Forums → Ingerland → Ingerland/Introduction to the project

Prelude

Ingerland is a country in northwestern West Uletha and is the homeland of the OGF equivalent of the English language and culture. The main parallel to Ingerland is England, not the United Kingdom. Like England, Ingerland is a major historical colonial power which has influenced a immense amount of the OGF world, in every corner of the world. Because of that, Ingerland can be considered one of the most important countries for OGF's in-universe history. This forum page should help all interested people meet at one place to discuss everything about Ingerland in-world, from geography and geology, to infrastructure and beyond. Should it be necessary or easier, discussions will be broken out into subforums.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Territory applications will not be approved without considering the national plans which are discussed below.

Timeline

Now: Discussion of critical points below begins; former colonies begin submitting a priority list of toponyms and monarchs to include in the project
01 May: Users may begin applying for a region of Ingerland, but no applications will be approved prior to 10 May to allow for initial discussions; active applicants will be given priority in the decision-making process over the broader community.
No later than 10 May: Final decisions on outline of geology, hydrology, and topography
25 May: Input from former colonies ends

Discussion

Other issues

Infrastructure

With the geography in place, and the history/movement of people determined, the next step is to connect the all the settlements. This includes national railways, highways (and trunks), national roads (mainly primary), important ports, airports. Lower levels of infrastructure such as public transportation should be decided in each region by its own owner, with the exception of the collaborative regions, where the community should be working together.

Please have in mind the transportation network of Nordurland and Kalm, the two mapped neighboring states!

User proposals

Discussion

Not really a proposal but something to keep in mind - we may also want to think about things that the UK lacks which other countries may have, e.g. a developed high speed rail network. I think this would be very interesting to explore. Yuanls (talk) 22:47, 29 April 2023 (UTC)

I think it could be an interesting play in Ingerland if we say, the equivalent of the Beeching Cuts were not undertaken, so the current Ingerland is super saturated with railways, then that would provide a bit better reason that there's less space for high-speed rail in a country that has a land-mass much larger than the UK does, if there's just no space to weave around a high-speed rail line. And it would also then inform why the Federal States has a marginally higher amount of commuter-rail than the RL analogue of the US, if the Federal States, or at least where the Ingerland colonies were, took a cue from the saturated rail services of Ingerland and carried it through to it's modern day. - Aces California (talk) 11:49, 1 May 2023 (UTC)

This would be interesting, and would certainly have my endorsement. I am a sucker for mapping disused railways though, and for better or for worse, I do imagine there'd be some amount of closures, even if it were more protracted/less drastic than what happened IRL. Would love to look into this in the future! Yuanls (talk) 12:00, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

It's possible that there can be concurrent railways run by rival private companies. On the other hand, the rail network could be nationalised that will decomission rail lines that parallels too much to each other.--Zhenkang (talk) 12:43, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

The FSA would've declared independence from Ingerland decades before the first railways were constructed in either country. --TheMayor (talk) 15:25, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

Various topics

Something else on your mind? Write it here!

I've given a read through this and I'd be interested in shaping one of the regions, particularly the marshy, flat eastern region since I'm from Norfolk myself. Is there a link to territory applications that I'm missing? --Myrcia (talk) 18:58, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

The territory applications can be accessed via the territories map and clicking on your desired region. Bixelkoven (talk) 19:29, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

Please could a section be added to this forum post be added to clarify the organizational structure of Ingerland (and provide a link to the collab page)? I know the structure is explained in detail on the collab page, but it would be useful to have a very brief summary here. Gubble (talk) 16:39, 5 May 2023 (UTC)

I'd say it is described nicely on the page you mentioned, but I will go ahead and post a summary nevertheless.

The entire country is divided up into regions that make up the whole of a unitary state. Two of the regions are "purple," meaning they are owned by the community and fully collaborative: the capital region and a second region that is a bit more rural in nature.

Individual regions are not independent entities, nor are they like states of the United States. They possess little governmental authority. They are owned either by individual users, or as private collaborative projects.

Users have a degree of mapping autonomy within their own territory, however several national questions and issues are to be determined on a national level (such as economy, nation-wide infrastructure, geography, culture, etc.). Ignoring national plans while mapping in a territory is unacceptable.

Every territory owner and mapper within Ingerland forms together a council-equivalent, with a chosen leader (coordinator). The council should discuss the aforementioned issues and questions, and the coordinator should guide the entire team and the discussions.

The collab regions (so far, only the capital region has been designated) can be mapped by anyone, following the plans which will be approved from this forum page.

Bixelkoven (talk) 01:00, 6 May 2023 (UTC)

I wish to give a few clarifications about some things as well, since they have come up in messages.

We recognize the regions are quite large from a real-world perspective. Please keep in mind that these regions are not too different than the nine regions of England in the real world (East of England, West Midlands, East Midlands, Yorkshire and the Humber, South West, etc.). They're simply regional administrative authorities, and they are pretty large.
Similarly, we expect that all the regions of Ingerland could easily be divided into 3–6 historical counties. Whether or not these are mapped will be up to the members of the project.
The size of the regions allows for people to have most types of mapping (urban, industrial, rural-agricultural, rural-industrial, etc.) in their territories without having to compete too much for who has the largest centers of population or the most coal mines.
I wish to reiterate that the second collaborative territory will be picked after the first round of applications are approved. We want to give people a chance to get their first choice in before we isolate a specific one for collaboration.
There has also been a question about ancient Celtic influences. Since Ingerland will need to have a cultural strata similar to real-world England, we would have expected Celtic influences in the Bronze and Iron Ages. The difference is that we don't want active Celtic influences to dominate the landscape akin to Wales or Scotland. These would be found in places like Regions 98 and 99 or in separate projects in territories nearby those regions if people were interested. UL10x is not planned to be a Scottish-inspired territory.

I'll add more here as necessary, but I hope this answers some questions that were frequently asked. — Alessa _(talk) 21:53, 6 May 2023 (UTC)

Not sure where to put that, but: while I don’t intend to claim a territory in Ingerland, having already quite enough to do with my tiny little speck of dust of a country, I’ve noticed that UL-10-98 and -99 are marked as part of Ingerland but not yet available? So, what about them, should they be considered as a part of Ingerland as of now, and what’s there? (I ask because these territories are fairly close to my own (Searavenag, the smallest thing at the far end of the firth of Hetzer) so I’m curious if there’s any sort of consensus on the area. Unrelatedly, I remember being told that there used to be (still is?) an international organisation for the Vinn sea area, but it doesn’t seem to have much existence in practice, and the rebirth of Ingerland might be the right time to discuss international organisations in the area? — Portier (talk) 20:37, 8 May 2023 (UTC)

Regions 98 and 99 are, as mentioned on the official collab page, to be much more inspired by things like Wales with a much heavier Celtic influence. As for the international organizations in the area, you are welcome to and free to talk about them with the members of the project. Ingerland may or may not wish to be a part of it. — Alessa _(talk) 01:58, 22 May 2023 (UTC)