"this is a special round"
 

Alliance limits will be increased to 100, with the top 65 counting to the tag score.

Can i have some of what PA Team is smoking... i meen WTF!!!

I was expecting limit 60 with 50 counted.

WHY??????

Re: "this is a special round"
 

we need so much more of a playerbase to do this... what ever happened to that awesome planetarion facebook integration that could potentially bring us 1000's more players...

/me slaps PA-Team

Re: "this is a special round"
 

no no dont slap pa-team! /me slaps pete!

Re: "this is a special round"
 

slap anyone with any of these silly thoughts.

Re: "this is a special round"
 

Jesus ****ing christ we had these limits 5 rounds ago with the same size playerbase. And hey, it was actually an awesome round. And the universe didn't end.

CAN YOU PEOPLE STOP OVER-REACTING FOR LIKE TEN SECONDS OF YOUR ****ING LIVES?

Re: "this is a special round"
 

They decrease, instead if increase.......... PA team in a nutshelll and priv gals with 1k as playerbase??? LMAO

Re: "this is a special round"
 

I see some actual facts are once again sorely needed. Captain Info to the rescue!

The number of players has gone from 1689 to 1307 from r23 to r34, with a max of 1696 in r31, if we're so bold as to ignore r27, which was a free round that attracted 2376, more than any round since r19, with the exception of r23, also a free round. r19, incidentially, was also the round the current inactivity deletion formula was introduced, so rounds before r19 cannot be easily compared to rounds since

Re: "this is a special round"
 

Wasnt it less that 1300 this round?

Re: "this is a special round"
 

1247. Oh my god the smaller alliance limits the last few rounds have been killing the game :( :( :(

Re: "this is a special round"
 

Why not? huzzah.

Re: "this is a special round"
 

The PA history page hasn't been updated for r35 yet.

Re: "this is a special round"
 

Rather than throwing accusations around, why doesnt someone answer the simple question of... which alliances are actually going to manage the 100 alliance limit?

I mean, no matter what is said on these forums.. The asc crew are going to say 'no' to.. but as to yet, none of them have actually gave any positive reasons for the increase.

Everyone was expecting that... (except for Asc)

Re: "this is a special round"
 

Thank you, finaly some one with a brain.
I've been telling PA team off for the shit cap on alliance tags since they introduced it.
Not only did it destroy alliances/communities (as there's a limit on people being allowed to join them) it has indeed also destroyed the game.
Playerbase dropped, because people weren't allowed to play with their own community/alliance.
Players jumped from one alliance to the next, loyalty to an alliance/community has gone.
People spread accross different alliances, but still not attacking their so called friends. Yet they pass on intel or attack. Making the spy game absolete.
And there's loads more.

Yah, I hated the alliance tag cap since they introduced it.

Just my opinion about it.

Re: "this is a special round"
 

Hmm, over the last rounds the alliance limit has been lowered, and afaik, there weren't any problems with that. Only few alliances reach the limit and that's most of the time at start and end of the round, before slackers get kicked and when shipjumpers have joined. So why would you up the limits again then? And not a little bit, but all the way back to 100? I'd like to hear what would be the reason for this?

Re: "this is a special round"
 

From what I understand, this is supposed to be a "special round". Both the (new) split between random and private galaxies and the tag limit of 100 seem to be a part of that. I would warn against dropping it all too harshly afterwards, though, it would be very unwise to give people the room to recruit this round, only to make them kick people again next round. If there's one thing that'll make people quit, it's getting kicked from their alliance.

As for reasons why a high tag limit is a good idea, since it's been over a week since I last said it, I'll give my usual reply: more places in alliances = less strict recruitment = easier for newbies to get into alliances = good for the game.

As for whether certain alliances are going to hit the limit or not, I'll leave that sort of talk to AD. It is worth noting though, generally speaking, that no alliance actually ended the round with a full tag, though as far as I know, several started with one.

Appoco has said several times that tag limits would not drop, including in #alliances.

