So your staring a alliance? heres a startup plan
1) get a group of l33t m8s with far to much time on there hands
2)read this
3)follow it
First, why are you starting an alliance? There are lots of good ones out there already. There are only two answers. The first is that you're already a group of friends who hangs out and attacks and defense together, you might as well give yourselves a name and invite others to join. This is by far the best way to start an alliance.
The second is that you are a power hungry person in search of peons to direct at your whim. This is also fine, but you'll have to do a lot more work to be even slightly successful. If this is you, just be honest with yourself about it, it will make things so much easier down the road.
Now answer some questions:
Do you know what IRC is? Have you ever attacked with a group of people before? Have you ever had to organize other people's fleets to defend someone elses planet?
If the answer to any of these questions is NO, then you will not be successful until you've spent a little time learning the ropes from an established alliance. Don't worry, you can still take over the universe some day, just not this round. Allow the people who have perfected the art to teach you their ways. You will use their own knowledge to crush them.
Now, some more questions:
Are you on IRC most of your day? Will you be active for at least one full round of Planetarion and the month or so before? Do you know anyone you can trust absolutely to help you out?
If the answer to these questions are NO, then you've got to seriously re-examine whether its going to be worth your time and effort to try this out. If you can't be around running your alliance most of the day, then its not going to go anywhere. PA is a 24 hour game. You have to be here for the full round, its not fair to your members for you to back out on them after 3 weeks because your mum forgot to pay the internet bill. And you have to have help. People you can trust to make sound judgements will be essential, because you have to sleep, and someone has to mind the store while you're away.
So if you can pass those basic questions, then you're ready to get started.
First if you're not experienced, and want help, get on #mentors on IRC. There PA has assembled a group of people who are both politically neutral and eager to help people do just what you are doing now.
Second, start a channel. PIck a word for your alliance, join that channel. Once you're the only one there with an @ by your name, you've arrived at your new home.
Third, get those people you can trust in there, and get P in your channel.
Now you're set to begin recruiting by word of mouth, but NO ANNOUNCEMENTS. If you can't get at least 10 people in your alliance just on your friends, galaxy mates, their friends, etc, then its a failed experiment.
Once you have an established core memberbase, some very basic infrastructure, and a little experience, you're ready to come to this board and announce your alliance. You will not tell them how crap your alliance is, and how you're new and don't know what you're doing. You will tell them what you've accomplished, how many dedicated active players you have, about your desire to do well next round, about your strong tight knit community, or any other GOOD things you have.
YOU WILL NOT POST ON THIS BOARD WITHOUT HAVING AN IRC CHANNEL.
To do so shows everyone in the world that you've ignored every piece of advice available to you. You WILL require your members to be in IRC on a regular and consistent basis. The in-game forums, and attack and defense tools are not meant to be adequate and will not be even laughablly sufficient for you to be half-way serious about this.
If you've done everything here and you've got a small memberbase, then you may be ready to be an alliance that people take seriously. You may not be experienced, and you have many many more lessons to learn, but if you can't master these prerequisites, you just can not be successful in this game.
If you have past game history then it is easy for you to attract top players you
might know.
You can also just recruit every new player you find and kick the inactive ones and
cultavate the new ones into the next generation players.
Its important to have a strong HC (High Council) to have a good alliance.
this should be made up of respected players, for there playing ability or
for other areas like activerty or codeing. (carefull of power mad access abusers)
HC structure of EX (Executives) and officers
[EX]Commander (controler of the total alliance not one area but makes sure each
area works smoothly with current members)
[EX]Tech (In charge of techical parts of alliance like bots in channels,
member database, arbiter, and website.)
[WO] Web Officer ( this person/persons is in charge of the websites look/coding)
[TO] Tech Officer (does the same as EX but may just be in a specific area)
[EX]Recruitment (In charge of Recruitment in allaince number of members
which inactive members to kick enterring/handling new members)
[RO]Recruitment Officer (handles enquirys on mirc and site handles applicants and
new members quries)
[EX]Comunication (In charge of Comunication. Forum, mirc and contacting other
alliances and opening and keeping comunication bettween them
[CO]Comunication Officer (monitors forum and anserws qusetions and also makes usre
members know what happening in allaince)
[EX]War (decides on attacks and any allaince that need targeting)
[BC] Battle coordinator (in charge of battle groups should organise attacks for members.
also should have list of scanners he can use. IMPORTANT these people must be able to be
active l8 at night)
[DC] Defence Coordinator (Handles defence for members should calculate defence for memebrs
and ask other members to help.)
