Document:The Sans-Culottes' Companion

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Organization of the Militia

Legal Basis

The Taijitu Citizens' Militia is established by the Militia Act. The law provides for its responsibilities, leadership and oversight.

Policy

The primary goal of the Citizens’ Militia is the defense of regional sovereignty. This policy is underpinned by the philosophy of sovereigntism, which holds that all regions contain sovereign communities entitled to self-determination. The exception is regions which use military force to impinge on the sovereignty of others and forfeit their own in doing so. This means that the Militia participates mainly in defenses and liberations of peaceful and allied regions and attacks on regions which invade others.

Ranks

The commander-in-chief of the Militia is the Citizen-Sergeant. The Citizen-Sergeant is elected by the Ecclesia to a three-month, once-renewable term of office and is the highest ranking officer of the Militia. The Citizen-Sergeant may also establish and assign ranks within the Militia. In addition to Citizen-Sergeant, the current ranks are corporal, lancepesade, sans-culottes and trainee. Each rank has a flag for use in operations and, except for trainee, a trigram of the 'Bagua' associated with it.

Name Trigram Flag
Citizen-Sergeant ☰
sky 		Citizen-Sergeant flag
Corporal ☲
fire 		Corporal flag
Lancepesade ☵
water 		Lancepesade flag
Sans-Culottes ☷
earth 		Sans-culottes flag
Trainee None Trainee flag

New recruits begin as trainees and are promoted to sans-culottes after their first successful participation in a non-training operation. The ranks of lancepesade and corporal are awarded at the Citizen-Sergeant's discretion for exemplary service.

Chain of Command

Chain of Command The Citizen-Sergeant may establish a chain of command within the militia. In the absence of the Citizen-Sergeant, command temporarily passes to the highest ranking officer in the chain. Currently the chain of command is ordered by rank and by seniority within each rank. Always follow an order given by an acting commander unless it violates the Militia Act or a mandate of the Ecclesia. Such an order should be considered illegal and reported to the Citizen-Sergeant or the Ecclesia.

Ecclesiastic Oversight

The Citizens’ Militia serves the citizens of Taijitu and must abide by any military mandate adopted by the Ecclesia. This includes the Militia Act, which provides that the Militia may freely defend or liberate other regions. The law also permits the Militia to attack regions with a history of raiding peaceful regions but forbids it from attacking others without a legislative mandate. The Ecclesia must also approve any operation which lasts longer than three days by a two-thirds majority vote.

NationStates Warfare

Regional controls

If a region contains at least one World Assembly nation with at least one endorsement, it will elect a World Assembly delegate. In most cases a region’s delegate will have access to its regional controls. These controls permit them to update the World Factbook entry and regional flag, open and close embassies with other regions, suppress posts on the regional message board, ban or ejection nations from the region or password protect the region.

Many user-created regions will also have a founder. A region’s founder is permanent and will have unfettered access to the regional controls unless they chose to remove it when founding the region. A founder can also remove the regional delegate’s access to them by making the delegate non-executive. As a result an active founder in a region can easily check the power of its delegate. If a region is founderless, either because it is a game-created region or because its founder has ceased to exist, control of the delegacy means control of the region. As a result, warfare in NationStates is centered around controlling the delegacy of such founderless regions.

Updates

Changes in regional delegacies occur twice-daily at updates. There is a minor update beginning at 12:00 PM (noon) Eastern US Time and a major update beginning at 12:00 AM (midnight) Eastern US Time. Regions are updated sequentially in an arbitrary but discoverable order. Within each region nations are updated in descending order by length of residency. Both updates take an hour to an hour and a half, with the major updating taking longer.

At update valid endorsements for nations in the World Assembly are counted. An endorsement from a nation is valid if the nation is in the World Assembly, the nation in the same region and the nation has not already updated in another region during the update. The nation in the region with the most valid endorsements becomes the World Assembly delegate.

Influence

A delegate’s power in a region is limited by their influence in it. Banning or ejecting a nation costs influence proportional to the influence of the target, with the cost for bans being greater. Password protecting a region also requires influence, more if the password is hidden from residents.

Influence is gained and lost at updates. When a nation updates in a region, it gains influence equal to one plus the number of valid endorsements it has unless it has not been logged into for a week. At the same time the nation loses influence in other regions. If a nation ceases to exist, it loses its influence in all regions except the one it was in. If it is later revived, it loses influence in the region it ceased to exist in for each update there it missed. In game-created regions influence above a certain level accrued over six months ago is also lost.

Puppets

Creation

A puppet is a nation other than your main one that you create for use in military operations. When you create a puppet you must provide an email address so that it can receive invitations to the World Assembly. To make sure you do not have multiple nations in the World Assembly at the same time, always use the same email address for all your puppets. Having multiple nations in the World Assembly at the same time is cheating and can get your nations expelled from the World Assembly or even deleted by the moderators. Do not do it!

Tracking

You will need to track the status of your puppets to use them effectively. The best way to do this is to add all your puppets to the dossier of your main nation. The dossier entry for each puppet will show its current region, whether it is in the World Assembly and whether it has ceased to exist.

World Assembly Invitations

When you apply to the World Assembly with a puppet, you will receive an email containing an invitation and link to join. You can then save this email and only click on the link when you are need your puppet join the World Assembly. By having an invitation ready in advance you can quickly swap World Assembly status from one puppet to another.

You should maintain a valid invitation for each of your puppets. To do so, apply to the World Assembly with your puppet when you first create it and whenever it resigns from the World Assembly. You should also apply with a puppet if the most recent invitation you received for it is over a month old.

