[IDEA] Security Networks

[Unibot III]

Currently, embassies serve no value for a region's security - this idea would bring value to diplomatic cooperation for a region's security.

Proposal

With each embassy, the endorsement level needed to assume the delegacy would be greater. The exact formula of how an embassy would enhance a region's security would have to be a balanced and nuanced affair - I would suggest every embassy would be worth 10% of the endorsing region's endorsements, with a maximum of +20 (after elapsing that bonus, regions would no longer gain security from more embassies).

I think to make this a more balanced proposal - the cancelling of embassies would have to take less than 3 days. Instant cancelling, but a 3 day wait-period for the construction of embassies. Otherwise, liberations will probably become prohibitively impossible in all cases while piling remains as a tactic. This balances out as a game change, because taggers would be able to cancel embassies with a region instantly - which is more dangerous if embassies are important for a region's regional security.

EDIT: We might also have to consider a limit on how many embassies a region can have - to prevent large defender regions like 10000 Islands and The Rejected Realms and Lazarus from just approving embassies with everyone. A 50 embassy limit or something like that would curtail that practice to a more reasonable limit.

EDIT-1: Bears Armed notes that allowing players to reject or cancel their own endorsements would resolve the issues that buffers would cause for native delegate transitions. That's an elegant solution.

Pros

• Tight-knit communities with low endorsement counts, like roleplayer regions and leftist or rightist regions could organize their own security networks - where they all embassy each other to improve their collective security. I'm imagining communities like International Incidents would have sign-up sheets for their own networks.
• Smaller regions would be able to make themselves more secure - instead of needing five or six invaders to invade their regions, invader organizations would need twenty or thirty invaders which makes the whole process more difficult although not impossible.
• This gives more value to embassies and diplomacy. Regions can take their security into their own hands to a much larger degree.
• Encourages invader groups to invade with larger numbers.
• Invaders will now be strategically encouraged to not remove embassies with regions that they intend to occupy - although they will be encouraged to remove embassies with regions they don't intend to occupy (i.e., tag-raids) - which they already do.

Neither Pros nor Cons Necessarily

• Your first thought may be that this proposal will make it harder for newer invader organizations and tag-raiders who want to invade, but with two or three people instead of larger communities. However: there will still be countless regions out there that don't embassy with anyone - these regions will be as open for tag raids as ever.
• The more embassies that a region has, the harder it will be to liberate said region - natives and defenders will have to contact allies of occupied regions and inform them that they need to cancel their embassies with said region.
• Assuming a cut-off to the bonus (I've proposed 20+), this proposal helps smaller regions more than larger regions - 20+ endorsements for GCRs is almost a negligible bonus. This helps balance out the proposal, because larger regions will not see it in their interest to significantly help out smaller regions for little benefit for themselves. This encourages cooperation among smaller regions.

Figure 1. As the number of members in a region rises, the value of this proposal to a region's security declines, because 20+ endorsements becomes a negligible security advantage and invaders will switch to different tactics with larger regions anyways which involve covert tarting, as opposed to sheer invasions. Besides, I imagine larger regions will have mostly embassies with smaller regions bumming off them for "phantom" endorsements - two regions with 200+ endorsements endorsing the same small region would be inefficient and nonstrategic.

Cons

• Invaders, to take the regions that they prize as targets right now, will have to increase their number of updaters.
• Liberations will become more difficult. I suspect though defenders will be able to talk regions into closing their embassies, invaders will propose embassies with their own targets rising their defenses over the three days to make up for the lost embassies.

[Unibot III]

Dyr on IRC pointed out that this would make delegate changes or transitions a bit more difficult - regions with large buffers, but small populations would have to have their delegates resign from the WA or leave their region temporarily or get foreign support to facilitate a delegate transition. This is a common practice for larger regions, although it would make a bit more work for smaller regions and prove to be a window of opportunity for invaders if they can catch a region during transition (unlikely unless they're scouting out opportunities).

I'm not sure these scenarios are are a "death knell" to the idea at all though, they just make using the security network a bit more interesting to use for smaller regions. That's not a bad thing.

[Cata Larga]

I fear it will be a year at most until raiders find some way to work around this.

Should it be instituted, that is.

[Havensky]

As a player with a presence in both a large WA heavy region (The Great Region of Texas) and a RP heavy region (Gholgoth), I'm fully supportive of this proposal. It's a clever way to solve one of the major pain points in the game. It also will encourage regions to work together more.

[Shadow Afforess]

I don't like this proposal. It encourages embassy spam and pointless embassies for the purpose of artificially creating an endorsement barrier. Further, It would make it impossible for a delegate change in most regions, in the absence of a founder, as no ordinary member of the region would be able to overtake the delegate. Plenty of regions operate on the basis of endorsement competition and this would end the original means of delegate election and make a delegacy more like a monarchy.

[Eluvatar]

I don't like this proposal. It encourages embassy spam and pointless embassies for the purpose of artificially creating an endorsement barrier. Further, It would make it impossible for a delegate change in most regions, in the absence of a founder, as no ordinary member of the region would be able to overtake the delegate. Plenty of regions operate on the basis of endorsement competition and this would end the original means of delegate election and make a delegacy more like a monarchy.

I'm afraid I have to agree with Afforess.

