[Amendment] Endorsement Cap Act

…3.1. The Viziers may, following a confirmatory vote of the Praesidium, propose to the Magisterium any number of Qualified Endorsement Caps. These proposals shall be confirmed via a normal majority vote by the Magisterium.

The Praesidium has voted in favor of reducing the Qualified Endorsement Cap from 300 to 200. With the drop in total WA as well as our vizier/delegate endorsements, we feel it necessary to increase the cushion for security and therefore propose:

…3.3. The current Qualified Endorsement Caps are as follows:
…3.3.1. The “Qualified Endorsement Cap” shall set the cap for nations endorsing the Delegate at 200 300 endorsements.

Thank you for your time.

Why would increasing the gap from 100 endorsements to 200 endorsements improve security? I would also like to note such a move would have an adverse effect in WA endorsements overall, as we already are one of the lower endorsed regions in NS.

Same as Arleat. I’m not sure we need less WA endos + this seems like it would only discourage endotarting and WA engagement more as people are forced to be ever pickier with who they endorse.

I imagine it could also have the unintended side effect of making new viziers padding their endos much harder than necessary by increasing the amount of endos needed. While it seems like a small issue, it’s still an issue all the same.

This is just unnecessarily drastic, and unlike the lowering to 300 in prevention of F/S would actually impact many of our members.

Currently the endocap is around 72% of Delegate endorsements (414). Lowering it to 200 would mean it would fall to at most 48% of Delegate endorsements, which is just too much. We also have a total of 48 nations above 200 endorsements, or 34 if we yeet the Viziers ane Delegate off the count. An endocap of 250, or about 60% of Delegate endorsements would be less dramatic and more easily enforceable, with only 7-8 non-Vizier non-Delegate nations above it.

At this point can’t we also simply consider a floating endocap again? A % of the Delegate endorsements as endocap, instead of a fixed one.

I should also remind the Praesidium that currently the largest jumps in the history of R/D (minus antifa operations and possibly some liberations, mostly during covid) have never went above 70 updaters, and that was with perfect conditions (a lot of active members, no leaks despite so many jumpers). Not even counting Libcord chasers in the mix. The Delegate, since F/S has never went below 400 endorsements, and when it was close to it was due to structural effects (decline of the total number of nations sitewide) which also affects those trying to attack us, or conjectural effects (REWARD not existing during a chunk of my Delegacy / being briefly down recently due to host transfers in late 2024, or Vussul’s hijack stunt), which are very rare. Having a >200 endorsements cushion is 285% more than what we need today against those largest jumps, 266% more if we expect Delegate endorsements to fall and stabilise around 400.

Reducing the endocap to 200 implies the Praesidium somehow expects the Delegate’s own endorsements to fall by at least 120 in the coming weeks / few months. Ignoring how this can theoretically only happen during a catastrophic drop in WA population sitewide - how do you suspect such a drop is coming?

Finally if all Viziers actually endotarted, that would help with security too. Because a drastic endocap lowering risks levelling down average Vizier endorsements in the process which are already not great for some.

Going to post here what I’ve more or less posted on discord - I’m in favour of lowering the cap. I think 100 is still reasonably safe but a bit too uncomfortably close to the seat, and vulnerable to short-term downswings. What I’m not convinced off is that the drop should be this huge. I think a step of 50 would be more reasonable. It would give us a solid boost in terms of absolute numbers, it’d only affect a small portion of tarters, and it’d be easier to implement.

I’d like to ask the Praesidium a couple questions beforehand. Firstly, what is the margin, in absolute numbers, that you guys would feel safe with? Secondly, what is the reasoning for this shift now, and why is it so drastic? Thirdly, what is the actual threat scenario this move would seek to prevent?

Being brutally honest, I can’t help but feel a bit frustrated at this. Three of the current Viziers are presently below the current cap of 300, and a fourth is only 11 endos above it. If we cannot trust the Praesidium to even maintain security to the best of their ability at the current cap, it feels bizarre and a little insulting to suddenly shift the burden of security onto our most diligent tarters. The Executive has been encouraging residents to tart, a lot of our infrastructure is aimed at encouraging endorsement culture. That the Praesidium now feels it is necessary to force the people who did follow all those incentives we set up to undo their own work isn’t unjustifiable but I’d like to see a solid and coherent reasoning as to its necessity.

