to have a winner. Which we say it can. It's the Faction with the highest score.

FACTIONS

Once registration opens, Factions can be founded by a Regional Officer of any region. Any and all Regional Officers of that region can update the Faction's official text to issue instructions to Faction members.

Factions can be made open to all members, or restricted to the region's members only.

You can leave your Faction, which is a good way to stay safe if you're signing off for the night. However, you can only do this if you're not engaged with the enemy! That means:

  • You must not have any nukes targeted or launched at another nation; and

  • No nukes can be targeted or incoming on you.

Note that in practice, this can make it challenging to leave a Faction, since you may be frequently targeted.

While outside a Faction, you cannot be targeted, and do not generate any Production.

Before joining, it's worth making sure a Faction isn't currently under mass bombardment.

Bikini Atoll and Kicking Faction Members
Bikini Atoll is a special, game-created, faction. It operates as a normal faction, but nations that are kicked from their factions will be transported to Bikini Atoll. All targets on the nation persist. Nations can be kicked from their nuke page, by Regional Officers in the factions founding region. Nations with incoming nukes cannot be kicked.

SPECIALTIES

Nations are randomly assigned a specialty.

Military Specialists build Nukes faster: They receive 50% more Nukes when converting Production.

Strategic Specialists build Shield faster: They receive 50% more Shield when converting Production.

Economic Specialists can accumulate more Production: Their production cap is four times larger than the other specialties.

Intel Specialists can finalize targets faster: Their targetted nukes reach READY in 3 minutes instead of 10. They have no Production advantages.

Cost of Nukes/Shield in Production Points

Military Specialist

Strategic Specialist

Economic Specialist

Intel Specialist

1 Nuke

2

3

3

3

1 Shield

6

4

6

6

PRODUCTION
Non-WA nations automatically generate Production at a rate of 15 Production per 2 minutes, up to a maximum of 750 (3000 for Econ Specialists).
WA nations automatically generate Production at a rate of 150 Production per 2 minutes, up to a maximum of 2500 (10000 for Econ Specialists).

Production can be spent on Nukes or Shield.

WA NATIONS
World Assembly members will accumulate Production 10x faster than non-WA members, and have their Production limits increased by around 3x.
It is allowed to switch WA membership to receive this benefit for different nations, but (as per regular site rules) you are only allowed to have one nation in the WA at a time.
Keep in mind that if your Production is over the non-WA limit when you resign membership on a nation, the Production on that nation will decrease down to the limit (i.e. if you resign with 75 Production on a non-Econ nation, the Production will drop to 50).

We ask that you refrain from switching WA for N-Day purposes more than once every two minutes. You will not be punished for this, but it is against the spirit of this change to the event mechanics.

NUKES

Nukes are purchased with Production, kept in stockpile until ready, then targeted and launched at an enemy nation.

Launched Nukes take 3-5 minutes to reach their target. While in-flight, they can be shot down by any nation using Shield. If they're not, each Nuke generates 0.25% of Radiation in the target and earns 1 Strike for the attacker.

SHIELD

Shield can be used to knock out Launched Nukes. You can shoot down any in-flight Nukes regardless of who they are aimed at.

Locate in-flight Nukes under Launches or Incoming, and use the DESTROY button to eliminate them at a rate of 1 Shield per Nuke.

It is possible to waste Shield if multiple nations deploy Shield simultaneously to knock out the same Nukes. However, there is a chance for duplicate shields to 'overflow' and take out the next set of incoming nukes instead.

Shielding a nation in another faction to yours incurs a 50% penalty on the cost to shield (it takes 1.5 shields to knock down one nuke).

SHIELD BANK

It is possible to donate shield to the Faction Shield Bank, which will automatically shoot down incoming nukes. This alone will not stop all incoming nukes, however, as the rate at which the Shield Bank shoots down nukes is dependent on the number of incoming nukes and its size. The exact formula per minute is given by:

MAX(MIN(0.15 * FACTION_INCOMING, 0.25 * SHIELD_BANK_SIZE), 200)

TARGETING

Target a nation by viewing their Nuke page and clicking/tapping TARGET. You may then select how many Nukes to target from your Stockpile.

It takes a short time for a Targeted Nuke to reach a READY state, after which it may be launched. This is normally 10 minutes, but Intel Specialists are faster, finalizing targets in only 3 minutes.

If not launched after 1 hour, Targeted Nukes automatically return to your Stockpile.

