[Proposal] More Feeders

[Aclion]

Maybe from your perspective.

I've never considered myself either one. I think there are more players like me than you might guess. People who consider it important are very vocal about it. People who aren't vocal about the differences probably don't care at all. That probably applies to most issue answerers, RMB roleplayers, Generalites, F7 posters, etc. I suspect the people who don't care vastly outnumber the people who do.

Well... I was speaking from a Gameplay perspective.

There's much much much more to gameplay then Raider/Defender Userite/Feederite nonsense. The cultural event/region building/diplomacy/WA side of NS is all gameplay. They would all see benefits from distributing founded nations more broadly.

[Wintermoot]

I wonder if many would-be founders have decided it's just not worth the work required to make and maintain decently large UCR.

I don't think this is a good solution to the problem. It would just make the situation even more pay-to-play, as Founders with the means to buy stamps would still buy them, and Founders without the means to buy them would still be at a competitive disadvantage. I would be even less likely to found a region if stamps were more expensive, but still existed, than I am now. But you're 100% right that the new recruitment system is the problem for UCRs.

It's not the best solution for sure, but it's probably more realistic than expecting the powers that be to remove something that brings in money, especially since that money has gone on to buy new/more hardware to support more features since then.

I keep saying this, but what we really need to do is make it harder to found a new region. For someone to found a region they should have a nation with a minimum population, or support from other players, or be a WA member, or something to suggest they have an idea what they are getting into. This would at least raise the caliber of leadership in UCRs by a small amount, and help concentrate players into fewer regions overall.

I'm not sure the problem is that there are so many regions as much as so many of them are actively competing for the same limited pool of new and refounding nations. Not everyone is looking to make a large or serious region, and they'd probably be the ones hurt most by a restriction on creating regions. I personally think the problem is more specific to the recruitment system anyhow, and there's probably enough old nations out there that it'd continue to be a problem even if a restriction on creating regions was implemented.

[Galiantus III]

what we really need to do is make it harder to found a new region.

Minimum population sounds like the easiest solution

Before you invest in this idea as some sort of solution, I can almost guarantee it won't fly. [v] doesn't like barriers to newbies. Any such program would kill an important special case, Class Regions. The majority of class regions are created by teachers who haven't visit the site before and have only 5 million populations. If we ask them to wait for a month, they'll leave and not come back.

This would at least raise the caliber of leadership in UCRs by a small amount, and help concentrate players into fewer regions overall.

This seems to be a solution in search of a problem. Newbie players who create Hermit regions aren't likely to play well with others regardless of the restrictions you place them. They're not disturbing anyone being off by themselves, are they? At worst, they're creating a few extra pages in the World Census reports, and some few of them may be adding to the level of spam with poor recruiting campaigns. Where is the harm?

It is the responsibility of Admin, not the players, to entice players to try out all aspects of the game before dismissing them. And no, merely saying "you can go join a region" is not enough. The game needs active players, and you don't get active players by allowing them to go indulge in isolation right off the bat. If someone really wants isolation, they will know by the time they've been around long enough to have 250 million citizens.

But it's not only the game which stands to benefit, but also the people like myself who genuinely wanted to build our own region right from the start. Anyone looking to found a new region for a new community absolutely should not do so before spending some time as an active member of another more established region. You need to have a pattern to follow, and you need to have a community of friends to fall back on if your region fails. Most regions fail early on, despite lots of hard work from their founder. Thus it is extremely likely that a well-meaning, tenacious founder will go off and recruit a few other players, only to result in all of them CTEing and never returning to the game. That is why this kind of barrier is needed.

P.S. Class regions deserve to exist the way they currently do because they are not contributing to the problem in terms of recruitment or activity. These aren't players joining for the first time, subject to recruitment spam while not knowing what to do, but students who might never have found out about NS otherwise.

[Jar Wattinree]

what we really need to do is make it harder to found a new region.

Minimum population sounds like the easiest solution

Before you invest in this idea as some sort of solution, I can almost guarantee it won't fly. [v] doesn't like barriers to newbies. Any such program would kill an important special case, Class Regions. The majority of class regions are created by teachers who haven't visit the site before and have only 5 million populations. If we ask them to wait for a month, they'll leave and not come back.

Ah, I forgot about the class regions. You make a fair point.

There's much much much more to gameplay then Raider/Defender Userite/Feederite nonsense. The cultural event/region building/diplomacy/WA side of NS is all gameplay. They would all see benefits from distributing founded nations more broadly.

