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Devlin 26 Mar 2009 18:26

Alliance limit
 
Ok, I can't figure out how to make a poll (perhaps regular people can't) and no one will tell me, so I'll just ask for opinions in replies for now.

What range do you find acceptable for the alliance member limit? Personally I think the proposed 90 for next round is no less ridiculous than the 100 we had this round.

I'll be happy when I see it set between 40-60

MrLobster 26 Mar 2009 19:26

Re: Alliance limit
 
Agreed 90 isnt a big enough decrease.

Appocomaster 26 Mar 2009 19:34

Re: Alliance limit
 
There's already a thread of this on the pd forum. Also, hcs and bcs probably have the best opinions on this

Kargool 26 Mar 2009 19:37

Re: Alliance limit
 
Erm, the best opinions on this? I think that there is a lot of people who probably have plenty of opinions, and some even better than HC's and BC's based on a gameplay point of view.

Devlin 26 Mar 2009 19:44

Re: Alliance limit
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Appocomaster (Post 3168600)
There's already a thread of this on the pd forum. Also, hcs and bcs probably have the best opinions on this

Sorry, I only looked through the suggestions form before posting :(

Heartless 26 Mar 2009 20:39

Re: Alliance limit
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Appocomaster (Post 3168600)
Also, hcs and bcs probably have the best opinions on this

Wrong. Absolutely Wrong. HC's and BC's will have the interests of their alliance in mind when making a statement regarding to this. What you really want is make up your very own mind on how alliances should function.

Appocomaster 26 Mar 2009 21:49

Re: Alliance limit
 
Yes, but who is in a better place than those people to illustrate how many people, on average, it takes to attack a galaxy? To organise and run a day to day alliance?
Unfortunately, the PA Team have not been allowed to play the game for so long that we need to talk to others to base some decisions on some information provided by their experience, as we simply don't know all the facts.

MrLobster 26 Mar 2009 22:01

Re: Alliance limit
 
I'm a DC and I can tell you that reducing the size would be a good thing.

Which is better for the game?

1) 30 alliance of 50
2) 16 alliances of 90

The suggestion of "I want to play with my friends" is a little inaccurate, I dont think many people know 90 people they want to play PA with.

Each alliance would start with a core group, who mainly leave a previous alliance, either by disagreements or trying something new.

Then they would go about recruiting people who they know.

New alliances cant be formed atm, as the bigger ones swamp them.

Look at it like this,

1) Your a pretty active and decent player.
2) Your in one of the lower tier alliances
3) Your current alliance isnt the most active.

Where can you go from here, your hardly getting defence, and most of your attacks are getting deffed due to poor target coverage.

Light 26 Mar 2009 22:02

Re: Alliance limit
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Appocomaster (Post 3168619)
Yes, but who is in a better place than those people to illustrate how many people, on average, it takes to attack a galaxy? To organise and run a day to day alliance?
Unfortunately, the PA Team have not been allowed to play the game for so long that we need to talk to others to base some decisions on some information provided by their experience, as we simply don't know all the facts.

So by using 'how many people does it take to attack a galaxy' we can presume that next round we will have the same size galaxys as now? 22+?

Buddah 26 Mar 2009 22:03

Re: Alliance limit
 
it takes 1 attackfleet to attack a galaxy.
it might take more to land.
if fcrew were 100, they prolly still couldnt have landed a single fleet on a top gal.
it depends on galaxys not alliances

Heartless 26 Mar 2009 22:06

Re: Alliance limit
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Appocomaster (Post 3168619)
Yes, but who is in a better place than those people to illustrate how many people, on average, it takes to attack a galaxy? To organise and run a day to day alliance?
Unfortunately, the PA Team have not been allowed to play the game for so long that we need to talk to others to base some decisions on some information provided by their experience, as we simply don't know all the facts.

If you don't know your game's mechanics then I really suggest you and zPeti start something from scratch where you two are fully aware how game mechanics work.

Appocomaster 26 Mar 2009 22:21

Re: Alliance limit
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Heartless (Post 3168623)
If you don't know your game's mechanics then I really suggest you and zPeti start something from scratch where you two are fully aware how game mechanics work.

