150 memebers to Many or Few?

[Zeus]

As a continuation of another thread in this forum, Eventh a forum member brought up a good point that this topic indeed should be discussed. As you may know alliance are now hardcoded in the game, with a max member base of 150 members to each alliance. The question I ask is:

With the estimate numbers of PAX player base in mind, is 150 memebers per alliance to many or few?

Note: perhaps even a vote would give a better idea?

Personally I beleive its too many. Going along the lines of the more alliances the more targets and if 150 memebers not changed, your looking at perhaps less than 20 alliances in the whole universe:-/ Whats your views/opinions??

[HobbieRogue4]

The question of "more alliances, more agreements, result: powerblockrahrahscreamohnowank!" comes to my mind, although that becomes moot in light of what I assume to be fewer players to actually make up a sizable alliance arena.

Old habits tend to die hard, especially within an alliance leadership (and subsequent "fresh blood" in a group of HCs), and I wonder if the alliance limits set forth by the Creators will have a considerable effect on the game at all.

I still believe the Creators cannot realistically "change" how the game is played on the political level - it simply cannot be "hard coded" like an alliance feature.

[Punch]

Using the example from the other thread, with 10 alliances having 150 members, means 1500 members of the galaxy being affliated to one of them so it is a lot.

For that i would agree with Zeus and say maybe decrease it to 100 or better still 75.

50, i think you will see alliances breaking into 2 or more wings and co-ordinating on irc or other boards outside the game so the loss of information is counter-balanaced. But on the plus side would create a lot more attacking due to the loss of alliance bonuses in game.

[Zeus]

Originally posted by HobbieRogue4
I still believe the Creators cannot realistically "change" how the game is played on the political level - it simply cannot be "hard coded" like an alliance feature.

Lo HobbieRogue4 m8ty, who knows, they may change the combat for all we know to only alliances memebers can attack, if more than one alliance on same target, then all fight eachother

[DaWoodster]

As the chance of out of galaxy defence is only possible from an in game allied planet, every planet in the universe NEEDS to be in an alliance.

By limiting the amount of players per alliance we will give the smaller alliances a chance of getting into the top ten rather than having the game dominated by the larger established alliances.

I'd like to see a cap of 100 planets per in game alliance.

This way, should we see 5 to 10,000 players, we may also see around 50 to 100 alliances form, allowing those with leadership skills to demonstrate their abilities on an even playing field.

[HobbieRogue4]

Originally posted by Zeus
Lo HobbieRogue4 m8ty, who knows, they may change the combat for all we know to only alliances memebers can attack, if more than one alliance on same target, then all fight eachother

Afteroon Zeus.

That's a rather interesting twist, should such a thing be implemented, but it would only change combat features of the game and strategies that have typically been used by alliances from Round 1 (i.e. huge launches on single [or more] targets of an opposing alliance). For example, while my alliance and Palpatine's alliance could attack Ackbar's alliance, yours cannot (keep in mind, you, me, and Palpy have a tri-alliance, average of 100 members each), lest your ships and ours end up attacking each other.

Therefore, you don't launch on our targets. You attack other targets of an opposing alliance (the ones we don't).

See where I'm going with this? One way or the other, there's dozens if not hundreds of players in this game, in leadership positions in alliances, who are smarter than me and could surely find a way to get around such feaures... thus, the need for something like a small "beta" to be conducted during regular rounds to test feaures such as these to see how people can get around them.

[Gerbie]

The size of an alliance is not an important factor i.m.o. We saw last round that 2 alliances with together ~400 planets can dominate the game without causing serious stagnation it. A maximum size of 300 should therefor not be any problem.
Effectively only limitting those that want to form a major block and to do this decide to set up a joined ingame alliance. Although this would ofc involve major risks for the parties involved.
If WEET was in one ingame alliance and decided to split then one side would be allianceless for 72 hrs... Perhaps setting a maximum isn't even necessary.

