Alliance sizes for free round

[Banned]

Originally Posted by Smudge

Emphasis on FOR EXAMPLE

No really, there are 16 alliances with >50 members. Have you asked any of them at all?

[Kieker Jan]

The problem of only 50 members is ull create blocks

there the top 15 alliances have a 50 member hardcore base already and therefore cant teke in new recruits.
Every major ally will end up with 2 alliances who willact like 1...

even if ths doesnt happen new players wil have a lot of trouble to get a place in a "decent" alliance because they will be hogging their spots for their trusted members

[Kargool]

The blocks is allready now in round 15 with 80 members. I dont think it will be worse with 50 member alliances.

[alch]

Originally Posted by Banned

But there will be less people with incoming, thus fewer people will need to send defense...

(Not that your suggestion doesn't have any merit.)

Not if some alliance cooperate together to take down a certain alliance. i think we need to hardcode some kind of limitation on the team up of alliances on another certain alliance.

[Banned]

Originally Posted by alch

Not if some alliance cooperate together to take down a certain alliance. i think we need to hardcode some kind of limitation on the team up of alliances on another certain alliance.

I think this is a seperate issue. Alliances this round are already given enough incoming that later waves on them recall because there won't be enough roids left for them when they land. Whether or not this is a problem, doesn't have so much to do with the size of alliances, as it does with ad hoc nature of alliance tags. Also keep in mind that the number of alliances (and therefore also command overhead) needed to saturate a target with incoming will be the same.

[Squishy]

Originally Posted by Kargool

Yeah. they would love to join the next game after having a round with cluster alliances where everyone wants to be leaders, internal conflicts, noone cooperating etc etc etc.. That would inspire them alot to play more PA.

I dont think forced cluster alliances will work, and tbh, coming from one of the PA team I really start to wonder if the PA-crew has a grasp of the reality of this game at all.

Im not a member of the Pa-Team

And all I was doing was making a suggestion on what i feel wuold be an intresting way on how to run a round and attract new people. Just because in the main round cluster alliances dont work doesnt mean they have to in this round.

Just out of intrest do you think people not being able to get in an alliance and being bashed into the ground would be a good way to inspire them to play as well? As thats effectivly whats gonna happen even if the alliance size limits are changed. The bigger more organised alliances arnt gonna take small people into their ranks its just not gonna happen. If the alliance size limits are changed all you will get is 2 wings of most alliances naped and playing as they always do.

This is why i made a suggestion that if cluster alliances were run well would add a really intresting dynamic into the game while also teaching smaller people how to play and what it means to be in an alliance

[Kargool]

Originally Posted by Squishy

Im not a member of the Pa-Team

And all I was doing was making a suggestion on what i feel wuold be an intresting way on how to run a round and attract new people. Just because in the main round cluster alliances dont work doesnt mean they have to in this round.

Just out of intrest do you think people not being able to get in an alliance and being bashed into the ground would be a good way to inspire them to play as well? As thats effectivly whats gonna happen even if the alliance size limits are changed. The bigger more organised alliances arnt gonna take small people into their ranks its just not gonna happen. If the alliance size limits are changed all you will get is 2 wings of most alliances naped and playing as they always do.

This is why i made a suggestion that if cluster alliances were run well would add a really intresting dynamic into the game while also teaching smaller people how to play and what it means to be in an alliance

First of all. If u are to create an alliance today with 80 members limit u need a coremembergroup around 35-40. if the limit is 50, u need a smaller coregroup. Its easier for people to start when they need smaller groups to make an significant impact of the alliance system.

Second. I've been a HC for a medium alliance for two rounds now. I may not have 100% right but I like to think that I've gained som expirience when it comes to members. My expirience is that new players : 70% of them are not active enough and quit because of that, or that the rounds are to long etc. I think that by cutting alliances size the lesser active player will have problems getting into an alliance yes, but im guessing in a lot of theese cases the player would have quit anyways, also, with a 50 memberlimit, I see alot of alliances thinking about making recruitmentwings where they send their lesser active recruits, and with theese alliances having dedicated officers they can assign to theese recruit alliances they will be able to help out the less fortunate players.

Third. In most cases theese new players arent active enough to be in an alliance in the first place. There are exceptions, but in general most of theese planets will end up as score pillows who get no def because they arent around when the alliance has incomings in general. This is the most common newbie killer of them all. In order to get def, u need to give def. When you are sleeping and ur alliance needs ur defships and u arent there to offer them, you'll end up low on the picking order anyways.