Re: "this is a special round"
 

So if no alliance ended last round at the full tag plus there being 6+ decent alliances to join now, why would raising the limit increase the amount of new players joining? If anything, all it does is encourage the current active alliances to merge with each other?

Hardly welcoming of newbies Mz?

Re: "this is a special round"
 

I don't think it will make much difference for the newbies, the ones that are active and willing to learn the game (= the ones the 'top'allies want) will always get a chance. Because even with lower limits, there are enough quality alliances already, who have space and are thus looking for good players and atm we don't even have the players to fill all these alliances. And I don't think Asc, App, DLR, VsN, etc. will allow crashers and inactives in their tag, just 'because they have space for them'. And if they want them for the community, while not having space in their tag, they can always make a second tag who can def each other every now and then.
I liked the thought of next round with quite some alliances with around 40-50 members who all could fight for the top 3 places. And after next round, when enough alliances really hit the alliance limit, it could have been upped.

Re: "this is a special round"
 

I can think of no alliance that I'd like Ascendancy to merge with.

That said, if alliances feel they can merge, I am entirely ok with that. It implies that the only reason they didn't before was because of the artificial limitations put in place by the game.

As for why alliances don't recruit newbies, I think it's partly a mindset. Recruitment is ridiculously strict in PA. In similar games, I have been invited to well-established alliances by total strangers, simply because of how well I was doing in the game. Sometimes that means you recruit an idiot who quits after a week and sometimes you recruit someone who ends up becoming the biggest player in your alliance. It's all about taking chances, and I feel PA alliances take too few. It's not like they have anything to lose. Perhaps these new high alliance limits will help facilitate that process. Then again, it's hardly a revolutionary move (though a step in the right direction).

What other people say is not my concern. I suggest you direct your queries to the person in question (who, if you hadn't noticed already, isn't me).

Re: "this is a special round"
 

Well, ASS was the alliance that ended closest to the limit of all the alliances playing, so I'm hoping this will allow them to continue their good work. I don't know why other "newbie alliances" (I don't like the term, open for suggestions) are incapable of doing as well as ASS evidently are. Work harder, people!

I'll forgive you for not keeping up with current events: cross-tag defence was made impossible last round. There were few complaints, so (as far as I know) it will be kept for r36.

I can of course only speak from the viewpoint of someone in Ascendancy, but you're half right. I don't think we'll be too big on crashers. Not crashing is not a matter of being active, it's a matter of playing competent Planetarion. Don't launch if you're not sure you'll be around when the fleet lands. Simple. As for inactives, I've been both a scanner and an inactive "proper" player for the last 5 or more rounds. Last round I was a scanner and did about 130 scans total. I can't remember ever being excluded from the tag.

Here's what I honestly don't understand, maybe you or anyone else can explain it to me. Why are you so focused on completely filling the tag? r33 was won by an alliance with 56 members, a 55 member alliance came second, while a 69 member alliance got third place. Surely that's an indication that the quality of the players is more important than raw numbers?

Personally, I feel there should always be room for new players in tags. As Spinner said elsewhere on the forums, PA started dying when the influx of new players ground to a halt.

Re: "this is a special round"
 

New times, old thread.

I have no idea why pateam would raise the limit to 100 only to drop it right back down, if in fact they are doing that. It seems that in that case, even if this change worked, as in more players became more integrated into the pa community, it'd only get undone next round. This seems rather perverse at best. In the long-term none of these changes really do that much (because the game is pretty shit and really hard for the first time player to get into due to a wide variety of factors including the woeful manual and the amount of garbage information thrown at you by the game at pretty much every point).

I don't know if you're insane or joking. Considering gm accused me of fabricating logs earlier today I'm tempted to lean towards the former as clearly I've underestimated the amount of over-the-top idiocy in pa.

The only thing that actually changes the metagame is the willingness of various alliance HCs and members to put in more effort in order to make the game more interesting. We've seen stagnated rounds with high tag limits, stagnated rounds with low tag limits, stagnated rounds with no tag limits, fluid rounds with no tag limits, fluid rounds with low tag limits and fluid rounds with high tag limits. The only thing that matters is whether people give enough of a **** to actually play Planetarion.

