Aurora

OVERVIEW

N-Day is an opportunity for nations to come together and exchange nuclear weapons in a fiery Armageddon of mutually assured destruction.

To Participate

1. Once registration opens, you can create or join a Faction (the full list of factions can be found here). Nations outside a Faction can't attack or be attacked. You can join a Faction when you're ready and leave when you're not (to stay safe). When joining your first faction you will be assigned a specialty.

2. Once the event begins, you will begin to accumulate Production. You will now be able to spend Production, fire Nukes and deploy Shields.

3. Watch your nation automatically generate Production. Use Production to build Nukes and Shield.

4. Launch Nukes at other nations and use Shields to shoot down Nukes that are launched at you.
   

Tactics

The simplest way to play N-Day is to join whichever Faction seems most fun and start targeting Nukes at its enemies while shooting down anything incoming.

Faction Bar

Your Faction page's icon bar shows everything you need to know, including who's targeting anyone in your Faction, and who your fellow Faction members are targeting. An example of a Faction page can be found here.

SPECIALTIES

Nations are randomly assigned a specialty when first joining a Faction. You can find yours on the top left of your nation's nukes page.

Military Specialists build Nukes faster: They receive more Nukes when converting Production.

Strategic Specialists build Shield faster: They receive more Shield when converting Production.

Economic Specialists can accumulate more Production: Their production cap is larger than the other specialties.

Cleanup Specialists can clean up radiation: For the a large Production cost, they can remove radiation from any nation in their faction, including those that were previously fully irradiated. They have no Production advantages.

BASIC MECHANICS

Producing: Step by Step

1. Navigate to the production tab on your nukes page.

2. Use your accumulated Production to purchase Nukes or Shields.

3. Purchased Nukes or Shields will go into your Stockpile.

Attacking: Step by Step

1. Make sure that you have Nukes to fire in your Stockpile.

2. On another nation's Nuke page, click/tap the TARGET button and select the number of Nukes to use.

3. Once Targeted, it takes a few minutes for your Nukes to reach a READY state. Note that your Targeted page is public: All nations can see who is targeting whom.

4. When your Targeted Nukes are ready, click/tap LAUNCH. You can find a handy list of targeted Nukes on the Targets tab of your nuke page.

5. Your Nukes are now categorized as Launches for you and Incoming for your target. Launched Nukes take a few minutes to reach their target. When they do, they earn Strikes for you and inflict Radiation on the target, which reduces their rate of Production. This also earns Score for your Faction and reduces the enemy Faction's Score.

6. If, after while, targeted Nukes remain unlaunched, they will be automatically returned to your Stockpile.
   

Defending: Step by Step

1. Make sure that you have Shields in your Stockpile.

2. Find Launched Nukes to destroy, such as those in the incoming tab of a faction or nation.

3. Your top priority will likely be any incoming Nukes launched at you. Secondarily, you may wish to target incoming Nukes on anyone in your Faction, and also keep an eye on targeted Nukes that may threaten you or your Faction in the near future.

4. Click/tap DESTROY to deploy Shields.

5. The number of Shields required to destroy incoming nukes depends on the relative faction power. If your faction is weaker, one Shield will destroy more than one Nuke.

6. You may also destroy Nukes that are inbound for Factions other than your own, but the number of Shields required to do so is affected by a cross-faction shielding penalty and is not affected by relative faction power.

7. Shields may be contributed to the faction Shieldbank, which will deploy them automatically, but with a lower efficiency than a human.
   

Cleaning up Radiation: Step by Step
NOTE: This feature is only available to Cleanup Specialists

1. Ensure that you have the neccessary Production accumulated.

2. Navigate to the Radiation page of the nation that you wish to clean up. It must be in the same Faction as your own nation!

3. Press the HEAL button to heal the nation.

4. Generally, it is ill-advised to heal nations that are not fully destroyed, as their radiation will decay naturally over time, the size of the healing is quite small, and the cost is rather steep. In most cases, the best use of the heal is on DESTROYED nations, which will not heal naturally.
   

