The Western IslesBoard

Integrated Consumer Products Companies

• Avazi

• Omega Electronics

• Zephyr
  

Technical, Scientific, and Industrial Products and Components

• Koria Precision Instruments, precision measuring equipment, speciality electronics

• Thermorasi, infrared cameras, spectrometers, and components

• Shariyath Ekfantoros, infrared, X-ray, and ultrasound medical imaging equipment
  

Electronics Components

• AMK, batteries, batteries, and more batteries

• Chyrtiros Dynamics, electric motors and dynamos

• Harauvatisnezhad and Triopas Kefir , graphics processors and graphics cards

• Mount Alethusos Foundry Services, to-order integrated circuit fabrication

• Nanoscribe, photolithography (integrated circuit-making) equipment

• STKL Neosemi, programmable hardware
  

Electrical Engineering Products and Services

• Parsozhad Hydro, turn-key hydroelectric power plant design and construction

• United Electric Products, products and services for power grids
  

Avazi designs and manufactures consumer electronics, as well as many of its own components. Avazi also has a small entertainment division. In the consumer electronics area, Avazi makes a broad range of medium- to high-performance devices, including computer game consoles, laptop computers, smart phones, still and video cameras, and OLED TVs and displays. Avazi's top of the line camera and display monitors are used for professional streaming and movie-making.

The company is known as a leader in visible light image sensors, producing many of sensors used by other companies as well as itself. It produces other components as well, especially GPUs, memory modules, batteries, and wireless transceivers and modems for 4G and 5G cellular communications and WiFi.

Avazi's entertainment division, Avazi Studio, specializes in computer games, mainly for its own consoles, but sometimes for other platforms as well. As a result of developing the expertise in the sophisticated graphics many current games require, the company has started to produce feature-length animated movies as well.

Avazi's administrative offices are in Shariyath, and it has fabs and factories there and in Eiresion. Avazi Studio is in Ornemion.

Omega Electronics sells and makes last-generation and low-end consumer, commercial, and industrial electronics. Their product range is huge, everything from feature phones to microwave ovens to factory control systems. Many of these products are simply sold from stockpiles bought when they were discontinued, but Omega also manufactures some of its own low-end goods as well. The company also sells outdated software as well, at least in cases where older versions are available.

Hadar Cheiron ben Medon founded Omega Electronics on two simple premises. First, not everybody wants or needs the most advanced gadget on the market. Some people can't afford them, and others are just cheap, hence Omega's slogan, "The last word in low prices!". Second, many people are happier with older gadgets or the software that runs on them because the older stuff has features that replacements don't have.

Omega Electronics operates three subsidiaries, Omega Data Recovery, Omega Industrial, and Omega Foundries to support the use and manufacture of trailing edge or outdated electronics as well.

Omega Data Recovery specializes in recovering data from obsolete media, especially obsolete removable media. Many companies and individuals know the importance of backing data up routinely, but they sometimes discover that their only back-up copy of older, but still important, information is years old, and they lack the ability to read the media containing the back-up. Omega keeps old back-up systems running, so they usually can read "orphaned" media. They're also familiar with older disk architectures, and can often recover information from them.

Omega Industrial provides equipment, support, and services to technical and industrial companies with obsolete electronic equipment. Like its parent company, Omega Industrial buys up equipment as it goes out of production, but unlike its parent, it does not sell cheaply, as companies unable to switch away from old gear will pay well for parts and repairs. On the other hand, Omega Industrial does offer services to help those companies migrate to newer equipment.

Omega Foundries makes integrated circuits using obsolete or outdated processes. They also emulate their parent company and make obsolete chips themselves. Hadar was offered the contents of an out-of-date fab when it was being upgraded to the state of the art, and he acquired the equipment, realizing that some of his own low-end products were dependent on chips that would go out of production soon. He was surprised to to discover that other companies also had use for older or low performance integrated circuits made cheaply. Omega Foundries thus produces parts with relatively large feature sizes, but does so very inexpensively.

Omega Electronics and its Foundries are based in Zeteomos, where land and labor are cheap. Omega's other subsidiaries are based in Chyrtiros, close that city's customers.

Zephyr is Ioudaia's largest electronics company. Zephyr Lamp Company started in 1921 as a light bulb manufacturer before branching out to vacuum tubes and then entire radios. They adopted new technologies as they were developed, making some of Ioudaia's first transistor radios, and making early use of integrated circuits in consumer electronics.

As Zephyr made heavier and heavier use of integrated circuits, they began to make their own. By 1982, they were one of Ioudaia's largest IC manufacturers, producing chips for themselves and other companies. And as electronics became more capable, they entered new product areas to make use of the components they could make.

Zephyr has remained true to their roots, and continues to make lighting products. LEDs can be used in more places and in more ways that traditional incandescent and fluorescent lamps: Zephyr makes not only LED light bulbs, but also LED signs ranging from small retail signs to immense LED screens for stadium use, LED displays (and some LCD ones as well), and now sophisticated LED walls, which are beginning to replace green screens for movie and TV backgrounds.