[S] Scanners (players who have a good low ratio and are willing to build large numbers of
scans for good of alliance. this can be anyone including officers)
all the above should be needed for a alliance to be workable long term. the core of the [EX]
are what is most important rest can be added as alliance grows and more [EX] if needed
Example of workable structure
[EX]Tech [EX]Rec [EX]Com [EX]Comu [EX]War
|| || || || ||
[WO][WO][TO] [RO][RO][RO][RO] || [CO][CO] [BC][BC][BC][BC][DC][DC][DC][DC]
|| || || || [S][S][S][S][S][S][S][S][S][S][S]
[Member][Member][Member][Member][Member][Member][Member][Member][Member][Member][Member]
Members are important cos you cant win without em
numbers mean nothing if they ant active.
Quality is very important as if you have good players you will gain respect from other
allainces and attract better players with your reputation.
Once command structure is set up then comes the fun stuff
1) decide a name
2) reg irc channel/channels
3) make webby/member database/access
4) decide officers
5) recruit members
6) make alliance bot
7) have fun:P
1) names can be important to a alliance they can help to give a idea of what kind of alliance you are going to be. eg. Legion a strong powerful name. Madcows or FryingDutchman sujest more fun light hearted play. some alliances have crap names but they dont seem to last. A good name can help attract players. but also should give your alliance a theme which then can be used for the alliance graphics.
2) You will need a public channel which tends to be linked to the alliance name eg virus is #Virus but doesnt have to be Rah used to have a public channel with a different name to the alliance and also was secret. which did have the advantage of people joining the game and typing /list wouldnt find the alliance. cuts down on Newbie players. You will also need a private channel this is always good to have on netgamers.org evern if you have a private server. just in case it goes down. a Defence channel is also useful and a officer channel. You will need attack channels 2 which should be secret and also for security reasons passwords changed each night.
3) the web needs to be secure with password protection on member only areas you will need a home page with news, forums with usfull info on whats happening, a about page with a little info about the alliance, a register or recruitment page for applicants to apply. other usefull pages are a arbiter and a links page. arbiter must be high level access and members can give there coords in and also any other info they have on their gals.
4) use the guide i said before. make sure the choice is good. as might have to be people that wont give up when things get tough. somtimes the job of a officer is more important than the one of a HC to the sucess of a alliance and it is normaly the success of these officers that decideds the overall efectivness of the alliance.
5) once you have your channels you can add recruiting to the topic this will atract some + get exisiting members talking to their friends
6) you might need 2 bots a defence and a genral one. a defence bot can sit in your public channel and relay defence calls which people pm to it to the defence channel. the genral bot should be able to be used as a arbiter check and also other things are usefull like a ship checker to see if its worth attacking a target or how many ships will be killed by other ships. a good example of that kind of bot is vanxbot made by yogibear though dont bother him to make you one or for anything else:P
7) what want me to tell you how to do that as well:P
ATTACK!!
When you have a few members you will want to make your alliance the best. The only way to do this is by being the biggest.
you will need to organise attacks. In planetarion the people who are most active, when others arn't normaly are the highest ranking players.
This is why in many cases players from time zones such as in the usa, Cannada and Australia are highly prized.
This doesnt mean that thay are the best players as they oftern wont be up for when defence is needed.
Anyway. Each night attacks should be planned normal attack times are from 12pmGMT to 6amGMT each seem to have verying amount of success but remmber when you attack a normal ETA is 7-10 so bare that in mind for your launch time. People normaly get up for work school etc 8-10am so you want the eta to low to get defence by that point. remember eta in gal defence is 5. Which brings me to the point of ingal defence. This can be prevented by covering all the planets in the galaxy.
The BC job is to use the scanners to help him find a target earlyer on in the day which can be used later by his alliance. this should be done each night.
The times of launches should be at different time in the night or morning to suit the alliance members. if you have 4 galaxys coverd each night the alliance is doing well.
Somtimes galaxys are large priority targets this could meen two or more people choosing the same target to land on the same tick or land the tick after. This helps the reduction in chance of defence.