[The_Fish]

150 is too many imo, 100 would be better.

And Punch, sif LLM would have you!

[dabult]

Originally posted by Gerbie
The size of an alliance is not an important factor i.m.o. We saw last round that 2 alliances with together ~400 planets can dominate the game without causing serious stagnation it.

That was last round, free, 11-12k planets..huge difference though :/




150 is too many imo, depending on how alliances will eventually be coded into the game, a small alliance might (will) have an extremely rough time trying to survive. 75 or 100 should be far enough.

[ParraCida]

I don't see what is wrong with 150 max players, this number will require most of the big alliances right now to reduce in size. This means there will be MORE alliances, more alliances can only add more game play. Now ofcourse, that would be a lovely arguement for making alliances smaller, but the object of this limit is to prevent huge alliances forming overrunning everyone, not to destroy communities.

[-=Zyth=-]

Originally posted by Zeus
Personally I beleive its too many. Going along the lines of the more alliances the more targets and if 150 memebers not changed, your looking at perhaps less than 20 alliances in the whole universe:-/ Whats your views/opinions??

So the pessimistic view of 3000 players was right then? All the marketing campaigns etc did not pay off?

Also lets face it, the number of alliances who can state that they have more than 150 members is not going to be high, say 1, and if you are counting on the comunity aspect as a rebuttal, look at it this way, the alliance in talking about just mass recruit ergo the same community that can be found in #planetarion.

[Scouse]

100 would be better, in my opinion. Would make more alliances, more possible political moves and move people in control of 'decent' military power.


As for limiting alliance numbers at all, I suppose it's better late than never.

[Zeus]

Originally posted by -=Zyth=-
So the pessimistic view of 3000 players was right then? All the marketing campaigns etc did not pay off?

Hey I know nothing, I an not prevy to such information or even have that information in confidence. For all I/we know it may be 50,000 account signup, but as I've said I know nothing regards this. Im no longer a Creator, remember?

Regards Scouse's comments, your right and its good to hear someone else admit it. Spliting "old" alliances might not be good for that alliance AS a community, but the more alliances the more political aspect, the more probility to alliances wars, and rememebr only one can win. As this will be the frist time we ever have an outright winner!!!

[Razorback]

Zeus im not entirely sure what you are aiming at. You say you dont want to destroy the community yet you want to limit alliances more to a small number lets say the 100 or 75 ppl mentioned here already. Now alliance X has 150 members (which was so far for most big alliances a normal number give or take 10).
So in this case an alliance would have to remove half their members or atleast 30%. Surely you can say a good alliance can take the best 70% and still do well but by doing such you will remove most alliances will to recruit anyone new and even more dangerous you will lose customers.
Now you will ask why that is, the answer is simple. The topalliance member usually has an assumed activitytime of lets say 6h per day. While the medicore or "bad" alliancemember might have only 1-2h. Now this alliance gets their usual not even heavy incomings, who is supposed to cover that ? the 75 1-2h players ? this would mean per hour youve got about 3-6 players online and active. With your 72h restriction on leaving and rejoining an alliance a new player who finds out an alliance is "crap" (new player as in unexperienced) will be without any real help for the next 3 days. Who will benefit more from this, the longtime proplayer who might change once per round his alliance or the person who is new to the game and might need to try 2-3 to find his place.
A second result will be the reduced effectivity of alliances ( with 75 players and 10 ppl gals you can only hit a very limited amount of gals and not really fight an enemy directly) and alliances cant defend themself anymore properly. In a random round if you get 10-15 incomings over the day the alliance would be "out of def". Especially in addition to the fact you cant calc defences anymore and will overcover.