Dont blame the alliances for the new players being lesser active. Blame the game for being as it is, and blame the new players for not being dedicated. An alliance is about ACTIVITY, and if you cant keep up with the rest you will end up iding, quitting or leaving for a lesser active alliance. Thats just how it is.

*Disclaimer* As i've said in the post this is most new players. I know there is alot of active first time players out there, and this must not be seen as critisising them. But the lesser active PA players.

[Squishy]

And here in lies the problem.

New players dont just show up active (some do i know but very few) they have to be persuaded to be active by gaining friends and by helping your alliance out. But an alliance wont accept somoene unless their active and they wont become active unless they are in an alliance. Its a viscious circle and their is very little way out of it. I just thought that this free round wuold be an intresting way to bump some people out of that to give them a cahnce in a decent run alliance with players who know what they are doing. A chance to make friends and contacts and most of all a chance to become active and enjoy the game as we all do.

If alliances make recruitment wings that take in new people and help to train them up. This will work really well also and was somthing i hadnt really considered. But how many alliances will go to the trouble of doing that. I wuold suspect not all that many.

[Kargool]

Originally Posted by Squishy

If alliances make recruitment wings that take in new people and help to train them up. This will work really well also and was somthing i hadnt really considered. But how many alliances will go to the trouble of doing that. I wuold suspect not all that many.

I can personally guarantee that I might be running TGV's recrutimentwing if that happens.. Hell, then I wont even retire from PA. So thats one alliance doing it.

[Vargon]

Recruitment Wings are not a new concept, but are time consuming, If you cut alliance size down, it is likely that several alliances will turn to them if only to keep their active officer staff going, and to not make a single alliance top-heavy.
Now, that being said, many of those alliances will still not take new players into their wings, but instead take players who excel from smaller alliances, etc.
It might excellerate the potential for less known players to rise.
It will give the better leaders the ability to abuse a recruitwing for attack related purposes.
Most HC will not care if the recruitwing gets identified, etc. So they will have a kamikazee group at their disposal.
There are always pros and cons. It just the matter of whether a change is necessary and will achieve a desired goal.

[Pinkerton]

What about random alliances??!! You join a buddypack of 6-10 , then you are randomly shuffled with other buddypacks to form an allaince of 60 or so. Then you vote on an HC. Yes I know what your going to say "Awesome idea!" You can make the check out to Alonso F Pinkerton III.

[Veedeejem!]

I voted 80, 50 isn't enough imo
and different max members for t10 & non t10 are just silly caus there's no way to know at tickstart what alliances will be t10 and which one wont be t10

[The_Fish]

During R14 I was HC of 40 members, and then upto 100 or so members. The difference is amazing, at 40 members HCing was much more enjoyable, I knew most of the members, there was a tight bond between us that I havent seen in any other alliance. When we (I) decided to go for a shot at victory and recruited quite a bit, things changed. It is far too much effort to run a large alliance effectively. Many HC's burn out because of this. I think you would get more commands available for 50 man alliances as it is much less work.

I have been talking about it being this low for a few rounds, I hope it is implemented

[Nadar]

Originally Posted by The_Fish

During R14 I was HC of 40 members, and then upto 100 or so members. The difference is amazing, at 40 members HCing was much more enjoyable, I knew most of the members, there was a tight bond between us that I havent seen in any other alliance. When we (I) decided to go for a shot at victory and recruited quite a bit, things changed. It is far too much effort to run a large alliance effectively. Many HC's burn out because of this. I think you would get more commands available for 50 man alliances as it is much less work.

Enough reason for making it alliance 40-man.

[Rocklobster[Dok]]

smaller alliances will just make the gap between the top alliances and the smaller once even bigger. Now the smaller alliances can get more ppl in than the top alliances to compencate their lack of activity. A small very active alliance of 50 players would still own an inactive alliance with 200 planets. So the size doesnt matter that much. 80-100 players are ok in my opinion. Smaller alliances will just make it boring.

[Nadar]

Originally Posted by Rocklobster[Dok]

smaller alliances will just make the gap between the top alliances and the smaller once even bigger. Now the smaller alliances can get more ppl in than the top alliances to compencate their lack of activity. A small very active alliance of 50 players would still own an inactive alliance with 200 planets. So the size doesnt matter that much. 80-100 players are ok in my opinion. Smaller alliances will just make it boring.