I agree that it is for the best that the endorsement cap be lowered. WA numbers are down across the game, and until the last wasteland is dismantled (may it be speedily in our days), this is the new reality.

However, I agree with some of the concerns about a 100-endorsement drop. That’s a big change, and one that I’m not entirely sure is necessary. The days of 50 or 60 jumper raids have passed, at least for the moment. Others are suffering from lower WA counts as well.

250 has already been proposed as a compromise; I think that’s reasonable.

It is the general trend in NS that WA numbers are going down. Especially here in TEP. Our current delegate is only at 400+ endos. Currently only 100+ endos above the endo cap.

I understand the argument on WA tarting culture that the executive is trying to bring to TEP may be halted by this current proposed endocap by the praesidium.

With the current endocap at 300. Approximately about 100 endos away from being del, is very unsafe for our region. Especially during delegate transition as well.

As a region, we need to think of ways and strategies on how to get our WA numbers up again and we may see the endocap going up again. But for now dropping the endocap to 200 is our safest option right now.

If you’re talking about drastic. It is not so drastic. As our endocap before we went to 300 was 400. And the delegates then had 600+ endos on average. So the 200 endos between the delegate and the endocap is not something drastic as some may have argued. It has always been like that.

To speak regarding the general consensus among the Viziers:

The option of 250 was originally discussed; however, the decision on 200 was ultimately made based on the prediction that it would eventually be necessary, and would be easier to handle in one large push now versus incrementally. The Magisterium is free to disagree with this.

We receive half the spawn rate we used to. It may have slowed or appeared to stabilize, but at the rate we’re losing WAs since 2021 (arguably a bubble at 700+, although I remember a period where we had roughly ~600 stable) it’s likely the delegate will eventually deteriorate to 350, then 300 endorsements. At that point a cap of 200 will be necessary. Possibly too high for my comfort, even.

Also worth mentioning that as we get lower in endorsements, a % starts to become irrelevant - especially if something like Cordone repeats itself and the delegate loses ~10 endorsements; a drop from 350 to 340 to 330 with an endorsement cap of 250 becomes a much more dire situation if we don’t react almost immediately, and one where bad actors could aggressively tart past the cap and receive piler support relatively quickly in a push for control. Plus a %-based cap is an aggravating experience for everyone involved.

We steward a very coveted asset in the Gameplay world. The Viziers are aware of this and are alarmed by the deterioration we’ve experienced since the introduction of Frontiers. My two cents, and speaking for a number of members of the Praesidium regarding why 200 was chosen.

I am replying as a Citizen and Magister but also as a Vizier. I do not speak for the Praesidium, but I do have years of experience in the security branch and I led it for over a year. I was here for the last coup and I’ll be here long after the next one fails. With that experience in mind, I’d like to express my support for this change. I was also initially skeptical on the 200 drop rather than the 250 drop, but like the rest of the Praesidium, the more I talked it through, the more I realized the necessity. With that in mind I’d like to address some concerns of my fellow Magisters:

It means potential coupers/invaders have a much higher distance to make up for in pilers, meaning propelling a non-Vizier to the Delegacy as part of an invasion would be much much more difficult. It would also limit the relative gain of influence compared to the Delegate and Viziers, making it more difficult for the person, if pushed into the Delegacy, to do too much, and making it way easier for the Viziers or Delegate to eject and ban them.

While that is a concern that we discussed, ultimately the fact of the matter is that our endorsement culture is lacking anyway. When it comes to choosing between something which our community struggles to do – of our WA (non-Vizier) Magisters only three have over 200 endorsements, and only one Arbiter – and security, something which is the difference between the life and death of the community in the wrong circumstance, I think it’s worth the small sacrifice.

Obviously there’s a line to be drawn, but we debated back and forth and ultimately, maintaining 250 or especially 300 endorsements requires an active, deliberate effort which few TEP natives are willing to put into it. So the endorsement culture won’t be there anyway – the Praesidium’s ideal case is always raising the endorsement cap but it always should come with a significant number of natives brimming at the top with high Vizier and Delegate numbers as well. The endorsement rate is not getting to those levels right now anyway.

And yet some regions can also bring upwards of a hundred pilers to military operations. While we’re busy ejecting and banning those 70 updaters and running unendorsement campaigns, new pilers could be swarming in and infiltrators in the region could be using stamps to do exactly what Vussul just did – spread misinformation to damage the reputation of the government (an act which cost us 10ish endorsements even without an explicit call to action).

