Alliance Defence Systems

[Kal]

I'm starting to come round to the idea of a full blown alliance status rather than any other in built alliance defence tools. Its simple, we know it works for galaxies etc. Though in the case of alliances i;d restrict who has access to it.

There are two issues:
- it gives alliances to much control over planets
- people may be less IRC active as they feel they don;t need to bother reporting incomings

I think the first issue can be countered simply by the fact that people should join an alliance where they trust the hcs etc.

The second one is more difficult - but I remember when being in a galaxy if I saw lots of red I'd jump on irc and tyry to find defence etc - why would that be any different for an alliance?

[mist]

Originally Posted by Kal

The second one is more difficult - but I remember when being in a galaxy if I saw lots of red I'd jump on irc and tyry to find defence etc - why would that be any different for an alliance?

alliances have BCs to do it for you, galaxies less so.

i'm against the idea as i think it makes it too easy for alliances. iirc, pia has/had something like this. how'd it go?

[Kal]

Originally Posted by mist

alliances have BCs to do it for you, galaxies less so.

i'm against the idea as i think it makes it too easy for alliances. iirc, pia has/had something like this. how'd it go?

ity may make things easier for alliances - but which ones. the "avtive" alliances simply jpg their offline members - but the less active cannot do that - so surely it means less activity is required which is a good thing?

[Heartless]

Originally Posted by Kal

There are two issues:
- it gives alliances to much control over planets

I don't think so. When people join an alliance, then the alliance either already has the wish to control it's members or it is an alliance which pays more attention upon playing just for fun and thus less organized.
Obviously every alliance which is known for it's efficient military machine is usually one that does not just have appropriate recruitment policies and officers, but also has some methods of controlling it's planets.

Originally Posted by Kal

- people may be less IRC active as they feel they don;t need to bother reporting incomings

Depends, really. People should get on IRC* anyways, especially since in most cases whole galaxies get hit**, which would mean people should ensure there's cross-coverage ingal additionally to the alliance defense.

*preferred, but any other communication system would work fine, too
**unless certain alliances wage war against each other

[mist]

Originally Posted by Kal

ity may make things easier for alliances - but which ones. the "avtive" alliances simply jpg their offline members - but the less active cannot do that - so surely it means less activity is required which is a good thing?

i get the impression that jumpgate scanning members may not be as feasable under the new scans system, tho i must admit i don't know the fine details of how they'll work out.

my problem with this is that on the face of it it seems good for players - everyone wants to get defence. however, it worries me that HCs will then be able to keep tabs on everyone. the extent of my worry really depends on exactly what you give people. for example, if you just show incomming fleets then i've no real problem with that (other than the effect on attack vs defence balance but that shouldbe able to be addressed in other areas). however i seem to recall wakey saying that he'd like to be able to see outgoings as well so that he can make sure members don't do anything stupid. the flip side of this is, if members never do anything stupid then the game will be awfully dull.

have you considered what levels you could run this at? at one end you could just have a list of allied plantes with incommings, and bcs able to set a checkbox as to whether they're covered or not (probably with a timestamp), at theother end you could tell the alliances what's in each fleet the planet has and where it's headed. where exactly you fall in this spectrum, imo, makes a difference as to its effect.

[Heartless]

Originally Posted by mist

i'm against the idea as i think it makes it too easy for alliances. iirc, pia has/had something like this. how'd it go?

Why would it be "easier" for an alliance? Knowing that a planet has incoming is always nice, but ultimately it needs to be covered which should be quite hard under given circumstances (this includes appropriate anti-blocking measures ingame and a decent shuffle/exile system).

Additionally, this system would give active players in inactive galaxies a chance to survive without constant jgp'ing of the planet in question.

[Heartless]

Originally Posted by mist

have you considered what levels you could run this at? at one end you could just have a list of allied plantes with incommings, and bcs able to set a checkbox as to whether they're covered or not (probably with a timestamp), at theother end you could tell the alliances what's in each fleet the planet has and where it's headed. where exactly you fall in this spectrum, imo, makes a difference as to its effect.