[Zeus]

Originally posted by Razorback
Zeus im not entirely sure what you are aiming at. You say you dont want to destroy the community yet you want to limit alliances more to a small number lets say the 100 or 75 ppl mentioned here already. Now alliance X has 150 members (which was so far for most big alliances a normal number give or take 10).
So in this case an alliance would have to remove half their members or atleast 30%. Surely you can say a good alliance can take the best 70% and still do well but by doing such you will remove most alliances will to recruit anyone new and even more dangerous you will lose customers.
Now you will ask why that is, the answer is simple. The topalliance member usually has an assumed activitytime of lets say 6h per day. While the medicore or "bad" alliancemember might have only 1-2h. Now this alliance gets their usual not even heavy incomings, who is supposed to cover that ? the 75 1-2h players ? this would mean per hour youve got about 3-6 players online and active. With your 72h restriction on leaving and rejoining an alliance a new player who finds out an alliance is "crap" (new player as in unexperienced) will be without any real help for the next 3 days. Who will benefit more from this, the longtime proplayer who might change once per round his alliance or the person who is new to the game and might need to try 2-3 to find his place.

I said bad for that alliance community. Nothing stopping those that dont stay in the orginal alliance starting there own, etc..

[Razorback]

what about the other points ?

[Zeus]

Originally posted by Razorback
what about the other points ?

Im chilling having a few beers, but tomorrow along with my hangover, I try and reply....but for your argument there are pros/cons.

[Razorback]

enjoy your beer m8, i guess im gonna crash myself aswell

[Banned]

150 people per alliance is way too many. It's basically going to limit any of the modern alliances, though it may limit them in the future.

Looking away from the objective points for a moment, it's my very subjective opinion that alliances are more fun when they're smaller. That is, when an alliance becomes an institution that requires maintanence and work, and is no longer really about working with friends and more about running an efficient business for the benefit of a minorities' planets or egos*. When you get down to sizes like 75 members alliances are often a different kind of entity.

I think 150 is way too much because I want smaller alliances to be viable. I want smaller alliances to be viable because I think they are more fun and less work. More of what the alliance world of Planetarion was about for me in round 3, 4 and (parts of) 5, and less of what it was about in round 6, 7 and 9.

* Because that's the only reason people run alliances. People who claim 'I did it for the members' are really saying 'I LOVE ATTENTION'.

[Naris]

In my opinion we must decrease the amount of maximum members to a much lower total amount per in-game alliance.
I thought more like 50 as the max amount of members in any in-game alliance, because more organizations/alliances less in size will result in more action and fun both in the game and around the different political views & issues of pax. Strategy and political statements are usually very close to eachother alliance wise in pax.

Right now we might have too few alliances/organizations in total numbers which are known to most of us since the earlier days of pa, with a few exceptions of course.
Mostly because of the amount of members of (150) limit which is allowed right now, which is in my opinion way too high in consider of the old player base.
Its still hard to predict the amount of new unknown pax players who will join latter on, however I`m very optimistic around that subject.

[Punch]

Just another thing that i thought of about this.

If the limit was set at 50-75 at the start of the round and mid round it turned out there was a lot of alliances at this limit, how easy would it be to change that to 100 or 150 member limit?

Compared to in the worse case, having 4-5 alliances with 120+ players dominating mid way through, making the game stale for the rest and trying to reduce the limit?

Which in my view would probably be nearly impossible and unfair to those forced leave an alliance to keep within the limit.

and Fish: exactly

[Naris]

Yes I agree with Punch here and his earlier post, and its indeed alot harder to ALTER the in-game alliance limit after the round started.
And its not fair for those very few large alliances in here already who got that amount of members of 150 already.

But if we changed it before the tick starts even, we will see more alliances in near future I`m sure of, which is good in my view of the big picture.

In the early start of pax round it might be tricky for those alliances who got close to (150) registered members, but it cant be that hard to create two different groups within the alliance.
If all agree to fight under the same banner of course, and if it turns out to be diffecult, its always open spaces in other organizations

[KoeN]

too many.

