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Here are answers to a few questions I've seen raised in various places:
Q. Shouldn't Influence take into account a nation's population?
A. If it did, the game would be dominated by its oldest nations. These nations would make extremely powerful invaders, and have a permanent advantage over newer players. We don't think this would be fair.
Q. Shouldn't Influence take into account military or economic strength?
A. One of the quirks of NationStates is that it does not reward you for subscribing to a particular ideology. You can certainly argue that highly militaristic nations would, in real life, be harder to handle than others. But if we built this into the game, all players would have a strong incentive to make their nations militaristic, at the expense of those who didn't. We still want to allow players to make all kinds of nations, not just capitalist ones with strong militaries.
Also, of course, we are talking about the sytem that determines how hard it is to "eject" a nation from its region. It's a bit weird to argue about what is "realistic."
Q. Shouldn't Influence take into account how many times I log in, or post on the RMB, or send telegrams, or some other measure of my activity?
A. The game can't measure whether you're posting interesting, thoughtful contributions to your RMB or just garbage. It would be dangerous to reward things like posts and logins, because some players would start doing those things just to get the reward.
Players may also wish to note that military strength, population, etc, have never determined how easily a nation can be ejected from its region in the past. So we are not introducing any change in that respect.
Q. Why should UN nations earn more Influence than non-UN nations?
A. Two reasons. First, a nation that has joined the UN and won some endorsements has demonstrated a certain level of involvement in the game and their region. Second, players are limited to a single UN nation, but can control many non-UN nations. So if non-UN nations earned Influence rapidly, then one player could control a formidable invasion army all by himself.
Q. Why have you abolished the concept of "natives"? Natives deserve to be treated differently to invaders.
A. We haven't abolished the concept so much as moved it from a moderator judgement to a part of the actual game. Previously, moderators were frequently called on to make subjective judgements about whether nations qualified as "natives" or not. Yet there isn't any logical point at which a nation suddenly becomes "native"; rather, it gets steadily more native the longer it's there, and the more support it has from other residents. This is what the Influence system recognizes. Natives are still protected, only now without needing to call on the moderators for help.
Q. The Delegate in Region X is ejecting dozens of nations--doesn't this prove that the system isn't working?
A. No. What we're seeing so far is a few Delegates who have been in power for some time spending some (or most) of their Influence in order to perform ejections. These Delegates can hardly be considered "invaders," after controlling their regions for so long. And they have weakened themselves by performing purges, meaning that they are less able to repress rebellions in the future.
We are not trying to stamp out political ejections, or prevent Delegates from being dictators. Such things will continue to be part of the game, and as always, players have two ways of dealing with it:
(a) Work to get the Delegate unelected and replaced with somebody else
(b) Move to a better region
Q. My region has a Founder and doesn't like these changes.
A. If your region has a Founder, it's largely unaffected by them. A Founder can still undo anything a Delegate does, even deny the Delegate access to Region Control.
Q. Why is my tiny, non-UN nation in Region X a "Superpower", but my big UN nation in Region Y a "Minnow"?
A. Because Region X contains fewer influential nations than Region Y. Your non-UN nation is thus a more important part of Region X than your big nation is of Region Y.
Q. My nation has been a resident of this region for two years. Why don't I have bucketloads of Influence?
A. Because the system is new, and nations only started building Influence a month or two ago. Sorry about that, but we can't tell how long nations were in their regions before then, or how many endorsements they had.
Q. I had a nation deleted for breaking an "Invasion Griefing" rule, but now those rules have been abolished. Can I have my nation back?
A. No. We don't retroactively punish players for breaking rules that didn't previously exist, and we don't pardon players who broke rules that have now been removed. Players must abide by whatever rules were in place at the time.
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