Members of the alliance should never attack with 3 fleets.
The BC should try and keep the attacks as secret as possible so when you do scans they should be put up on the net but with coords removed and at a url that is diffferent each night. The coords should be removed and value/score changed or removed to prevent coords being found in a search
ATTACK Target picking and launching
Right BCs you need to pick a target. good idea is to see how big the average person in your alliance is and pick targets that suits. Sometimes it is a good idea to have a battel group of the more elite players who will attack larger targets each night or higher priority ones. you can use web tools like sandmans.co.uk to help you pick your targets. then get a scanner to scan the targets for you so you can give your alliance members detailed info on the target they are about to face but not so detailed they can tell what the target is well in advance. once scans are done they should be hosted on the net as a text file mostly but if you want somit more fancy you are welcome to do it:P The attack bot you use should be able to store the url of the attack and be seen by anyone using !scan command or simular. Once a LT launch Time is chosen then a TP Target Picking Time can be. somtimes this can be shortly before the LT somtimes well before. The late attacks somtimes have the TP well before so people can sleep before they attack. Target picking is quite simple once the time arrives you have set for it picking takes place using the command !take # or !take 2:x:# depending on how many target you have running at one time. its first come first served for this which does tend to mean some disopoinment in some players. but if you have plenty of targets each night then they can always go for another one or do a second wave. It is also important that you have as many planets in the gal coverd as posible. with a ETA of 5 in gal it is easy for somone to gain defence well after they cant from there alliance. So it is much better to cover 1 whole gal than hit two half coverd one's. once a person has chosen the target they need to wait for the LT the best time you can launch is a few minutes befor the tick thats why most alliances go at ##:55. You can then use !launch # function on a Attack bot to tell when people have sent their ships. this info should then be givern to the hc of War who can give anyone claming a target and not launching a telling off
The Bc should next be up at landing time. Some alliances give scans in the morning allready done so you can see if your target has defence. or you can just get people to ask for them. I advise that the BC uses sandmans to see the sucess of a attack seeing what % has been lost as this info can be used l8r to see when to best hit a galaxy.
DEFENCE!!
This is mainly the job of the DC.
The activerty must be high at night for this job.
basicly you sit in defence channel and wait for things to happen. the times listed for attacks is the same as the ones you need to be active as dc as thats when the calls will come in. use the defence bot so tell all your members to tell their gal members how to get them defence. the bot sits in public channel and then person can msg the bot or for security it can sit in no channel.
Defence handy tips
One important thing for a DC is to learn as much of the ship stats as possible. It comes in very usefull. Defence should be asked for and delt with in this order.
1)DC pmed
2)Overview givern and time incoming came this tick last tick etc
3)ships home if you being attacked
4)scan if you have one of attacker
5)bcalc with your and attackers ships already in.
The more of these you have filled in before you pm the DC the easyer it will be to cover you. if these things are not provided then the DC has to do it himself.
Dc then does following
6)/notice the chanel requesting ships
7)all ships home should be pmed to the DC so he can then sort out which he needs
8)info gived to defenders what to send and what eta
9)defender then conferms what he has sent
10)Dc makes record of the defence
you might find it useful to make a record of which alliance members defend and attack this can be used to see who is active in the alliances and who is not.
Also remind the person being attacked to mail the defenders as soon as the attacker recalls this help to reduce the number of ships just defending with no incoming which could be used elsewhere.
The good thing about a DC channel is it means one DC can keep the others up to date with what is going on. many times a DC can be covering one incoming then another comes in. if its not in the same galaxy i advise you split the workload over the other DC but only one ask for ships and then the other DC can say what defence is givern by the members and it can be split between the 2 defences in the best way.
Dc Notes
lowest eta you can cover is 7
Fi/Co in alliance defence 7
Fr/De in alliance defence 8
Cr/Bs in alliance defence 9
to work out what is attacking you +1 to the eta of the incomings first tick
you can always send fake defence to a target but that is risky make sure the amount of ships you send is the same as the type of ships it is pretending to be and also the ETA is the same.
Well thats all so far. hope it makes sence:P if you got any input to in join #ATOM on netgamers and give it me and ill add or ajust what i have writen
This was writen by Cayl and Mr_Blonde of #ATOM
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