[Gerbie]

It would be nice if when there is a fixed limit of say 75, to have this limit increased to 100 after ~3 weeks in the game to give alliances room for recruitment. The member limit seems to threathen recruitment in some cases, which I believe is a very negative side-effect. I.m.o. even outweighing the need for any limit at all.

[Jonas]

100 would be just perfect

[Legator]

100 is a very good number imo.

[MegaNova]

Originally posted by Gerbie
It would be nice if when there is a fixed limit of say 75, to have this limit increased to 100 after ~3 weeks in the game to give alliances room for recruitment. The member limit seems to threathen recruitment in some cases, which I believe is a very negative side-effect. I.m.o. even outweighing the need for any limit at all.

and then comes r10 and you will be forced to get rid of 25 member becouse of the 75 member rule at the start of the round.

[Omnipotent]

3k new players is a wee optimistical, but a grand total of 2-3 paying customers are quazi realistical.

50 members per alliance would be more then anough though, should keep some of the fun the game has left,to last 1-2 months.

[Golin]

150 is fine.
if it should be discussed, fewer than 150 would be better than more.

[HobbieRogue4]

I recall a particular alliance one round that did "pretty damn good" with far less than 100 members.*

*Just letting people know it can be done.

[Spinner]

I am reading, and awaiting more replies...

[Rudmer]

am I the only one thinking 150 is good, even more needed? 180 would fit me too.

I like the big community on irc within my own alliance, fighting for the same thing together with alliance mates. I like the larger alliances. more ppl to play with, who I know better then the rest of the pa community.

imo, set the numbers a bit higher then 150. and I don´t see ppl starting their own alliance after they are kicked out of an alliance that needs reducing because of limitations. eg 150 to 100 or so.

I think the game looses ppl by going down to 100.

[Hurragutten]

100 would be more than enough

[Maddix]

Originally posted by Zeus
With the estimate numbers of PAX player base in mind, is 150 memebers per alliance to many or few?

Note: perhaps even a vote would give a better idea?

Personally I beleive its too many. Going along the lines of the more alliances the more targets and if 150 memebers not changed, your looking at perhaps less than 20 alliances in the whole universe:-/ Whats your views/opinions??

I think 150 is definately the maximum it should be. I would also tend to lean more towards a 100 limit, mainly to stop alliances mass recruiting simply to increase their score level and thus ranking. In my experience of P2P rounds very few alliances who do not go on massive recruitment drives recruiting anyone and everyone have over 100 members.

The important thing in my opinion tho is not to set the number so low as to force current alliances to split and to leave alliances feeling so under protected that they are encouraged to block excessively. A fine line to try and balance

[WipeOut]

Ideally, I am in favour of alliances with a size of more or less 70 members. You can have a great community within a 70-member alliances, assuming you are having an alliance, filled with dedicated active players.

With the small universe we have, and will continue to have (sorry Spinner, but do not see it changing yet) I think to uphold diversity, and work against stagnation, smaller clustered groups are the way to go. Apart from that, the more alliances out there, the more people get the oppurtunity to practise themselves in running an alliance.

Is it possible to lower the max member amount in respect to a higher average score of the alliance's members? That would make it nicely equal.

[Sonnenbomber]

you can arguement a lot which membersize for allys is the right one (ingame). I also cant definitly say, which is the right one. I think its really hard to balance. but fact is, the announces till yet always said, the ally maximum will be 150ppl. all allys did a prepartion and also politics for PA X regarding to this announced ally limit. and in my opinion to change the ally limit now(after sign up started), has only effect that a lot ppl wont pay. just to give an example:
ally XXX has 140members for R10. its an ally with a good community, the people know each other (that fact is given in nearly all allys which survived till yet). the new ally limit would be 75ppl. maybe the ally is so pretty organised and organise 2 wings ingame which cooperate as far as possible. but more realistic is, that only the core of the XXX ally can join and the rest leave their ally and dont play R10 anymore, if they cant play with their ally where they were members for several rounds and where they have a lot of friends.
again, we can surely discuss whats the best allylimit but to change the limit from 150 to 100 or 75 after signup (and so the organising and preparation of the allys) started, is only the next step to suicide this game.