They also have an active consumer electronics division, specializing in appliances: microwave ovens, refrigerators, dishwashers, washing machines and dryers, and other "white goods". They have a reputation for reliability, and at the high end of their product line, they are known for sophisticated, elegant, and easy-to-use products. Zephyr is also Ioudaia's leading maker of smartphones, though they don't compete at the high end of the market, preferring to use economies of scale and internal parts production to serve mid-range and value-conscious customers.

The company also makes a wide variety of integrated circuits, including ASICs, 8- and 16-bit microcontrollers, and low-end FPGAs, for their own use and to sell to other OEMs.

Zephyr's administrative and research campus is located in Ornemion, adjacent to a subway station. The company has factories in Ornemion, Eireson, Chyrtiros, and Shariyath.

Koria Precision Instruments began as a manufacturer of scientific instruments, but now produces speciality semiconductors as well. It's a leader in precision instruments, and makes among the most accurate clocks, multimeters, and oscilloscopes in the Western Isles; it also produces electron microscopes.

KPI's specialty semiconductors find their way into many products. They include real-time clocks, analog ICs, power electronics – battery controllers and power regulators – and accelerometers. In addition, KPI makes a large fraction of Ioudaia's discrete components, especially tantalum capacitors. Because of the unusual nature of many of KPI's integrated circuits, it has its own fabs.

Their line of low-cost, 8-bit microcontrollers is popular with appliance makers who need "smarter" equipment to meet consumer demand, as well as automakers and others with a small need for general-purpose embedded processing power. The new very low power variants are making inroads into battery-powered "internet of things" devices as well.

KPI's facilities are located in Cypharisseis and Thyron.

Thermorasi is Ioudaia's leading producer of IR image sensors and support equipment (optics and electronics) as well as IR instruments, systems, and services for consumer, industrial, scientific, and military use. Their products include everything from sensitive infrared spectrometers for laboratory use to rugged thermal imagers for armored vehicles, as well as consumer-grade thermal cameras and non-contact thermometers. They've also made most of the infrared telescopes and spectrometers used by the Space Exploration Agency's satellites.

Thermorasi is located in Shariyath.

Shariyath Ekfantoros manufactures x-ray and IR image sensors, ultrasound transducers and decoders, and X-ray, IR, and ultrasound instruments and services for medical and technical use, including digital X-ray machines, CAT scanners, and medical ultrasound imaging and therapy equipment. They do some military business as well.

The company has most of its facilities in Shariyath, and it has a research and development campus located adjacent to Tagaris Medical School in Ornemion, in order to work with the School's clinicians to develop the instruments they need for next-generation treatments.

AMK manufactures batteries, everything from tiny zinc-air cells for hearing aids to massive arrays of vanadium flow cells for bulk electrical power storage. They produce every chemistry and every size of battery, gaining customers in every industry and every country.

They're one of the Western Isles' leaders in electrochemical research, both in-house and sponsored in Ioudaia's universities. They also buy or license battery technology developed elsewhere.

AMK is located in Chyrtiros.

Chyrtiros Dynamics supplies electric motors and dynamos, including rare earth magnet motors for vehicles, computer disk drives, and specialty applications.

Chyrtiros Dynamics has most of its facilities in its namesake city, but also has factories and research facilities in Shariyath.

H&TK is one of the Western Isles' highest-performance GPU manufacturers. They also produce graphics cards and graphics systems for desktop and laptop computers, respectively. H&TK is located in Shariyath.

Mount Alethusos Foundry Services is a contract foundry company, offering IC fabrication to companies throughout Ioudaia and the Western Isles. Their main fab complex is in Eiresion, and they also have fabs in Shariyath.

Nanoscribe manufactures photolithography equipment for IC fabrication. They're one of the Western Isles' few companies in this specialized business. They're located in Shariyath.

STKL produces programmable hardware, specifically field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) and complex programmable logic devices (CPLDs), which are superior to general-purpose CPUs and application specific integrated circuits (ASICs) for many purposes.

STKL is one of the the government's great success stories that emerged from the 1979 industrial policy. Omid Sanehtajni, Tamir Dardanus, Koroush Noam, and Leodes ben Galal founded their company explicitly to become a leader in programmable electronics.

Their original goal was the develop a new microprocessor architecture to compete with those available on the international market. This proved to be much harder than expected, as Ioudaia's electronics manufacturing industry was not up to producing suitable photolithography equipment, and in any event, many potential customer companies were locked into existing architectures. But along the way, Koroush began to work on configurable hardware to make the company's proposed microprocessors more flexible than foreign designs. Once the company abandoned their original microprocessor goal, FPGAs became their focus.

STKL quickly found customers for their FPGAs in Ioudaia, ranging from consumer electronics makers, through industrial and scientific equipment manufacturers, to military suppliers. The Ioudaian Air Armada and Navy were both very happy with a domestic supplier for their unusual needs, even if they sometimes preferred microprocessors for some military applications.

Today, STKL makes some of the region's most sophisticated programmable devices, including extremely high density FPGAs, mixed-signal FPGAs (analog and digital circuits on the same chip), and PSoCs, which ironically use the standard ARM Cortex M0, M1, and M2 architectures under license, ARM being one of the foreign microprocessors STKL hoped to replace. Some of their devices also include GPUs, USB controllers, ethernet controllers, and other dedicated special-purpose hardware.

