[Veedeejem!]

I don't really like the changes to the ally ranking and the cluster eta's...
I've read the whole 5 pages of this thread and one of the only things i read that i actually liked was jerome's suggestion for an ingame "war" mode, nobody other than me has actually replied to that though.

My predictions for next round if these changes are used:

1) A vry ****ing boring round: the bigger and more active allies will all be scared of eachother and the idea of losing by actually going to war with another big active ally, so they'll just limit themselves to hitting down the foodchain.
Or there will be 1 superpower that just chews up the entire universe.

2) A whole lot of exiling till you end up in a cluster dominated by your alliance, if you don't you're pretty much ****ed when an in-cluster fleetcatch comes for you.

3) Medium/small alliances getting their asses kicked horribly, unable to organise themselves as properly as a superpower does they will be doomed very early in the game, with nothing left to play for.

4) Stagnation: The winner of the round will be decided in the first 3-4 weeks, the remaining time is useless to the overall ranks

5) T100 player ranking not reflecting the overall skill of alliances, in previous rounds alliances that were high up on the rankings had alot of t100 planets, the way it should be imo, with this new system XP whores will make a huge part of the t100, especially unallied or small allies have a chance to get alot of people in t100 if they go for xp and don't care about overall alliance performance in ranks.

6) Alot of bashing, all the alliance players have no more reason to go after xp, so they can just hit far down the foodchain and pick up easy roids, the small/medium players get ****ed again...

I could probably think of alot more but kinda tired atm,
I'll just finish with the following then:
IF this is used, it will turn the game into an eletist game, the occasional player (medium/small) will have no reason to play as they'll just get raped over and over again by the big boys.
Because of this I can see PA losing 50-75% or more from the playerbase, the 50-75% that is usually forgotten on these boards: the casual player, the player that just plays PA for some fun, the new players, ...

I agree that changes have to be made to the game, but this is not the way, atleast, it's not the way if you want PA to grow, if you want PA to be a small comunity of elite players then this is the way...

PS: sorry for this post being a bit long and maybe a boring read, it's the longest post i've ever made on these boards i think, but it should illustrate how much i oppose to the way r20 looks judging from the specifications given.