Osiris Newbie Guide

THE OSIRIS NEWBIE'S GUIDE

Hello, and welcome to both NationStates and one of its most dominant regions, Osiris!

For having such simple mechanics, NationStates (NS) is a surprisingly deep and complex game and community. Osiris itself, the region you probably find yourself in if you’re reading this, has nuances and complexities that you can’t glean just from the first page you see. This guide will try to help you understand how everything works, don’t worry we’ll try to make it quick ^^

HOW DOES THIS GAME WORK??

You are the leader of a nation; your nation has a variety of policies and stats for a variety of industries and qualities such as military strength, cheese exports, political freedoms, etc. You can change these policies and statistics via your choices in the issues that you get every few hours or so. You can found as many nations as you like.

That’s it. The base mechanics are really that simple. You select issue choices and your nation changes.

There are people here who have been working on their nation’s stats for nearly two decades just by answering issues for years on end!

OKAY BUT OSIRIS IS A REGION? WHAT’S A REGION?

Every nation in NS must be a part of a region. These can be either made by the game for a specific purpose (a GCR – game created region), or they can be made by a nation (a UCR – user created region). The vast majority of regions on NS are UCRs. UCRs, unlike GCRs, can have actual Founders (the nation who made the region) who have complete authority over that region.

The types of GCRs are Feeders, Sinkers and Warzones.

FEEDERS, WHERE NATIONS ARE FOUNDED: The Pacific, The North Pacific, The South Pacific, The East Pacific, The West Pacific

SINKERS, WHERE NATIONS ARE REFOUNDED: Lazarus, Osiris, Balder

THAT OTHER WEIRD SINKER, WHERE EJECTED/BANNED NATIONS GO: The Rejected Realms

WARZONES, MINOR GCRS MADE FOR MILITARY GAMEPLAY: Warzone Sandbox, Warzone Europe, Warzone Africa, Warzone Airspace, Warzone Australia, Warzone Asia

WAIT, BUT WHAT’S THIS WORLD ASSEMBLY THING?

The World Assembly (WA) is the big voting bloc in NS that decides on which Resolutions to pass or not- these Resolutions are written and proposed by actual players, and people will sink actual money into advertising campaigns making sure their resolutions get passed.

TL;DR it’s the United Nations of NS.

The two categories are the General Assembly (GA) and the Security Council (SC). The GA is all about what goes on in your nation, dealing with the rights of your citizens whereas the Security Council (SC) is concerned with what goes on with other regions.

HOW DOES JOINING THE WORLD ASSEMBLY WORK?

You’re only allowed to have one nation in the World Assembly at a time (trust me, mods will know if you try to skirt the rule). Being a member allows you to vote on WA proposals, but it also allows you to endorse other nations.

The endorse button is at the bottom of every nation's page insofar as they are also in the WA and in the same region as you, in the same place as where all their endorsements are listed. The person with the most endorsements in a region becomes the DELEGATE: the Delegate will (unless there is a Founder) have the ultimate power over the region and their vote in the WA is boosted by one for every single nation endorsing them.

Most regions have some way of choosing which Delegate they have, you can’t just endorse your way to the top (that will usually get you banned from the region as a security threat).

YOU MENTIONED MILITARY GAMEPLAY EARLIER, HOW DOES THAT WORK?

The military gameplay in NS (which Warzones were originally created for) is a by-product of the endorsement system. Because all someone needs is enough endorsements and they’ll become supreme leader of the region, it is possible to artificially inflate someone's endorsement count by moving a number of new WA nations into the target region to help take it over.

Entire military organizations, such as our very own Sekhmet Legion, have risen from this premise. There are even Defenders, players who go out of their way to counter invasions and liberate regions that have had their delegacy taken over by another group.

This threat is also why we put such an emphasis on our Delegate’s endorsement count in Osiris; the more they have the more difficult it is for any enemy force to take Osiris over from us. Because only one person is allowed to be in the WA at a time, it takes one individual player per endorsement in an invasion; it is very rare for there to be more than a few dozen endorsements to move in the first phases of any invasion.

OKAY BUT HOW CAN I GET INVOLVED IN OSIRIS ITSELF?

Glad you asked! You can get involved in our region and friendly community firstly by joining our Discord! This is where most of our activity happens and you can get to know all of us there. We also have a forum which is important for gaining citizenship, which opens up a bunch of potential job opportunities and channels, not to mention voting rights! The links to all of these are on our main regional page.

Osiris is a meritocracy. Meaning that while we do incorporate democratic elements in our legislature, by in large our government is appointed according to merit and our Delegate (or, Pharaoh) is appointed by the previous incumbent and holds supreme power. You'll get out of Osiris what you put into it, basically.

Our Pharaoh (Delegate) is the head of our government. The Viziers, including the Chief Vizier (should there be one) are all appointed by the Pharaoh to serve as executive leaders of their departments. Our Scribes deal in legislature and handling our voting system. Our Priests handle the enforcement of criminal law and, lastly, our Citizens handle the voting of new laws. If any of these jobs interest you then remember that the only hurdle to overcome is putting in the time and effort to earn them!

SO IS THAT EVERYTHING?

Not even remotely! For all its simplicity NationStates is an absolutely vast game, with more people to meet and regions to explore than you could ever expect when founding your first nation, or from reading any guide. But, in spite of that, we hope this has been informative and you'll stick with us in Osiris!

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