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Dispatch → Bulletin → Policy
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The Moss upon rocks by a stream of The Age of Dystopia.
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Trident Alliance N-Day Guide
N-day is an event that happens twice a year where nations get to sling thousands of nukes at each other in an apocalyptic armageddon. In order to participate nations need to be part of a faction, those who don’t join aren’t able to participate but also can’t be targeted.
While in a faction each nation generates an amount of production which they can then spend on two things: nukes and shields. Nukes are used to destroy other nations and shields are used to shoot down incoming nukes. Different nations will be naturally incentivized to do specific things based on their specialization.
Throughout N-day Trident Command (the heads of our faction) will be directing faction members where to target and attack. Often, large enemy factions will have large stockpiles of shields that require barrages of hundreds of nukes to clear. When we work together we’re able to do what single nations couldn’t achieve. Additionally, it’s important to follow the orders of Trident Command so that we don’t break any non-aggression pacts that we’ve made with other big factions. Targeting those outside of directives from Trident Command can provoke the ire of the targeted faction and can earn unwanted barrages of nukes.
There are four specializations during N-day, each assigned randomly: Military, Strategic, Economic, and Cleanup. Each specialization has its own benefits that play best into specific roles.
The Military and Strategic specialists are counterparts to one another, with Military specialists having a discount on producing nukes, and the Strategic specialists having a discount on producing shields. Their optimal roles are offensive for Military, and defensive for Strategic.
Economic specialists don't get any discounts, but rather have a higher production cap, holding four times as much production as other nations. Economic Specialists’ benefit doesn’t predispose them towards being better at offense or defense, so they fulfill both roles equally well.
Cleanup specialists, like Economic specialists, don’t get any discounts either. Cleanup specialists get a special ability where they can spend production to remove radiation from nations. Essentially, Cleanup specialists are healers.
If you're a Military specialist you should produce nukes and work on offense, targeting and firing at our enemies as directed by command.
If you're a Strategic specialist, you should produce shields and use them to shoot down nukes coming at our faction. Remember to protect everyone, N-day is a team effort.
If you're an Economic specialist or Cleanup specialist, you can fulfill any role. Command might give orders to produce nukes at one time and shields at another as needed for the survival of the faction. Cleanup specialists are encouraged to heal any radiation they see within our faction, but given our faction's track record with previous N-days there's unlikely to be any to clean up (you don't need healers if you never take any damage).
If you really dislike slinging nukes and only want to protect, shielding the faction from torrents of incoming nuclear armageddon, it’s okay to follow the orders for strategic specialists instead. The same is true if you want to be a nuke-slinging missile platform annihilating our enemies. If you want to play offense and not defense then it’s okay to follow the orders for the Military specialists instead.
Launching nukes is a two-stage process and it takes time to ready and launch one.
The first stage to launch a nuke is to choose an enemy and target them with however many nukes you want to use. You can do this from their nation's nuke page. It takes 10 minutes from when you target a nation for the nuke to reach a ready state where it can be launched. Targeting people is public information, so factions will often target each other as threats even if they don’t launch. You should never target someone Trident Command doesn’t tell you to for this reason, it will create tension and enemies.
The second stage is to launch the nuke. Once you’ve launched the nuke it’s out of your hands and will hit the targeted nation in 3 to 5 minutes if it isn’t shot down.
Strategy Tips for nukes: WA nations have 10x more production power than Non-WA nations and can thus produce 10x the nukes or shields than a non-WA could, thus destroying enemy WA nations should be prioritized over non-WA, although it’s still important to remove both.
Shields are a lot simpler than nukes, however you can only use them on incoming nukes. You can find incoming nukes on the incoming nukes page. You can select the ones you want to shoot down from here.
What is the shield stockpile?
Each faction has a shield stockpile that their nations can donate shields to. The shield stockpile automatically shoots down incoming nukes, but it will never stop all of them. Players can shoot down nukes much faster than the stockpile can, so if you’re online it’s better to shoot them down yourself then donate to the stockpile. If you aren’t going to be online though, donate your shields to the stockpile.
Strategy tips for shields: WA nations have 10x more production power than Non-WA nations and can thus produce 10x the nukes or shields than a non-WA could, thus protecting our WA nations should be prioritized over non-WA. It’s far more important to shoot down as many nukes as you can though, as strikes on us reduce our power and lose us points so we don’t want any getting through.
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
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).
