Alliance Merging

[Churchil5]

Ok... where to start?

I am the HC of the alliance United Fleets. In PA we are not doing very well, but like IPC have focussed on another similar webgame. I am creating this thread not because I am trying to recruit, but I believe my experience as HC could help a lot of people.

United Fleets formed about 8 months ago. After I left IPC (I felt I wasn't up to their standard) I joined a small force called Phoenix. After showing some top quality leadership skills and in-game understanding, it was not long before I was given HC status there. This didn't last as we had an argument as to what to do with the alliance, and I left to form my own (UF) with some mates from my own and a nearby college (there were about 12 of us).

However starting an alliance is all well and good, but getting the members is the difficult bit. So we tried the easiest option and sent messages (I had to do this) to about 250 galaxies (this other game is free and therefore more heavily populated) and their MoCs asking them to join United Fleets. As there were no member-limits in this game we managed to get around 130 people in the short space of time that we played that last round. But we only finished about #20.

This round (that's over now) we decided that we wanted to go much higher in the rankings, which is the aim of most new alliances, so we came up with a strategy.

As recruiting people via in-game spam is tiring and not always widely appreciated, we held negotiations with HCs of other similar alliances about merges. Getting to my point: these were the main things we had to consider:

Why should they join us as opposed to the other way round?
What will the name be?
What positions within the alliance will the merging alliance hold?

We had a lot to offer the joining alliances. We had a good management team that had a good understanding of the game as opposed to new players who just wanted to be big.
We had the correct facilities to offer any new players in the alliance - established IRC rooms, private forums etc organised attacks and extremely good defensive players.

For IRC see:

irc.********.net / #uf

We will shortly be moving to the netgamers server as well.

The name will always pose a problem as alliances will always feel patriotic to their name, and alliances that have been around the longest will not want to throw their history away. Normally it is the biggest alliance that will fight harder to keep their name, but as we had more to offer the members, we won our name.

Security will sometimes be a problem. In planetarion only the HCs get to view the memberlist (as far as I can remember) so I'd be very careful who you gave that position to. Their intentions of joining might not always be honourable. However, you cant expect people to join you and give up all authority they had previously. Give them some kind of Officer position and then out of all the people in the alliance choose the bext people for the job in the next round.



United Fleets is doing well in this other webgame. We are currently #5th (reaching #2 at one stage) after some good and some not-so-good merges with other alliances. We also have a member-count of 250. Ish. Come September we will be coming back to Planetarion with a vengeance after not really establishing ourselves as well this round.

If you would like more information about United Fleets or would like to ask a question, please dont hesitate to contact me at [email protected] (as of june 4th i will be using [email protected]).

Other United Fleets activities coming in September:

UF Clan (UT2004 / Half Life: TF2 (hopefully) / Call of Duty)
UF Webhosting
UF Application Development

If you can help with any of the above... which could involve paid contributions please email me at the address above.

[Cayl]

I don't mean to rain on your parade... but after reading your post, I think the parade's been canceled anyway.

You're so close... Just read this
http://pirate.planetarion.com/showthread.php?t=177654

You ignored the bit about not telling people how much you suck. Did we really need to know that you were booted from IPC for sucking (I mean FS, IPC? You must -really- suck... sorry). Then after being given a leadership opportunity with an existing alliance, you couldn't manage to agree on any direction, so you took your ball and went home, to start UF. That whole paragraph should just have been deleted. Its our first impression of you, and already I don't like you.

Next you talk about your alliance history and how you spammed a whole game to scrape together 130 players who were so small that even all together you were only ranked #20. I don't know how it is over there, but on here, about 5 decent sized active planets can rank 20 if they work hard enough. So we can imply that you recruited a bunch of IRC inactive, smallish planets to pad your ranks....

You do an ok job analyzing the problems of alliance merges, and the point where you say "United Fleets is doing well in this other webgame. We are currently #5" should have been your first paragraph in a recruitment thread.

September is a long ways away though, probably looking at r12 if r11 is July/August. I wouldn't post until you're ready to have a serious in game presence.

Why are you posting to tell us that you're not really intending to establish yourselves in this game this round? Why not establish yourselves this round, if only as a group of like 10 people?

And then you ask for money!

Class

Anyway, just a little constructive (and destructive I suppose) criticism. I know you -said- you weren't interested in recruiting, and just wanted to pass on your experiences, but thats not really true, because it ended up being a recruiting thread anyway at the bottom.

