[furball]

I've given these changes some considerable thought over the last day or so, and I have to say that I'm in favour of almost all of them. The use of economic and sociological theory is an excellent idea, since it helps us to be more objective about the proposals and escape emotional attachments to any particular concepts.


The removal of the alliance member limit seems like a good approach to me. There's several ways to run alliance recruitment, and although some current alliances will regulate their members very strictly (as they would under the present limits), a couple of alliances should make a killing by recruiting a LOT of people and seeing what stuck. It'd take a couple of rounds to complete itself, but it'd definitely force some of the present complacent HCs to be much more pro-active.


The changes to ship-stats seem well-thought-through and along lines that I've been quietly in favour of for quite a while, mainly because of the re-introduction of a proper tech-tree where choices impose restrictions on your planet (e.g. military scans excluding hyperspace). The potential to do this with ships, via the element of races, is logical and comprehensively covered by Jester, a superb stats-maker. I don't think there's much more for me to add here.