Next round alliance limits

[NitinA]

Originally Posted by Appocomaster

In the earlier rounds, the active but more compact alliances were often able to win over the bigger, more unmanagable alliances because they were better able to co-ordinate.

It's not dissimilar to relating it to the issues with several alliances co-ordinating attacks on other alliances at the same time. 300 members in an alliance - how realistic is it to do defence calls, arrange attacks and so forth?

Doesn't that position, support this position?:

Originally Posted by Cochese

Remove them for a round.

If it turns out to be shit, change it back for r24.

[Chel]

OK, this may have been discussed, but bear with me.

I like the no limit ideas and think Veil05 presented it best. Small/strong/trusted vs large/spread/spies.

First off, I'd suggest total score of an alliance being viewed SOLELY on their top50 scoring members. That would allow an alliance of 50 to complete on a (relatively) equal footing with an alliance of 200. This would be how alliances were ranked at end of round.

Of course there is the possibility of alliances working just to protect the top50, but would this really be a problem? We protect 70 like this as it is anyway.

OK, to the alliance signup issue. Obviously being in tag is a huge advantage with the lower eta's, something support planets/alliances are unable to enjoy. So, to restricting membership: The 'below 50%' thing is a bit crude. I propose something similar, but more tuned. A round lasts 1200 tocks (or thereabouts). I say that the first 48 members (you'll see why later*) in tag have no restrictions at all. No more than 48 can join in tag till tock 100. Every 100 tocks the restrictions change. At tock 100, only a player with <95% the score of the top player in that alliance can join. At tock 200, it drops to 90%, 300, 95%, etc etc. Come tock 1100, this will be 45% - effectively only a (relatively) small planet could join the alliance. This prevents the late game tag changes, still allows for large alliances, but gives small alliances an equal chance.

What will result from this is that a large player, joining late or just cooling his heels too long, will be unable to tag ingame, losing the traveltime bonus. Ofc he can still join up on irc.

Perhaps this needs worked slightly for smaller alliances, as if they grow slowly the 5% shift is an arbitary ruling and may cause balance issues. Then again, maybe not.

I like envisioning this as like PA was in the old days, with 4/5 wings of 20 people each within tag. Would one wing be more heavily represented in that alliances top50 than another? Perhaps the possibility for subtags for BG's, with less restrictions on changing? I dunno lol.

OK, as u see I'm throwing it out, so here's a couple of off topic opinions after reading some other threads:

Cluster eta's - -2 def, no bonus attacking until an appointed time, say tick 700, when attacking eta also drops to -2. What politics would that lead to for an alliance? Perhaps the highter membercount ones would be able to ride it out, but would smaller ones have to resign some clusters as lost?

* BP's - this is where the initial 48 members in tag comes in. Preshuffle, up to 48 can sign up in tag. Buddy packs are of three people, so each alliance can have a max of 16 BP's. At shuffle, gals each get 2 BP's from DIFFERENT alliances, making things a bit mixed. Random, but there's a chance two alliances will cover much common ground and want to work together. Or not.

Currently in game the top 15 alliances have more than 48 members. I know some form late, and no provision will be made for this, but assuming they had 48 by shuffle, that means 16*15/2 = 120 gals, 12 clusters of 6 BP people each gal. Everyone out of tag gets a random gal, to an initial gal limit of 10, meaning that some gals won't have BP's at all, but they'll still be able to sign up for alliances, providing they arent too large ofc :O)

BP gals do not get any randoms joining at shuffle - only new players can be put into these gals. This will likely increase the number of clusters past the 20 we're at at the mo, but more gals = more targets. This also allows typically less organised randoms a sporting chance against BP gals. It could even be a tactical decision not to join a BP in order to be more evenly spread or in a slightly larger gal at the beginning of the round. A BP of only 3 people also accentuates the need for fine selection of race within a BP, increasing strategy further.

What do u think? It combines the alliance limits, cluster eta's, and BP's all in one post. Maybe it's the breath of life a lot of us feel PA needs?

[Makhil]

if you increase the limit, the top 5 alliances will benefit from it, as they will have plenty of candidates. Smaller allies will always exist but the medium ones will suffer the most (unless they merge). It would be sad to see them disappear.

[Mzyxptlk]

Originally Posted by Makhil

if you increase the limit, the top 5 alliances will benefit from it, as they will have plenty of candidates. Smaller allies will always exist but the medium ones will suffer the most (unless they merge). It would be sad to see them disappear.

You assume having lots of members is a good thing.

[Makhil]

Originally Posted by Mzyxptlk

You assume having lots of members is a good thing.

if it takes away the players from other allies yes.

[Game^]

Originally Posted by _Kila_

At first I was skeptical about Jester and Rob's "let's remove the alliance limit" arguments but after a little thought, I think that it would work out as alliances would have to stop recruiting at some point as having too many members will merely damage an alliance.

The complications, however, are that two seperate alliances may be able to share a tag, function seperately and borrow defence from each other - they wouldn't get too big to function and would be able to benefit fromt he score of both alliances. This would, however, mean that the two alliances only gain half the credit of the win :/

Yes because im sure those two alliances wouldn't fall out with eachother at all when the going gets tough and one is performing better than the other half.

[Talin]

Originally Posted by Makhil

if it takes away the players from other allies yes.

Other alliances should then simply make sure this does not happen, or alternatively compensate the losses with their own recruitment. Where is the point?

They're only suffering the consequence of their own performance and decisions. Nobody is taking members away, members are leaving. If an alliance isn't stable enough to keep their core membership, the game shouldn't be protecting it with needless rules. They should simply take the loss, end of story.

The game needs to stop (over)protecting players and alliances and let them take full responsibility for their survival and eventual success. That's the whole point of getting rid of all the rules that hamper this raw competition mode that was and should be the main feature of PA.

[Game^]

Originally Posted by Talin

Other alliances should then simply make sure this does not happen, or alternatively compensate the losses with their own recruitment. Where is the point?

They're only suffering the consequence of their own performance and decisions. Nobody is taking members away, members are leaving. If an alliance isn't stable enough to keep their core membership, the game shouldn't be protecting it with needless rules. They should simply take the loss, end of story.

Try telling that to Kargool or Wakey

I completely agree with what Talin states here, if people are going to leave your alliance you should be asking yourself WHY are they doing so, and actually take action to ensure this doesn't happen.

Alot of this talk of "x amount of players will leave their current alliance" is complete crap anyway, what makes people think that any organised decent alliance would want more than 80-90 members with this player base is beyond me.

The most annoying part is, no-one has presented an argument with VALID points other than looking after their own selfish interests.

[Tomkat]

Originally Posted by Cochese

Remove them for a round.

If it turns out to be shit, change it back for r24.

Indeed. We learn from our mistakes. At the very least, whack the limit up to 150.