Z-Day Autoposy: We Did Great But We Could Do Even Better

[Raz]

I wasn't sure if this was the right place to put this, but given that the sign-ups were posted here, I figured I'd put this here too. 

During the Z-Day event we did fantastic, and if the site mechanics and a few dedicated twerps hadn't gotten in our way we would have done better. However, this thread is not about breaking down the site mechanics or yelling at people about the bad decisions they made during the event (which I say with all fondness, now that the event is over I hold no ill will towards any of you who tried to sabotage us). 

These are my thoughts, as someone who was in the thick of it calling shots, on how we can do better next year... and at the end, potentially a way to make the event more fun for all involved.

1.) Start Planning Sooner And Be More Organized

The Z-Day Task Force Thread was posted on 10/10, and then the Z-day Discussion chat on discord was not opened until 10/26. If planning had commenced earlier we would have had more time to chat and discuss things, and possibly could have predicted, planned for, and gotten out ahead of some of the issues I'll be talking about later in this post. 

The Z-Day planning chat should be opened at least a week before the event next year, or given that we don't know exactly when the event will be, the Z-Day planning chat should open on the 20th. 

In addition to planning happening sooner, there needs to be more organization. It felt like there was nobody in charge of our planning, and I'm not certain that the suggestions and ideas we came up with were ever handed off to the government to be executed (at least the parts of them that needed someone in the government to execute them). To this end, there should be a Zombie Czar (working title, I just like the Z sounds) appointed to lead the planning efforts in advance of the event. It should be this person's job to not just lead and oversee the planning, but to ensure cooperation between the executive government and the planning committee. 

2.) Outreach Needs To Happen, And Happen Early

I know from being in the planning chat that outreach was suggested as early as the 26th, with things like a telegram explaining the event and event related additions to the WFE's of both regions being suggested. Neither of these methods of outreach were used. 

In the lead up to Z-Day 2023 we should update the WFEs of both The League and Concord to reflect regional policy on the event; this should ideally take the form of both a written addition to the WFE saying Research The Cure! Do Not Eliminate! Do Not Embrace! or something along those lines, as well as a dispatch outlining why we've chosen to cure, or even just making it further clear that not following regional policy will have repercussions during the event, up to and including banjecting those who do not follow it (as several people were during the live event). 

Also leading up to the event at least one, but ideally two telegrams will be sent out to both regions. The first should be sent out at least a week before the event informing people of what the event is, and what regional policy is regarding it, and then another telegram should be sent out once we have a concrete time when the event will be taking place, ensuring that people are aware of when it will be, reiterating our regional policy, and also telling people where and to whom they can look to for direction on the day.

3.) One Planning Committee, Two Task Forces

While it makes sense to coordinate planning between the two regions for what Z-day should look like, once we hit the event there needs to be a separation so that people are not confused. During the event as I was issuing targets to be cured, I kept getting messages saying things like "I can't cure them, they're not in my region," as well as people being confused as to whom they could look to for leadership during the event itself. 

I stepped up and took control of the league, but I was never aware of exactly who was running things for Concord at any given time, and at no point, that I could see, were commands for Concord issued on Discord. 

In the lead up, and this is something that perhaps we could have done had there been more time in the planning stage. We need to form two Task Forces, one for The League, and the other for Concord, these task forces both need to have separate discord channels where they can issue orders and answer the questions of people in the various regions. Perhaps the channels for each region could be hidden behind a self assignable role (like the z-day ping role but like z-day concord and z-day the league instead) so that people don't have to try to figure out where they belong once the day comes. 

There should also be a Z-day Leadership role for each region, so that there is no confusion about who is in charge for each region. 

Leadership also needs to be decided upon ahead of time, we need to figure out ahead of the event who is giving orders in each region. 

4.) A Multifaceted Approach to the Solution

There is a lot going on at any given time during Z-day. At times I was watching for people moving into the region so that I could banject them if they caused trouble, I was calling orders on both discord and the RMB, I was assessing what the best target would be, I was curing nations, and I was trying to watch current targets (because there were various times when the RMB target and the Discord target were different) to ensure that nobody was without a target for too long. 

It's a lot for one person to do. 

There were times when people would move into the region and be in the region for long enough to do some real damage because I just missed them coming in, and was focusing on the other tasks. 

Next year, we should have someone, or a small team of people, who are assigned the job of watching for people moving into the regions, identifying threats, and notifying those with the power to remove them. I think there should be a pingable role on discord for people who are assigned the power of removing incoming threats so that their attention is easy to get.