You surely mean vice versa? It's easier for a top notch alliance to get a larger memberbase of active, good players than it is for smaller alliances. The numbers the smaller, worser, alliances gets is usually just inactive players that does no good for the alliance other than giving it a score-boost. By lowering the size-limit of alliances to 40, the top notch alliances will indeed have a good memberbase, but it'll be much easier for the "worse" alliances to recruit members that can actually work for the alliance. Eventhough it won't be able to compete in the top, the gap between them and #1 will get smaller.

Small alliances will make it boring you say? Absolutely not. The smaller the alliances is, the more efficient and dangerous they'll be. Now there's like 3-4 alliances that actually is considered a top notch-alliance. By lowering limit to 40, there'll be lots more alliances that has a chance of winning. There'll be a lot more fighting for the top spots (even a spot in the top10 will require fighting for). The only thing I can see becomes more "boring", is being a HC. Being a HC in a 80-100 member alliance requires a lot of organizing and time, while being a HC in a small alliance with only 40 members will require much less effort.

Think about it for 2 secs: The not-so-good-noob-alliances usually don't have HC's with much experience. Thus, being a HC with 80-100 members to control will be HARD for them. The job will be so much easier for these HC's when the limit is capped at 40. They'll only need to concentrate on a few players.

The smaller an alliance is, the easier it is to make it competitive. The community within the alliance will build a stronger bond and sense of companionship, which will build trust and a strong relationship inside the alliance. These factors is what newbie-alliances need in order to be able to play efficient. Compare it to a bigger newbie-alliance and you'll clearly see the pros: Numbers only, a bad community, not many having the feeling of "belonging" somewhere, less trust etc.

So in other words: Saying that numbers is good for newbie-alliances is plain wrong. A successfull alliance isn't about numbers, it's about the community. And creating a community which benefits the alliance is much, much harder with lots of members than with not so many members.

[stoney_elmo]

old skool ftw!

[Catif]

Originally Posted by Kargool

I can personally guarantee that I might be running TGV's recrutimentwing if that happens.. Hell, then I wont even retire from PA. So thats one alliance doing it.

Hooray F-Crew is already one

[Intruder]

Will the free round be PAX or PAN??

[Stifler]

Originally Posted by Intruder

Will the free round be PAX or PAN??

PAX, will be run while PAN development is finished

[Smudge]

Originally Posted by Pinkerton

What about random alliances??!! You join a buddypack of 6-10 , then you are randomly shuffled with other buddypacks to form an allaince of 60 or so. Then you vote on an HC. Yes I know what your going to say "Awesome idea!" You can make the check out to Alonso F Pinkerton III.

Strangely enough, I love this idea!

[are]

My alliance currently has ~65 members and it exists for quite some time, it has been smaller, it has been bigger through the rounds.
I dislike reducing the alliance size further for these reasons:
1. The well organized 'hardcore' alliances will just kick their less active members, thereby raising their average score further. As the limit is there for all alliances (perhaps with a top5 negative bonus).
2. If you take this ticks sandmans stats, ND (currently #1) with 40* avg score would reach 136M, VGN (currently #6, so just not-top10) with 50*avg score would have 120M, then again this would be more than 1up has with 40 members (102M) -> VGN would be at least #5 that moment. In fact, it would be #3. This again means #5 is #6 and may recruit 10 planets -> every alliance will have 50 members in the end, except you manage to have a that bigger average score that you never drop out of top5 that way.
3. While amongst hardcore players you find officer grade players more easily and those are not kicked from the top alliances as they are active (see 1.) -> todays top alliances probably have better qualified staff that way. In my opinion a less active alliance can only fix this by having more officers. But you can't have more officers as you tend and find only 1 officers in n members, but your membercount is very limited.
4. Many low active members are less targetted in alliance wars, that way that alliance has relatively less defense calls to cover and can cover them potentially with their online (lower percentagte) of members, if the alliance size is reduced, you stop this.
5. In current PA you need external tech to succeed in any way, especially if you lack really good officers, however, finding capable tech personnel is hard. If you think creating new alliances without decent organization involving officers and tech, go to AR and read the HC 101.
6. At least my alliance is a community. We have active people, we have inactive people and after many rounds we finally managed and have a decent share of people not living in the EU. So finally we have a chance to compete. We came a long way since r3. And the members stay in this alliance because they have friends and a home here. we don't threaten them to be kicked for being offline 3 days or similar. And if we did, they would probably just stop playing. They don't play PA because it is such a great game. It is an average game. What makes it special is the community. And the community is the alliance. Have heard many times 'Let's go and play XY, we would rule the game, no organization there, no contacts'. So which 15 members should I kick of my 65? The long term members that just are a bit less active? The europeans to distribute activity better? Those that have a different opinion than me? Those complaining more? The pupils that are not allowed to be up at night? I don't want to take that decision. I lead this alliance since r3 and since then I have kicked 4 people in total, now 15 in one go? This makes me angry. This is not what I want to do and this is not what i want to be forced to do.