I think it was supposed to be like the galaxy status, if I understood it correctly.

[Kal]

Originally Posted by mist

have you considered what levels you could run this at? at one end you could just have a list of allied plantes with incommings, and bcs able to set a checkbox as to whether they're covered or not (probably with a timestamp), at theother end you could tell the alliances what's in each fleet the planet has and where it's headed. where exactly you fall in this spectrum, imo, makes a difference as to its effect.

the first end of things you mentioned.

I guess the problem with allainces seeing outgoings is that they know when u arn;t optimally helping them etc.

Though i'd have thought there would be more objections to seeing incomings than outgoings.

[mist]

heartless - i agree with most of what you say, i just have this nagging feeling about the outgoings side of things...

why would there be objections to them seeing incommings? i'd have thought the alliances would love that?

[Kal]

Originally Posted by mist

heartless - i agree with most of what you say, i just have this nagging feeling about the outgoings side of things...

why would there be objections to them seeing incommings? i'd have thought the alliances would love that?

lets page wakey to the thread

[mist]

Originally Posted by Kal

lets page wakey to the thread

last time i made a post like that, i got neg-repped. just so you know

[furball]

I'm an alliance HC, so you'd think that I'd love to see incomings.


And from an alliance point of view, I would. But I think that it would also be horrific for the game. Many solo players as well as smaller alliances can only really succeed on attacks when the incoming isn't instantly reported.

An alliance status would make the galaxy irrelevant. At the moment you need to be at least cordial in order to get your incomings reported - with an alliance status, no more!

As for outgoings, I posted in the other thread that you should limit the number of members an alliance can see the outgoings of - 1/10 of their member count.

[Kal]

On the private PAN boards i suggested ealying the info on the alliance status page by one tick - any thoughts on that?

[mist]

i suspect it deminishes the good and bad points of the idea by about the same amount.

[Heartless]

Originally Posted by furball

An alliance status would make the galaxy irrelevant. At the moment you need to be at least cordial in order to get your incomings reported - with an alliance status, no more!

As for outgoings, I posted in the other thread that you should limit the number of members an alliance can see the outgoings of - 1/10 of their member count.

First of all: why limit the number of outgoings to see? Sounds strange, I fail to see a reason for it

Alliance status would not make the galaxy as irrelevant as people might believe. The problem is rather simple: A good and active random player lands in an inactive galaxy - he is utterly disadvantaged now, as he will need sleep from time to time and is very unlikely to get ingal defense. He either self-exiles in the hope to get into a better galaxy or he quits, most likely the latter as landing in a galaxy he'd consider active enough could be hard. Wouldn't it be just fair to offer him a way to compensate for his disadvantage from being in a bad galaxy? Also, it might keep him motivated and thus he will stay in that galaxy and on might occasionally meet another person from the gal (probably a freshly signed up person that is active and wants to test the game) which he can then teach

[Cannon_Fodder]

Originally Posted by Kal

On the private PAN boards i suggested ealying the info on the alliance status page by one tick - any thoughts on that?

It's really an 'all or nothing' thing this alliance status. Anything else* is confusing and stupid.








*incluing all

[mist]

heartless: this would be served simply by a list of who has incommings tho, surely?

[The_Fish]

An alliance status page would rock, quite simply.

Most active alliances get most of the incs reported anyway, it is just impossible to stop them. With the stats being so aggressive it really does mean a lot of people get through despite alliances knowing about the incs.

On top of this, an in game arbiter would rock, so you can set the alliance and nick of a planet (upto the alliance to do this) so it makes it easier to see what alliances are attacking you. The best alliances already have tools to do this, the small alliances don't I believe, but it would make it much easier for them. note I am only suggesting that alliances can set a planets nick/alliance in game for their own viewing, nothing different to external tools.

