Alliance Size

[BloodyButcher]

Why would everyone choose to join one, two or three tags? that dosnt make sense, that would mean political crippling urself!
Even in old PA you had groups that broke off their alliances cus they were not happy with how things were run, and im sure no one(except maybe xvx members) would be happy to stay allied to the whole univers, fighting for nothing else than peanuts.

[Mzyxptlk]

See also Dunbar's number.

[Influence]

Originally Posted by Mzyxptlk

See also Dunbar's number.

Dunbar's number is essentially the reason a fair amount of the alliances in the old day had wings and battlegroups. By removing alliance limits this system will soon be restored, smaller allies will become wings of the 2 top fighting allies. Essentially creating 2 block allies. In between rounds (and in some cases during) these battlegroups will move between the allies, but i fear in the grand scheme of things politics will become even more stale than they are now.

[SantaCruz]

yeah i fully agree.

There isn't really a point to argue this further i guess. Butcher has giving up trying to make sense and is attacking xVx politics from last round.

Maybe we can lower tag limit now ;-D

[BloodyButcher]

Originally Posted by SantaCruz

yeah i fully agree.

There isn't really a point to argue this further i guess. Butcher has giving up trying to make sense and is attacking xVx politics from last round.

Maybe we can lower tag limit now ;-D

No ive not given up trying to make sense at all.
Most alliances/BGs/wings will not be happy with anything less than winning, if we look away from xVx.
With no alliance cap, a alliance is most likely to get an active officer/BC what ever u call it these days prospect into the alliance, lets face it, anyone can play planetarion, but what seperates most alliances is good active command teams.
The best alliances would not want the dead weight to slow them down, the mid tier alliances could use the dead weight even it out with the top tier alliances.
It will make it easier for new players to get into a alliance.
It will not fail!
Capping the alliance limits is bringing PA one step further to its doom.
Stop the 1337ism.

[neroon]

lol.. this is so sad.. ure absolutly clueless

u either just wanna make fang the ultimate alliance in 4-5 rounds after recruiting every single active player there is in the universe..

or..

u just really dont have a clue..

if u desire to play like that, then join in to havocs of planetarion.. thats something that kinda shows the future.. 1 alliance gettin the actve ppl and then just noobroids, or takes unallied top100 down 1by1..

thats now what i call fun.. gl with that

[BloodyButcher]

Originally Posted by neroon

lol.. this is so sad.. ure absolutly clueless

u either just wanna make fang the ultimate alliance in 4-5 rounds after recruiting every single active player there is in the universe..

or..

u just really dont have a clue..

if u desire to play like that, then join in to havocs of planetarion.. thats something that kinda shows the future.. 1 alliance gettin the actve ppl and then just noobroids, or takes unallied top100 down 1by1..

thats now what i call fun.. gl with that

I have nothing to do with anyones recruitment policy.
Im here to share my opinions on what i think would make this game grow.
Back in the days we had alliances that tryed to recruit everyone they could find, and get smaller
alliances to merge into them, i cant think of any sucsesfull.

[neroon]

back in the days the playerbase was what, 100x bigger?

the situation today is tho that the game cant support the 80 man tags nemore since there aint more than 300-400 activly playing ppl around.. hence if u remove the limits alltogether then it gives a sudden death to the game, because simply there will be just 1 alliance left to rule the uni..

problem today is, that there can be maximum 2 alliances that can recruit to the full tag and then go for the win.. ct and nd can also fill the tags, but a big portion of their members, opposed to ultores for instance (really guys no offence), are not active.. they idle around on 300 roids and shit fleet but still fill the tag.. now u see, such tag can not be competitive

cant be, since ultores has 80 ppl in tag, that are way more active and therefore giving a lot bigger def pool, etc..

i cba nemore

[Mzyxptlk]

You said it yourself, there's nothing stopping alliances from using 2 tags, or 3, or even more. By that logic, if FAnG or any other alliance wanted to recruit the entire universe, they could and would have done it by now.

But they haven't. Not in the 35 or more rounds that tag limits have existed. This means that
1) Alliances will not split over multiple tags, and significantly lowering tag limits will leave many people without a home, and
2) Alliances are not interested in recruiting an infinite number of people, and alliance size (as opposed to tag size) is self-regulating.

I think that blows your case out of the water. Let me know if I'm mistaken.

[neroon]

1) theres always a home for them, weather its a new training alliance or someone that is returning.. in this case, pa-team could also implement new things making it easier to run "new" tags or whatever.. u dont actually need that much.. u need munin and a few dedicated ppl, the rest is done by ure members

2) i hope ure right, however this still dosent address the simple fact, that current state of planetarion does not have enough strenght to support 80 man tags

also, yes they havent done multiple tags so far, since theres actually no point since there aint enough members neways + its much more harder to run 2 tags.. its not about it.. its more about trying to make a difference and trying to make more competition hopefully..

