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A few telegram tweaks
We've been making some changes on the back-end of the code which should make our moderators' lives easier (and anything that does that is a good thing). One visible change is that official telegrams from NationStates have special colors. You UN regulars will quickly grow to recognize the look of new laws sent out by the Compliance Ministry. As for the rest of you, you'll probably never see it, but official telegrams from the Moderators and staff will come from the NationStates Moderators. Anyway, we were getting bored with our little graphics and needed some more bling.
Oh, as long as I was editing the game anyway, I slipped in a little treat. I'm still not editing issues, but that doesn't mean that there isn't anything interesting coming your way ...
Regional Influence, Invasions, and Griefing
All nations now have a "Regional Influence" label displayed on their
home pages. Regional Influence is how important a nation is considered
in its region. Similarly, the new "Regional Power" label for regions
describes how important a region is considered in the world at large.
Regional Influence isn't just a nice ranking: it's at the heart of
a change to how UN Delegates get to wield power. It's quite a
comprehensive change, so a special page has been created with all
the detail. Read More!
Change, it's a-comin'
Shortly we'll be unveiling a significant change in the way regional UN Delegates wield power. This will primarily affect the invasion game--that is, the practice of storming other people's regions to capture the Delegateship, or defending regions against such attacks. Stay tuned for more details!
The Great Disk Space Disaster of 2006
A disaster occurred in the main record keeping office of NationStates earlier this morning. Upon arrival, I quickly found panic in the streets, fires in the hills, and scraps of paper fluttering down from the heavens. I caught one and examined it; it was our core file on a nation. I rushed into the headquarters. Nothing could prepare me for what I saw. I stepped into the secretary's office and found that the door to his records closet had blown off its hinges and papers were everywhere. There wasn't room to breathe in that closet. As soon as the secretary had regained consciousness, I tried to find out what happened. No, he wasn't sure why our alarms didn't go off. I went to fetch our logs to recreate the time-line.
"Excuse me? What's this?" I pointed at a single pile of paper that filled over half of the room.
"That's the log!" He looked very proud of this.
I picked up the top piece of paper, "February?" I tried to look at the bottom piece of paper but couldn't lift the weight. "You know that you're supposed to use a fresh pad every month right?"
"Aha! I knew that I forgot something."
So that's the story of The Great Disk Space Disaster of 2006. We've lost about 16 hours of data, and that includes telegrams, region moves, etc. Hopefully there won't be a sequel and the replacement secretary will be very carefully instructed on how to use more than one pad of paper for all of his notes. Now, I'll go get a forklift to move these logs.
P.S. I've also rewritten our instructions that the secretary may not run a dating service in his spare time.
NationDates
In an effort to keep from going broke and needing to take down the game, we've decided to change the game to NationDates. It's the same game that you know and love, except now we're moving into social networking and hoping to help you meet someone that you know and love.
The data that we've collected from your issues and play style place us in a unique position to accurately match you up with a fellow player and not need to worry about political incompatibility. We are working on effective ways to monetize NationDates in the near future.
We hope that you like this new direction.
SalusaSecondusNationDates, Chief Minister of Hookups
Company: my third novel!
My new novel, Company, hits stores across the US and
Canada today, so if you were wondering what that ill-defined urge
you had to rush out and buy something was, now you know.
For more info, check out my blog: http://www.maxbarry.com/. As a way of thanking NationStates players who buy Company, or have bought one of my books in the past, I now offer a way to remove ads from your nation! I'm also doing a short tour of the US in a few weeks time to promote the book, so if you want to ask questions about NationStates and you happen to live near these cities, come along! |