[cbk100]

OMG this is really a tough one Kal.
I can see obvious reason for this idea, but I can also see disadvantages (not quite that obioius ones though, but could still outweigh the pros).

Lets try to take things somewhat from one end and work trough the considerations (the ones I have had at least).

First what I think should be considered is how you want to form the game in the future conserning ship stats. While this is not an obvious thing to consider then at least in my mind its VERY important. As it has been in this round (to an extreme) and also in the last few rounds it has been VERY easy to attack with success and thus VERY hard to def. Therefore it has been unbelieveably nasty for the DCs in the game. While PA still has many good DCs around it is even for them becoming too exhausting to DC trough the most hectic hours. There are simply too many incomings and as the stats are now its too hard to cover them. I have ofc. only seen how it is in EX and LCH, but I find no reason to believe that its easier for the DCs in other alliances than it is for EX and LCH DCs. I rather think that its harder for other alliances as they dont have as many roids. But the main thing is that it has become too hard for DCs to handle everything and I have seen DCs (from both EX, LCH but also many other alliances) who has simply had to step down or just go offline as they couldnt take it anymore. (some of you might come with arguments that they can just relax some more while DCing and just be satisfied with that effort, but lets not discuss that here). The thing is that if DCs get so exhausted that they cba to DC anymore then the alliances collaps and I am quite sure that I can say that it has happened to all alliances at least once this round.
To sum this up it has simply become too hard to def this round because of the shipstats, so if you want to keep the stats like this (attack and def wise) then it talks strongly for making an alliance incoming/outgoing screen.
In this way DCs dont have problem like: ppl reporting late, gal ppl reporting incomings tick after they showed up so DCs maybe think its CO while it could also be FR or anything else. It also gives them an overview of who got fleets and slots available so that they dont have to call ppl who is sleeping and actualy got all fleets out.

Ofcourse you might argue now that at least the last thing can be achieved with the right tools and active enough members... yes in theory you are right, but the reality is VERY different.
These are all things that will help giving the DCs an easier time while it doesnt limit the game very much and thus not hurt the gameplay and its strategical aspects so in my oppinion its a STRONG argument in case you keep the stats with this sort of balance and just a good argument if you decide to change them so that its somewhat easier to defend (which I actualy think should be done).

Then there is a consideration weather its bad because then members can't "hide" in the alliance doing nothing but idle. This is both good and bad, but since its a minor limitation to the game and its strategic aspects then I actualy think its a minor bad thing because of this.
For the bigger alliances its not much of an advantage as they keep track of their members relatively well allready as it is, but for the minor alliances its a very good thing as this will make it much easier for them to keep thack of their members. This is a very good thing for the game as it will bring more balance so actualy this talks for change.

We also have to consider weather this destroys the concept about galaxies. It will make gals less important relatively to the alliances, but the gals will still be very important as this is still the last way and still the most effective way out of your incomings. You will still depend on your gal a lot of times trough any round of PA and therefore you will still have strong incentives to keep your gal running smooth. So I actualy dont think this is too much of a problem.

Now I will try to comment on a few of the statements in this thread:
Kal says that it will give alliances more control of their members. It hardly does as all the alliance can see is the moving fleets. That is hardly any control unless rules are broken and you log in to other ppls accounts.
Kal says that it causes inactivity. I tend to agree here, but it MIGHT also cause more activity. When ppl actualy can see what is going on and how well the alliance is performing while the DCs are working I think they will feal more entertained and thus want to see how the night evolve and evne help covering some calls once in a while as the results become more obvious. I have to agree with you though that there is also an effect coming from the fact that incomings are reported automaticly and therefore ppl might not have to come online as often to check for incomings, but then again most alliances has ppl who is awake to check for incomings anyways so its very few ppl who actualy get up every 2nd hour to check for incomings so this kinda neglects the argument.