[cypher]

imo 150 is way too many in current pa..... (i'm assuming you got around a same player base as the last rounds...)
100 would already be a big improvement as then you can get alot more diversity in alliances and communities. to be quite honest i think 50 or 75 would be best. in that way you can still have a nice community and a good alliance...

yes ofc you'll get 'elite' alliances.... but those will always be around anyways.... it's foolish to think you can actually change a thing in pa without the help of alliance hc's... as even with these hardcoded alliances you can easily attack alliance X with alliance B, D, A and G.

point is if you make alliances smaller you'll also give others a chance.. i mean i assume it's alot harder for an alliance like rock to get 150 members then it is for eclipse.... meaning AGAIN you give alliances like them the advantage... not solving any problems... and knowing them they'll have exactly 150 peeps or atleast 140.. which only gets this game to stagnate more.

75 people per alliance is something every semi decent alliance should be able to make... atleast when you take into consideration that there will be alot of people allianceless who have been in the bigger alliances.

[Killerbij]

75 sounds like an ideal number; 150 is way too much imho. It would do the universe a lot of good if alliances were forced to shrink. Problem is they will probably just create eclipse 1 2 and 3 and ely 1 and 2. So instead of making new alliances we will simply get more wings in the big alliances. I doubt the current 150 will be a problem for alliances bigger than that. Just split your membercount in 2 and split defense as well. With 100 or more members in each defense should be no problem. They can still attack the same galaxies as well. Just targets need to be devided between the 2.

[dabult]

For people who say their alliances are such great communities:
In what way would your community change or be harmed because the number of members of the ingame ally drops/gets split in 2?
One could instead think it would be kinda fun, a little competition between the 2 new 'wings'. You would still be attacking with each other (probably), you would be idling in the same channels (only def-chans needs split), you would use the same webby as before (*assumes most allys have somewhere to spam*).

So i ask again, in what way would your community be harmed if the number of max members was dropped to 100 or 75? (something that WOULD benefit smaller alliances (for once) and new players (for once)).



Edit; I get the feeling the only ones really complaining are the ones who are used to always being covered by their dominating/large memberbase/l33t's only pls-alliance.
The 'win at any cost'- philosophy shines through, when what PA needs the most is pro community-thinking with the shrinking playerbase we have :\

[cypher]

heh dabult so true... but these days people judge people on the alliances that they are in.... if you're in hostile alliance you're an asshole by default.... as quite clearly showed since r8.....

[Razorback]

Originally posted by dabult
Edit; I get the feeling the only ones really complaining are the ones who are used to always being covered by their dominating/large memberbase/l33t's only pls-alliance.
The 'win at any cost'- philosophy shines through, when what PA needs the most is pro community-thinking with the shrinking playerbase we have :\

And you think restricting the game any further will get new players and keep current players ?
I honestly doubt this round there will be much hassle in general with playernumbers since most alliances i know of wont make the 150 player per wing level anyways. And it doesnt really matter if you split in 2 groups or in 3 or 4 because i dont see how this would make things fairer or more challenging.
Most alliances who won the previous rounds, did not win because they had 500 members but because they played their politics well. In most cases the "best" alliance of each round consisted normally of less than 150 members. So your analysis that those who dont like the idea (i dont see why its called a complain as its a feature up for discussion) fear to lose the competition by give and take eta -1 is bollox.

[Zeus]

Originally posted by dabult
For people who say their alliances are such great communities:
In what way would your community change or be harmed because the number of members of the ingame ally drops/gets split in 2?
One could instead think it would be kinda fun, a little competition between the 2 new 'wings'. You would still be attacking with each other (probably), you would be idling in the same channels (only def-chans needs split), you would use the same webby as before (*assumes most allys have somewhere to spam*).