You should track which invitations have been used. The easiest way to do so is to not open emails for invitations until you use them. Whether an email has been read or not will then show if the invitation been used.

Gmail is the best email service to use for puppets and invitations. It lets you easily make sure NationStates emails are not marked as spam and allows you to rapidly search for “World Assembly Invitation” or configure a filter to label all invitation emails.

Switchers

Switchers are puppets intended to move between regions and to quickly swap World Assembly status between each other. Once a nation updates, its endorsements are invalid until the next update, so to deploy to more than one region in a single update you must swap World Assembly status between switchers. To do so, have the switcher which updated resign from the World Assembly and use your saved invitation for the one which has not updated.

Switchers should be stored in the Citizens’ Militia’s jump point Waves. This region is one of the very last to update, so the endorsements of puppets stored there will be valid for operations in almost any region. Switchers should fly the Citizens’ Militia flag for your rank. They can be named and themed anyway you like so long as it is not offensive or inappropriate.

Sleepers

Sleepers are puppets intended to lie in wait in a region and build up influence. A sleeper should be camouflaged as a natural resident of the region. By residing in a region for a long time, a sleeper can accumulate enough influence to resist a potential enemy occupation of the region because they will cost more influence to ban or eject. Nations only accumulate influence for the first seven days after a login, so you must log into sleepers at least once a week.

Operations

Orders

There are four ways in which you may receive orders for an upcoming or ongoing operation: through a post in the orders thread on the regional forum, by personal message on the forum, by a telegram to your main nation or through direct contact in the Militia’s IRC channel. To make sure you do not miss any orders, regularly check the orders thread, your telegrams and your personal messages and join the IRC channel whenever online if possible. If you receive an order for an ongoing operation, carry it out immediately and respond to acknowledge doing so. If you receive an order for an upcoming operation, reply with whether you will be able to participate. If you are contacted by multiple means for a single order you only need to respond to one of them.

Liberations and Raids

Liberations and raids are operations that involve forcibly seizing a regional delegacy. A liberation refers to taking a region back from occupying forces, while a raid is an invasion of a region controlled by its native population. The goals and politics of the two differ but their tactics are the same. Both require coordination and can only be undertaken by Militia members who are active during updates.

A region cannot usually be taken by haphazardly moving nations into it. Nations do not gain influence in a region until they update there, so the region's delegate can ban or eject nations for free if they arrive well before update. Many nations must instead move into the region together just before update so the delegate cannot ban or eject them all quickly enough.

These operations need a jump point and a lead. A jump point is a region that updates after the target region so that endorsements of participating nations remain valid. A lead is a nation in the jump point that every participating nation endorses. Endorsements are only validated and counted at update, so when the lead and their endorsers move together to the target region their endorsements will be counted there when it updates, not in the jump point. Participants also crossendorse by endorsing everyone endorsing the lead. This way more people have more endorsements and the chances of success improve. During liberations there may also be a native lead. A native lead is a nation in the target region which participants endorse after moving.

Once everyone has endorsed the lead and crossendorsed each other, they must move together into the target region just before update. This is done using a group chat where a commanding officer issues the order to move. This officer will typically set up a trigger to alert them when the update is about to happen and give the order when it fires. The Citizens' Militia uses its own IRC channel or ones established by allies for this, and to participate in liberations or raids you must join them.

In summary, if you are participating in a liberation or raid the steps you will have to take are:

  1. Move your active switcher to Waves and have it resign from the World Assembly and apply to rejoin.
  2. Open the World Assembly invitation email for your next switcher and follow the link.
  3. Join the IRC channel being used to coordinate the operation.
  4. Move your new switcher to the jump point, endorse the lead and crossendorse all nations endorsing them. Periodically check for new endorsers and crossendorse them too.
  5. Open a tab in your browser for the target region. If there is a native lead, open a tab for them too.
  6. A few minutes before the update, refresh the tab for the target region. If there is a native lead, refresh their tab too. If you do not do this, you may get an error when you try to move or endorse.
  7. Go to your tab for the target region and wait for the order to move.
  8. When the order is given, immediately move into the target region.
  9. If there is a native lead, refresh their tab and endorse them.
  10. Cross your fingers.

Remember that speed is important. Be prepared to move the second the order is given and do not hesitate when it is. Also keep in mind that not every operation will be successful. Even a failed attempt can be helpful if some nations update in the region and the delegate must spend influence to remove them. It is not uncommon to take a region by wearing down the delegate’s influence over multiple assaults.

Defenses

Defensive operations are those in which the Citizens’ Militia deploys to a region held by friendly forces and endorses a number of their nations, usually the delegate. Because there is no danger of being ejected, these operations do not need to occur at an update and can be participated in by all Militia members.

The steps to take in a defense will depend on whether you have a sleeper in the region. If you do not have a sleeper in the region:

  1. Move your active puppet to Waves and have it resign from the World Assembly and apply to rejoin.
  2. Open the World Assembly invitation email for your next switcher and follow the link.
  3. Move to the target region and endorse the target nations.
  4. Respond to the order acknowledging that you have deployed and noting your puppet.

If you do have a sleeper in the region:

  1. Move your active puppet to Waves and have it resign from the World Assembly and apply to rejoin.
  2. Open the World Assembly invitation email for your sleeper in the region and follow the link.
  3. Set your sleepers flag to the Militia flag appropriate to your rank.
  4. Endorse the target nations.
  5. Respond to the order acknowledging that you have deployed and noting your puppet.

Once you have deployed to the target region, remain there until ordered to withdraw.

Glossary

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