Mist says that it makes it too easy for alliances: Well it makes it easier to do def, and thus harder to do attacks. How you can judge that its all in all easier I don't know so some more aguments would be needed for you. And even if it makes it easier then it has to be relatively easier for it to have an effect, but if its easier for everyone then its just a status quo for the single alliance and thus the net effect is zero.

Mist talks about the posibility of making this change in a wide spectrum: Have to agree that its something that has to be discussed and that a fine balance should be found. I strongly suggest that the change involves the screen showing when a planet has incomings as that will have more or less only positive effects in my eyes. I also strongly suggest that it should show amount of ships, the race of the attacker and eta as I can more or less only find positive sides about this. I also strongly suggest that it should show attacking fleets, but just as attacking and with amount of ships. Reasons for this are stated above (gives DCs an easier time).
This means that I am not sure weather it should show coords of the attacker and coords the alliance is attacking. Reasons for this is that its not realy such things the DCs are interested in and if they are then the marginal benefit of it is not very high, but if they want to know then they have to go trough the work to jpg scan the planet with incomings so there is still room for elite alliances to outperform in the more strategical and organization part of DCing.
So Kal listen to mist's advice to think strongly about the spectrum of changes.

Heartless says that it will be easier for the alliances: Not relatively to other and since that is all that matters then no it will not be easier for the alliances (reasons stated above).
Heartless says that active ppl in an inactive gal gets a chance to survive: I am not sure if you think this is good or bad. I at least think this is a good thing as this makes it up to you to make a differnce and even if you get unlucky in the shuffle and in the first many exiles then you still have a chance.

All in all I think its a good idea to make such a screen, but consider carefully what info you want on it.

btw. I am sure I dont consider everything worth considering, so just keep coming with different areas that we have to discuss as that is the best way to do it instead of us just getting our eyes and mind fixed on the same few topics.

cbk (who is once again sorry about posting such a long post)

[mist]

while it doesn't make it easier for the alliances relative to other alliances, it makes it easier for them relative to those who're unaligned - particualrly as it shifts emphais further away from the galaxy where they'd otherwise at least have a little hope.

tbh, i think it's time to look at the way alliances are implimented in the game as a whole tho.

[The_Fish]

Originally Posted by mist

while it doesn't make it easier for the alliances relative to other alliances, it makes it easier for them relative to those who're unaligned - particualrly as it shifts emphais further away from the galaxy where they'd otherwise at least have a little hope.

tbh, i think it's time to look at the way alliances are implimented in the game as a whole tho.

I don't see how it shifts emphasis away from galaxy tbh.

Of all the attacks I've launched this round, more have been stopped in gal than by the alliance. And in my defence, one dude in my gal has deffed me more than the rest of ND put together. Thats how it goes with these stats.

[Proxi]

Originally Posted by furball

I'm an alliance HC, so you'd think that I'd love to see incomings.


And from an alliance point of view, I would. But I think that it would also be horrific for the game. Many solo players as well as smaller alliances can only really succeed on attacks when the incoming isn't instantly reported.

An alliance status would make the galaxy irrelevant. At the moment you need to be at least cordial in order to get your incomings reported - with an alliance status, no more!

As for outgoings, I posted in the other thread that you should limit the number of members an alliance can see the outgoings of - 1/10 of their member count.

exactly
Anything that diminishes the importance of the gal isnt good for the community spirit of the game.

[mist]

Originally Posted by The_Fish

I don't see how it shifts emphasis away from galaxy tbh.

i'd tend to agree with this

[Kal]

Originally Posted by mist

i'd tend to agree with this

which bit of it though. I'm inclined to think that it won;t alter IRC activity now and the galaxy will still be a hugely important defence source and the best way to organise defence is in real time communications.

[Shyne]

Surely its a bad thing that alliances can see all the incs of its members.

It reduces the need to report incs etc.. as has all been mentioned.

But surely some of the few times the top planets are roided is when his/her incs arent reported?