[Influence]

Originally Posted by Mzyxptlk

You said it yourself, there's nothing stopping alliances from using 2 tags, or 3, or even more. By that logic, if FAnG or any other alliance wanted to recruit the entire universe, they could and would have done it by now.

But they haven't. Not in the 35 or more rounds that tag limits have existed. This means that
1) Alliances will not split over multiple tags, and significantly lowering tag limits will leave many people without a home, and
2) Alliances are not interested in recruiting an infinite number of people, and alliance size (as opposed to tag size) is self-regulating.

I think that blows your case out of the water. Let me know if I'm mistaken.

well after more than 20 rounds i think i can safely come out and say this. In r22 Vengeance had an overflow tag, and said overflow tag is probably what gave them enough momentum to win the round.

[Mzyxptlk]

Do you remember the name? The biggest tag in that round that doesn't ring a bell had 35 people in it and had next to no score.

Amusingly, Ascendancy had not one, but two overflow tags that round. Try and find them!

[Influence]

Originally Posted by Mzyxptlk

Do you remember the name? The biggest tag in that round that doesn't ring a bell had 35 people in it and had next to no score.

Amusingly, Ascendancy had not one, but two overflow tags that round. Try and find them!

It was TiT, however the end rankings are a bit offputting as a fair amount of planets got closed and deleted in the last week, for being support planets which was illegal at that point. Never did it have 35 ppl in it tho, think it was 25 throughout the round.

[BloodyButcher]

Originally Posted by neroon

1) theres always a home for them, weather its a new training alliance or someone that is returning.. in this case, pa-team could also implement new things making it easier to run "new" tags or whatever.. u dont actually need that much.. u need munin and a few dedicated ppl, the rest is done by ure members

2) i hope ure right, however this still dosent address the simple fact, that current state of planetarion does not have enough strenght to support 80 man tags

also, yes they havent done multiple tags so far, since theres actually no point since there aint enough members neways + its much more harder to run 2 tags.. its not about it.. its more about trying to make a difference and trying to make more competition hopefully..

Where u getting this sh*t from?
Did u play last round?
What three alliances where the biggest(member count) one mid game?
What alliances where the biggest end round?
Who won, who didnt?
The fact that some people in this game think the only way to play the game and win it for real is with a 1337 and small group does not make it so.
Sure, if Ultores, DLR, FAnG, Apprime or who not want to be small and hardcore, go for it, but you should not limit less hardcore and dedicated players chance of sucsess.
If they want to use the number advantage, let them(to a certain extent).
If ur good enough, u can use our political magic stick and your hardcore game expertise to bring em to their knees.
NO WAI you would see all members in 2-3 tags if the tags were unlimitted! NO WAI!
If you dont want to be in a big tag, make sure you set your BPs up good enough to beat these lurking 300 mans alliances who is just waiting for PA team to unlimit the ingame tags, before they reveal their evil masterplan.
Stop trying to turn the PA team into making the game into what YOU want.

[neroon]

this is stupid.. i give up

gl

[BloodyButcher]

Originally Posted by neroon

this is stupid.. i give up

gl

If people disagree with ur opinion u dont have to give up, just tell them they suck and ur right(wich ur arnt btw!)

[Mzyxptlk]

Originally Posted by BloodyButcher

Stop trying to turn the PA team into making the game into what YOU want.

I happen to agree with your point, but this is a terrible argument. You are doing the exact same thing that you're accusing him of. Furthermore, this is not something to be ashamed about. We all argue hoping the powers that be take notice. Without that hope (that reality, in fact), there is no point for the forums to exist at all.

[BloodyButcher]

Originally Posted by Mzyxptlk

I happen to agree with your point, but this is a terrible argument. You are doing the exact same thing that you're accusing him of. Furthermore, this is not something to be ashamed about. We all argue hoping the powers that be take notice. Without that hope (that reality, in fact), there is no point for the forums to exist at all.

PA needs to go back to its roots if its ever to grow.
Bash limits, alliance limits, multi hunters wouldve killed PA withing the 3 first round.
No joking.
Anyway, id love to play in 50 mans alliances with only active players, that would be fun for me(if im active enough for it).
But i want this game to evolve, and grow. If the newbies feel they are doing good, or is in some good alliance, they will come back for new rounds.
If their 50 man alliance is on rank 20 out of 30 alliances, they arnt doing good, and more likely will not come back.
Its one of nature laws of games and gamers, nobody like losing, if they keep losing they will find something else to do.