Mainly because there's so few of them.

We've always tried to have everyone in the same tag to be honest. Anything else, besides making you look some kind of faggot who cared about average score and shit, wouldn't even make sense from a military perspective.

As always, our recruitment remains fruity. Three of our more recent members only just returned to pa last round. But no we don't randomly recruit newbies by pming inactive low score planets around the universe if that's what you're asking.

Re: "this is a special round"
 

Yeah zPeti is doing a great job there with all those nice updates he gives us..

come on dude at least you could pop in from round to round if not weekly or monthly to give us a little update on your progress..
Facebook application was the way to go.

But I think big daddy will come back here when his new game is finished and use this as an advertising platform.

When does PA get a dedicated owner?

Re: "this is a special round"
 

Since it's a special round, please also make it specially short. The longer this crap continues, the more players will leave.

Re: "this is a special round"
 

JBG - is there not a slight fear that with the 100 man tag limits that there will be even more mergers between allies creating another boring block? I realise that with higher tags, some allies may feel less inclined to get involved, on two levels...they dont have the numbers to compete and also that others with big tags may not feel the need to ask as they're less likely to be overrun and overpowered?

All I see from this is less fighting between specific allies (i.e. more mergers/naps), making this round as repetitive and boring as the last. Obviously, if you disagree, I'd like to know why...:)

Personally, I've found the recent block wars completely boring and would like to see more allies fighting each other rather than working together.

The only thing I like about it is that it implores HC's have to be more politically astute...

Re: "this is a special round"
 

Well, that depends on the rules for mergers. If they stay the same (I don't see anywhere that has said they won't) I don't see why things would change dramatically. Who exactly is going to have a full tag though? I haven't heard a single alliance come on here and say they would. "They don't have the numbers to compete" makes no sense at all to be honest. R31 saw 20-30 man tags take on ascendancy as part of a block. Why would the situation be different now?

I don't think there's a clear and miles away favourite alliance like last round. I think you could have tag limits of infinity + 1 and this would still make it a more fluid round than last round. I'd like to ask why you see this as causing less fighting between alliances?

And the last few rounds of 70 man tag limits really accomplished this? It's just how the political field has been set up recently.

Personally I like it because it removes the cap on alliance growth. New alliances aren't some magical thing that spring up out of thin air because the alliance limit is sufficiently low. They just happen when a group of players feel like they can set up a new alliance. Larger tag limits should, in the long term, encourage slightly larger alliances and have the potential for dealing with an influx of new players (if that ever occurs) than a system which tells them that they can't get into the established alliances who are already full and must set up their own alliance if they want to play.

Re: "this is a special round"
 

The only inconsistency I see with the new changes is the need for private galaxies. While this clearly addresses the issue of "core galaxies" by allowing every alliance to easily achieve these, it does at the same time drive one of the major recruitment factors for alliances away. Random galaxies have always been good to find new people and give them a chance (unless the alliance limit forces you to not recruit any further).

Oh well, another half-assed decision that does not help the game to grow. And for those that cannot read: I am not criticizing the raised alliance limits here, these are good - I am merely stating that private galaxies are idiotic.

Re: "this is a special round"
 

Random galaxies have not "always been good to find new people and give them a chance". Random galaxies have sometimes been good for that. 95% of the time they're dull as ****ing sticks. There are other ways to meet new people in this game. There are other ways to meet new people in this game. And you can still go random, so it's not like this will turn PA completely insular and inbred (at least not any more than it already is).

Re: "this is a special round"
 

We dont?? But how did I get in then?

We've also asked Appocomaster to join Ascendancy since its so obvious that he does everything he can for Ascendancy to thrive and enjoy ourselves while pwning angryducks, general motors and others that seem to have a huge whine windup instead of just saying: "This is how the rules are, now lets play by em."

Re: "this is a special round"
 

You begged and we needed a new maid.

