The irony is that L&C cannot eject even a minnow with more than about 12 endorsements. I suggest that anyone seeking to be free from being ejected obtain at least 12 endorsements before unendorsing Useless and Cluck. ;D
Seems to be quite a bit more than 12 endorsements. While most of the nations banned yesterday did have an endorsement count of around 10, The United Socialist States of Idealist Scholars did have an endorsement count of 38 yesterday and The Federation of ET Edwards did have 26. But both were ejected after they unendorsed L&C. Maybe Nations should should only unendorse him when they are around 50 endorsements as ~30 doesn't seem to be enough.
Everything the mods have said about the influence system indicates that banning is a single variable transaction: You lose influence based on the influence that the target has.
In that case, the immediate number of endorsements doesn't matter at all - if a newbie endotarted his way to 200 today, he would be no less bannable than the newbie who still has only 0 endorsements. A week later, it's a different story.
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If my hypothesis about the linearity is true, then you get about 5% of the influence L&C is getting every day with about 14 endorsements (14 / 280 = 5%). In that case, 20 people having kept 14 endorsements each for one day can be banned by L&C's daily influence allowance. Or 10 people with 28 endorsements. Or 10 people with 14 endorsements for 2 days, but keep in mind that in two days, L&C also gets his daily allowance twice.
Unfortunately, there's not much one can calculate even given these wild assumptions. We require one single additional variable: What does it cost to ban someone who has no influence because he's only moved hours ago? Is it free?
If it is, we're screwed because L&C can ban the newcomers and switchers every morning for eternity, unless he forgets to log in for a day or two, or we amass a huge army that does not fit into the banlist all at once (and in both cases, influence becomes moot because we could beat his endocount outright.)
I'd rather like to think there is some small price attached to banjecting a 0 influence nation. Not sure what it is. But it is this crucial variable that will determine the long-term trend:
We can see that L&C is banning a certain number of new nations every day, but leaving older nations alone (the "last ones get eaten" in the influence ranking). You could analogize this to an ant-hill that is being eroded while ants continue building on it, with the outer layers getting banjected and the inner layers solidifying.
The question is where the ant-hill will stabilize. Will there be an influence "gap" between GBM's "old" supporters (who will eventually become almost impervious to banning) and the "new" supporters who will be immediately banned? Then we have a stand-still.
Or will the erosion actually be sufficient to gradually sweep away more of the stronger members? This trend I find unlikely because the influence count has gradually grown in the last weeks which runs counter to the prediction.
Or will enough of the "new" supporters remain to "solidify" that the ant-hill wins eventually?
You can see that some weird ideas are going through my head.
I had so much fun with it, I kept it.
). And it would make the game move a hell of a lot faster.