[Zaejii]

We've had limitless alliances, and we've had lower alliance limits. It doesn't have as great an effect on the game as you think it does. Even more so now that you can choose alliances to ally with in game.

Please let the horse rest in peace.

[budious]

... but when was the last time we tried anything other than some absurd tag size where two-thirds count towards score? How much has the playerbase dwindled since the last change? Why does it hurt to try it again and see if it goes different now? How can keeping the status quo for which most seem disgruntled for one reason another the best option? Make a change just for the sake of being different if for nothing else...

If you can't appreciate the argument of political relations and insist that the same people will block, ally, play together; can you at least appreciate the idea of consistently sized scoring blocks? Incentivize alliances to recruit to full tag by counting all members and reduce the tag sizes. Do you wish to keep the passionate players in the smaller tags or cater to the quasi-idlers who you think may go homeless and quit the game if you lower their home tag limit and force them to join another?

If we can agree to anything, sticking with the current status quo is a recipe for failure.

[BloodyButcher]

Why would we want to limit the chances of new players to join a good alliance?
Why would we limit PA any more than we have allready done?
Are we wanting a fun game for the few thats been around for 35 what not rounds on the cost of new players settling?

[budious]

I've already seen plenty of instances of new players being turned away by the fat tag alliances who still have spots to spare but no motivation to train or deal with new recruits when they dont have to fill their tag to capacity. Newbies get bumped down to the smaller tags as it is and DLR has taken more than our fair share over the past few rounds and the vast majority have worked out well. Larger tags wait for players to mature in the smaller tags then leech them on the premise that if you want to compete in this game you have to join one of the fat tags. Don't pretend like you do the PA community any favors with new players because you don't, the small tags consistently outreach and recruit and take more chances on new signups than you do.

[Shev]

Oh look, DLR are trying to portray themselves as the shining light of PA again.

Maybe if you recruited as many new players as you claim you do you wouldn't be quite so irrelevant.

[neroon]

Originally Posted by BloodyButcher

Why would we want to limit the chances of new players to join a good alliance?
Why would we limit PA any more than we have allready done?
Are we wanting a fun game for the few thats been around for 35 what not rounds on the cost of new players settling?

Where do you get new players?

Where are the new players right now? Are they still hiding due to the reason that planetarion so far dosent support limitless alliances?

It seems that either: a) u have no idea whats going on in planetarion b) you just wanna argue with someone until the new round starts c) you really dont care about planetarion and just wanna ruin it

New players do not come from limitless alliance tags.. In order to get new players in this game need alot more new and user-friendly features to make it more understandable and also more attractive to ppl out there.. it also needs decent advertising and such in order to draw more ppl to try this browser based game from 2000.

Alliance tag size matter is in no way tied to new player problem, so leave it out please..

Until theres new features and someone actually dealing with this game in order to get new ppl drawn, we should concentrade on: a) gettin that someone that will start to deal with the game in a direction that is needed and b) gettin the remaining playerbase not to quit and make it interesting enough for them to play along

now lets go to the limitless tags.. if u remove the limits, there will be just 2 alliances out there that will be able to go for a win and it more likely gonna be decided on who is able to recruit more ppl in their tag..

dlr or tgv or any other similar smaller tags will still be not able to recruit enough ppl to go for a win, thats guaranteed.. so this will be the end of planetarion.. atm we have 80 man tags and its still just a game for maximum of 2 alliances, that are able to recruit the active part of the playerbase..

now if u drasticly made the tags smaller, lets say 40 ppl, then it would be possible for dlr, tgv, apprime whoever else to compete for top, since they do not have to try to poach and recruit masses of players to fill their tag.. they would need to do it, if they wanted to go for a win, but its almoust impossible, since there simply aint enough players..

now please let me know what u dont understand about this, u really must be blind if u cant see this ureself..

again, forget ure idea that gettin limitless alliance tags gets us more new ppl from some odd reason.. think about the situation out there for a second, then think again, maybe try to think once more.. and then if u want u can reply again..

[Buly]

neroon, I think you always avoid the argument about how much more dominating hardcore tags will be compared to tags with more casual players in them, if the tagsize was reduced.

