Region (NationStates)
Adapted from NSindex.
A region is an integral grouping of all nations on NationStates. Nations can choose the region in which they wish to be located, although executive Founders, executive World Assembly Delegates and Regional Officers with 'Border Control' powers can eject or ban nations at will.
There are two types of regions. Game Created Regions are built into the game to serve a particular purpose, such as hosting new, ejected or recreated nations. User Created Regions are founded by the players themselves and the Founder nation has absolute power. Game mechanic changes enabled the founder to choose whether or not to grant themselves access to the Regional Control panel at the time of founding the region. Founders and Delegates without control panel powers are called non-executive. While a non-executive delegacy protects a region from raiders, a non-executive founder makes a region completely vulnerable.
Game Created Regions
Fifteen of the many founderless regions are built-in Game Created Regions. In these regions, the World Assembly Delegate has permanent executive access to Region Control, although the delegate must spend some of their influence to take certain regional actions. Border Control is the only power to cost influence in a Game Created Region, with the exception of Warzones which are completely immune to influence cost. All other permissions are hampered in the first twenty-six hours after appointment for Regional Officers.
There are three subcategories of Game Created Regions: Feeders, Sinkers and Warzones. Delegates from Feeder and Sinker regions are usually influential due to the size of the Game Created Regions and large numbers of endorsements, with plenty of new, ejected and returning nations to keep them in the top ten regions in the world through sheer population.
Feeder regions
Five of the Game Created Regions are Feeder regions, also known as the Pacific regions. They are starter regions for new nations. Game mechanics ensure that Game Created Region delegates cannot password-protect the region. There is a brief exception for passwording the Game Created Regions during a site event known as Z-Day, where the regions can be passworded (temporarily) without cost for the duration of the event.
However, new nations can create and become a Founder of a region, or join other regions straight away; existing nations can join at any time if they are not banned from that region.
Sinker regions
Four of the Game Created Regions are Sinker regions. The Rejected Realms takes in nations who were ejected or banned from other regions, while Lazarus, Balder, Osiris jointly take in reactivated nations. The Delegate and Regional Officers of The Rejected Realms cannot eject or ban nations because of its integral role as the host to all ejected nations.
NationStates introduced Balder and Osiris on October 19th, 2011 to balance membership numbers at Lazarus with other Feeder and Sinker regions.
Warzone regions
Six of the Game Created Regions are Warzone regions, introduced on June 28th, 2004 and designated specifically for raiding and defending. While Warzone delegates can only ban nations temporarily and cannot password-protect the region, they do not need to spend any influence to do so. Bans in Warzones last only twelve hours before expiring, whereas in other regions bans do not expire and can only be lifted through unbanning the nation or being bumped off the ban list by the ban list cap. Warzone region pages show the longest-serving delegate in their respective regions.