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.
Watch your nation automatically generate Production. Use Production to build Nukes and Shield.
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
On your Production screen, spend some of your Production to build Nukes. These go into your Stockpile.
On another nation's Nuke page, click/tap the TARGET button and select the number of Nukes to use.
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.
When your Targeted Nukes are ready, click/tap LAUNCH.
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
On the Production screen, spend Production to build Shield.
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.
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.
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 |
Numerical Changes
Change | Old Value | New Value |
Cross-Faction Shield Penalty | 1.5 | 1.7 |
Radiation Penalty | 0.5 per rad | 0.66 per rad |
Maximum Power Modifier (Shields) | Unlimited | 20 |
Radiation Healed per Heal | 10 | 5 |
Production Cost to Heal | 600 | 700 |
Score per Heal | 5 | 10 |
Other Changes
Decreased the scale of the modifiers; that is, differences in faction power will result in smaller modifiers than previously.
Production (but not shields or nukes) is now reset upon leaving a faction.
Discussion
We are happy with the changes from the previous event. However, the increased ability to revive your own allies, constant self-healing, and the reduction of the strength of larger factions against smaller ones have led to a shift in the balancing of the event. To counteract this, we are taking several measures. Firstly, we are reducing the strength and increasing the cost of the heal. The intention for this is to reduce the number of nations that can be revived within a certain timeframe. To reflect the increased cost, we have also increased the score gained from healing. Secondly, as radiation is now cleaned over time, we are increasing the penalty for being irradiated from 0.5 to 0.66 per point of radiation. This means that at radiation levels of near-100, nations will gain production at about one-third of the normal rate, down from one-half. Thirdly, we are reducing the effect of the modifiers somewhat, and capping their maximum effect at 20. We will monitor to see if this improves the overall experience or not. Lastly, the recent changes have strongly benefitted smaller factions. As a result, conglomerates of small factions have increased drastically in power relative to larger factions. This is being reigned in through a further increase in the cross-faction shielding penalty and by eliminating the ability for healers to move between factions on a whim while keeping their revive charge ready.
Bug Fixes
Factions that are within a 5% margin of the defender's power will now be considered as equivalent in strength. This was always the intention, but was not implemented properly last event.
New Additions
Faction Power Modifier
Factions are now rated with an internally calculated power score, depending on their size. Weaker factions will gain a strong increase in shield effectiveness against stronger factions, while stronger factions will deal less radiation and gain less score per strike. For example, a faction with three times the power score will deal 1.5 times less radiation per strike than normal, while the weaker faction will only have to expend 0.5 shields per nuke to defend. The faction shieldbank does not experience any increase in efficiency and will continue to shoot down nukes at a rate of 1:1. Cross-Faction shielders will also not experience any increased efficiency benefit in shielding. The exact numbers for this effect can be found at the top of the enemy faction page.
Radiation Decay
All nations with less than 100% radiation will now naturally lose radiation at 1% per 2min. Fully destroyed nations are exempt from this effect.
Cleanup Specialists
Intels have been archived, and are now replaced with Cleanup Specialists. These specialists gain no advantage to production or nuclear warfare but carry the unique ability to heal 10 radiation for the cost of 600 production on any of their Faction-mates, including themselves. This ability can be used to bring a nation back from the dead, but will not restore the lost production and stockpiles. Every use of this ability will generate +5 Score for the faction that the Cleanup Specialist is in.
Minor Changes
Minimum targets increased to 40
Maximum Shieldbank value set to 65 thousand
Incoming view now displays the number of shields required to shoot down the incoming nukes
Bug Fixes
Cleared old faction endorsements
Can now endorse Bikini Atoll
New Additions
Faction Score Update
As part of the general direction that we plan on taking the event in, the scoring function for this event will be updated.
This is primarily designed to balance the huge negative scores and encourage factions to stay in the game for longer, prioritising landing nukes over avoiding all radiation. Now, landing 100 nukes per nation in your faction is enough to guarantee a positive score.
Numerical Changes
Change | Old Value | New Value |
Cross-Faction Shield Cost | 1.2 per 1 nuke | 1.5 per 1 nuke |
Minimum Shieldbank Intercepts | 400 per minute | 200 per minute |
Shieldbank Intercept Rate | Once per 10s | Once per minute |
We were content with the effect that increasing the cost for shielding other factions had on shield usage and would like to push that number up further. Likewise, the Shieldbank previously needed around 1200 nukes being fired to overwhelm the minimum deployable intercepts. This number has been decreased to around 600. The rate at which the Shieldbank makes intercepts has also decreased, from one per 10s to one per 1min, which should make the numbers feel more impactful, clearer to analyse and save some server resources.
