[Mzyxptlk]

Irrespective of whether they should, they can't "take away" IRC. What are they going to do, beat us with sticks any time we connect to NetGamers? in any case, the way to fix IRC's weakness (lack of ease of use) has been clear for years: an ingame IRC client. As far as I know, this is a widely accepted fact.

So widely accepted that it actually already exists! It's been a while since I last looked at the Com Unit, but as far as I remember, it functions adequately and is reasonably well integrated with the ingame alliance and galaxy toolset.

I realise that isn't exactly a ringing endorsement, but it doesn't need to be: the ingame IRC client doesn't need to be as good as or better than stand-alone IRC clients, it's just not PA's core business. All the ingame IRC client needs to do is to allow people to connect to NetGamers (check), join the channels that are useful to people who just started playing, #mygalaxy, #myalliance and #planetarion (check, check, check) and finally, to make this a fairly simple process (check). If players choose to, they can move to a stand-alone client, but this is neither a requirement to play PA on a high level, nor to participate in the community.


None of that has anything to do with DZ's suggestions, though. There is a good reason why alliances should indeed be multi-round entities: they already are, and it's the one thing that makes them fundamentally different from galaxies.

As for access control: there's a well-tested and widely accepted model that's been in use in *nix operating systems for decades: allow users to be in multiple groups, instead of in just one. It's powerful enough to accomplish all the things you want, while remaining extremely straightforward at its core.