Yes, that's what I said. The ideologies are just a part of the whole.

[Ever-Wandering Souls]

Well... I was speaking from a Gameplay perspective.

There's much much much more to gameplay then Raider/Defender Userite/Feederite nonsense. The cultural event/region building/diplomacy/WA side of NS is all gameplay. They would all see benefits from distributing founded nations more broadly.

This is something I'd like to stress. While I see strong short term benefits to "gameplay" as in "military gameplay," and *think* there would be moderate medium-long term positive effects, I think the real value in this proposal is in some of those things you names. While, as Cormac said at one point, adding in any new GCR (Osiris and Balder as examples) provides some level of long term activity via settling and fresh faces, a fundamental idea of this proposal is that doubling the number of feeders/150%'ing the overall GCR counts, combined with reducing the inter-GCR disparity to just merit-derived disparity rather than an innate feeder vs sinker disparity will have very positive permanent impacts in the scenes for diplomacy, alliances, the WA, et al. A wider, more equal base should allow for more dynamic "gameplay" in those regards, where the dominant powers are *less* dominant, and there's more room for change and variation. Whether the issues is an SC vote, who will or will not support regime change elsewhere, who bands together to share resources on cultural or military events (see, for example, how TWP and TEP ran their militaries jointly for some time), or something else entirely, the proposed change should add depth and variety into the mix, compared to the current state of very limited options where just even fewer faces dominate. These are fundamental parts of why I'm proposing 5 new feeders (alongside because that's what should drive approx sinker-powered end size) - one or two is more of the aforementioned short-shot "stimulus" to things, whereas I think this has the potential to approach being more of a "solution."

And, while this is more of a stretch, I do think that that benefit would bleed over to UCR's too. If the function of the game encourages feeders to act less monolithically and partner/interact more with their peers (which I think again is good in general and to begin with), it should also encourage them to interact with either large singular UCR's or tight-knit alliance of mid-sized UCR's on increasingly even terms. Those are currently on more even ground with sinkers, so in a world where feeders are also more even with sinkers...

[Flanderlion]

I personally joined NS due to my brothers mate making a region, and my brothers persuading me to make a nation. I never ended up joining due to the descriptor saying that my nation would be picked up by helicopters, but the idea of new nations being able to make their own region with a few mates is kinda important.

Recruitment wise - not convinced they should be able to, but it's usually players who've been around long enough to have made any minimum pop req, and thinking 'oh, my region will be different', spamming TGs and sucking up a large group of noobs who ultimately CTE due to a lazy founder. Noobs generally aren't smart enough or rich enough to do that much damage recruiting wise, they'll drag a couple down, but they usually don't have enough money, motivation or tech know how to recruit more than a couple of players away from decent GCRs/UCRs. I'm not an expert on recruiting for a region, I've done a bit for other regions, and received a lot, but not a lot more, so if people who have done a lot of recruiting think that new nations are getting way too many TGs when they arrive, I'll

Class regions are made by a teacher discovering the game, creating a region, sending in a GHR and the mods applying class region status to it. If there were restrictions on founding a region, this couldn't happen, as Fris said above.

--

More Feeders won't make the game better. It'll be taken over by the existing factions, as the regions that have the largest/most active mils in both pilers and updaters are GCRs/Imps/Raiders and Defenders. Possibility of a radical left (or right) one, but it's not going to do much more than entrench the current powers. If Feeders are that much better than other regions, shouldn't other regions be made better rather than make the success stories do worse?

I don't think this would improve the WA. It'll either be neutral - or as some of the current GenSec members have worried, will just increase the disparities (not sure if it'd do that, but can't imagine it improving it either). Best option to help the WA is hiding total votes and reducing larger delegates votes.

This is a political game, so most of that is supposed to happen.

Great, so now they can have five more large regions to do it in. Everybody wins!

There is a collection of minor problems, but this doesn't really address it. As Guy said "Which is not to say that maybe more feeders could be a good idea, but I'm not sure that it'll really have the desired effect. Potentially a (maybe even strong) positive payoff, but for me there's too much of a risk of a negative payoff, I think."

Focusing on each issue, and sorting each one is better than going 'lets add more Feeders, it'll totally solve everything, it's the magic silver bullet'. This is a solution in search of a problem, like, people like big active regions.

Creating more Feeders is a bad idea, at least at the present.

