Region crashing

Region Crashing

Region crashing is the process where a group of nations all move to a region with the aim of seizing the UN Delegate position. Often, after gaining control of the delegacy, any nation approaching them in endorsement count (and almost always all defenders) are ejected. (But not banned--see Griefing.) Great care must be taken with respect to Natives.

It should be noted that armies are formed around region crashing for the intent of taking and holding regions until they see fit to release them (e.g. The DEN HQ, Invaders, The Black Hawks, The SAOP, etc.) whereas many peaceful regions with internal governments possess armies of varying strength, training, and readiness for the occasional war that breaks out in NationStates. Examples of these peaceful armies (not including Defender Alliances) include Germany, Ireland, etc.).

People who participate in region crashing are usually called raiders, crashers, or invaders.

The practice of region crashing

Region crashing was once predictable. Under the old NationStates server, each region was assigned an update time. Once a region's update time was known, raiders were able to slip in seconds before the update. Unless the defenders were able to gain targets from covert means, or ready to react instantly, the invaders would take the target. However, fixed update times also permitted defenders to slip into a region held by an invader delegate right before the update, thus liberating the region.

On the new server, regions needing to be updated are randomly put into a queue. As of now, it is impossible to even estimate when a region will update, although it seems that moving into a region later causes the region to be put into the queue later. As such, the raiding style in NationStates has shifted from sheer numbers to one of more covert means. Many times, raiders must covertly infiltrate a target region for days, sometimes months, and operate intensive internal investigations to weed out spies. On the other hand, defenders have, in turn, been forced to increase the number of covert operatives that they have. However, in the NationStates world, Defenders typically enjoy a greater range of flexibility in their army. For example, a single person can go defending with or without an alliance. Raiders must form large armies instead.

For this region, Defender Armies are typically larger than Raider Armies in orders of magnitude, although recent attempts have been made at unifying Raiders into a strong army. While these attempts have been shot down almost all of the time, and when they haven't, they usually fail due to power struggles, raiders have generally recognised the need to become more intertwined. Quite adept at this, The DEN HQ The DEN HQ has a global reputation among raiders for being able to provide at least a few raiders in time of need, as have Invaders and other large and/or established raiding regions.

Raiders and Defenders are also necessarily opponents. In the fierce intelligence struggles, many members of either side feel that speaking with the other will implicate them as a traitor. At the very least, none walk into a meeting without looking for ulterior motives.

To date, there has been only one (known) attempt to appeal to both Defenders and Raiders on behalf of the players. Hosted by A Better Colonial Ambition and DEN II, the Global Summit saw raiders and defenders gather and hammer out a rough accord to "legalise" certain raiding practises. In practise, however, the GS Accord could not survive the intelligence wars, and several infractions upon members before the GS Accord was signed played key roles in influencing certain clauses. For example, DEN's intelligence agency plotted with a now-unknown 10000 Islands member in an attempt to infiltrate 10000 Islands' "Council of Nine". Certainly, when counter-intelligence operatives found this out, it presented a serious impediment to the Global Summit's progress, and a clause was added banning governmental espionage, or spying with the intent of ruling, or invading the ruling body of an enemy. Nevertheless, such intelligence attempts continued.

Other problems with the GS Accord included the interpretations that various raiding army commanders placed upon it. DEN took a very liberal viewpoint and toed the line between violating the accord several times in verbal remarks. Others continued following old practices or failed to live up to promises. For example, DEN vowed not to invade any regions until the Accord had been settled upon, however, a single raid a few days after that announcement only hindered the process.

We can see examples of skepticism in the Alliance Defense Network's approach to the Global Summit: they refused to send any member except by a masked IP Address so that it would not be possible to trace the movements of key ADN members. Other Defenders were not so wary.

Needless to say, the GS Accord was doomed to fail, however. Under the command of "Steve Owen", DEN declared war on the ADN, allying with neutral armies Imperial Germany and Ireland, hoping to gain out of the conflict that these two regions had with the ADN. Quickly, the GS Accord fell apart as declarations of war flew about, and within no time, all GS Accords had been breached by members on both sides.

To date, no second attempt at a second Global Summit has been made, although the idea is still out there, and several members have discussed this briefly, though never accross the Defender/Raidier lines.

Having had the upperhand in the intelligence stakes for some time, The DEN HQ have torpedoed recent attempts by defenders to negociate and continue to take delegacies at will.

Alliances

There are a number of gameplay-related alliances devoting their efforts to one side of raider-play or the other.

Among them:

• The longest lasting and largest group is known as the Alliance Defense Network or ADN.
• the Red Liberty Alliance (RLA, socialist defenders)
• the Allied Liberation League (ALL)
• the Ten Thousand Islands Treaty Organization (TITO)
• the Emergency Auxiliary Army (EAA)
• the Rejected Realms Army (RRA)
• the Global Liberation Army (GLA)
• the Coalition of Evil (CoE)

Invading, or region crashing, was first made prominent by a group of players that became called the Farkers, who all arrived due to the game being linked on the website Fark.com. Later groups such as the Atlantic Alliance and the World Pudding Alliance took up the hobby.

Also, the growth of defender organizations such as the ADN has lead to rivalries between them and other groups. One such group was the New Pacific Order, or NPO. The NPO has recently reconstituted its government into the People's Republic of the Pacific. Other groups are mostly alliances of invaders. Some invaders include The DEN HQ (universally known as DEN), the SAOP, and the Rebel States of Heleth.

Warzones

Warzones are a set of special regions, set up with their own rules and Griefing criteria, for the expressly permitted purpose of Region Crashing.

Raiding

See Raider.