Alliances, Support Planets and the EULA

[Furyous]

I’m not interested in a prolonged discussion of the history of the support planet rules: Personally I’ve always considered them a rather less than satisfactory and/or unnecessary addition to the game rules. Nor am I concerned with a discussion of whether or not we ought to have support planet rules. Nontheless, the five or so people who might have actually read the EULA when signing up this round will have noticed that support planet restrictions are very much in place:

18.2. Multiple Accounts / Account Sharing / Support Accounts:
Multi-ing, Account Sharing and Support Accounts are not allowed. The
definitions are, but are not limited to:

(f) Support Accounts are accounts which are dedicated to undertaking specific
and repeated actions which result in an unfair benefit for a
planet/organisation, where an organisation is defined as an alliance or galaxy.

As many will be aware, the renewal of cluster attack bonuses and increase in defence bonuses in Round 20 brought about an extra dimension to the style of play that made the identification of support planets potentially much more difficult for the MH team. As such, the then head of MH declared that the support planet rule would not be enforced against alliances unless or until it was clear that alliances were abusing the rules in a significant manner. And in round 20 this policy was successful: As far as I am aware, no alliance exceeded the tag limit in member numbers in any significant manner.

The reason for posting this is that despite a number of requests and questions to the current MH team and indeed other members of the PA Team over a number of days, there has been no clarification whatsoever as to whether they intend to enforce support planet rules in respect to alliances, whether they intend not to enforce them at all or whether they are going to take the same stance as in round 20.

With a set alliance limit of 70, even the most dim witted of individuals would realise that it is critical for alliances to know exactly how many people they can take in without breaking the game rules. If they stick strictly below 70 and MH do nothing at all about support planet rule breaches then other alliances can (and in round 21, will) have a significant advantage in attacking force, cluster defence, and custom made out of tag universe defence planets. If they recruit over the 70 limit to enjoy these benefits but then MH do decide to enforce the support planet rules, then they’d end up having their planets closed and alliance significantly damaged.

My question to the PA crew and MH is this: IF you find that an alliance is clearly gaining an unfair advantage from planets(beyond the 70 tag limit) which are undertaking specific and repeated actions (defences out of cluster and joint attacks), will action (both warnings and account closure) be taken against those planets and organisations (as it is identified as cheating in the EULA)? Or will this clause of the EULA not be enforced under any circumstances?
Or in layman’s terms: Will planets be closed if alliances recruit and use up to 100 or more planets in a game where you’re supposed to have only 70?

I suspect the reason why an answer has thus far been lacking is that MH do not wish to upset either those alliances which have recruited well beyond the tag limit or alliances which have diligently recruited only within the tag limit. In effect, they are sitting on the fence, and hope that everyone remains pacified. However, the absence of such a simple clarification, in a game that is a commercial enterprise and charged, is entirely unacceptable and unprofessional.

Note: My interest in this subject is clearly determined by my role in Planetarion, and of course I have my partisan preference as to what I would like the policy to be. But this post is not intended as a means to push for one policy over the other. It is merely to demonstrate the incredible lack of clarity, and to push for an answer as to whether and how the MH intend to enforce the support planet rule in Round 21 of Planetarion. It’s unfair to everyone concerned to remain entirely non committal on the issue. And it’s critical that an answer is forthcoming very soon.