I know the full functionality of the game. I don't know how users always apply it, nor do I know all the users and exactly how THEY play the game.

How do I know how big an alliance should be to take on a galaxy a night?
I could spend hours painstakingly tracing alliance attacks over a period of weeks, and trying to average them out, or I could just ask the alliance BCs, many of whom have probably been around for a few years.


MrLobster: the second question is "how many people are capable of managing / running an alliance?"

In rounds 4/5/6, I was in quite a few small, semi active alliances. I saw lots of bad HCing - I even tried to steal an alliance and do some myself. I know that to a certain extent, players have to learn to manage alliances through experience.

If alliance limits are cut drastically, we could end up with lots of alliances at the end of the round. Or we could end up with a few extra alliances and a lot fewer players. It's a bit of a gamble! I'm only willing to take such a gamble on a free round, and perhaps when tools are improved slightly and we have better generally support - manuals improved, which Pete is organising, and possibly a few more alliance features, to support those without tools themselves.

What I do worry about is those less active players in alliances, that may be rejected from smaller alliances where activity counts.

Appocomaster 26 Mar 2009 22:22

Re: Alliance limit
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Light (Post 3168621)
So by using 'how many people does it take to attack a galaxy' we can presume that next round we will have the same size galaxys as now? 22+?

You saw the announcement. If you looked at early sandman stats, you'd see there were ~112 non c200 galaxies. See how many there are now.
:)

I was looking for general figures this round and previous rounds, actually. It was only an example of the sort of thing that should be kept in mind

Heartless 26 Mar 2009 22:45

Re: Alliance limit
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Appocomaster (Post 3168627)
I know the full functionality of the game. I don't know how users always apply it, nor do I know all the users and exactly how THEY play the game.

How do I know how big an alliance should be to take on a galaxy a night?
I could spend hours painstakingly tracing alliance attacks over a period of weeks, and trying to average them out, or I could just ask the alliance BCs, many of whom have probably been around for a few years.

Well, you should obviously do exactly those calculations. Sorry if this sounds utterly arrogant, but that's exactly what the game designer responsible for balancing is doing in our company: running a gazillion excel sheets simulating different scenarios. Of course that gets harder the more variables you include in the simulation; f.e. galaxies growing over the course of a round leads to even more fleets being required over the course of a round in order to roid them. I think this is just going to be another argument for _removing_ galaxies completely and take that sphere shaped universe approach ;)

Gate 27 Mar 2009 06:44

Re: Alliance limit
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by MrLobster (Post 3168620)
Which is better for the game?

1) 30 alliance of 50
2) 16 alliances of 90

This question isn't really applicable atm because we just don't seem to have enough active DCs/BCs/HCs to competently run more alliances. Where will they come from!?

In r25 there were about 14 alliances I know are worth the name, this round there are about 16. The difference is that in r14, more of the allies were at membercap (~11 compared to ~3), but still, there were only 4 allies that were ever going to finish top 4...

The other difference is that those 'competent' alliances had a total of 790 members by round end in r25. This time around there's about 990.

The smaller memberlimit round had fewer alliances, fewer people in alliances, but more alliances at membercap.

People thought this was the last round which skews it a bit, but look through the history and I can't see much change.



Something that is a little tempting is 30-40 member tags, in which case you'd have to accept that top alliances would just have several tags. Is this better than what we have at the moment? It might be interesting.

Banned 27 Mar 2009 11:02

Re: Alliance limit
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Appocomaster (Post 3168600)
There's already a thread of this on the pd forum. Also, hcs and bcs probably have the best opinions on this

There are way more plain old members than HCs and BCs, how on earth can you think that the HC and BC's opinions are more valuable?

Makhil 27 Mar 2009 12:16

Re: Alliance limit
 
the best for alliances is to be left ouside of the game. No defense travel time bonus, they make the tools they like/can, they recruit the people they want/can. PA should be playable solo, then should work on galaxy level.

_Kila_ 27 Mar 2009 14:57

Re: Alliance limit
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by MrLobster (Post 3168620)
Which is better for the game?