This isn’t even touching on the fact that most infiltrators come in teams, and they may have the Delegacy (and therefore RO control) or maybe even a rogue Vizier on their side. Even if they don’t, they can get any person, regardless of suspicion, close to the Viziers without even infiltrating anything. GCR coups are messier than just an army’s initial update and the security forces’ response. In the same circumstances in which a coup would arise, the response would need to not just be immediate, but also long and influence-extensive. We can easily avoid that with a lower cap.

Yes, it would, and a significant wing of the Viziers are doing that, but the fact remains that the Delegate sits at about 400 endorsements after almost a whole term (which means getting to that point is difficult, and getting close only slightly more so) and Viziers need to be comfortably above the endorsement cap without getting too close to the Delegate, which is a balancing game. Ultimately, “Viziers should tart more” can’t be the end all, be all. If you keep saying “Tart more” to every potential threat, eventually Viziers are beyond the Delegate.

Could you explain this? I don’t quite understand this thought process.

I mean you walked right into this lol but I think a margin of 200 would be very safe. In all seriousness I think it’s difficult to draw an exact line. It’s definitely more of a sliding scale than an absolute defcon level threshold, and putting the slider in the first spot we feel not just safe, but also rather comfortable, is good. We can feel safe with a 325, 330 endorsement cap maybe if we’re checking endorsement rates and the activity page every day, and it becomes a game of what is the perfect balance of that. I think 200 is a comfortable bet, not just a safe one, and keeping our government comfortable is good.

It honestly could be at any time, but the last Delegate was at 464 endorsements shortly after being elected to his third term and the current rate on the current Delegate can only be assumed to have stabilized at where it is now, at essentially 400, because it’s been three months since their election. Dealing with a 2 term and then 3 term Delegate inflated our sense of a normal Delegate term, but ultimately we can’t always expect the Delegate to go for multiple terms and accumulate more endorsements.

The effects from F/S have stabilized more or less, so it’s easier to estimate a normal trajectory as well. We also have to consider the fact that Delegate transitions are vulnerable times and we are coming up on an election. I think it’s difficult when, quantitatively, is the best time to make such a step for the same reasons choosing a number is difficult – it’s a sliding scale. We could have ultimately done it a month or four months earlier and it may not have been a very different situation, but now we have some distance from the election and the 3 term Delegate – enough to know what normal is.

Perhaps it would have been better to lower to 250 four or six months ago and lower to 200 now, but ultimately the ideal location for us to be at is 200 and moving down to 250 would be so trivial as to be an unnecessary stepping stone in reaching that, so 200 seems fair.

The bare minimum: An infiltrator or group of infiltrators which sidles up to the endorsement cap with clean puppets, does nothing suspicious, and springs an attack. However, as I said to Altys, it complicates itself when we come to GCRs. Feux likes infiltrating Security Councils for a reason. Maybe one person manages to make it into the Praesidium and others are coming close to the cap without drawing attention to themselves. Maybe one runs for Delegate instead, after building a TEP career over a year or a couple years, with others joining at staggered times and rising to the endocap. Maybe they send tgs to unendorse the rightful Delegate and/or loyal Viziers. Either way, the point is any substantial threat could do a number of things with such a close margin between the cap and the Delegacy, and that itself is the threat.

[quote=“Kingdom_of_Napels, post:5, topic:18619”]If we cannot trust the Praesidium to even maintain security to the best of their ability at the current cap, it feels bizarre and a little insulting to suddenly shift the burden of security onto our most diligent tarters.
[/quote]
I would say not being able to rely on the Praesidium with this cap is precisely the reason to lower it, but on your endotarting point, I go back to the response to Altys – endotarting can’t fix everything and while you’re looking at the lowest endorsed Viziers we’re looking at the most endorsed Viziers and the Delegacy and the difference is not as big as it should be with three Viziers under the cap. Yes, those Viziers should tart more. Yes, those Viziers are being told to tart more and organized to do it. However, that can’t distract us from the fact that this would be a threat even if every Vizier was perfectly hovering at 370 or 380.