In addition, there needs to be people, other than whomever is giving orders, that understand what our response is and how the event works that can answer the questions of people on both the RMB and on discord. Especially at the start and midpoint of the event it can be slightly overwhelming if you're trying to do everything I listed above as well as answer the question "What option should I choose? Oops I chose killsquads what do I do?" for the 50th time in a 30 minute period. 

Basically the more things we can outsource to various other people, the more people feel like they have a stake in the event, and the quicker responses can be had as needed, the more engaged I feel like our citizens will be in the event itself. 

5.) Dealing with the Dedicated Twerps

 A problem that arose a lot during this event was our own citizens refusing to follow directives and either embracing, or more annoyingly exterminating, the zombies. I was given parameters for who I could and couldn't eject from the region which made dealing with people who are stubborn and steadfast in their refusal to comply with regional policy difficult.

We need to come up with an acceptable way to deal with these people that makes it clear that they can't just sabotage our efforts for the lols. 

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Now for something completely different: 

6.) A Split Regional Policy

I love curing on Z-day, I really do. It feeds that need inside of me to help others and provide acts of service that was drilled into me back when I was a young catholic. However, it might be fun next year if one of our region's takes on the regional policy of embracing the zombies. It could be either The League of Concord, but I feel like it would add some well needed variation into the event to do something else, and as we have two regions we could easily have one choose to embrace and one choose to cure. 

If we make it clear which is which ahead of time it gives people time to decide which they want to do and shuffle their nations around accordingly, and giving them the choice of either Embracing or Curing while still following a regional policy might just help prevent people from choosing to killsquad entirely. 

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So those are my thoughts on it, I welcome your feedback and reflections as well. 

And just want to say again; thank you to everyone who took part. It was a lot of fun. I'm sorry if I was a butthole to you during the event.

[Spode]

Per section three, I think it really could help in future Z-Days if we had opt-in roles for what region someone is primarily going to focus on working on that give them access to a specific "Z-Day Concord" or "Z-Day The League" channel on the discord server. That could help in balancing out where people are going to be active and just structure the event more.

Per point 5, at least in The League (which I don't anticipate deviating as a region from a "cure only" policy anytime soon), we should probably have some dedicated puppets on standby in a separate region to horde and killsquad native non-complying exterminators and exporters- This would lock these nations out of doing harm to the region's efforts without requiring bans.

[Raz]

As Z-Day is on the horizon, I'm bumping this. :3

[Spode]

As Z-Day is on the horizon, I'm bumping this. :3

Noted- I have some thoughts here, and will expand on them here in due time.

[Spode]

Z Day Comprehensive Note

I have been thinking about Z-Day for awhile… Perhaps too much

I Have Opinions
Regarding what direction we go in for Z Day this year, I would still support a full cure policy. The complete domination of old GCRs, UCRs, and increasingly puppet dumps on the Dead and Infected leaderboards will mean there will be no broader game recognition of our action besides doing well in curing.

In theory we could do okay with a coordinated euthanasia campaign, but in the past our attempts to choose that path have ended in disaster, and with the resurrection of all dead patients at the nine hour mark, we are effectively locking ourselves out of nine hours of what could be more effective treatment.

How do We Save 1 Trillion People?
Keeping citizens alive comes down to keeping the rate of spread as low as possible, and the fastest means to achieve that is to cure a large proportion of the region’s population as quickly as possible (I believe, more on that later). Since we get diminishing returns on how well we can cure a nation’s citizenry, it thus follows that the most efficient means of curing all citizens is curing the largest populations first, causing a massive decrease in the proportion of citizens with active infections.

This is part of why I believe part of our strategy for this Z-Day should be the mass importation of citizens from abroad. Specifically, between the earlier portion of my Spode SEO Specialist Series, my Rakeo Air Core series, and Makasta’s… Makasta series, we’ll have a tremendous amount of population to work with in both The League and Concord.

Development of New Technology
The technologies we need this year can be sorted into three categories.

Enhanced Monitoring
We’ve made some enemies in the R/D space, and some of those enemies may currently be angry enough to try and disrupt our event response. Ideally, we don’t have to go off of a constant vigilant watch for 36 hours, because that’s probably unsustainable, but we can probably use a mixture of gameside technology and mass surveillance to judge when the most dangerous periods are, and when an account engaged in unproductive behavior has joined us and needs removal.

This should check The League and Concord every 30 seconds, and using the Brimstone technique, it will determine any new nations in the region, see what their respective Z-Day decision is, and report them if it’s not in line with our Z-Day policy. Every two minutes, it’ll run a more comprehensive but time consuming check to see if any nation in the region is violating policy. When a policy violator is detected, an alert will be posted both gameside and on discord.