Surprisingly, the more neutral members in this thread have pretty much agreed with that, unlike other similar threads where randoms have been more mixed views. I think that's partially due to the GA going from 'GCR delegates are bad' to 'big delegates are bad', probably due to IA being the delegate of Europe with one of the highest endo counts in the game. I was also surprised to see CWA coming around to being pro Feeders and focusing on the WA issues, while a year or so back after a bad experience in TWP he was more along the 'break up the Feeders' camp. It could also be due to the fact that WA numbers in most Feeders have stayed the same or decreased over the last 2 years, while the work involved by all Feeders to enlarge their WA counts has increased dramatically.

[Ever-Wandering Souls]

More Feeders won't make the game better. It'll be taken over by the existing factions, as the regions that have the largest/most active mils in both pilers and updaters are GCRs/Imps/Raiders and Defenders. Possibility of a radical left (or right) one, but it's not going to do much more than entrench the current powers. If Feeders are that much better than other regions, shouldn't other regions be made better rather than make the success stories do worse?

I don't think this would improve the WA. It'll either be neutral - or as some of the current GenSec members have worried, will just increase the disparities (not sure if it'd do that, but can't imagine it improving it either). Best option to help the WA is hiding total votes and reducing larger delegates votes.

The things you start out stating are not necessarily corollary. Ignoring the annoying back and forth (where it's either claimed "they'll all be claimed by those already in power" but also "then they'll be too split to be active despite being many times larger than UCR's and controlled by the existing regions" and also at the same time "they'll all be controlled by the evil userites") ...Existing factions and groups trying to take them is ...part of it? It's doesn't prevent it from being good for the game? Of course existing groups of all types will fight over them in the near to mid term. As has been given as examples prior, we've *seen* that happen before (and provide a positive impact on Gameplay specifically). Also worth noting is that even the groups that "won" those cases have not remained exactly who they were prior. The nature of a GCR and the environment changes them. Anyways, most of the benefits I see come *regardless* of who exactly controls these regions, and certainly work *better* if a wide variety of groups currently not in power in feeders are the ones controlling them - wherever those may come from. And none of this will serve to "entrench the current ones" - which is why they're all in this thread bitching and making personal attacks where arguments fail.

The second part of your first paragraph is just nonsense. On one hand, plenty of UCR's are successful - it's not a given that "making feeders have 50% lower spawn rates and 'only' 250+ WA members will kill them oh no!" Again, Sinkers do pretty okay too, eh? Also again, the problem is that *regardless* of differences in effort, all feeders are far above all sinkers (and all largest UCR's). Which brings us to the other hand - nothing in this proposal prevents good regions from being better. I sound like a broken record, but the difference will be the really good Feeders will only be 2-3 times more powerful than the sinkers and the really damn good UCR's, not 6 times so, 2-3 times so before adding any effort into play at all. The fact is, feeders are naturally, astronomically higher up the food chain, and that imbalance is bad for many types of gameplay.

Regarding the WA, while this is perhaps not as exacting of a solution as one specifically and only targeting WA votes, the introduction of more parties into play/single players controlling a smaller share should make that more dynamic. In reply to threads regarding totally "nerfing" large votes, Admin has made clear that the presence of large votes and the ability for large blocs to exist are generally desirable, real, political effects (and I agree). The idea, then, is to make them manageable. In other threads, that devolves into bickering over different complex nerfing formulas and methods, to defines what is too much or too little. I think the much cleaner solutions is this - make the blocs at worse at least made of more component parts, and likely, make there be at least two far more equal blocs and some more powerful unaligned voters. While the WA will still have to play some politics, it should at least be more interesting than "do you or do you not have WALL support?"

Any suggestion that this could make disparity in WA votes "worse" is utter nonsense. You're not summoning new nations out of thin air. Only spreading those concentrated in 5 feeders eventually across 10 feeders.

[Aclion]

Regarding the WA, while this is perhaps not as exacting of a solution as one specifically and only targeting WA votes, the introduction of more parties into play/single players controlling a smaller share should make that more dynamic. In reply to threads regarding totally "nerfing" large votes, Admin has made clear that the presence of large votes and the ability for large blocs to exist are generally desirable, real, political effects (and I agree).

On this topic. The core of the objection is not that large votes exist but that the large votes that decide basically every resolution are a product of mechanics, not politics.

[Flanderlion]

Firstly, noting, again and again, I'm not the same person as the other people from my region/who others are arguing against you. I might even agree with some of their viewpoints/reasons even if they reach the same conclusion. And my 'personal attack' on you re the motivations of you was first for two paragraphs giving context to people reading the thread, who mightn't have realised the timing of this thread.