[neroon]

how the hell will they be more dominating?

lets say ultores for an example.. they have very active core and dont have much dead weight in their tag (apart from wattee ofc)

if the tag size was set to lets say 40, then they will still have those same 40 core players in their tag and thats it..

the change tho is that they also have less defpool (let me remind u that their defpool was previously coming from 80 players).. which means in a way, that its even more easier to take em down..

also there will be other tags coming close to their levels, since they now at last can fill their tags and play on the same level.. and actually have a change..

also, this is where more complex politics hopefully come in.. in my thoughts this would give more diversity in the overall politics as well, since theres simply more groups in the big game.. dlr is in the game atm, but whats the point? they just lolwave 1 enemy alliance from midround and thats it.. they idle it away, since they have not enough players to compete for the win and so it just goes, with lacking motivation as well i assume..

AND

if u have a hardcore tag that really gets up every single night to every single phone call they get.. then it really might be so, that they in the end deserv to win cos of this..or u want to argue? if ure good, then u deserv to be in top, simple

domination is not the case here tho, i belive at least.

[BloodyButcher]

Im sorry that i dont share your views in tag limits. My beliefs is that a new player needa to be involved in an active community, focusing on smaller more hardcore alliances and focusing on building a strong gal puts new players aside. I think the fact that gals is reduced from 25 planets to 14 or what not reduces the chance for a new player in planetarion will have serious probls staying in the gal that eventually ends on top. same goes for smaller more exclusive tahs

[neroon]

again the new player thingy :/

there are no new players.. even if there is one of such kind from time to time, then no gal or ally limit decides if he/she continues playing or not..

thats not the question here at all :/

[Shev]

Originally Posted by neroon

dlr is in the game atm, but whats the point? they just lolwave 1 enemy alliance from midround and thats it.. they idle it away, since they have not enough players to compete for the win and so it just goes, with lacking motivation as well i assume..

They choose not to have enough players. It's not something forced on them.

[Influence]

Originally Posted by BloodyButcher

Im sorry that i dont share your views in tag limits. My beliefs is that a new player needa to be involved in an active community, focusing on smaller more hardcore alliances and focusing on building a strong gal puts new players aside. I think the fact that gals is reduced from 25 planets to 14 or what not reduces the chance for a new player in planetarion will have serious probls staying in the gal that eventually ends on top. same goes for smaller more exclusive tahs

In round 6, as a noob you had no chance to find yourself a 1337 ally or gal. This is because this community has never been bothered with training noobs, apart from certain alliances. Having limitless alliances and/or bigger gals won't change that. infact with bigger gals you will see even more fortressing, and a higher need of exiling, as alliances are allready having trouble taking on galaxies in the top 10 at the moment. The game just doesn't have enough players anymore to support these big galaxies and alliances.

Please lower alliance limits to somthing like 50/60 and give another alliance a chance to arrise. Over the past rounds too many alliances have said their goodbyes just because it isn't worth it to put in all the effort it needs to run an alliance for 20-40 members.

[Tiamat101]

Agreed. 50/60 Alliance tag size would make the game's politics much more dynamic and more actually impactful. With more players on the stage its not just 1 alliance ruins the round(xvx). If someone gets too big or starts to have alot of roids there are going to 6-10 alliances that all have the player bases to hit them. Yes Ult will still win but as was said before, if you have the active player base with good players that respond to every def call, then yes you deserve to win.

As for New players and newbie alliances there will always be alliances trying to recruit up to the tag limit and that are willing to shepard new players, like Rock and tgv when it first started. Will they be top contending alliances maybe not but they will atleast have an impact on the game.

As for alliances Like dlr and dfwtk that prefer small tag play, why should they be forced to recruit 40 "shit" players just to match up to the 80 man tag size in order to compete for something. If they like there group then let them keep it besides its not like those 40 players will just materialize out of no where. We don't have new players coming in. Hell 2 rounds ago xvx split into 2 tags 1 hardcore 1 softcore. And I know that if a new player wanted to join the relaxed ally they would and there would be people there to help teach the basics.

Reduce the ally size to 50 or 60 counting ALL. None of this 50 counting 40 crap.

[RexDrax]

Some interesting reading and I can see both sides of the argument. I think it comes down to choosing the lesser of 2 evils. I think at this stage of PA there is no "right" solution to fixing the game. A lot of suggestions have been given and the game is so dynamic and so is the community that nobody truly knows the repercussion of any changes. In either case I think limiting the alliance size should be looked at and implemented as a possible way to introduce some dynamic politics to the game and also attracting new players and making existing players have more fun. If the alliance limit is changed it should not be done for just 1 round, it would need to be done for a minimum of 2 rounds in order for the community to adjust to the changed game and to get accustomed the the change. PA team would also need to give the community ample time to adjust to the change.

Now the reason I think alliance size change is a benefit is for the following, and yes I know some of the following is a repeat.