Strategy

Strategically, it may be wise to avoid attacks on nations or Factions until you are confident of obliterating them, since this eliminates the possibility of counter-attack. Smaller-scale attacks, which damage but don't destroy an enemy, can lead to an escalating series of grudge-related nuclear exchanges.

On the other hand, targeting an enemy can be an effective warning. And it takes Nukes 10 minutes to be ready to launch, so you can't leave it too late.

Scoring

Each Nuke that reaches a target causes Radiation damage, which reduces the target's rate of Production generation and counts as a Strike for the attacker.

Duration

N-Day lasts for 24 hours, after which point, an Arms Control Agreement means that no Nukes can be launched. (In-flight nukes can still land, however.)

The "winner" is the Faction with the highest score; if, that is, nuclear war can be said to have a winner. Which we say it can. It's the Faction with the highest score.

FACTIONS

Once registration opens, Factions can be founded by a Regional Officer of any region. Any and all Regional Officers of that region can update the Faction's official text to issue instructions to Faction members.

Factions can be made open to all members, or restricted to the region's members only.

You can leave your Faction, which is a good way to stay safe if you're signing off for the night. However, you can only do this if you're not engaged with the enemy! That means:

• You must not have any nukes targeted or launched at another nation; and

• No nukes can be targeted or incoming on you.

Note that in practice, this can make it challenging to leave a Faction, since you may be frequently targeted.

While outside a Faction, you cannot be targeted, and do not generate any Production. Leaving a Faction will also clear any spare Production that you leave with, but will not affect your Stockpile, so make sure to spend your Production before leaving.

Before joining, it's worth making sure a Faction isn't currently under mass bombardment.

Bikini Atoll and Kicking Faction Members
Bikini Atoll is a special, game-created, faction. It operates as a normal faction, but nations that are kicked from their factions will be transported to Bikini Atoll. All targets on the nation persist. Nations can be kicked from their nuke page, by Regional Officers in the factions founding region. Nations with incoming Nukes cannot be kicked.

WA NATIONS
World Assembly members will accumulate Production 10x faster than non-WA members, and have their Production limits increased by around 3x.
It is allowed to switch WA membership to receive this benefit for different nations, but (as per regular site rules) you are only allowed to have one nation in the WA at a time.
Keep in mind that if your Production is over the non-WA limit when you resign membership on a nation, the Production on that nation will decrease down to the limit (i.e. if you resign with 1000 Production on a non-Econ nation, the Production will drop to 750).

We ask that you refrain from switching WA for N-Day purposes more than once every two minutes. You will not be punished for this, but it is against the spirit of this change to the event mechanics.

PRODUCTION
Nations automatically generate Production every tick. The current tick rate is one per 2 minutes. Production can be spent on Nukes, Shields or Healing other nations (Cleanup Specialists only).

Production Rates

Cost of Producing

SHIELD BANK

It is possible to donate shield to the Faction Shield Bank, which will automatically shoot down incoming nukes. This alone will not stop all incoming nukes, however, as the rate at which the Shield Bank shoots down nukes is dependent on the number of incoming nukes and its size.

MAX(MIN(0.15 * FACTION_INCOMING, 0.25 * SHIELD_BANK_SIZE), 200)

RADIATION

Radiation is generated in a nation when it is struck by a Nuke. The amount of Radiation generated is affected by the relative power of the factions. Weaker factions will receive less Radiation per Strike than the base value.

Radiation proportionately reduces a nation's Production generation rate. For example, if the current Radiation Penalty was 50%, 20% Radiation would reduce Production by 10%.

Radiation naturally decays over time, and can also be healed by a Cleanup Specialist.

When a nation is 100% Radiated, it is destroyed. A destroyed nation is no longer able to Produce, use Nukes or Shields, or Heal, and will not passively decay in Radiation. Only a Cleanup Specialist can 'revive' a destroyed nation.

You can leave a Faction when irradiated, but this does not affect your Faction's score.

SCORE

A Faction's score measures strikes and radiation that occurred while those nations were a member. It is unaffected by nations joining or leaving the Faction.

A Faction's Score is calculated by

RADIATION_GIVEN - (0.25 * RADIATION_TAKEN)

GLOSSARY