1) 30 alliance of 50
2) 16 alliances of 90

You seem to be suggesting that the former is better. Why is it better? I'd say that the latter is better as it allows more people to play with alliances that they want to play with

Quote:

Originally Posted by MrLobster (Post 3168620)
The suggestion of "I want to play with my friends" is a little inaccurate, I dont think many people know 90 people they want to play PA with.

Yeah and it's a good idea to make people play in alliances they don't want to play in because there are arbitrary limits on how many members can join alliances these players want to be in? The reason alliances tend to fall apart and suck is because of unloyal players, what lower member caps do is just make the people who can't get into the alliance they want to be in go and play in alliances they don't want to be in, and will probably result in them being unloyal and contributing to the alliance crumbling. Just look at VGN this round and all the people who were playing for them because Omen were full. A load of good that did for VGN...

ArcChas 27 Mar 2009 22:54

Re: Alliance limit
 
Absolutely right, Kila - although wannabe Omen members only contributed a few of the problems that we've suffered this round - and I kicked some of them for ignoring our rules once too often. I had to stop myself or we'd have been down below 50 members by now.

However, most of our problems have been caused by too few HCs, BCs & DCs.

ArcChas 27 Mar 2009 22:57

Re: Alliance limit
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Banned (Post 3168685)
There are way more plain old members than HCs and BCs, how on earth can you think that the HC and BC's opinions are more valuable?

That's a simple one to answer - how many of these "plain old members" are actually going to run an alliance?

Please try to avoid making yourself look stupid by posting a ridiculous suggestion. If you have a genuine answer I'll be very happy to hear it.

Fuzzy 28 Mar 2009 05:52

Re: Alliance limit
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by _Kila_ (Post 3168717)
The reason alliances tend to fall apart and suck is because of unloyal players, what lower member caps do is just make the people who can't get into the alliance they want to be in go and play in alliances they don't want to be in, and will probably result in them being unloyal and contributing to the alliance crumbling.

hmmm 1 main point to make here

1. why do players want to play in these other alliances? (ie. ascendancy/omen etc.)

whilst i see your point, i dont think its all as 'pure' as you like to make it out. certain groups will always ofc have greater appeal in society to other groups. This is rarely down to some element of morals that group has etc, but more often due to what the individual can gain from being a part of that group. loyalty only seems to last as long as people can gain from it (without trying to be too much of a cynic)

by allowing everyone free will to join who they want etc you put more and more power in the hands of the already powerful: ofc you cant force a player to stick it out with a group like Rock or Orbit, but giving them the option to join asc/omen/ct/nd etc after 1 round in these smaller allies and theyll never have a chance to DEVELOP that loyalty to a particular group. (look at our gal this round _kila_ - considence, AJ and ClimaX all being relatively new players in smaller allies who joined asc. ofc this is their choice, but why did they join ascendancy? imo it was to experience playing the game at a higher level and to have that chance to experience winning. there is nothing wrong with this! but this is trend that will continue to repeat itself round after round if the mechanics allow it, its human nature)

im not trying to say alliance caps are ideal for promoting loyalty, but my point is motives for wanting to join big allies in this game like omen/asc/ct arent 'oh i like how the play' or 'i have friends there' but imo its more like 'i can get a better planet rank there' or 'theyre more likely to win'.

without meaning to get personal ill bring up 2 examples of players i know who highlight this (i hope im not breaking forum rules by doing so!)

1. elviz - how many times does he switch allies? nox r26, denial r27, ct r28, asc r29+30
2. mikee - joins audentes r29, leaves for asc mid-round. leaves/gets kicked from asc r30 and joins omen. leaves omen and afaik reapplies/rejoins asc

now these are two ISOLATED EXAMPLES. i am the first to point that out, however they illustrate my point that its not this undieing loyalty to groups which makes people join them, but individual gain. (im also aware there are others who stick it out with the same groups round after round when they could join 'better' allies: i guess stuhlman at vgn and lukeylove and ND are example of this). it comes down to were you think the balance lies within the playerbase between self interest and loyalty.

with a smaller ally cap i believe we will see more strong core groups of players develop (look at DLR and Factory), be competitive and mostly importantly SURVIVE round after round, whereas the larger, more ambitious new allies just cant cut the proverbial mustard (NoX, Audentes, Omen being examples of this in the past few round)

another essay :confused:


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