I am somewhat inclined to agree, though with some reservations. First of all, you're going to have people trying to form fortress galaxies no matter what. I think we can agree that it's a bad thing if newbies get exiled because they're either not active enough or not knowledgeable enough. This happens in a significant portion of potential fortress galaxies (though by no means in all of them). So what you have is a group of people who really only want to play with each other and who are unlikely to help newbies get into the game anyway. Why not separate them from the rest of the community?

That said, I expect that a majority of the people in private galaxies this round wouldn't have tried to get into a fortress galaxy. The loss of this experience (it's lost because it doesn't get transferred to newbies) is something that PA might feel keenly in the long run. (Incidentially, I also expect that the number of people in private galaxies will decrease sharply if this system stays for r37. Being in a fortress/private galaxy is not the Valhalla people imagine it to be and I foresee that r36 will be the evidence they need to acknowledge this valuable insight.)

All of this of course goes back to the whole issue with the limit on interaction in galaxies. I'm fairly confident that it's extremely rare for a reasonably established alliance to proactively contact someone who isn't in a galaxy with at least one planet from said alliance. By locking experience in private galaxies and creating artificial limits on interaction between newbies and veterans, the newbies loses out on valuable information and recruitment opportunities, while the game loses out on valuable newbies.

Then again: what newbies?

Re: "this is a special round"
 

It depends quite a bit on how large random galaxies end up being in comparison to private galaxies. If the factor is anything greater than 2x, then I think a well organized random galaxy will win the round, giving greater incentive to go random.

Re: "this is a special round"
 

I hope u do remember how r31 turned out for the smaller tags? I do recall the bigger tag to win. Everyone needed to work together to not make it the most boring round ever, with asc winning by pt100. For a while this was done, but it was clear from the start that asc would dominate. Which they did afterall, and most of the small tags ( at least Evo, where I played) got totally raped. Really fun round that was :rolleyes:

Would that round have been more fun with lower ally limits? That depends on where u played, xvx and asc had an almost full tag, so they would say no. I'd say yes because then those smaller tags might have had a bigger influence on the round, because as you said, numbers are not everything, but having only half the members, that you just cannot compensate with skill/activity, because you just miss the fleets to do it.

So next round you say you haven't heard any alliance who will be playing with full tag? Then why have the alliance limits been changed that much? Ofcourse, if ASS (or any other alliance) has more than 70 members it would be a shame if they should say no to ppl who want to play with them. But they could also make the limit 80 or so then.

Last round most alliances ended with 40-65 members, this round Asc will play active again (i think?) and Exc is coming back, where do you find all the new members to make all those alliances have (close to) 100 members? Perhaps a very actively recruiting alliance can fill 1 tag with 100 ppl, leaving the others at ~60. And with the cross-tag defense removed, like Mz said, those numbers do make an even bigger difference, because the smaller tags in r31 could defend each other, that's not possible now.

I hope all the allies will be around the same size and the tag limit won't make the difference, but it could.

Re: "this is a special round"
 

If people don't want to play in your alliance, perhaps that is a problem of your alliance, and not of the game as a whole.

Re: "this is a special round"
 

I repeat:

Ironically enough, it wasn't the big bad Ascendancy that advocated this change. In fact, the only reason I stopped arguing against it was because I became convinced that we should give their ideas a chance, in the (vain, in hindsight) hope that they'd learn that their suggestions are invariably idiotic.

Re: "this is a special round"
 

Lol, that's a fact I won't deny! I only try to say, there is only a limited amount of players available, no matter what ally you are. And don't have anything against Asc, I like them in fact, I was only trying to say that I find the change a bit big. But let's hope it turns out to be a good change or at least not a bad one.

