First, what even are endorsements?

When a nation joins the World Assembly, they get access to some features of the game. Like proposing and voting on international resolutions, and the ability to endorse or be endorsed by other nations.

You may create hundreds of nations, but only one of them can be a member of the World Assembly. The game has ways to track if a player is cheating on this regard (don't try it).

Endorsements are like a "vote of confidence", by clicking the little button on the bottom of a nation's page, you are essentially boosting the ability of that nation to gather influence.

If you go to your nation's stats, you will see that one of them is called "influence". That is a metric of how influential your nation is in a region, and it grows everyday by a rate determined by how much endorsements your nation has. The higher the endorsements, the faster your influence grows and higher the maximum value your influence can reach (at some point it stops growing, unless you get more endorsements).

And what does influence do? Well, for example, if nation 1 with "border control" powers (you can see which nations have it, on the "admin" section of the region) wants to eject nation 2, it has to spend an amount of influence (50% of nation 2 total influence, I think, not sure) to do it. Which means that nations with high influence are tougher to kick from a region, and have power to eject less influential ones.

That means I have to gather as much endorsements as possible? To get as much influence to be safe from those evil regional officers? No. We are a democracy and every regional officer is elected by our citizens, they are very trusted guardians of TFS.

Which comes to our second point: what happens when a nation has the most endorsements in a region? Well, they become what we call WA Delegate. You can see who is a region's WA Delegate on the top of a region's page. In TFS, the Delegate is also called President, a position that is elected every 6 months as written in our Constitution.

Not only that, Delegates have a voting power in the World Assembly equal to their number of endorsements plus 1. That is right, your nation, as a WA member, has only 1 vote when it comes to voting on a resolution. Delegates, on the other hand, have the total might of their regions on their backs. Meaning that if a Delegate has 47 endorsements, their vote equals 48 votes on the World Assembly.

Players of NationStates, from different regions, tend to be very organized about this. First, there is an election to determine who will be Delegate, and when a winner is picked, we shift our endorsements to them in an orderly manner.

Technically, the game mechanics have no way to enforce those elections, which means that an unelected nation can become Delegate, if it has the most endorsements. There are regions in NationStates dedicated to grabbing the Delegate position from other regions. They are called Raiders. But we will get back to them soon.

For that reason, regions like TFS have what is called an "Endorsement Cap". Depending on your position in the region, you have the right to a limit number of endorsements. That way, the elected Delegate has always a secure number of endorsements more than those below. If your endorsement count exceeds the cap, you will be asked to have another nation to withdraw their endorsement, or for you to resign from the WA for a day. If you don't comply, you will be seen as a threat an be ejected from the region. You can check what are our endorsement caps on the World Factbook Entry on TFS page.

Types of Regions in NationStates

So we have established what endorsements are. Now we must understand what regions are and how they work. Regions are nothing more than a collection of nations, as you have probably already guessed. But did you know that there are different types of them? And when I say "types", I am saying on a game mechanic standpoint, because, of course, each region has its own themes and blablabla.

First, we can separate them in 2 categories: User Created Regions (UCRs) and Game Created Regions (GCRs). I think you can guess what each one means. UCRs are created by users, and can be divided into Strongholds and Frontiers. GCRs are native to the game, they were created by the devs, and can be divided into Feeders, Sinkers and Restorers. That is not the only difference, every UCR has a founder, which is the nation that bothered to create them. Island Raft is the nation that founded our beautiful Frontier Sea. Opposed to GCRs, which have no founder.

Let's forget about Frontiers for a moment. The special thing about founders (in Strongholds) is that they basically have complete admin power over their region, and ejecting a nation costs them 0 influence.
On GCRs, on other hand, as they have no founder, the admin power rests on the hands of the WA Delegate, which, I should remind you, can change solely on the premise of who has the most endorsements.

Remember that I said GCRs can be divided into 3? Each one has its own characteristics. Feeders, well, feed nations to the game, that is where nations are founded (forget about Frontiers goddammit, we will get there), they are: The Pacific, The North Pacific, The West Pacific, The East Pacific, The South Pacific (how original). Sinkers are regions where a nation goes after being ejected. If I eject a nation from TFS , that is where they will go. There are 3 sinkers: The Rejected Realms, The Outback and The Plains of Perdition. What happens if a nation is ejected from a sinker? You are complicating things, but yeah, they go to another sinker, which can go on in an eternal cycle of pain. Last, but not least, the Restorers, they are where, as the name implies, nations are refounded. So if you forget to log in for more than 28 days and your nation ceases to exist, you can refound it and it will be reborn in a Restorer. There are also 3 Restorers: Lazarus, Balder and Osiris.

No, I will not talk about Warzones, because I don't understand them. Deal with it.

As one can imagine, most stuff happens on GCRs. They concentrate the "population" of nations, which makes them dominate the World Assembly votings, and it is where most of the big game of inter-regional politics happens.

Then what is a Frontier?

In 2023, the blessed people that volunteer to be devs of this game decided to introduce a new type of region: a Frontier. Yes, TFS was one of the first to ever come to existence. Before this update, every UCR was a Stronghold, where admin power was always on the hands of its founder. Now, the founder has the option to forever relinquish admin power to the WA Delegate, making their region into a Frontier. Why would a founder do that, you may ask? Simple, spawns. Yes, nations can be founded (spawned) on Frontiers! Which makes them basically User Created Feeders, I guess?

As of the last update, Frontiers divide 50% of total nations spawned between themselves, and Feeders divide the other 50%.

But Frontiers don't divided those 50% equally. Instead, they divide them based on a mechanic called Magnetism (how much they "attract" a spawn, wow). The higher the magnetism, higher the chance of a nation spawning in a Frontier. As of now, some things can affect the value of a Frontier's magnetism: how long ago was the Delegate elected, how many endorsements the Delegate has, if the region has a welcome telegram and how long ago was the last post on RMB (basically metrics of how active and successful a Frontier is).

Again, why is your endorsement important?

Firstly, it boosts our total votes in the World Assembly. Secondly, it boosts our Magnetism, meaning more nations are founded in TFS. And finally, it protects the Delegate's position from those who would like to undemocratically usurp it, like raiders.

You promised to talk about the raiders 😡

Oh, well. I will make it quick, if you want more information about the game of Raiding and Defending, go here.

Raiding is an ancient practice on NationStates. A group of players that have fun invading other regions in an organized fashion. There is an elaborate way to do it, but basically they all jump into another region and endorse themselves, usurping the Delegacy and wrecking havoc. Opposed to Raiders are the Defenders. When Raiders occupy a region, a task force of Defenders jumps to the same region and endorse themselves and the natives.

A siege then begins, which is basically a war of attrition based on how much influence each side can generate to eject the other from the region.

If Raiders win, they lock the region with a password and either erase it or keep it as a trophy. If Defenders win, they restore the old natives to that region or keep a trusted Defender in charge.

The Conclusion

If you want to be part of a safe region, that blossoms with life, and that has a voice on the World Assembly, you should join the World Assembly and endorse our Delegate. By doing that, you also join the list of citizens in good standing.