Better scheduling
We have obligations to society and our frail human bodies, and those don’t usually like to take a backseat for 36 hours straight. It would be good to have a 36 hour calendar where people can mark their approximate availability, to ensure that we have at least someone holding down the fort at all times or taking point as the regional Czar for either The League or Concord. Experience with this style of scheduling is dual use - It will undoubtedly be useful in future military operations.

Better Curing Tech
My best strategy last year was using six nations, each open in either a browser window or its private browsing variant to cure faster than the 20s superweapon cooldown would normally allow. But this is not a great way of doing things, or at least, not as good as it could be. If we could figure out a way to hold even more browser sessions open with nations at once, and in a better format, we could cure at speeds not yet seen in NationStates history.
Research
From some of the earliest Z-Days, I’ve sought to try and use data analysis to give the region an advantage. Now this year, through enlisting the aid of Blue Chevron, we can start getting some answers.

Project Ares
A shallow exploration of the passive participation effect using 150 puppet in various regions to simulate varying levels of passive engagement with the event.

Project Neptune
It’s been hypothesized that infected population percentage scales research speed- But this has never been experimentally confirmed. Project Neptune aims to either confirm or reject this hypothesis, and has enough nuance to hopefully provide some actionable information for future events.

Project Pluto
There is a possibility that outside forces will interfere with Z-Day this year. In that event that outsider interference is proven and responsibly can be positively assigned, new and existing technologies will be deployed in an offensive capacity against the enemy on their own grounds.

I’m… not entirely sure what this will entail.

Awards, Honors, Recognition
I think that we should keep the main event badge as something given to people who are very involved with the effort, as the Consulate did last year, but I think it could also perhaps motivate more members of the region to participate if we had awards modeled more on achievements, that would be given as the event progresses or at its conclusion, through a dispatch.

Here’s some ideas I’ve had for possible achievements thus far-

• Medic!: Choose cure as your main nation’s specialty.
  
• Curve Flattened: Have zero zombies with a nonzero survivor population by the end of Z Day.
  
• Part of the Quaran-Team: Apply for membership in the Z-Day Taskforce
  
• On Notice: Register for Z-Day alerts either on Discord or through NationStates directly
  
• Turn the key: Fire a cure missile during the event
  

Removal of the Unproductive
Whenever some people try to do something, there will always been someone who doesn’t want to play along, either out of some weird contrarianism, or a sense that the right to play a game in whatever manner they please our ways the wishes of others to play it in their own fashion. These are people who have the “raider instinct”, and should be removed if they display it and refuse correction.

Prevention of Unproductive Behaviors
I believe that at least some unproductive behavior can be averted through the introduction of Eusocial Linguistics and vocabulary modification software. The word “zombie” and “apocalypse” should be erased, replaced with “infected patient” and “pandemic”, as should the physical button to help the infected patients.

Foreign Affairs Possibilities
Some of our allies and more tentative friends in the near abroad have ambitions in this space, and we should help them where we can and where our help is wanted in order to build goodwill. There’s three areas we can help in that I can think of off the bat

1. Technology sharing and collaboration : We already have technology sharing work with Balder, and we could further expand that relationship, or see if any other partners would be interested in it.
   
2. Passive participation: Leaving a pre-agreed amount of population and/or puppets set to a particular Z-Day policy in a region on request. The precise benefits of this should become more apparent after Project Ares concludes.
   
3. Direct participation: This is perhaps the best at developing goodwill because we’d actually be getting more cross-membership in each others’ discord servers and be generally vibing, but consumes a resource that cannot simply be duplicated and shared- Us and our time.
   

Max Barry is a Doofus
This would be so much simpler if Max had just made Z-Day, and it had never changed mechanically all that much. Unfortunately, Max (let’s be honest, staff on behalf of Max) has gone ahead and added a bunch of mechanics that make Z-Day not just hard, but unfair.

We need to be able to deal with the resurrection, cure progress being disabled, and cure progress reset- At minimum.
That means

• have a regional telegram drafted telling everyone to restart cure progress
  
• Having someone online with the comms permission to actually send that regional telegram
  
• All involved puppetmasters putting in the time to reset all puppets to cure again
  
• Surfing active cure puppets from WTZ or somewhere similarly late in the update cycle (I’m using the dangerous assumption that Z-Day updates using the same ordering system as normal update) to early updating regions as soon as we become aware that the reset is taking place.