[qebab]

From my point of view, I always had a distaste for people who get others to do their "dity work", and then proceed to get rewarded for it. Regarding support planets, my own egocentric, not necessarely logical, and biased answer is a loud "No!".

But the interesting part is how to define a support planet? How do we implement a rule that prohibits support planets? If we are not able to successfully implement that rule, or if we implement it in a manner that does not guarantee that everyone will have the same rights, should we then have the rule at all?

Apologize in advance for the coming part, it is not necessarely related to the poll, but as Appocomaster mentioned it in the opening post, I feel it is safe to rant a bit about it here. I am astounded that 1up managed to pull away something in round 16 (or 17, I am not sure how far we got since I stopped playing), that half of the community and many of the PA team were angered by when eXilition did it in round 15. Why is it that eXilition's use of support planets caused a sudden and unforeseen debate of a rulechange, and had several of the planets in question closed (the rule was apparently retrospective(sp?), and if you had been a support planet before the rule, you would be closed for breaking a rule that didn't exist at the time you signed up. I am not sure if this is true, but I heard it from several people I know)?

While the cases in question are obviously (far from it), identical, they have many similarities. Well - you answer "elephants and birds have many genetical similiarities" - lets keep dogs and elephants out of this, please! The thing is, the scanners that were in tag in 1up and donated to the tag were effectively members of the alliance and contributed to it, in a manner that is in my opinion not acceptable with the current set of rules. But this is a grey area of it, and I don't think that 1up could (should?) have been punished for it in a way that would reflect the actual "crime".

The point for me, is that in both cases the alliances got around the alliance member limit by having "supporters/scanners/defwhores" etc. I wouldn't care if we were speaking about alliance members actively supported the alliance from inside tag (and this is the brilliance in what 1up did, they had their support planets in the tag), as they would then have taken up a valuable spot in the alliance hence reducing the potential alliance. But by only staying in tag for a while, one can get around this.

I am very, very sorry for this far too long post, and I coming to a conclusion soon. First I'd just like to say that what we have seen so far is that it is virtually impossible to enforce these rules justly, and that creativity seems to be getting the better off them whatever we do anyway. And since this isn't real life, and we aren't speaking about laws regarding life, death and the cosmic truth about everything (42!), a rule such as this might create more harm than it will rememdy. I didn't use to think that, but time has proven me wrong.

Why bother with a rule that can not be implemented in a way that will satisfy the majority (all would be a bit too far fetched here) of the players? I don't think we should. For clarification, I still think that use of support planets is morally wrong, and unfair.

Edit: I am so hungover that I have forgotten how to properly use a keyboard. I fixed 4 typoes already but be alert for more!