So i ask again, in what way would your community be harmed if the number of max members was dropped to 100 or 75? (something that WOULD benefit smaller alliances (for once) and new players (for once)).



Edit; I get the feeling the only ones really complaining are the ones who are used to always being covered by their dominating/large memberbase/l33t's only pls-alliance.
The 'win at any cost'- philosophy shines through, when what PA needs the most is pro community-thinking with the shrinking playerbase we have :\

Im glad Im not the only one who see this and well said.

I'm reminded of the days when counterstrike clans began. You had your 1st, 2nd, teams etc.... If good enough you got into 2nd team, then your high activity and skill if good enough got you into the 1st team. We all know towards the end of the round, the big players in either team will move into 1st team in order to get the alliances overall team score up too #1 poistion.

In fact I predict the last few days of the round people in alliance which have no chance of #1 spot, joining togeather to make a new alliance just to steal the win off the winning alliance. Which is also a possible problem, I'm sure not the only one to see this.

For the outright winning alliance of PAX I would examine which planets began the round in that alliance and take that score total otherwiase we will have the top planets from different alliances making one new alliance, or joining one alliance, just to get #1 spot on the last days of PAX.

[Razorback]

Originally posted by Zeus
Im glad Im not the only one who see this and well said.

I'm reminded of the days when counterstrike clans began. You had your 1st, 2nd, teams etc.... If good enough you got into 2nd team, then your high activity and skill if good enough got you into the 1st team. We all know towards the end of the round, the big players in either team will move into 1st team in order to get the alliances overall team score up too #1 poistion.

Just PA isnt Counterstrike or will we get more features from CS ? And just the general question: Why do we need smaller alliances ? Ive not yet seen in any round a big issue about the size unless it was to justify politics. Since every pa player knows the winners are not made by numbers normally its a mixture of politics and good players which brings an alliance up.

In fact I predict the last few days of the round people in alliance which have no chance of #1 spot, joining togeather to make a new alliance just to steal the win off the winning alliance. Which is also a possible problem, I'm sure not the only one to see this.

This makes no sense tbh. Why would ppl want to leave their alliance to bend up with others to fight the roundwinner? normally the round winner is ahead and far enough ahead to defend himself. If now all the "topplayers" would try to make a challenge they would be stupid to put all eggs in the same basket. Especially since you seem to forget how much work it can be to run an alliance. So your prediction seems odd and those alliances (if they would exist) wouldnt exist for more than one round.

For the outright winning alliance of PAX I would examine which planets began the round in that alliance and take that score total otherwiase we will have the top planets from different alliances making one new alliance, or joining one alliance, just to get #1 spot on the last days of PAX.

This idea seems rather odd. If an alliance even a successfull one would split or disband and create a new alliance just with the best/core players it would not have any chance of winning with your plan. Neither would you encourage ppl joining other alliances during the round simply as they wouldnt benefit the alliance in the ranking.
Zeus no offence but alot of those ideas seem not to be well thought out and just for the sake of the argument i start to think that this whole "how should we force players to play the game and to organise themself" argument seems to be working on the smallest problems pa has. Get us just more players and i guess we can stop nitpicking about unimportant topics.

[Zeus]

Originally posted by Razorback
Just PA isnt Counterstrike or will we get more features from CS ? And just the general question: Why do we need smaller alliances ? Ive not yet seen in any round a big issue about the size unless it was to justify politics. Since every pa player knows the winners are not made by numbers normally its a mixture of politics and good players which brings an alliance up.

Everyone is well aware, I hope, its not CS It was the principle of CS clans I was refering too and how they operate.
As for you not see a problem with alliances being much bigger than others in previous round.....where have you been the past rounds? One word, Blocking......cause a few alliances with so much more memebers than the rest, causeing the smaller alliances to block up, just to get a sporting chance. They do it, then others do it, think..... circle.
I dont doubt good players brings an allaince up, I even agree to the politics aspect.....but numbers of memebers also have a huge influence in the end result, from the beginning of the round until the end....how you can imply it doesnt, is beyond me.