1) There is a greater potential for dynamic politics. Instead of having 4-5 alliances (ult, ct, nd, xvx, fang) having the potential to win the game with 2 of them being very strong contender. If the alliance limit was lowered there could be multiple contenders (ult, ct, nd, xvx, fang, dlr, apprime, tof plus 1-2 alliance composed of the players from the alliances that have over 40-50 members)

2) Not to pick on ultores but they are the perfect example of an alliance that has over 85% active members and as such have a lot more defense fleets and the only way to roid them is by a huge team up on them consisting of a good chunk of the remaining alliances. Basically a bash fest that gets boring after a while. By reducing the alliance size to 40-50 members it means a hardcore active alliance will have less defense fleets which means its more likely that a huge gang up on an alliance will not occur, which will hopefully keep the politics dynamic and fun for all PA players. This also will lead to more lands and roids moving around various alliance which is good for the game. As the last round showed, if landing for roids are scarce people get frustrated and move on to other things.

3) New players will have a chance of actually doing decent and lower tiered alliance will have a chance of fun and being able to play instead of being bashed to the stone age by the more experienced players. Also lower tiered alliances can have a more substantial impact on the game instead of being relegated to roid farms.

4) Politics will be more dynamic and instead of seeing the pro-ult vs the anti-ult block from the last few rounds we could potentially have 2-3 main blocks with maybe 2 other smaller blocks.

5) Support planets and escorts will hopefully be eliminated. )NOTE: I am not counting scanners as support planets since they are essential to any alliance.) By support planet I mean the 20 or so planets in an 80 man tag that are used to escort or as defense planets. Since they are not counted in the alliance score they can take higher risk missions or if they crash it wont have any effect on the potential win of the alliance. But now if they are counted then every crash or value loss will be essential. This means alliances will not be able to exploit that loophole.


On the flip side the argument stating that people will leave the game since they cant play with their friends is valid. I know quite a few people that feel that way and there is nothing wrong with that. But lets face it, ultores has won the last few rounds because they have the majority of active players. They are a hard force to stop and one way of stopping them is to bash them from the very beginning of the round. This imo is pretty crappy and boring. Not only for the banshees but also for the bashers. At that point it will basically come down to who can roid ultores the best or turn them into roid farms. Plus ultores member will probably end up leaving or becoming idle or leave the game which again hurts the game overall.

Some players will probably be part of said alliance but play out of tag. They would not have too huge of an impact since if your out of tag you cant send defense to the said alliance. Yeah in some cases you can PL defense and they can have an impact but overall I dont think it will be a significant impact.

The other argument I read is that alliances will just make multiple tags. Not sure who countered that argument (too lazy to look) but they stated something along the lines that if tag1 and tag2 were part of the same original tag with tag1 having the more hardcore players and tag2 the less hardcore players that didnt make it to tag1 that over time tag2 would probably want to challenger tag1 for the win. This would also benefit the game since now tag1 has a contender in tag2 and could lead to some sort of conflict.

In either case I think its unlikely that alliance limit will be changed. Too many vocal people are against it. There is also no consensus among the people that are for it as to what the limit should be.

[neroon]

Originally Posted by Shev

They choose not to have enough players. It's not something forced on them.

and even if they chose to recruit full tag of 80 ppl they would either fail OR they`d have to fill the tag with not as competent ppl compared to the top 2 alliances.. because, again we will get back to the same place, which is, that planetarion has too few ppl left playing

[Shev]

Originally Posted by Tiamat101

As for alliances Like dlr and dfwtk that prefer small tag play, why should they be forced to recruit 40 "shit" players just to match up to the 80 man tag size in order to compete for something.

Because that's what the scoring is based on. If a group of 5 people want to win a football/soccer league, then they will need to find some other players or be hugely disadvantaged. They don't get to petition the league to stop anyone else making 11-a-side teams.

We're in a privileged position of actually being able to talk to the people in charge and see them change things. Somehow people seem to confuse this with wanting the game to be made exactly to suit only them.

(I'm not particularly for or against a lower limit in general, I just hate this argument)

[Tiamat101]

I dont want it to suit me, I actually want the game to get better before it dies. I personally would rather play with 20-30 active players than 50-80 mostly inactive players, and anyone that's played with me will know I've said that every single time. So that's not anything new.

[Shev]

Well that's absolutely fine. Everyone can play as they want. However, what you said above was that the rules should be changed so DLR could win or at least compete.

[budious]

Originally Posted by RexDrax

In either case I think its unlikely that alliance limit will be changed. Too many vocal people are against it. There is also no consensus among the people that are for it as to what the limit should be.