Re: "this is a special round"
 

Well, of course no one is entirely sure of numbers at this stage. But I fully expect to see allies like ND and CT benefit with full tags or as good as. I don't see their being 20-30 man tags getting involved at all this round - in fact quite the opposite. I see them folding. Reason it'll cause less fighting between alliances because simply put I see there being less alliances because of the changes. Without any disrespect to these alliances being mentioned, Vsn were potentially folding last round but didn't, p3nguins almost folded the round before but didn't. I see these changes to the tag limit meaning quite the opposite affect to what most people desire...which is more fighting between alliances and more personal rivalries - in much the same mould as we (p3nguins) had with CT last round. For example, 50 man tags, more alliances, less of which will be involved in needless boring block wars and are more likely to take a neutral political stance. They're less inclined to be bullied into either side of a block and instead be quite happy to have their own personal battle or gal raid as this is more beneficial to them.

This 100 tag system will see allies such as (again no disrespect) DLR, Subh, Vsn and even p3nguins struggle to succeed solo. Therefore you're bound to see exactly the same political stance that I feel everyone is completely bored of...i.e. DLR/Euph working together, Asc/Apprime working together (obviously not last round but like in previous rounds)

Alliances will die simply put, because people want the best...its natural for people to want to be at the top. People will leave alliances for say asc (who are bound to be competitive at the very least) and this movement of players throughout the round is likely to increase with these changes. This will result in allies folding, resulting in the opposite affect of what people want to see (more neutral ground alliances). Correct me if you disagree

Re: "this is a special round"
 

Or perhaps it's a problem with the decreasing player base?

:salute:

Re: "this is a special round"
 

Or maybe it isn't:
But hey, if you have any more unfounded bullshit to post, feel free!

Re: "this is a special round"
 

Just a quick comment, for most of it's existence Hidden Agenda came close to the alliance limit* and never broke into the top 5, why do people assume that a full alliance === a better alliance?


*Hopefully SpacedMonkey can back this up.

Re: "this is a special round"
 

Re: "this is a special round"
 

Something that does worry me is that some alliances are already setting up mixed gals from the start.

Re: "this is a special round"
 

I think only in round 29 did we not come close to the alliance limit but let's be honest, we accepted just about everyone, regardless of ability :)

Edit: Mz beat me to it but are those limits right? Looks a bit freaky having a limit of 83. And we only had 65 members in r31 afaik

Re: "this is a special round"
 

Why does this worry you?

How did you solve the problem of dead weight? I mean, obviously the recruitment requirements for an alliance like H-A are different from those for Apprime, but no matter how little you expect from your members, you're always going to have people who don't live up to them. Did you just kick them after x weeks of absence? Did you try to get them more involved? I'm honestly curious here. :)

Re: "this is a special round"
 

stagnant politics. same people in charge who are likely to repeat the same mistakes of the last 7 rounds.

Re: "this is a special round"
 

Fair enough.

Re: "this is a special round"
 

Like this hasn't happened for the last 30 rounds.

Re: "this is a special round"
 

All this we R gonna batter fenced gals from asc is a self fulfilling prophesy.

Other Allies dont want to have to DC fortress gals, (they dont have the system for it) and we have drawn a line in the sand saying build fortresses or else, so they run to the only option there is, a ready made block.

This is what happend when there was priv gals before was it not?

Re: "this is a special round"
 

There are always going to be certain people who try to get 5+ alliances in to this 8 man gal. This can go very well, and it can also backfire and bite them in the ass. If they are willing to take the risk then I have no problem whatsoever wit this problem.

Afterall, as JBG has already said(albeit a bit differently), Ascendancy might not come and level such gals to the ground, but it is more likely than theam not getting laid this round. I think that is going to be - insert positive adjective here - fun!

Re: "this is a special round"
 

I suggest inserting 'awesome' there.

Re: "this is a special round"
 

From what I remember, we didn't. Must've kicked the bottom people when we had full tag but otherwise didn't bother except for a couple of trouble makers.

Re: "this is a special round"
 

Hi Heimdall

Re: "this is a special round"
 

lolfences are going to force us into blocks, and that is going to force us to fight against the fortress alliances and I am going to scream until my throat is bloody. Please, please, please, please, please... no lolfencing. Two alliances per gal, max, or I will explode.