RADIATION

Radiation is generated in a nation when it is struck by a Nuke.

Radiation proportionately reduces a nation's Production generation rate by 0.5% per 1% of Radiation. For example, 20% Radiation reduces Production generation by 10%.

When a nation is 100% Radiated, it is destroyed and no longer able to launch any Nukes nor use any Shield.

Radiation is irreversible.

You can leave a Faction when irradiated, but this does not affect your Faction's score.

SCORE

A Faction's score measures strikes and radiation that occurred while those nations were a member. It is unaffected by nations joining or leaving the Faction.

GLOSSARY

Term

Explanation

Production

Used to buy Nukes and Shield. Automatically generated by all non-destroyed nations in a Faction.

Nuke

Unholy instrument of death and destruction.

Stockpiled Nuke

A Nuke that has been purchased with Production and is sitting idle, awaiting a target.

Targeted Nuke

A Nuke that has been targeted at a nation. A targeted Nuke takes 10 minutes to achieve a READY state, after which it may be launched.

Launched/Incoming/In-Flight Nuke

A Nuke that has been launched at a nation and is currently chewing up 3-5 minutes of in-flight time.

Shield

A unit of defensive technology. Possibly involves lasers or satellites or something.

Strike

A record of how many Nukes have successfully landed on targets.

Radiation

A record of how many Nukes have struck the nation. Reduces Production generation.

Faction

A group of nations sharing a common interest in survival and/or bloodlust.

Score

The Faction Score

Read dispatch

After last year's disgusting show of dominance by the Crabs of the Apocalypse, we have made a small change. Faction pre-registration now opens 3 days before the event, allowing nations to join together and make plans before their inevitable obliteration.

Also imminent: re-opening of the Vault 41 discussion forum.

Announcing the winners of Issue Contest: Lucky Seven!

by Verdant Haven
Thu, 21 Jul 2022

This post comes courtesy of Issues Editor Verdant Haven.

Luck? More like Skill!

Friends, authors, nations, lend us your eyes! After a hard-fought contest featuring nearly 250 entries, several asides for soliloquies by our resident network hamsters, and an inordinate amount of whipped cream, the Issue Editing team is pleased to announce the winners for this year's installment of our Annual Game Encouraging New Draft Activity: the Lucky Seven competition!

Presented in alphabetical order by author, the winners are:

Check out these fancy people! Check out this fancy presentation! Eternal fame is upon them, and as promised, these ten issues are now guaranteed to be published.

Please join with the team in congratulating the authors of our Top Ten issue submissions! Look for them to start appearing in the game in the near future.

Nation Name Release

by Max Barry
Thu, 30 Jun 2022

Every decade or so, we adjust the name re-use rules, allowing some previously reserved nation names to be reused for founding new nations. It's that time again! Starting next week, you can create nations with names of ex-nations with populations between 500 million and 1 billion.

This doesn't happen often, because we want people to be able to come back years later and revive their old nations. But with eight million nations created over the last twenty years, it's harder than ever to find a good name.

Names only become available for re-use if a nation has been inactive for five years, isn't a Site Supporter, and doesn't meet a range of other criteria.

The population threshold will rise from 500M at the rate of 10M per day, so it will take a couple of months before we reach 1B, in order to avoid a rush for desirable nation names. You can see when (or if) a name will become available for re-use by checking it in the Boneyard. Once a nation name is re-used, any previous nation of that name can no longer be refounded.

A Banner Year

by Pogaria
Mon, 27 Jun 2022

This post comes courtesy of Senior Issues Editor Pogaria.

I remember when NationStates only had 31 issues. National leaders in those days were faced with the same dilemmas over and over. Just when you thought that your nation's rainforests couldn't possibly have any more uranium deposits, someone stumbled upon another one. Fortunately, we added the 1500th issue to NationStates earlier this year, all thanks to the many wonderful people who write issues for us. Whether you've submitted dozens, or you've just written your first issue for the annual contest, we appreciate everyone's efforts.

Speaking of which, it's nice to earn rewards for your accomplishments. Especially those banners that you can put on your nation's home page for things like having a good economy or turning your environment into the polluted cesspool of your dreams. "But wait," you might be saying. "I've accomplished a lot of things that have gone unrecognized. Where's the banner for finishing an issue chain, or managing to outlaw so many things that lesser dictators stand in awe and send congratulatory fruit baskets?" Well, we're pleased to announce that we now have a wider selection of banners for you to strive for. We hope that you enjoy figuring out how to earn them - particularly the one about turning your nation into a Mafia-run crime state. Buona fortuna!