Regards,
_are_

[Kentaminated]

Originally Posted by Wishmaster

-other-

Remove alliances in game, in other words -no limidt-

-1 eta for all def missions.

tata.

I agree with wishmaster. get rid of the alliance benefits and give the new guys/loners a chance to compete. on a level playing field.

[Appocomaster]

Originally Posted by Kentaminated

I agree with wishmaster. get rid of the alliance benefits and give the new guys/loners a chance to compete. on a level playing field.

So in effect, alliances become battlegroups and it's impossibly easy to signup planets out of alliance to support you?
A separate topic, relevant to this point, is the idea of blocking defence to people not in your cluster / alliance / galaxy (unless you're not in an alliance, when you can defend anyone else not in an alliance), to stop this sort of thing from happening, not make it easier to happen.

[are]

Originally Posted by Appocomaster

A separate topic, relevant to this point, is the idea of blocking defence to people not in your cluster / alliance / galaxy (unless you're not in an alliance, when you can defend anyone else not in an alliance), to stop this sort of thing from happening, not make it easier to happen.

It has already been suggested to me to just create one or more 'training' wings. We prerfectly have the infrastructure to coordinate tose via the cluster alliance. And I bet others are able to do the same. After all, before ingame alliances had been there the cluster had been the way to organize people.
On the other hand, if non-aliance planets may defend everywhere this is a great way to add 'new' members to the alliance in clusters the alliance has a strong presence. They are new, they are small, they are not active enough, whatever, they can nonetheless join in raids and get alliance defense via the alliance cluster alliance and give defense to every member. And for the PAN suggestions: great, noone can declare war on a bunch of non-alliance planets.

In short: for the current PA limiting the alliance size to a number that actually hurts alliances will just lead to evading the limit, just let it same size as it is or go to 75 (natural fluctuation) When there had not been ingame alliances we had an *alliance* winning the round anyway. Perhaps not officially, but obviously in the sandman/pilkara rankings.

Regards,
_are_

[Wishmaster]

Originally Posted by Appocomaster

So in effect, alliances become battlegroups and it's impossibly easy to signup planets out of alliance to support you?

Alliances are still alliances. Do u remember PA before PAX? there werent just BGs then, but also alliances. And u know what? It worked like a charm

I think it was Stalin that once said: quantity > quality ( in russian and different ofc..but yeah, u get the point )

If alliance A manages to get 500 to play for them, then alliance B either has to manage with less, OR ally, OR recruit.
Survival of the fittest.

1 round with big alliances will give new players great chances to get into a decent ally, as recruitment will be alot more open. I have recruited quite a few players from C alliances into my alliance during the years I have played, recently ,however, with the alliance limidt u cant invite a guy with high activity and low score into a top alliance.

Originally Posted by Appocomaster

A separate topic, relevant to this point, is the idea of blocking defence to people not in your cluster / alliance / galaxy (unless you're not in an alliance, when you can defend anyone else not in an alliance), to stop this sort of thing from happening, not make it easier to happen.

Why?! pff

[darts]

i think alliances that r big and top 5 now will make 2 teams
1 with the top players in it
and 1 with less

so its of no point i think 2 make alliances smaller

keep it 80

[Nadar]

Originally Posted by darts

i think alliances that r big and top 5 now will make 2 teams
1 with the top players in it
and 1 with less

so its of no point i think 2 make alliances smaller

keep it 80

err... What makes you think people would agree to being downgraded to second team rather than forming a new alliance?