[Kal]

Originally Posted by Shyne

Surely its a bad thing that alliances can see all the incs of its members.

It reduces the need to report incs etc.. as has all been mentioned.

But surely some of the few times the top planets are roided is when his/her incs arent reported?

the top planted tend to be jpg's when offline to prevent that - i expect they get roided when their galaxy is physically drianed of defence (and that could actualyl be aided by an alliance status page...)

[Heartless]

Originally Posted by Shyne

But surely some of the few times the top planets are roided is when his/her incs arent reported?

Hardly. Most times it is because the alliance the top planet belongs to is hit so heavily that they cannot defend him, and that his galaxy is unable to provide the required ingal defense.

This shows already that galaxies are far from unimportant, even with an alliance status. You will still want to be able to cross-cover yourself in-gal, especially since most of the big ships can only be used for ingal def purposes. Additionally, I haven't seen a single top 10 galaxy (back in the days even the top 100) which didn't have the required ingal communication to cross-cover each other in-gal.

Without the alliance status all we will see is people leaving because they cannot survive in an inactive galaxy, not even with being in one of the smaller alliances which they can join as those smaller alliances are hardly able to jgp the planet in question.

All in all cbk did also point out a lot of things why it is good to have an alliance status. The only reason not to have it is for some unnecessarily high importance of the galaxies. For the good of the game, get the alliance status. There will still be loads of uncovered calls for an alliance.

[furball]

Probably the top 4 alliances regularly jgp the top 30 planets.


But it's not all about the top 4 alliances or the top 30 planets. For everyone else, it's the galaxies which are the home of these planets, they're the people who report incomings and help send defence. If the alliance already knows about someone's incomings, then the galaxy will serve no use at all, apart from sending defence.

Frankly you're making the galaxy and the overall community less important, and I see no way of construing that as anything but a bad thing.

[Shyne]

Ok perhaps its a good thing then.

On a different note, but kinda relevent here - will PAN allow integration with arby/external apps?

For example, if an alliance could integrate an rss feed from alliance listing to their arby, they could allow more complex processing and management of incs.

[robban1]

cool an hc/dc with alliestat dont need active members just hook up the vnc and/or sms the guy so is it sorted... gonna have outgoing stats too?

if ppl wants to know everything why just not get back to *then ppl is online and showing tags infront of the rulername no hideing anymore

[Naps]

This is by far the worst idea i have ever come across.
The only purpose this will serve imo is to allow the top alliances to deffend even better than they already do, thus creating an even greater divide between the top 5 alliances and the rest. lets face facts here, the top alliances are top because they are more active, they only accept active ppl.
the bottom alliances are bottom (and i include my own in this) simply because the activity is poor.
All that will happen is the top alliances wont target each other they will turn into bottom feeders and it will be a race who can roid the smaller guys quicker.

As for DC burnout and it will ease the problem? thats your problems if they dont like it they shouldn't dc or they should get more help. i know alot about this having had to DC over 50 incoming fleets last night (lo VGN AND FCREW) and over 40 on tuesday.

All this will do is create an even bigger divide between the active players and the new players. the growth of the player base will be seriously hindered. all in all this whole alliance integration thing to improve the game and increase the player base is a bloody farce. Alliances dont need your help its the newbies who need your help! you want to increase the player base? create newbie alliances let anyone join, have them run by PA team ask for the officers of other alliances to help you!. Im not saying this is a good idea all im saying is Alliances DONT need any help from PA crew

anything that increases the effectivness of any alliance is pointless, you want to make it easier for the new people? have all random rounds, open the mentors up, have a link on the menu in game (that ppl can choose to have their or not) to a newbie discussion board help these new ppl communicate with each other and experienced volunteers. and to be honest simply posting a "how to use irc" faq is fairly fkin pointless as their are a billion versions setup in a billion different ways

ps:
Just noticed my siggy still says 1up peon ignore that just havent been active for the early part of this round

[cbk100]

Originally Posted by Naps

This is by far the worst idea i have ever come across.
The only purpose this will serve imo is to allow the top alliances to deffend even better than they already do, thus creating an even greater divide between the top 5 alliances and the rest. lets face facts here, the top alliances are top because they are more active, they only accept active ppl.
the bottom alliances are bottom (and i include my own in this) simply because the activity is poor.
All that will happen is the top alliances wont target each other they will turn into bottom feeders and it will be a race who can roid the smaller guys quicker.