Not sure how 'people already in power', 'evil userites' and 'existing factions' can't all be the same thing? If you want I can explicitly say, regions like TBH are some of the biggest regions on the raiding side. They are userites, and they're an existing faction. Not sure how any of that is hard to grasp.

And honestly, unless you're weak, most decent regions should have decent enough piler forces to hold it after a week. There would be a brief uptick in GP activity, probably for a month or so of conflict if that, then governments etc. formed and then go the way of Sinkers.

You mention Sinkers are doing pretty well, I don't agree. In fact, I've walled of text a lot about how they're actually a pretty terrible environment, with inactive RMBs, communities that either burn out/are inactive/toxic and often too much change for stability. Baseline activity for somewhere a new player comes into should be like most Feeders RMBs, or regions like https://www.nationstates.net/region=com ... of_liberty and https://www.nationstates.net/region=europe. Someone active at pretty much all hours. Notice commonwealth of liberty has only 200 nations, yet is better than most of the UCRs I looked through, showing population/WAs isn't a direct indicator of activity.

I guess I don't see it as a problem Feeders being bigger than Sinkers/UCRs, and honestly, I think it's better to grow them rather than shrink the only regions that are actually doing decent at present. Activity creates activity, it's not like nations/regions are a zero sum game.

Feeders have really been the only 5 regions that have been working consistently on their WAs and communities for a protracted period of time (5+ years). Sinkers are on and off, some UCRs might work on their communities consistently, but I can't think of a region that has been working as hard as Feeders on WAs for a similar period of time, while also consistently working on their community. Europeia did decent for a while, but they only put an emphasis on WA in the recent ish 3 years or so, and their community takes massive dives when pivotal members leave the region such as Mousebumples (and then other members stepping back with the dodgy stuff going on there).

Merit wise, we deserve larger numbers. The reason why there have been more people working harder to increase the numbers is likely due to the newer fresher people who are interested in helping their regions, but it doesn't get rid of the fact, all five to varying degrees have worked harder than other regions for a longer period of time. Rome wasn't built in a day, and neither were we. People seem to think that 'I tried for a year or two, I'm not bigger than a Feeder' when usually they've done less work, and over a far far far shorter time period.

There are two main different metrics I use, raw nations/WAs in the attempt to gain number of individual players and RMB posts/happenings/offsite activity both on their forums and chats/NS forum activity in the attempt to measure activity. A region doesn't need to have a lot of members/WAs to be active, nor does a lot of members/WAs equal activity (Sinkers).

I'm not sure how you personally measure success for a UCR, but yes, I agree, plenty of UCRs are successful, both with WAs and with community. They could be more successful without burnout/more persistent efforts over the long haul, but there are ones that are pretty successful.

With splitting up the delegates - I mentioned I didn't think it'd magic more votes, but was paraphrasing what they said. Shrinking the larger delegate votes with a formula has been fairly popular when mentioned across the various WA communities, individual players, and even some of the larger Feeders/UCRs have grudgingly accepted something needs to be done. Preserving larger delegates voices are larger, but not dramatically larger. Some still remember the days of where Europe and 10KI were the dominant WA voices, showing that it's not a GCR thing, and more a big region thing.

--

Coming up with a formula for something like that, normal to 100 (or 101 votes including delegates personal one), then (total endoes - 100)^0.9? So 300 endoes would be 219, 120 would be 116, 1000 would be 557. Just playing around with the numbers.

[Unibot III]

With regards to WA votes - another way to do it is instead of a rejigging algorithm is to give each region the same amount of votes as before but split the WA Delegate’s votes between a number of WA deputies (the number of which is based on how many votes, the delegate would otherwise have.) The regional distribution of endorsements lessens the consolidation of votes and vote stomping/stacking - it would improve retention of residents in larger regions by giving them more incentive to stick around and collect endorsements, but it also wouldn’t detract from the overall influence of larger regions.

[Roavin]

How would that work in regions with a deliberately low endorsement cap, though?

[Unibot III]

How would that work in regions with a deliberately low endorsement cap, though?

I’ve mused about it in the past. I’ve speculated a regime would want to have a least a handful of endorsees to make the most of the system - a purely autocratic GCR with a sole endorsee would be forfeiting its full potential of WA influence in favour of its endorsement monopoly.

[Jar Wattinree]

How would that work in regions with a deliberately low endorsement cap, though?

I would imagine trusted ROs.