[darkage]

voting for a 50 members in a alliance won`t help very much i thik ......... big alliances can still split theyr alliance in 2 and make almost the same game as they do in 1

[Nadar]

Originally Posted by darkage

voting for a 50 members in a alliance won`t help very much i thik ......... big alliances can still split theyr alliance in 2 and make almost the same game as they do in 1

That's what people thought would happen in r10 aswell.

[Appocomaster]

What about the following:
50 limit for all alliances for the first 4-5 days of the round (i.e. protection and 1-2 days after)
No alliance in the top 7 can recruit more members once they've got 50 members added ingame.

Anyone outside the top 7 can recruit up to 100 members, and accept them on the following basis:

You can accept an applicant every max(1,20-$rank) ticks - i.e. 8th place can accept a new applicant a minimum of every 12 ticks, going down to 19th that can accept an applicant every 1 tick, and all lower alliances also can accept every 1 tick.

This should force top alliances to be *slightly* smaller (the difference between the two limits is much higher than this round, and the lower limit isn't enforced for as long, but it is a shorter round), but still allows smaller alliances to have more players.

[Buddah]

how bout a no def round? :P
only cluster and gal def.
BG round ftw!

[Banned]

Originally Posted by Appocomaster

What about the following:
50 limit for all alliances for the first 4-5 days of the round (i.e. protection and 1-2 days after)
No alliance in the top 7 can recruit more members once they've got 50 members added ingame.

I think that if people wanted that, they'd be voting for the '40 for some' option.

[s7n]

I voted 50, i reckon it would create more better allainces instead of having only few which are good enough to handle number 1.

[bmwoody]

Originally Posted by Smudge

Also, with the new rules how will PA Team police the situation of alliances defending each other? For example, 1up, 2up and 3up could block together and they wouldnt take to kindly to each other being attacked; will PA Team be ready to step in? Indeed, will they even consider looking at it?

I think he's got the right idea. My vote is with 50 members each and some sort of restriction similar to the one in place for "support planets" at the moment. But that would require a lot of reconnaisance on PA Team's part, so as not to punish those just helping out a rl friend or someone they owe a favor to.

My biggest fear at this point is uber-powerblocks.

[are]

I think no limit <80 is really useful to anyone by the 'hard core' alliances. The 'core' is probably just what fits wel into 50 people.
Will have some people returning to PA over xmas, they won't be very active most likely, but we would love to be able to give them a home. If we have to think about kicking people to be able to play at all, this won't be possible. Alternatively we have to do what people suggested to me multiple times: create support alliances.
Hi VGN, who are you allied to? - VGN - yes, I know you are VGN, but who are you allied to? - VGN - Are you a bot or something? Who are you allied to? - VGN - Asking person dies confused considering me very stupid.

They definitly will not be able to create new alliances as they are away from the game for to long and don't have the necessary infrastructure to sort decent intel. So they die at the start, possibly leaving again in masses. No big deal restricting alliance sizes in PAN if you offer the promised in game alliance tools, but if you do that now, you can as well just tag the planets with online times and when they last played PA. Saves us the effort to look for easy targets in a database.

Regards,
_are_

[mazzelaar]

Originally Posted by Banned

* Ok, so this doesn't happen a lot. Counting on my fingers, I definitely can't count more than 5 off-hand, of which 3 turned into real alliances (Lux, Deus Ex Machina, Eclipse).

1up - me, sid, zhil, kg whilst in WP
SiN - Zyth whilst being a member with 1up

[mazzelaar]

I see pro's and cons

Pro - Currently the top alliances are top because they have a greater number of active players. Limiting to 50 players for an alliance has two reasons for being good here. With only 50 "top" players per top tier alliance active players will have to spread out. Also, alliances like VGN, HR, ToF have some damned fine players and a fair few semi actives. Dropping the limit to 50 will lower the percentage of "semi's" meaning that these "middle tier" alliances should be in with a much greater chance of keeping up with the others and therefore more alliances should be in with a shout of winning the round.

It bothers me slightly that with so few members per alliance a single member leaving/joining will have a huge effect to the point of being the difference between several ranks.

I think it's a good thing though.

[vd3a]

80 for the top 5, up to 100 for everyone else

[furball]

I'd really like to emphasis what _are_ said earlier:


Why should alliances like VGN be forced to kick people? We have long-standing members who perhaps are a bit less active, but we are a community and haven't kicked these people for that reason. We don't need to compete with the top 3/4, we don't play this way. We let people sleep.