As for DC burnout and it will ease the problem? thats your problems if they dont like it they shouldn't dc or they should get more help. i know alot about this having had to DC over 50 incoming fleets last night (lo VGN AND FCREW) and over 40 on tuesday.

All this will do is create an even bigger divide between the active players and the new players. the growth of the player base will be seriously hindered. all in all this whole alliance integration thing to improve the game and increase the player base is a bloody farce. Alliances dont need your help its the newbies who need your help! you want to increase the player base? create newbie alliances let anyone join, have them run by PA team ask for the officers of other alliances to help you!. Im not saying this is a good idea all im saying is Alliances DONT need any help from PA crew

anything that increases the effectivness of any alliance is pointless, you want to make it easier for the new people? have all random rounds, open the mentors up, have a link on the menu in game (that ppl can choose to have their or not) to a newbie discussion board help these new ppl communicate with each other and experienced volunteers. and to be honest simply posting a "how to use irc" faq is fairly fkin pointless as their are a billion versions setup in a billion different ways

ps:
Just noticed my siggy still says 1up peon ignore that just havent been active for the early part of this round

First of all I see no reason why this will make the big alliances feed on the small alliances. Imo the big alliances fight wars aggainst eachother and if EX is at war aggainst 1up I find it VERY hard to believe that 1up will target some n00b alliance and EX will target another n00b alliance. How you can deduct such strange reasoning is just beond me.
Furthermore the big alliances is not satisfied attacking ppl with no roids... hence they will not just target small alliances cause those have only few roids. Well you DCing 40-50 calls is probably bad ( I dont know which alliance you are in), but some DCs handle about 200 calls per night. Lets just say that your 40-50 incomings were evul, but try to put yourself into the ppl who have to try to handle 200+ calls per night. Now that is exhausting and especialy when its so damn hard to defend compared to attacking.
You cant just say that DCs have to get used to it cause they never will. ppl will whine about never getting def and DCs will be stressed all the time if nothing is done. NO DC can keep taking it. They will be burned out sooner or later.
You say it will devide the good and the less good players even more but you fail to say why. I can at least see some reasons why it should help the less active ppl more than the ubber active ppl. Active ppl actualy doesnt benefit from this AT ALL since they would be there to report incomings anyways. On the other hand the inactive players actualy get their incomings reported now even though they arent online so actualy I think you are very wrong on what you say.
Then you say that the player base will be seriously hindered, but once again no arguments why and once again I think my argument stated above should at least give one reason why you might be wrong.
I know you might actualy be right in what you say, but without some argumentation your words are nothing but statements and statements arent worth anything.
To have HQ run alliances? they have plenty to do allready...
Have officers of other alliances run newbie alliances? imposible as that will mean they dont do as much work for their own alliance as they could otherwise and that is not acceptable by any decent alliance. Also this will give conflicts with the rules of the game as they cant be in 2 alliances and as they are only allowed to def one alliance.
Now your statement about anything that increse the effectiveness of alliances is nonsense simply because of the fact that its not posible. Its a matter of game theory and the nature of the human race. I dont want to bother you or anyone else with proofs of it, but will either refer you to either use your common sense and think about it for a few minutes. If you cant realise that your statement makes no sence then lets take it in private and I will give you some litterature you can read which will for sure make you realise it.
This game is what it is because of the great comunity and because of all the interaction between ppl. Hadnt it been for that PA would be dead now.

cbk