[Tupelope]

Or just have the feeder WA delegate vote strength be based off the average WA endorsement amount of the region

[Roavin]

That too disadvantages regions with deliberately low endorsement caps, though.

[Tupelope]

Sounds like that is their problem then. There is an opportunity cost to everything and if they value their stability over having a stronger say in the WA then so be it.

[Galiantus III]

Do "Commissions":

In addition to endorsements, WA nations may give one commission to one other WA nation. Votes are no longer derived from endorsements, but commissions. It breaks up voting blocs without decreasing overall regional power, and separates WA power from regional power.

[The Tri State Area and Maine]

Do "Commissions":

In addition to endorsements, WA nations may give one commission to one other WA nation. Votes are no longer derived from endorsements, but commissions. It breaks up voting blocs without decreasing overall regional power, and separates WA power from regional power.

Most people would just commission their Delegate anyway, or an official specifically chosen by the Delegate to receive commissions.

[Galiantus III]

Do "Commissions":

In addition to endorsements, WA nations may give one commission to one other WA nation. Votes are no longer derived from endorsements, but commissions. It breaks up voting blocs without decreasing overall regional power, and separates WA power from regional power.

Most people would just commission their Delegate anyway, or an official specifically chosen by the Delegate to receive commissions.

Perhaps at first. I think over time WA and regional politics would separate, except in regions specifically taking interest in ensuring everyone commissions the delegate.

[Klaus Devestatorie]

Do "Commissions":

In addition to endorsements, WA nations may give one commission to one other WA nation. Votes are no longer derived from endorsements, but commissions. It breaks up voting blocs without decreasing overall regional power, and separates WA power from regional power.

That'd have the opposite effect that you intend. Instead, I'd make endorsements on regular nations count towards WASC/WAGA proposal votes as well, but reduced- say, the square root of the endorsements, divided by 2, rounded down. Then your tiers for extra votes look like,

1 vote: 0 endorsements
2 votes: 16 endorsements
3 votes: 36 endorsements
4 votes: 64 endorsements
5 votes: 100 endorsements

It would be extra votes, enough to seriously adjust the balance of the WA voting, but not a ridiculous number; even the vice delegate of TNP would only count for 15. It probably wouldn't work as intended either, though- most of the benefits would be in the hands of a dozen or so regions with large numbers of nations with 3 digit endorsement counts- the feeders, XKI, Europeia, etc.

[Galiantus III]

Do "Commissions":

In addition to endorsements, WA nations may give one commission to one other WA nation. Votes are no longer derived from endorsements, but commissions. It breaks up voting blocs without decreasing overall regional power, and separates WA power from regional power.

That'd have the opposite effect that you intend. Instead, I'd make endorsements on regular nations count towards WASC/WAGA proposal votes as well, but reduced- say, the square root of the endorsements, divided by 2, rounded down. Then your tiers for extra votes look like,

1 vote: 0 endorsements
2 votes: 16 endorsements
3 votes: 36 endorsements
4 votes: 64 endorsements
5 votes: 100 endorsements

It would be extra votes, enough to seriously adjust the balance of the WA voting, but not a ridiculous number; even the vice delegate of TNP would only count for 15. It probably wouldn't work as intended either, though- most of the benefits would be in the hands of a dozen or so regions with large numbers of nations with 3 digit endorsement counts- the feeders, XKI, Europeia, etc.

You could always do something to the delegate votes as well - maybe square root, but multiply by two, instead of divide? Or maybe you place limits on how many endorsements each nation can give out, so that there is a need to pick and choose who gets your endorsement, and could therefore gain extra votes. Otherwise, like you pointed out, this doesn't really serve to balance or distribute power so much.

[Ever-Wandering Souls]

Regarding the WA, while this is perhaps not as exacting of a solution as one specifically and only targeting WA votes, the introduction of more parties into play/single players controlling a smaller share should make that more dynamic. In reply to threads regarding totally "nerfing" large votes, Admin has made clear that the presence of large votes and the ability for large blocs to exist are generally desirable, real, political effects (and I agree). The idea, then, is to make them manageable. In other threads, that devolves into bickering over different complex nerfing formulas and methods, to defines what is too much or too little. I think the much cleaner solutions is this - make the blocs at worse at least made of more component parts, and likely, make there be at least two far more equal blocs and some more powerful unaligned voters. While the WA will still have to play some politics, it should at least be more interesting than "do you or do you not have WALL support?"