This change is fine for the top alliances because their players are able to go off and form new alliances for a round. They have officer experience already. You can't say the same for the other alliances - VGN, HR, TGV, Rock, ToF, F-Crew among others. You're really screwing things up by halving the member limit.

[Brimstone]

i would have to agree with smudge, and imo reducing the alliance size limits even lower will just make this another R5 where everyone leaves.

If you break up communities forcibly you will either get blocks, or you will loose the players.

And we need somewhere for the newer players. The arguement that "Well they have to learn some way" is not fair. If you went and started up a sunday league football team and got put in the champions league (i know not likely, but ignore the immediate flaws with that idea) would it be fair to say "ah well, you'll get by."

If we are going to go down the route of even harder coded alliances, and reducing their sizes even further, then we need a much stronger BUILT IN alliance training system.

To take an example, in EvE-online, when you first join up they put you into a standard corporation, where they have tutorials etc on how to play the game, the controls, the dynamics etc etc. I think IMO we would need something along those lines, where ppl on joining are put into a trainer alliance, where they can practise skills, get advice, and not just disappear into activity. From this position you can train up scanners, BC's, DC's, HC's, cov-oppers, or just general pe0ns to rape and pillage the universe.

This is what the mentor team SHOULD have been, not just another support team to answer noob questions.

[Nadar]

Originally Posted by Brimstone

If you break up communities forcibly you will either get blocks, or you will loose the players.

The lovable if.

[Dovai]

On the subject of alliance size i don't think it will effect the amount of new players coming and staying with PA, PA is one of the most anti-newb games i've come across.

As for game play the bigger the alliance size the better, as long as all naping is disallowed, this would make for much more interesting alliance wars. IMO

[Appocomaster]

Feel free to correct me, but most of the comments seem to suggest that top 4-5 alliances or so could cope with the limit being dropped to about half the size, but the mid rank alliances and some "training" alliances would suffer more as it'd break up the community and /or it's harder to get leadership material for those alliances.

This seems (to me) to point in the direction of a variable alliance limit again, like this round, but with a bigger difference in limits.
Maybe something not as extreme as 40 as the initial limit, with 110 as the upper limit after the shuffle /protection / whatever (it'll be slightly harder to work out when this should happen, as obviously the round is shorter) would be interesting to see? This might force the top allainces to either split into blocks or to play "badly" and recruit and then try and outplay everyone else with extra numbers. The lower alliances would take 2-5 days to get up to their limit, but the majority of the round would still be at "full strength", and people can be accepted right up until the end.

[SoulStripper]

Two words..... Old School

-No alliance member limit

[lurchleaf]

i voted on 100 for some, 80 for others. i didnt know what i was pressing, but it seemed to sound reasonable.

redyellowblue

[lurchleaf]

but yea, should be no alliance limit, and all across mergers should be welcome

[lurchleaf]

one hc should be able to put forward a merge, the other hc's click to accept. the other alliances hc's click also. this way no admins time is taken, and its quicker. no alli limits ROCK!

[DukePaul]

We in VGN get more and more old people returning. A free round of Planetarion will make sure of that. We want a home. We want somewhere to stay. We, bascially, want VGN. I'm sure I'm not the only one returning now (for my own reasons, it being a free round is not one); for example Corey, a BD HC back in the days thinks about playing next round, and he'd naturally fit in VGN (as bd is one of the two alliances that merged to create VGN).
I'm certain similar situations will apply for other alliances too.

Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but part of the reason for this free round is to get new/more people playing before PAN is launched? If these new people have nowhere to go to, as alliances are forced to pick their best, then I can't say I see any real chance of a playergrowth with the free round.

A quick look at sandmans tells me no alliance is above 80 members (oh, F-Crew is 89, sorry), so wouldn't 70 for the bigger alliances and 80 for everyone else be a good idea? Anything below would all in all be very damaging for the game from my point of view.


As it looks now from the poll, alliance size limit will be 50. If that is the case, then I fear I'll just get a scan planet and stay outside the VGN tag, so I don't take a spot from someone who will benefit the alliance better (planet-wise).

[furball]

Appocomaster - your summary is very astute.


Personally I'd retain the same limits as this round. The increase in playerbase due to it being a free round will in essence decrease the limits anyway, just indirectly.

If this is unacceptable, make it ~65 for the top 5 alliances and 80 for others. There were very few alliances this round with more than 80 members, and those that had that many have a high turnover of players anyway.