I think a better way to use Embassies for Security would be to leverage Influence. Perhaps one would gain influence to a lesser extent in all Embassied regions, or similar. This has been discussed before, of course.

[Free Republics]

Personally, I think a simpler solution (and the place to start) would be to award influence to nations for all regions with which their home region has an embassy (same amount as if they were in the region, unendorsed). If Nationistan is located in The Rejected Realms and TRR has an embassy with The South Pacific, then Nationistan would gain influence in The South Pacific at every update. If Raiderstan is located in Anarchy, which is occupied by The Black Riders (I use them as an example because they are, undoubtedly, the most successful raiding group at the moment), then Raiderstan would gain influence in Anarchy and The Black Riders.

This would penalize embassy spamming regions by making it easier for raiders to gain influence in those regions while it would also encourage raiders to maintain embassies with regions which they intend to raid in the future. Defenders would be able to station sleepers in The Black Riders in order to gain influence in regions raided by The Black Riders before moving into those regions, allowing them to drain more influence from the raider delegate.

I believe that whoever has the most endorsements should be the delegate. The delegate-elect idea, that is planned for implementation, is a solution to the tag-raiding problem (and I would be fine with the security network idea, if it was used to set the thresholds for avoiding delegate-elect status). The benefit of combining the 3 ideas is that there would not be a need for an embassy cap (since having large numbers of embassies would make it easier for raiders to gain influence in your region and thus harder to eject them once they arrive).

[Sichuan Pepper]

K I S S is a good rule to live by.
Keep it simple....this is far too convoluted and makes hard work of something that should be simple.

[Mekhet]

I don't like this proposal. It encourages embassy spam and pointless embassies for the purpose of artificially creating an endorsement barrier. Further, It would make it impossible for a delegate change in most regions, in the absence of a founder, as no ordinary member of the region would be able to overtake the delegate. Plenty of regions operate on the basis of endorsement competition and this would end the original means of delegate election and make a delegacy more like a monarchy.

I'm afraid I have to agree with Afforess.

I think a better way to use Embassies for Security would be to leverage Influence. Perhaps one would gain influence to a lesser extent in all Embassied regions, or similar. This has been discussed before, of course.

No, it would need a big drawback not related to influence or necessarily R/D, something else that would make people discouraged to use many embassies except the closest allies. So it becomes a trade-off. I'm not speaking of construction/demo times. If I think of something for that I'll post it.

[Unibot III]

K I S S is a good rule to live by.
Keep it simple....this is far too convoluted and makes hard work of something that should be simple.

The complexity is in the recipe, not the souffle. Like "Regional Influence", the typical user would understand the basic idea behind it, but the exact details would be a mystery.

I don't like this proposal. It encourages embassy spam and pointless embassies for the purpose of artificially creating an endorsement barrier.

Embassy spam and "pointless embassies" would not gain anyone much of an advantage. 50 embassies (the max) with regions that only have 1 endorsement each, would be a 5 endorsement buffer - and if those regions have no endorsements (like most regions), than there would be no advantage at all.

Further, It would make it impossible for a delegate change in most regions, in the absence of a founder, as no ordinary member of the region would be able to overtake the delegate.

Not if the delegate removes themselves from the WA or leaves the region temporarily - which is what larger regions do to ensure a safe transition.

[Bears Armed]

Dyr on IRC pointed out that this would make delegate changes or transitions a bit more difficult - regions with large buffers, but small populations would have to have their delegates resign from the WA or leave their region temporarily or get foreign support to facilitate a delegate transition.

Unless this was combined with the idea, already suggested in this forum, of letting nations voluntarily drop as many (or few) endorsements as they want without having to take the 'leave WA => lose all endos' route?

[Unibot III]

Dyr on IRC pointed out that this would make delegate changes or transitions a bit more difficult - regions with large buffers, but small populations would have to have their delegates resign from the WA or leave their region temporarily or get foreign support to facilitate a delegate transition.

Unless this was combined with the idea, already suggested in this forum, of letting nations voluntarily drop as many (or few) endorsements as they want without having to take the 'leave WA => lose all endos' route?

This would be an elegant solution!

[Bentus]

Definitely interesting. I'm hesitant to say it's a sure-fire solution to the R/D opt-in/opt-out issue that's been blowing around, but it makes up for it by offering a nice new twist to things. I can imagine (as someone who doesn't play R/D) sieges of regions as raiders try to hold out for 3 days to secure their gains, whilst defenders attempt a counter-attack in the window they have left. Also could be interesting from an RP standpoint as well. I could imagine these security networks popping up as inter-regional IC organisations on the forums as well.

[Unibot III]

Definitely interesting. I'm hesitant to say it's a sure-fire solution to the R/D opt-in/opt-out issue that's been blowing around, but it makes up for it by offering a nice new twist to things. I can imagine (as someone who doesn't play R/D) sieges of regions as raiders try to hold out for 3 days to secure their gains, whilst defenders attempt a counter-attack in the window they have left. Also could be interesting from an RP standpoint as well. I could imagine these security networks popping up as inter-regional IC organisations on the forums as well.

Certainly, players would run with the idea and make their own organizations with it and create. Any limits on something should replace the old opportunities with new opportunities to diplomatize, create, organize and have fun.

My hope is that this idea is something that would be a positive contribution to the game overall and not just a prohibition or restriction of something deemed negative.