[Galiantus III]

Regarding the WA, while this is perhaps not as exacting of a solution as one specifically and only targeting WA votes, the introduction of more parties into play/single players controlling a smaller share should make that more dynamic. In reply to threads regarding totally "nerfing" large votes, Admin has made clear that the presence of large votes and the ability for large blocs to exist are generally desirable, real, political effects (and I agree). The idea, then, is to make them manageable. In other threads, that devolves into bickering over different complex nerfing formulas and methods, to defines what is too much or too little. I think the much cleaner solutions is this - make the blocs at worse at least made of more component parts, and likely, make there be at least two far more equal blocs and some more powerful unaligned voters. While the WA will still have to play some politics, it should at least be more interesting than "do you or do you not have WALL support?"

For the most part I agree. Less complex solutions, reliant on a general principal rather than numbers and formulas, are preferable. However, there are some solutions which demand an explicit formula. In those cases, the important thing is that the general principle can be agreed on, and admin can be trusted to pick exact numbers they consider fair. The fact that we are giving general formulas here is more for the sake of admin so they can have a general idea what kind of relationship exists between one thing or the other. Relative to the balance of power in the WA, I care less about the actual numbers and formulas, and more that politics in the WA is engaging to the average player. If admin can do that with a seemingly abstract formula that involves math beyond high school, great.

[Klaus Devestatorie]

Regarding the WA, while this is perhaps not as exacting of a solution as one specifically and only targeting WA votes, the introduction of more parties into play/single players controlling a smaller share should make that more dynamic. In reply to threads regarding totally "nerfing" large votes, Admin has made clear that the presence of large votes and the ability for large blocs to exist are generally desirable, real, political effects (and I agree). The idea, then, is to make them manageable. In other threads, that devolves into bickering over different complex nerfing formulas and methods, to defines what is too much or too little. I think the much cleaner solutions is this - make the blocs at worse at least made of more component parts, and likely, make there be at least two far more equal blocs and some more powerful unaligned voters. While the WA will still have to play some politics, it should at least be more interesting than "do you or do you not have WALL support?"

Naturally, I'm already on record as preferring an even more aggressive version of your proposal.

[Cormactopia Prime]

We have discussed the possibility of adding more feeders.

I think there's a fair bit of support for having more places that nations can spawn, but there's some question about how to do it -- new feeders or open up the possibility for nations to spawn in UCRs, how many feeders if we do feeders, etc. -- and it may take some time before [v] finds the time to actually do anything with any of these ideas.

Bumping this thread because, beyond this post, there was never any acknowledgment this proposal had gotten administrative attention or was being considered and it's now been more than two and a half years since it was posted with no acknowledgment or action. Was the idea ruled out? Is it still waiting to be implemented? Given this thread had eight pages of player feedback and this is an idea that has come up again and again over the years, it would be good to have admin input.

Aside from that, I'd like to note that the Feeders' size and power hasn't decreased from the OP's analysis. What has changed is that even more of gameplay and even more WA voting power has been consolidated in the Feeders. The population ranges Souls mentioned have increased for the three Feeders that don't regularly eject nations, and The North Pacific is now approaching the 10K nation mark. Despite some suggesting that Feeder Delegate endorsement counts always wax and wane, if you take a look at Souls' stats and where Feeder Delegates are now, you see remarkable stability in those numbers for the most part from two and a half years ago.

One of the arguments against the addition of new Feeders was that UCRs were still able to remain competitive if they tried really hard, but you've seen across the board decreases in UCR populations so that now you have regions like Europeia that once hovered just above or below 1,000 nations slipping to a population of 753. 10000 Islands is now the only UCR that isn't a puppet dump with a population above 1K, meaning you have one Feeder that is on the brink of 10K nations, two above 8K, and only one UCR that is above 1K with most far below 10000 Islands as the population outlier. That is a gross imbalance, and though the imbalance isn't entirely reflected in WA voting strength with some UCRs retaining more WA voting power than some Sinkers, that number is constantly dwindling. The mentions made two and a half years ago that 10000 Islands' Delegate once had more than 1K endorsements and could again at some point would be absolutely laughable today.

I believe what has also changed in the past two and a half years is a recognition by more gameplayers that this part of the game has badly stagnated, so I expect you would see even greater support among gameplayers today for the idea of adding more Feeders both for the dynamism it would bring to gameplay overall and the degree to which diluting Feeder power and influence might help UCRs be relevant again. I don't know what kind of toll the size of the Feeders might be taking on the servers, but that might be a consideration as well. I'd like to get a discussion going on this again and hopefully hear from an admin this time.