I'm for any change so long as people can see the light and agree the playerbase doesn't support the current alliance sizes. If Appoco came on right now and said next round would be 70 members with 60 counting I could live with that for the coming round, then we could decide if we wanted to take it down another notch next round.

Originally Posted by Shev

Well that's absolutely fine. Everyone can play as they want. However, what you said above was that the rules should be changed so DLR could win or at least compete.

Why are you dragging DLR into this? I only cited DLR because I'm familiar with our situations but it is a generalized problem that affects all the small tags. Turnover is high, people take a round off or go to another alliance to discover the pastures are not greener, and come back, we probably take in 3-4 new players a round on average so we average a %10 recruiting posture, but this is not enough to keep our tag filled with quality players who share our gameplay philosophy. I also prefer to have a modest conversation with 40 or so people I can get to know quite well on IRC, having more than that in a channel tends to annoy me and I start banning people...

[Mzyxptlk]

Originally Posted by budious

Why are you dragging DLR into this? I only cited DLR because I'm familiar with our situations but it is a generalized problem that affects all the small tags.

If you use an example to reinforce your point, you shouldn't be surprised when people attempt to tear it down.

[neroon]

Originally Posted by Shev

Well that's absolutely fine. Everyone can play as they want. However, what you said above was that the rules should be changed so DLR could win or at least compete.

but Shev mate, this is not about making it suitable for DLR.. its about making it more competitive among the alliances overall.. the main idea, for me at least, has been the fact that the game cant support big tags anymore, hence it should be made more playable for a wider range of groups = more tags able to compete against each other.

if the next one posting here again says, that then those tags that wanna be competitive just have to go and recruit a full tag, then im going insane :P

Somehow, ppl have made a holy-cow out of this alliance thingy (even tho it wasnt part of the original concept of the game anyhow) and cant think about doing something different :/

[neroon]

one more thing..

IF there was any tag limit reduction coming in any upcoming rounds.. then dont take it down 10 by 10 or something silly like that..

u`d have to do it at once, yes u should leave enough time for the alliances to know this and deal with this, but cutting it down 1by1 would be as shit idea as it was to bring PL back :P

[Shev]

Originally Posted by neroon

but Shev mate, this is not about making it suitable for DLR.. its about making it more competitive among the alliances overall.. the main idea, for me at least, has been the fact that the game cant support big tags anymore, hence it should be made more playable for a wider range of groups = more tags able to compete against each other.

if the next one posting here again says, that then those tags that wanna be competitive just have to go and recruit a full tag, then im going insane :P

Somehow, ppl have made a holy-cow out of this alliance thingy (even tho it wasnt part of the original concept of the game anyhow) and cant think about doing something different :/

I'd prefer no tags or very small tags. Never have been a fan of ingame alliances.

However, what a lot of the people are doing here has nothing to do with improvement of the game and a lot to do with them wanting the game changed to their personal specifications. And yes, yet again, if DLR want to compete then they should recruit a full tag. They could do it quite easily if they had the appetite to do so. I'm not saying that they have to, I'm saying it's their choice and that's fine.

[neroon]

i dont get it..

point is this..

DLR can not recruit full tag unless some alliance merges em or disbands overall.. but in that case we havent won anything right, since we have instead lost an alliance

DLR could do open recruitment to try to poach "newish" nd/ct/hr ppl, but they would still not be in the running for top tag, even if they managed to fill their tag with these players.. dont get me wrong, but those ppl would most probably sadly be not as competent as ppl in ult..

so..

no, even if they wanted to, they wouldnt be able to compete for top UNLESS someone merges or disbands

ps: dlr could be changed with any other tag that has less than 40 members

[Shev]

Originally Posted by neroon

DLR can not recruit full tag unless some alliance merges em or disbands overall.. but in that case we havent won anything right, since we have instead lost an alliance

Yes they can. Don't talk crap. If people can recruit to form a new alliance every few rounds then there are enough out there willing to join an alliance that's actually respected for their attacking.

And why is an alliance disbanding so bad? You really want exactly the same alliances every single round?

[DragonKing]

Pa draft ftw

[RexDrax]

@Shev

Actually I think I am going to have to agree with neroon there. The majority of active players are currently in Ultores, by that I mean Ultores has over 85% active players. If you compare that with other alliances such as CT or ND who probably only have a 50% active player basis they have quite the advantage and that's one of the main reason they have been winning the last few rounds. A 80 member alliance with over 85% super active members will beat 2 80 member alliance with 50% activity 7 out of 10 times.