STKL sells development systems, design tools, and reference designs for their FPGAs and CPLDs, and provides consulting services for them as well.

STKL's corporate offices and fabs are located in Eireson.

Parsozhad Hydro provides one-stop shopping for hydroelectric power. They not only produce hydroelectric turbines and turbo-dynamos, they also design and build hydroelectric power plants. For small plants, they offer a series of standard designs differing only in dam construction for the site, providing turn-key design and construction. For large hydroelectric facilities, Parsozhad acts as an engineering firm and general contractor, farming out work as needed to specialist companies.

Parsozhad Hydro is based in Chyrtiros.

United Electric Products produces equipment for electrical power generation and distribution. They're Ioudaia's largest producer of step-up and step-down transformers, as well as electrical meters, voltage regulators, high-voltage switching systems, and other gear. They also provide design services for electrical production, transmission, and distribution systems, up to entire power grids.

Like most of Ioudaia's heavy industry, they're in Chyrtiros.

Hello there. Thanks for joining the Western Isles!

You must be wondering what you can do here and how, what is expected of you and how to start role-playing... I'll try to answer these questions in this dispatch.

First of all, if you haven't done so already - go ahead and introduce yourself on our regional message board (RMB). You can post things like what country you're from, if you're new to NationStates or to role-playing (RP), what kind of a nation you want to create, and anything else you'd like to share.

• IC communication (in-character, meaning role-playing) is done on the NationStates forums

• OOC communication (out-of-character, from general chatting to world-building) is done on the RMB and the forums

• Telegrams are usually OOC

We don't have offsite forums, but there's a "mostly unofficial" Discord chat.

We use the NationStates platform to create fun and interesting stories, about our nations, peoples, and leaders. We usually discuss ideas and plan RPs on the RMB and in OOC forum threads, and then co-write them as RPs, news, accounts, information, and history in dispatches and IC threads.

We have a democratically elected government (you can run for office) in-charge of several aspects of the region:

• Facilitating RP and promoting world-building and cooperation in the region

• Managing the region in terms of regional rules and standards

• Recruiting new players and managing our embassies with other regions
  

For more information, you can read through the following dispatches when you get a chance:

• The Constitution - It details the responsibilities of the various government officers and the Founder, as well as the processes of legislation and elections in the region. Of course, there's no need to remember it all, but it's there if you need it.

• The Regional Rules and Conduct - That's just... The rules. You know, don't be a jerk to others, don't spam the RMB, and so on. The map rules are also there, but we'll get to that in a minute.

• The Monthly Report dispatch - Contains current and updating information about the region (recent stats of the region, weekly updates, important daily events, etc.).
  

Of course, most of us can. If you still have questions, you can do either of the following:

• Post a question on the RMB; you'll likely get an answer not long after.

• Send a personal TG to any of the officers (listed in the WFE) or to an active member
  

Your address for questions regarding specific RP rules is the Sec. of RP (Roendavar). Feel free to tag him in your RMB post or to TG him.

Our regional map is the basis of our RP, and it is therefore reserved for nations who actively engage in RP or plan to do so.

To be added to the map, send Ainslie a telegram with answers to several simple questions - they are listed under "Map Rules" in the Regional Rules and Conduct dispatch.

Here in this region we don't use NationStates stats at all. Population, economic status, main industries, defense budget - All of those things are up to you, the player, to decide! Make factbooks or dispatches describing your nation's culture, history, religion, government, economy, climate, military, science, industries, people, corporations, trade deals, and anything else you can think of.

RP in this region is based on realism and modern-technology, so keep your nation in those limits. There are a few other guidelines we have in place to keep things balanced, for example:

• Population should be no larger than 30 million

• GDP per-capita should be no larger than $30,000 USD
  

Other than that - the limit is your own creativity. Feel free to look around and read other nations' factbooks and dispatches for ideas. See for example:

• Miklania's dispatch on his Air Force and on his FM5 Seraphim

• Vancouvia's dispatch on Foreign Affairs and Policy

• Athara Magarat's dispatch on Magarati languages

• Alteran Republics's colorful Sterling Airlines Homepage

• Ainslie's detailed and organized main factbook
  

Take some time to look around, get to know the other players and the region as a whole, and develop your nation. I recommend doing that before getting into RP.

You can get to the region's ongoing RPs and events in either of the following ways:

• Through the "Ongoing Events and Perpetual RPs" in the region's World Factbook Entry

• Through Ainslie's RP Directory, which contains the region's RPs, alliances, and collaboration threads
  

As a start, I recommend reading the recent posts in the regional news thread and posting some of your own, before moving on to more complex RPs. This would allow players of the region to get acquainted with your nation and your style.

NS is full of useful guides on RPing and writing. This one, for example, is short and to the point. This has all the NSCodes. This thread explains about RPing warfare. There are many more RP guides and tip dispatches or threads around the site - feel free to explore and learn more about RPing.

For any question on the region (or not), feel free to ask on the RMB or to any of the active members.