Lower WA counts being a trend is precisely why lowering the cap makes so much sense. The fact that other regions experience declines means that this isn’t the fault of the three Viziers under the endorsement cap. The fact that this is a trend means that it may continue – perhaps not as drastically as AMOM predicts – but still nevertheless. As I said earlier in this post, we need to be comfortable being where we are now.

Appreciate the explanation, AMOM. Personally, I’m still in favour of 250, and adjusting the cap downwards if the Praesidium’s predictions come true. The cap has been 120-140 endorsements below the Delegate’s endos for a long while now, as Merlo tended to hover around 420-440 and only exceeded 450 in June and July. I think widening that gap as a precaution to 150+, assuming we don’t have a mass die-off out of the blue, should relax security concerns without hindering any endorsement culture we’re promoting. A cap of 250, or even a less intuitive but lower number like 240, would widen the gap between the cap and the Delegacy to 164 as it stands (or 174 if we go with 240). A decently-sized group of our residents have more than 200 but less than 250 endorsements, and the seven nations above 250 aren’t that far above it either. Adjusting the cap downwards, if these predictions are true, would not be a huge issue. If the delegate drops into the 380s, 370s, then I’d lower it to 200.

There’s 34 nations over 200, I don’t think they should be dismissed so easily. Kneecapping a fragile endorsement culture is the concern to begin with.

Pilers take time to gather, any RO online can negate them outside of updates. The danger is updaters, as Altys points out, and a nation tarting past the cap to get in reach of being put in the seat by those updaters. Even assuming a huge, unprecedented and frankly unrealistic leap - 90 updaters - lowering the cap down to 250 still strikes me as a reasonable compromise. Rogue nations would need to be sitting 60 endorsements above that cap to even have a long, long shot at the delegacy, and if they’re allowed to tart that far past the cap there’s really no point in having a cap in the first place.

In which case a lower cap is irrelevant, if not actively harmful by limiting the influence of legitimate natives trying to resist a coup. Again, keeping rogue nations away from the seat is important and we should lower the cap. I’m not sure why rogue delegates are even a question here.

Going to leave the debate on Vizier tarting aside for now, since a reduction of the cap is needed anyway in my view, but you should absolutely sort that out regardless of any discussion on the cap.

…are you not?

My main point was that they come in teams – the rogue Delegate or Vizier argument is secondary, but indicative of the possibility that a few nations near the endocap join said rogue element in an attack, which would expound the dangers of a high cap. The overall conclusion being that, as I said, a GCR coup is about more than one person at the cap and one update of jumping. We cannot oversimplify threats in the security business.

Me? No. Except to tart, of course.

When it comes to this act, I stand by the opinion of most magisters as to move the cap to 250 rather than 200, as I would also point out as I’m a Winged Hussar (a NS with over 200 endos and currently slightly above 250) such a move to reduce it to 200 would drastically force a change in endo tarting and the hussar program, which arguably has saw decent success in general.

Recognise I’m kind of getting sidetracked, but surely the Praesidium does check daily? Also to enforce the very cap we’re discussing?

Below the trends of WA nations count in the last 6 months:


WA nations count over the same period:

I deduce from this that:

  • The North Pacific, whose technology catastrophically disappeared in 2023 has not yet recovered from such period. I do not know if they are manually recruiting - or how effectively they are doing so if that is the case. It is also worth mentionning TNP was / is still piling in The Outback.
  • The South Pacific remains stable. Note they are piling in The Plains of Perdition, which affects their numbers.
  • The East Pacific remain stable - possibly being slightly lower towards the end due to the Maham Pact purge and Vussul’s departure, with their new region - Cordone - having many WA nations (10-25) who formerly were in TEP.
  • The New Pacific Order’s data is unusable over this period due to them pulling their external members (a jump of an absurd 130 or so WAs) to endorse Xoriet for the delegacy transition. However the general trend since October seems to be that of stability.
  • The West Pacific has grown during the August-November usual yearly members surge - in parts thanks to manual recruitment - before going down at the end of the year due to their huge piling efforts in The Outback (at least 30 pilers - possibly more).

In conclusion all Feeders remain stable, with drops related to conjunctural reasons. However the site’s WA population has been on the up during this period - which we can see in TWP’s trendline and WA nations total line, which suggests Feeders are still ever so slightly declining in population - something which TWP’s data proves is possible to combat through manual recruitment and proper integration. In fact, The West Pacific has, since January 13th 2024, gained WA nations in spite of both their recent ongoing massive piling efforts in The Outback and F/S - supposedly affecting WA nations like Viziers state. Something which we have the ability to mirror - which we are currently doing.