Looking for Technical Moderator(s)

by Max Barry
Tue, 21 Jun 2022

Do YOU want to hone your technical skills on a world-famous website that contains code written in 2002? Wait. Let me rephrase that.

NationStates is looking to bring on some technical expertise, with the goal of adding another site admin or two. Because this place is run by volunteers, we first want prospective candidates to come on board as Forum Moderators with a technical bent, and progress over time to hands-on admin stuff. You would move at your own pace and be largely free to choose what you work on.

This role would be perfect for someone who would like to:

  • Help improve NationStates by dragging it into a Web 2.0 world before everyone leaves for Web3.*

  • Actually add that feature the site has sorely needed for like five years and you can't believe it doesn't exist already, you know the one.

  • Bolster your CV with experience on a well-known legacy website, so when you apply for a real job, the hiring manager is like, "NationStates, really, wow, I used to play that." And then you both smile.

  • Apply your NationStates knowledge in ways other than overthrowing Delegates.

  • Stare into the abyss of decades-old code without blinking or screaming.

Obviously this one isn't for the faint-hearted. Details here.

* Just kidding. Web3 isn't real.

Lucky Seven

by Verdant Haven
Tue, 31 May 2022

This post comes courtesy of Issues Editor Verdant Haven.

Glitz! Glamor! The opportunity to make every world leader (in NationStates) personally deal with your issue! What amazing lifestyle is this? It's the lifestyle you too can have if you join us for this event!

We are delighted to announce our "Yup, It's Definitely Annual Now Issues Contest". Our chosen winners will get their names in lights, displayed on the monitors of people viewing a future NationStates News post. Your region-mates will be so jealous! More importantly, winning submissions are guaranteed to be added to the game! You won't find that kind of deal just anywhere.

With only one entry per player, you'll want to put your best foot forward, so we strongly encourage you to draft on the Got Issues? forum, and make full use of the Got Issues FAQ and issue-writing guide posted there. What will you write about? Maybe the number seven? Could be something about luck? Perhaps a totally unrelated topic because you've been thinking about it for ages and it's time to seize the moment? Show us what you've got! The floor is yours.

Please submit your issue during the month of June, using the usual method. Make sure you are fully happy with your submission before entering, and that you check the box to confirm you are entering it into the Issues Contest.

Please see this thread for full information. Good luck!

Thank You for Visiting the Global Trade Fair

by Max Barry
Sat, 02 Apr 2022

It's over! And slightly earlier than you anticipated, if you believed this News Page!*

During the Fair, 21,616 nations stashed 164,746 goods in 1,913 regions. But especially Suspicious, which managed to accumulate the most of absolutely everything.

Global Trade Fair Region Stashes

A few more stats:

  • Nations performed 471,073 actions, including 226,021 inspections.

  • The most searched-for item was Kittens (36,961), followed by Inspector Uniforms (27,357), then Patriotic Flags (26,654).

  • The least searched-for item was Humanitarian Potatoes (9,611).

  • 16,138 inspections were thwarted, which is 7% of the total. The most common cause was patriotic celebration days (9,719).

  • 35,247 goods were shipped, with the most popular being Inspector Uniforms (4,087) and Sticky Labels (4,016).

  • The Fair ended with nations holding 236,616 goods, which is quite a lot more than were stashed in regions. The most goods held by a single nation at that point was 336.

  • 1,397 goods were destroyed. To be honest, destroying goods was originally intended to be a much more central part of the Fair, before we had the idea of stashing them. The most-destroyed item was Gas Centrifuges (288), followed by Uranium (148), which just goes to show, people really do want to make the world a safer place. The least-destroyed item was Gold Bullion (64).

Thanks again for participating!

(* Sincere apologies for the News page misinformation. Daylight savings struck again. We can just not work that out.)

Announcing the Inaugural Global Trade Fair

by Max Barry
Mon, 28 Mar 2022

International affairs can get pretty grim sometimes, so that's why I'm pleased to announce the first ever Global Trade Fair.

★ ★ ★ Visit the Global Trade Fair ★ ★ ★

For a limited time, nations are invited to view and collect a range of goods, which you may stash and display in your regions.

Unlike all those other world events, this will be a celebration of love and co-operation! And to keep it that way, there will be inspections and confiscations.

  • Trade Fair begins (click for local time)

  • Trade Fair ends (click for local time)