Bug Fixes
Bikini Atoll should now function as a normal faction.
Fixed production gain continuing after a nation was destroyed.
Fixed nations showing up as destroyed for radiation values between 99 and 100.
Cleaned up some tooltips and other various pieces of text across the site.
New Additions
Faction Shield Bank
Nations can now deposit their shields into a faction-wide shield bank. This can be accessed at the top of your nation's shield page. The shield bank will automatically deploy a percentage of its shields to shoot down a percentage of incoming nukes every minute (sorted by closest to landing). Please note that this number will always be smaller than the number of currently incoming nukes, meaning that no matter how large you grow your shield bank, it will never be able to do all the work for you.
The exact formula for the number of shields deployed each minute is:
This should mean that as long as your shield bank remains at least 4 times larger than the incoming wave, every minute about half of the most threatening nukes (nearest 1 minute of landing) will be shot down.
Faction Ejection
To maintain a distinct NS flavour to faction border-control, we are introducing NDay's first Game Created Faction - Bikini Atoll (located conveniently at fid=0). This faction functions as any other faction, with one exception - when the relevant faction authority (a nation with BC perms in the parent region) utilises the new 'Eject from Faction' button, the offending nation will be teleported into Bikini Atoll, together with all of its targets and targetted nations. The only exceptions are nations with incoming nukes, which cannot be kicked from your faction. Once in Bikini Atoll, nations cannot leave until all the nukes targeted on them have cleared, as usual.
PS: As testing for this faction will be running during the faction registration period, do NOT use the name for your own faction. It will be deleted and I will be annoyed.
Shielding Overflow
It can be annoying, and a large time-waster in a pinch, to repetitively see the 'Your shields prepare to launch but the nukes have already been destroyed' message. To help relieve this somewhat, every time the user encounters this situation, there is now a 50% chance that their shields will deploy to clear the next incoming batch of nukes for their faction instead.
Numerical Changes
Change | Old Value | New Value |
Prod gain p/2min (non-WA) | 1 | 15 |
Prod gain p/2min (WA) | 10 | 150 |
Production Cap (non-WA) | 50 | 750 (3000 for Econ) |
Production Cap (WA) | 150 | 2500 (10000 for Econ) |
Cost Per Nuke | 1 (0.67 for MilSpec) | 3 (2 for MilSpec) |
Cost Per Shield | 2 (1.33 for StratSpec) | 6 (4 for StratSpec) |
Radiation Taken Per Nuke | 1 | 0.25 |
Production Loss per point of Radiation | 1% (max 100) | 0.5% (max 50) |
Cross-Faction Shield Cost | 1 per 1 nuke | 1.2 per 1 nuke |
With these changes, we aim to give the player the feeling of having more stuff at their disposal. People have generally looked favourably upon the WA buffs giving the sensation of having more prod and nukes to buy, so we have extended that to all nations, increasing (effective) production gain by five times. The corresponding WA buffs remain (10x prod), and the production cap benefits have slightly increased (roughly 3.33x up from 3x). We have also increased the costs of both nukes and shields to get rid of the complicated fractions and offset that by increasing the production gain by the same scale.
Since the gap between nuke and shield purchases has grown by 5x (an hour of prod can now buy 150 nukes and 75 shields, up from 30 and 15), we have decreased the effect of nukes on nation radiation by 4x (making nukes slightly more effective overall).
The production loss also seemed a little too frustrating to deal with, so we have reduced this from 1% loss per rad (up to 100%) down to 0.5% loss per rad, up to a max of 50%. This means that a nation at 99 rads will still be operating at more than half efficiency, increasing the importance of getting those final blows.
Lastly, the cost of shielding across factions has been slightly increased, to encourage more consideration towards the trade-off on shielding nukes that are headed to factions other than yours.
Bug Fixes
Non-Exec WA delegates can no longer edit faction details.
Fixed Broken 'Prev' page on some pages (linked to page 1 instead of the previous page)
Faction Endorsements are now opened during the faction registration period, instead of when the event starts.
Captchas - should hopefully feel better this time around, but no promises just yet.
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