Cheers

[Bode]

A couple more things to add.

By now you should have read Cayl's thread about how to start an alliance. If not, do it now. Go ahead...I'll wait.....

Okay. Now from what I got out of your post you are not a good Leader for an alliance in one way or another. Like you said, you were kicked from IPC (still in somewhat shock that you admitted to that). Maybe you should take Cayl's advice and join an established alliance first and learn the ropes of what running an alliance is all about.

If you are looking for an alliance to merge with now is defiantly not the time to do that. Wait untill your alliance makes it return. Planetarion just lost one of the last 'God' alliances this round. Its hard telling what next round will bring alliance wise.

A piece of advice, if you return and start to worry about what name your alliance will be called, just stop. Trust me, the alliance name means nothing, its the members that should count. You could be called "Boo Boo Kitty F*ck" and still get respect if your members are good enough.

[Chika]

lmao. This guy asked for money. WOW.

[Kal]

I think it was a good honest and open post, and of course the mentor team will help this aalliance as well as any other establish itself better in planetarion - #mentors

[Churchil5]

I really do think that the majority of you have taken this in completely the wrong way.

I'm going to restrain from flaming (in a bid to set a decent example of forum behaviour) in retalliation from these ill-informed comments made about not only myself but my alliance. Instead... I'm going to clear a couple of things up.

1) I was not kicked from IPC. Not anywhere in my thread did I say that. I left IPC because I did not have enough access to the internet to be IRC active and therefore felt I was of no benefit to the alliance given my lack of activity. It was two years and a broadband connection later that I restarted playing webgames (I chose the other over PA because it was free and I'm a student) and am now IRC active, and I try to encourage all of my members to do the same. In order to help a lot of people with connectivity issues I have provided them with access to a simple and global CGI script so that they can access our rooms whilst still at work or at school and do not have the required software. I am a good HC with plenty of community support from the other alliances within the game and United Fleets will now be working as close as possible without being accused of blocking with IPC in this game.

2) The thread was originally aimed to help the alliances who wished to try and merge with other alliances and how to go about it. In order to put my point accross successfully I needed to give background information. I do not see why you cannot appreciate this. It was a bid to help the community as a whole, because the more strong (and not necessarily 1337) alliances there are in the game, the more competitive it will be and the more enjoyable for all involved.

3) I sent messages to lots of people and many will interperet this as spam. However, I handpicked the people I wanted to message (yes, all 250 gals) and tried to personalise these messages as much as possible. What I acheived by doing this is winding about 5% of the people i messaged up and 95% took kindly and I got a lot of positive feedback. I was also able to include a lot of players who would normally not have such interactivity in a game as they would have had without an alliance. Again: service to the community.

4) Also after reading certain comments I feel that I did not quite define well enough the 'Paid Contributions' section. I wasn't asking for money, but quite the opposite. In return for helping with any of the future plans (webhosting/applicaion development) we at United Fleets were going to give the volunteers commission for their work. Respectable and non-insulting commission as well.


If there are any further questions then please, do not hesitate to contact me at the previously provided email address.


I also apologise for not making this clear in the first place.

Thank you once again.

Churchil5

(IRC: Sarek16)

aka Kenneth.

[Cayl]

I apologize for any negative misconceptions I may have perpetrated. I wasn't intending to solely break you down, but also point out why your post was a poor example of a recruiting thread, which is what I took its primary purpose to be.

Of course its good to be open and share lessons you've learned and why you've learned them.

Good luck with your projects

[Filth]

for once a argument on forum that was resolved...a first from what i have ever read throughout PA forums, most of which end up being imense flaming

...he is impressing me as an HC on that basis

GL mate

[Tis]

Originally Posted by Churchil5

I am not disappointed that Cayl does not like me.

you should be :-(

[Churchil5]

Ok, am glad to get things sorted. Am not gonna write another long post... I'm sure you all have better things to read.

Originally Posted by Tis

I have now stricken this comment from the record.

Originally Posted by Filth

a argument on forum that was resolved...a first from what i have ever read

Originally Posted by Filth

he is impressing me as an HC on that basis

Thank you Filth... it is good to know that I'm making a slight impact in the community. It takes more that good communication skills to make an HC, but that's for another thread...

[Cayl]

Oh I thought he was talking about me... *hum*