N-Day 6: Crabs of the Apocalypse Breaks Score Record, Sweeps Leaderboard
Crabs of the Apocalypse Sweeps Leaderboards, Prompting Discussion into Changes
Written by Bronyleader
Chances are you have heard it; whether it was from the Republic Square, a NationStates related Discord serve or the site-side news announcement. N-Day has come and gone yet again.
This year, Europeia joined Crabs of the Apocalypse, working with the regions of The West Pacific, The Pacific, Balder, The Communist Bloc, The Great North, United Kingdom, The Leftist Assembly, The Land of Kings and Emperors, The Internationale and Social Liberal Union. Crabs of the Apocalypse also signed a Non-Aggression Pact with The Potato Alliance for the first 12 hours of N-Day.
The first few hours were used to stockpile nukes and shields (which were accumulated rapidly thanks to the large number of nations within the faction) to get ready to face what was likely the biggest challenge in the entire event: The Catgirl Hivemind. However, the faction would be rendered incapable of defending itself a few hours after the event started, allowing Crabs of the Apocalypse and The Potato Alliance to nuke it for the rest of the event, boosting the point totals up exponentially. A couple hours after The Catgirl Hivemind fell apart, the two megafactions began nuking every other faction to gain points while also slowly stockpiling for the upcoming conflict.
After the twelve hours passed, The Potato Alliance notified Crabs of the Apocalypse that they were going to cancel the Non-Aggression Pact and at around 11:00 A.M. UTC, The Potato Alliance launched an attack on Crabs; however, very few of the nukes launched hit their targets, to which the other faction retaliated with their nearly 1.5 million stockpiled nukes, effectively destroying their only competition. Crabs would spend the rest of the event clearing out any other factions not yet destroyed, allowing their protectorate factions to take the other nine spots on the leaderboard, with the main faction shattering the all-time score record with 1,287,974 points. Second place, Crabs of the Apocalypse 2, had 5,751.
Despite the impressive numbers created by Crabs of the Apocalypse, that wasn’t the focus of the conversation following the event, but rather the concern of megafactions wiping out all the smaller factions instead of fighting with each other. Augustin Alliance didn’t show up this year, as well as Ba Sing Se and ATOMIC. The only factions to have more than one thousand nations were Crabs of the Apocalypse, The Potato Alliance and The Catgirl Hivemind as opposed to last year, with six (Augustin Alliance, An Alliance of Potatoes, Ba Sing Se, CRAB, Horsemen of the Apocalypse and ATOMIC). Since the major victory, numerous threads were made in the Vault 41 discussing the seemingly unfair advantage the two megafactions had when it came to their size, prompting Sedgistan to make a thread brainstorming and addressing ideas to improve the event and discuss possible solutions for this issue in the future. Although no plans were made to make major changes, some of the ideas to help alleviate the issue in the future include an events calendar that people could easily access so they can plan and participate in events, early registering and joining of factions so smaller factions don’t get immediately destroyed by a megafaction as soon as it’s created and making shields cheaper to produce to help factions survive a bit longer and put up more of a fight. It is unclear though whether or not any of these changes will actually be made.
Only time will tell whether any of these changes will be implemented or if megafactions will continue to dominate N-Day for the foreseeable future.