We also are a region with a huge treaty web and additional connections to non-treatied regions as I’ve laid out on Discord. The most recent ‘credible’ outside attack on a GCR was a petty deltip against TNP - because ultimately that’s the most you can do when endocaps already place 100+ endorsements before the Delegate and any non-Security Officer. You must perform a takeover from the inside - and as I’ll lay out later - a lower endocap makes this easier.

A World Assembly endorsement culture - also sometimes referred to as the influence fortress - is based on the encouragement of cross-endorsements without limit. The more endorsements, the more influence. A cap discourages people from cross-endorsing, even if encouraged by Government programs. However this is somewhat neutered by the cap being high enough to the point where without Government assistance or consistent work (which very few people would practice - but you can take pre-Vizier Zukchiva as an example) you cannot go beyond it.

However here by lowering the cap by 100, the Praesidium effectively kills the current REWARD, which encourages everyone since 2023 to be above the proposed new cap. This is likely either going to outright force REWARD’s Winged Hussars to be removed - or to level down its own cap to 150, grandfathering Godsinia knows how many nations into the list. Note 200 endorsements is not a hard number to reach either - I’ve myself reached 130+ by endorsing barely 1/5th of the region and simply parking my WA nation in here for a little bit.

There will be less of an incentive to cross-endorse for the nations grandfathered because they will already have the highest reward - thus lowering our average influence amount across all nations - making the region weaker against a coup.

There will be less of an incentive to endorse at all for new nations, since why bother when you are being blocked at such a low number. This includes the endorsement of all Viziers.

Hence why ‘levelling down’. Hence why we call 250 less damaging - because it both prevents the voiding of half our current WA program with possible repercussions and has a smaller effect on our average regional influence amount.

There’s a third element to this that is about looking secure. Any given couper or external hostile force seeing that the non-Security Officers are hard to remove and entrenched with influence, the less likely they are to believe a hostile takeover might succeed, the less likely they are to try.

Ultimately if Viziers cannot do such a simple task as endotarting to the point they fall below the endocap they themselves voted on in the past and remain in such a state for several months despite constant reminders - not even counting the times some of them CTEd - then perhaps they should follow in VW53aland’s footsteps and resign. Otherwise the Magisterium should discuss their suspension for clearly being unable to take the defence of this region seriously.

Yes, but not every Vizier is tasked with that specifically either, and enforcement is managed by EPPS.

SOP 1.6 states, “The Viziers shall maintain a high endorsement count, above the endorsement cap, to the best of their ability.” So maybe they need more assistance. The last couple of day I have helped Todd get just over the cap, Bach is really close, and McStooley will be more work, but he’ll get there. CTEs, happen, that’s on us. We should have been more watchful of our own when life had them down. Tbf, VW was retiring, so resigning was the only course he could have taken. At this time the Praesidium does not feel we need to suspend any Viziers but are working with our lowest endorsed to get them back up.

  1. The amount of Viziers under the cap is very low.
  2. Those Viziers are endotarting and rising each passing day.
  3. The Magisterium cannot remove Viziers.
  4. The Magisterium SHOULD not remove Viziers – if it had that power, our Delegate would be a member of the Rahl family today.

I remind my fellow Magisters that amending the proposal is not a power the Grand Vizier has. It must be voted down for a new proposal to reach the floor, and yet many Magisters are keen to not have that vote. It seems to me that dragging this out benefits neither side, which both want a conclusion to be made but differ on which conclusion, but does benefit anyone who might have a vested interest in long-term East Pacifican instability, who would rather us be too busy arguing numbers to actually enact any change for at least a few weeks.

I motion this to vote.

I second this vote. While I appreciate the spirit of debate it’s not mechanically possible to alter the endorsement cap we proposed.

For a complete record, I’m going to post my views on this as I already did on Discord.

As to my general position on going to the 200 endocap:


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I would like to add that the Praesidium is not a second legislative chamber, nor is it like the Executive charged with executing the laws of the Magisterium. Due to the nature of the Praesidiums mandate and task, it does not approach this proposal from the same scope of information as the Magisterium does. In my view, the current system of the endocap act only functions well if the Magisterium effectively trusts the Viziers with security.