I think what neroon and others are saying is that the current PA environment means that either ultores is going to get ganged up by a massive anti-ult alliance or they will continue to win a few more rounds with no opposition. Of course all the other active players from the other alliances can get together and form a counter alliance to ultores that can compete with them but then we 2 alliances basically fighting it out every round. That's 160 planets out of 900 (I checked 1 of the many merlin websites for this number) that are in the current universe having "fun" and a game.

By reducing the alliance limit to 50 for every alliance it will level the playing field. For instance DLR, who are are skilled group of people can now compete, with ultores for the win since now ultores does not have a 2.3:1 numerical advantage. The same can be said for ToF and other alliance who do not have the numbers to compete with the 70+ tag alliances such as CT, ND, xVx, Fang.

Regarding your point about recruiting up to the 80 man tag limit. That's easy to do. Hell I can go talk to my friends and probably get 10 or so of them to sign up. But getting players into your tag is quite different than getting active players that are willing to devote time to this game. Look at CT and ND, they have the same tag size as Ultores, but they are not able to go toe-to-toe with ultores 1-on-1 because ultores just has a much more active members than other alliances. Due to this reason they can draw upon a much more active defense pool and during major incoming they probably have all fleets being used efficiently for defense while other alliance cannot say that.

I dont mean to pick on Ultores. What they have accomplished is awesome and they should be commended for that. But at the same time their accomplishment over time will have a detrimental effect on the game overall. By the way that's my opinion and with no real concrete facts to back it up. Its just the way I am currently seeing things and what people have told me and what they are planning on doing.

[budious]

Well said RexDrax

Originally Posted by neroon

one more thing..

IF there was any tag limit reduction coming in any upcoming rounds.. then dont take it down 10 by 10 or something silly like that..

u`d have to do it at once, yes u should leave enough time for the alliances to know this and deal with this, but cutting it down 1by1 would be as shit idea as it was to bring PL back :P

The only positives I see to the step approach is getting people on board to agree to tag downsize; and that those 5-10 players who are shaved from each of the large tags don't have enough members to split into 40 man tags as the argument went, so they would be inclined to find new established home tags rather than form a new one. This approach would be more a migration than an exodus.

[BloodyButcher]

Rexdrax, you more than anyone else in this thread should know that alliances dont run themself, even if you made tags smaller, fitting less members into the tag you would have to put in as much "officer" and "hc" work. we have seen it for a long time, when alliances collapses its not due to peons getting bored or tired, but often it is because officers and hc run out of fuel. the short term might be a few more interesting rounds, but imho i think it will lead to less planets, hardcore, inactive, or whatever. people who are giving their comments or thoughts should, not that i know most of you here, try set up a new alliance and try run it for more than 600 ticks.

[RexDrax]

Originally Posted by BloodyButcher

Rexdrax, you more than anyone else in this thread should know that alliances dont run themself, even if you made tags smaller, fitting less members into the tag you would have to put in as much "officer" and "hc" work. we have seen it for a long time, when alliances collapses its not due to peons getting bored or tired, but often it is because officers and hc run out of fuel. the short term might be a few more interesting rounds, but imho i think it will lead to less planets, hardcore, inactive, or whatever. people who are giving their comments or thoughts should, not that i know most of you here, try set up a new alliance and try run it for more than 600 ticks.

Oh I agree, running an alliance is not easy and HCs/Officers get burned out quite often. There are quite a few people that can run an alliance but there are not too many people that want to due to RL or they know they dont have the activity or they just dont want to devote that much of their time since they have done it in the past and they know what it means to be in a command role.

One reason why TGV didnt play r45 is because the HC team was burned out and needed a break and there was no replacement.

I am not saying reducing the alliance size will be the cure to PA's current problem, but it might help lead to a cure. Lets say that each of CT, ND, Fang, xVx, Ultores reduces their size by 20 members with 13 of them sticking around in PA and being active/semi active. That's a potential of 65 players (13x5=65). Those 65 players would most likely go into established alliances such as DLR, ToF, HR, Apprime, DFWTK and NGO. Since the alliance tag was reduced and the 2nd tiered alliances have gotten some more active players and have increased their tag size they now have a more significant impact on the game as well as politics. Instead of being relegated to attaching themselves to 1 of the bigger alliances they have a bigger say and can actually dictate politics and determine the course of PA a bit more than they do now.

Of course reducing the alliance size wont fix (m)any of the problems and it has the potential to add new problems too. But I think most PA players agree that the current format cannot survive and something has to be done to improve the game. What the solution is, nobody really knows but reducing the alliance size might be a something to try out for 2-3 rounds. It should not just be done for 1 round since it will take at least 1 round for the community to adjust to such a change.

