[wakey]

Originally Posted by Zo0f

wakey: Dear god please stop posting, your so arrogant it amazes me. I had the great experience of having you in my galaxy in r11. You rarely talked on irc and when you did it wasnt anything useful. The few times you did come on and send defence, you sent the wrong fleet or the wrong ships and people lost roids. In the end I exiled you, partly for fun and partly because you were no value to the galaxy at all.

The mere thought of you teaching anyone about the game scares the hell out of me. The fact you think it gives you some great value to the game amuses me.

Arrogance! Is having an opposing view due to my different background in this game to the masses that post on the forum arrogance. Should I also take then you’re complete and utter lack of understanding and care for the lower players and the alliances they are in plight as arrogance also then.

As for you other allegations.

1. I don’t remember being in your galaxy ever
2. I was always in my round 11 channel
3. I have a distinct memory of my round 11 galaxy hardly being very talkative.
4. My main period of free time for idle chat came during a period where no-one else was awake
5. I remember being the only one awake most of the time when the first lot of incomings showed up each night. As such I was the one reporting all the incoming to people’s alliances
6. The above point was the exact thing I said when the exile was started, infact it originally persuaded the GC to cancel the exile but 10 mins later when all the ministers were on it was redone
7. I never defend without checking with the planet or the galaxy member organising the defence so if I sent the wrongs ships ever it was the person running the calls fault
8. My new galaxy which was higher ranked and more active were more than happy with my contribution to the galaxy. Infact it was one of the best galaxies I’ve been as it resembled the early round galaxies most where the galaxy put alliance differences aside and worked as a unit and didn’t forget the fun and comradeship a galaxy should have
9. For someone who had no value to the galaxy, wasn’t active and apparently sent wrong ships on defence (which would normally imply Id lose ships) I did extremely well. I finished just outside the top100 that round while being in an alliance that only managed 17th spot. I was certainly the highest scoring F-Crew member that round by a fair way and also the highest defender in the alliance by a fair amount so I was doing something right

As for your actual points

Originally Posted by Zo0f

Training Alliances: If they can train with an 80 man limit, they can train with a 50man limit. Dont be scared of change. At worst training alliances could 'apply' for a special status at the start of each round, allowing them more slots for extra members (that would not count towards their ingame alliance score etc).

A reduction in members Doesn’t mean a real reduction in the personnel you need to run the alliance. This largely stays the same if you have 80 member or 40 members as its connected more to coverage of the requires people. While an alliance who’s average player spends 12 hours online might be able to get a good level of DC coverage on just 5 people another alliances who’s average time online is lower will probably require more. Its also effected by quality, if they are at the top of the game a player is likely to be able to handle more calls an hour than someone less experienced and skilled. And it’s not like the games blessed with an endless supply of people who are willing to do the role and are 100% ideal. The best people get picked up by the top alliances and everyone else has to do what they can with what they have got.

At F-Crew for example our ‘command’ numbers around 30 members (around 37% of our members). This includes but isn’t exclusive to the following roles

• HC
• Senior BC
• Junior BC
• Scanners
• Recruiters

This provides us a fairly good coverage for the HC, BC, Scanners and Recruiters and enough depth in BC so that at peak incoming time the BC’s aren’t completely swamped. With fewer members there’s the possibility of cutting some of these people but not at the 33% reduction that keeps it in line with the member’s reduction (that equates to around 11 command staff cut) unless we wanted to seriously overload these people and completely take over their lives.

And I would say we are one of the better alliances in this kind of situation, we have actually built up enough of a core to have the foundations of a solid command and we are less prone to issues of someone having to pull ridiculously long shifts or cancel ‘personal time’ else it doesn’t get done.

And yes you could allow people to apply for more members that don’t count but who decided what is and isn’t a training alliance. A lot of people argue that F-Crew’s top10 finishes mean we aren’t a training alliance; we however still put a significant focus on helping new/inexperienced players and feel we are.

And if 1up return and announce they are going to be a training alliance, or Angels announce they are shifting focus and being a training alliance but do you call them lairs and restrict their ability or do you grant them it and potentially give them an advantage of having support planets in tag. If they do that they are just making a mockery of the limit and defeating the object

Originally Posted by Zo0f

Mid Level Alliances: Ive seen a few statements that this would damage them. I have no idea how. I played a round in Howling Rain once, out of the 50+ members only 20 or so ever did anything actively. Infact I was quite horrified to see the memberlist at the end of the round. From talking with friends this seems to be quite normal. What a lot of people do not realise is all this flak can actually be a weakness.

It depends how people are classing Mid Level alliances. One thing I will say as a member it’s often hard to judge how active people really are. At F-Crew we had this one BC who every day would moan that he hadn’t ever seen 10-15 specific players and demanding they were kicked. At the same time some of this group were moaning they hadn’t seen another 10-15 people (one of which was the BC moaning about them) and demanded they were kicked. On the whole both sides were wrong, their online times were different and hence they weren’t coming across each other even though both sets were pulling their own weight.

Also someone who might be considered flak in one alliance may do more than enough in an alliance with fewer choices and hence makes a positive contribution. If they don’t make a contribution then they will probably be kicked.

Originally Posted by Zo0f

Top Level Alliances: A much lower limit would not only get rid of the trash and allow many to be more 'picky' (i.e. pick more loyal members) which would make them more confident and give them a chance to actually fight for victory. This would make the game more competitive.

How does it make it more competitive? How competitive an alliance is has a lot more to do with comparative strength of the alliance than strength of the individuals in the alliance. The individuals will always be stronger in some alliances than others and you need to do more than just lower a limit to overcome this. You need to offer methods for alliances to overcome or at least offset the members difference a little so they are more able to compete

Also how does it make alliance more confident and able to attack each other more? After all let’s say you have AllianceA and AllianceB. They both have 80 members and a similar score, size and averages. You then tell them they can only have 50 members so they kick the weakest 30 and end up largely keeping things the same but with fewer members. If they wouldn’t attack each other before nothings really changes to make them more inclined to attack now.