I think its pretty well known that excessive nation-sheet building before the RP begins is a bad way to start. Forget all the excessive history, detailed alien race bios etc. Tell us what the heck your nation is all about. What are the goals and aspirations of your nations leaders? What are they willing to do? Excessive lore-building and detailed alien histories are fine and dandy, but they bog down the meat of the RP. While I certainly enjoy the narrative-driven RP style that seems to dominate the NRP forums, at times I also want to feed my megalomania and control a nation, not tell three different stories over the course of a few months to figure out if my nation put troops on the border or not. I think what I'm getting at is I want my nation to have influence in the game world, and to interact meaningfully with NPC's, PC's and leave an impact. Hope this helps-