Originally posted by Razorback
This makes no sense tbh. Why would ppl want to leave their alliance to bend up with others to fight the roundwinner? normally the round winner is ahead and far enough ahead to defend himself. If now all the "topplayers" would try to make a challenge they would be stupid to put all eggs in the same basket. Especially since you seem to forget how much work it can be to run an alliance. So your prediction seems odd and those alliances (if they would exist) wouldnt exist for more than one round.

Misunderstanding here I think, lets take an example. Your alliance bash my alliance. Your #1 alliance....being such you obviously create a LOT of enemies and Im sure many will do whatever it takes to spoil your #1 spot, even something so lame as to make an allaince, fill it with top planets in already beaten alliances, JUST for ther final days of the round, I didnt say they would stay an alliance at all, but obviusly go back to there normal alliance for the following round. Indeed, I havent said they would be perm alliances at all and I too wouldnt expect them to exist for more than the end of the round.

Originally posted by Razorback
This idea seems rather odd. If an alliance even a successfull one would split or disband and create a new alliance just with the best/core players it would not have any chance of winning with your plan. Neither would you encourage ppl joining other alliances during the round simply as they wouldnt benefit the alliance in the ranking.
Zeus no offence but alot of those ideas seem not to be well thought out and just for the sake of the argument i start to think that this whole "how should we force players to play the game and to organise themself" argument seems to be working on the smallest problems pa has. Get us just more players and i guess we can stop nitpicking about unimportant topics.

Again most of this founded on a misunderstanding, I didnt say it would split or disband, it could be a temp alliance, made for the sole purposes of getting up the ranks and taking #1 spot on final days. After end of round, that alliance would be no more...and once again go back to their alliances they truely belong too.

As for more players...indeed it is needed, over last 3 days we seen an increase of 23 new memebers to the forums, which doesnt exactly inspire me that we're having a huge inlfux of new players, but hey, I have no idea on signups etc.. and I certainly hope we do have those new players as we certainly do need them.

[Maddix]

Originally posted by Zeus
For the outright winning alliance of PAX I would examine which planets began the round in that alliance and take that score total otherwiase we will have the top planets from different alliances making one new alliance, or joining one alliance, just to get #1 spot on the last days of PAX.

I think a more realistic problem on this angle would be alliances with say only 110 members, recruiting anyone they can to fill up the 150 quota and raise their score accordingly come the end of the round.

As several people have said, not many alliances will hit the 150 limit as they stand atm (not discounting the mass recruiting that some are bound to do), but I doubt players will leave their in-game alliance that actually means something and represents their 'actual' alliance to form nothing more than a tag that will win and means nothing.

[Razorback]

Zeus where have u been the past rounds ?
The blocking which occured never was down to numbers of a single alliance. It was down to politics.
If someone created a block others did one themself to counter it. The startingpoint of the last 7-8 rounds of pa was never "fury or whoever is 150 members we need to get some more because we are only 50". It was always the reputation or the fear creating blocks along with the wish to win. So how you can interpret this as a sign that alliancesizes actually leaded to blocking fails me.

Your example of joining all one "alliance" for beating the winning alliance seems strange in best words.
a) if the roundwinner alliance has enough score they would have beaten down enemies and so their usual 100 members would have more score than the connection of "topplayers" which bend together against them.
b) what would this victory mean ? to the new alliance as it has no history no future and no community and will break apart like you said yourself.
c) why would alliances want their members back after the round ended? they left for whatever reason and did not benefit the alliance itself since lost is lost, the fact the topalliance might not have won means nothing in this case.
d) strategically would it be much more logical to see the end of round blocking with lots of players trying to bring the topguys down. Why create a seperate ingame allaince for it which has no pride name or anything ?
e) why are you encouraging lame gameplay ? this makes no sense afterall pa is fun and if such a tactic would succeed it would betray the ppl who played for their team the whole round and prooved themself to be loyal upright players and not some shiphoppers who are just out for glory.