[Shev]

Originally Posted by RexDrax

@Shev

Actually I think I am going to have to agree with neroon there. The majority of active players are currently in Ultores, by that I mean Ultores has over 85% active players. If you compare that with other alliances such as CT or ND who probably only have a 50% active player basis they have quite the advantage and that's one of the main reason they have been winning the last few rounds. A 80 member alliance with over 85% super active members will beat 2 80 member alliance with 50% activity 7 out of 10 times.

I think what neroon and others are saying is that the current PA environment means that either ultores is going to get ganged up by a massive anti-ult alliance or they will continue to win a few more rounds with no opposition. Of course all the other active players from the other alliances can get together and form a counter alliance to ultores that can compete with them but then we 2 alliances basically fighting it out every round. That's 160 planets out of 900 (I checked 1 of the many merlin websites for this number) that are in the current universe having "fun" and a game.

By reducing the alliance limit to 50 for every alliance it will level the playing field. For instance DLR, who are are skilled group of people can now compete, with ultores for the win since now ultores does not have a 2.3:1 numerical advantage. The same can be said for ToF and other alliance who do not have the numbers to compete with the 70+ tag alliances such as CT, ND, xVx, Fang.

Regarding your point about recruiting up to the 80 man tag limit. That's easy to do. Hell I can go talk to my friends and probably get 10 or so of them to sign up. But getting players into your tag is quite different than getting active players that are willing to devote time to this game. Look at CT and ND, they have the same tag size as Ultores, but they are not able to go toe-to-toe with ultores 1-on-1 because ultores just has a much more active members than other alliances. Due to this reason they can draw upon a much more active defense pool and during major incoming they probably have all fleets being used efficiently for defense while other alliance cannot say that.

I dont mean to pick on Ultores. What they have accomplished is awesome and they should be commended for that. But at the same time their accomplishment over time will have a detrimental effect on the game overall. By the way that's my opinion and with no real concrete facts to back it up. Its just the way I am currently seeing things and what people have told me and what they are planning on doing.

Before I start, please note again that I personally would prefer no tags or very small tags.

Every time someone makes the mistake of referring to DLR as if they are somehow the opressed victims standing up for all that is right and awesome I'm going to come back with the same response - they play this way because they choose to. They are not forced to. With their reputation they could easily recruit enough acceptable standard players to add to their impressive core if they really wanted to challenge.

Oh, and you're not going to believe me, but to say that 85% of Ultores can be counted as active is laughable by any recent standard. I also doubt our core would run away with a small tag round. What we do have is a decent system of responsibility and a bunch of decent roiders.

We didn't have 80 players in any of the rounds we've played. 73 last round, 62 the time before, 50 in our first round. Plus the odd couple here and there that were kicked at certain points - although we also recruited later in the round sometimes as well. And the only round you can say we ran away with in any form was the most recent - when we were inexplicably left alone for the first 500 ticks to grow and then presented with an opposition that was more interested in galaxy wins than anything more.

But I think most PA players agree that the current format cannot survive and something has to be done to improve the game.

I have to pick up on this as well. I'm not trying to make this personal but PA has survived with alliance limits around this level for the last 35 rounds or so. Let's not get too hyperbolic. You may want a change but while the game might not thrive it's unlikely to die.

[Kaiba]

I have to agree with Shev with some of his points about Ultores. THe 85% thing is balls to extent... they are just better set up than everybody else. From what i can gather there is more of a push on everybody to dc their own calls where possible and they have instilled in their group that they need to there def info up to date and send when smsed/rung.

Other alliances around them rely more on 3-4 people to dc a vast quantity of the incommings and thats not always possible when your getting swamped.

They probably have the same ratio of active/inactive as most alliances around them BUT i will say that their inactives are of a higher calibre than other alliances, know the game inside out and are able to still have a decent planet without putting major effort in.


The DLR/ToF condunrum is a weird one, i agree with Shev that if they wanted to compete for the win they could recruit enough decent players to do so BUT these players would come from another competeing alliance, as most probably not Ultores. This means that your only taking away from Ultores rivals, it doesnt add to the amount of alliances 'going for the win' it just means DLR/ToF would replace an exsiting one. Thats because the playerbase isnt growing anymore, just dwindling. We didnt even make 1k players this round

My opinion stays as this - low tag limits sound cool but wouldnt really change PA... bigger tags (limitless) would kill PA in about 5-6 rounds. Stay with tags as they are or have a drop of 10 per alliance max but make everybody count towards score. That will make crashes/fc's/big roid losses impact more on an alliances score and make the need to war/attack/defend sensibly more appropriate.