Another point which is never addressed, the guys who dont play seriously (and who pay). This is a group i guess every alliance has, ppl who are just hanging out with the gang, maybe takeing a round off for whatever reasons. By limiting the total numbers of an alliance you will force the alliances to get rid of those ppl and by doing so you will remove their connection to the alliance and maybe the game. You can argue now that they still can defend their friends but with the local traveltimes you will basically make it harder for them to stay around, unless they want to join an alliance which they would fit in activitywise.
The worst case would be you lose a player and im only saying A since its moot to argue how many etc but i guess your point 23 new registrations seems not very positive i thought more about 2k new players :P not 20 and the trialphase is a trial so to say, so not every signed up planet will play in r10 simply there will be players lets say 10% at lowest who will just leave since they dont like it and from the feedback from the beta i can say the number 10% is very fair.

But i dont want to be negative, i can only say from my point of view you will get with more restrictions lesser players not more. Because the new player who just joined isnt really interested in blocking and whatever, he is more busy to get the tricks and learn to handle all those new ppl and to find its place in the pa community. You may call it subculture-

[Naris]

Originally posted by Maddix
I think a more realistic problem on this angle would be alliances with say only 110 members, recruiting anyone they can to fill up the 150 quota and raise their score accordingly come the end of the round.

As several people have said, not many alliances will hit the 150 limit as they stand atm (not discounting the mass recruiting that some are bound to do), but I doubt players will leave their in-game alliance that actually means something and represents their 'actual' alliance to form nothing more than a tag that will win and means nothing.

I agree Maddix and his views, also reputation, glory,bravery and not at least history should strongly be remembered in any alliance victory in pax.

I`m not against new alliances or other new organizations, but a victory should be earned after many rounds of playing and experiences.

[Aneu]

If any alliance wants to get around it, they can get around it.

Lets say an alliance has 200 members...

Create 4 alliances 50 members per alliance and they could easily cover eachothers back...

Say they have 400
Create 4 alliances 100 members per alliance and the same result...

Theres no way the creators will be able to stop people from doing this... its just impossible.

Regards
Aneu
{Ps those numbers are hypothetical}

[Punch]

Originally posted by Aneu
If any alliance wants to get around it, they can get around it.

Lets say an alliance has 200 members...

Create 4 alliances 50 members per alliance and they could easily cover eachothers back...

Say they have 400
Create 4 alliances 100 members per alliance and the same result...

Theres no way the creators will be able to stop people from doing this... its just impossible.

Regards
Aneu
{Ps those numbers are hypothetical}

Thats fair enough if they wanted to do that, but it would still give the disadvantage of losing bonus time to the other 3 parts of the alliance and also, they will have to use an individual part of alliance to group up to attack 1 planet if it needs more than one person.

Also with having several section the HC would then have to decide which member will go into each section, so they could have an all round balance or put several good members into one section.

That would make it a bit more of a challenge for the big alliance deciding what to do and give the smaller alliances a bit more of a chance if they have organised themselves.

[Zh|l]

150 seems fine to me. Limiting to 100 wont really do much except aggrivate some alliances. Back in the glory days alliances could be anything from a dozen ppl to thousands (ala BlueTuba). In the latter rounds 120ish seems an ok size.

If I get a vote, I vote 150 since it gives more leeway. 100 is just too small but then, I am thinking in a Fury frame of mind and not in any way related to current Eclipse.

If you want to spawn more alliances then this 100 limit will NOT do this. To spawn more alliances there has to be room for them in the political arena and for people to actually take responsibility of creating/leading new alliances. Artificial limits won't bring about brand new unique alliances (at least I doubt it), and 100 may just cause some alliances to split up into sects.

My two cents.