[Discuss] Alliance fund

Would there be any support for an alliance fund, operating in the same way a galactic fund does.

Would help smaller members of alliances or those who are being hit hard.

[mist]

been suggested before, generally thought too open to abuse

-mist

fair nuff. my bad

[Cochese]

I actually like this suggestion, and have wanted to see it since alliances were hard-coded into the game. Yes, it is abuseable, but perhaps there are ways to limit the amount of abuse possible.

If you can only donate to people below the alliance average, or something similiar, surely the amount of damage possible is limited?

[Kal]

Originally Posted by Cochese

I actually like this suggestion, and have wanted to see it since alliances were hard-coded into the game. Yes, it is abuseable, but perhaps there are ways to limit the amount of abuse possible.

If you can only donate to people below the alliance average, or something similiar, surely the amount of damage possible is limited?

I agree, it would be really good if there was a way to make this work

I can see how abuse can happen, but i think it would lead to a lot more ballanced scores within each allaince, it aslo means a bad run of hits wont ruin your round

[Cochese]

I think the main issue is using it to mass-donate to select players and all the other nasty business we've seen in the past.

All donations would have to be logged, and someone (a multi-hunter or whatever) would need to check it daily. People donating the most, and people recieving the most donations, could be watched for suspicious activity, etc.

Perhaps create a new covert op as well, that would target an alliance's fund?

[Kattepis]

Nice option but when it gets donated it should arrive 8 ticks (or more or less) later or else an alliance ony have to have many res instead of schips and active people.

[wakey]

An idea i've always liked as part of the alliance fund is the possability of 'compensation' when it comes to players leaving.

A major problem smaller alliances often have is their prime assets being poached mid round which leaves them in major trouble. Heres an asset they have put alot of time and effort into and were relying on them as a way of bringing more people through and then they are poached and you get nothing back.

Now what I think would be intresting would be a system much like the military. When you join an alliance you do so for a certain term (ie 1 round). The only way out of the alliance would be for you to either 1) be dishonourable discharged by the HC 2) Buying your way out of the alliance or 3) having a new alliance buy you out (basically tpay to transfer you)

It will bring about more loyalty for alot of people because its now more formal plus if they decide they really want to go elsewhere the alliance can be compensated so they can then use these resources to help boost the smaller planets.

Probally the best way for buying yourself out of the 'contract' would be

- Your score/value is taken, along with your rank in the alliance and the value calculated accordingly. This means a 1mill BC's release fee will be the same no matter if they are in 1up or Revolution

As for alliance buying out your contract I dont think it should be quite as simple as buying yourself out. This is a direct transfer to another alliance and it shoudl cost more to take the fact you miss the allianceless stage you would if you buy yourself out.

The fee should probally take teh following things into consideration.

- The persons rank in current alliance
- The % of the current alliance score that member makes up
- The differnece between the two alliances

This would mean if Revolution were to have a 1 mill member poached by 1up they would receive more money than if it happened the otherway round because not only would the 1 mill player make up a greater % of Revolution's total than the 1up player on the same score makes up but also because 1 up are considerable larger so for themt o poach they would have 'penalty' payments where as Revolution would receive a 'discount'

Now as long as the forumulas are such that the amounts dont get silly (ie so they arent as high as say exile costs are) it will still allow people to progress further when they feel they need to and the bigger alliances will always be on the lookout for more active players BUT it doesnt leave the smaller alliances in as much of a pickle

[Kal]

Originally Posted by wakey

An idea i've always liked as part of the alliance fund is the possability of 'compensation' when it comes to players leaving.

A major problem smaller alliances often have is their prime assets being poached mid round which leaves them in major trouble. Heres an asset they have put alot of time and effort into and were relying on them as a way of bringing more people through and then they are poached and you get nothing back.

Now what I think would be intresting would be a system much like the military. When you join an alliance you do so for a certain term (ie 1 round). The only way out of the alliance would be for you to either 1) be dishonourable discharged by the HC 2) Buying your way out of the alliance or 3) having a new alliance buy you out (basically tpay to transfer you)

It will bring about more loyalty for alot of people because its now more formal plus if they decide they really want to go elsewhere the alliance can be compensated so they can then use these resources to help boost the smaller planets.

Probally the best way for buying yourself out of the 'contract' would be

- Your score/value is taken, along with your rank in the alliance and the value calculated accordingly. This means a 1mill BC's release fee will be the same no matter if they are in 1up or Revolution

As for alliance buying out your contract I dont think it should be quite as simple as buying yourself out. This is a direct transfer to another alliance and it shoudl cost more to take the fact you miss the allianceless stage you would if you buy yourself out.

The fee should probally take teh following things into consideration.

- The persons rank in current alliance
- The % of the current alliance score that member makes up
- The differnece between the two alliances

This would mean if Revolution were to have a 1 mill member poached by 1up they would receive more money than if it happened the otherway round because not only would the 1 mill player make up a greater % of Revolution's total than the 1up player on the same score makes up but also because 1 up are considerable larger so for themt o poach they would have 'penalty' payments where as Revolution would receive a 'discount'

Now as long as the forumulas are such that the amounts dont get silly (ie so they arent as high as say exile costs are) it will still allow people to progress further when they feel they need to and the bigger alliances will always be on the lookout for more active players BUT it doesnt leave the smaller alliances in as much of a pickle

I like

[noah02]

LCH could like send max resource held to a n00b
and then he can build 50000000000000000 harpys against an attacker
Damn that would annoy me arriving at a planet with loadsa ships in production.

[wakey]

Originally Posted by noah02

LCH could like send max resource held to a n00b
and then he can build 50000000000000000 harpys against an attacker
Damn that would annoy me arriving at a planet with loadsa ships in production.

Obviously there would have to be limits on waht can be sent to prevent it being too much of a powerful tool Something like limiting it to 1 donation to a planet a day and a max donation of something like half the planets value. That way it can be used to build up small planets but its not enough to make it that useful from an abusable pov

[Kattepis]

Originally Posted by Kattepis

Nice option but when it gets donated it should arrive 8 ticks (or more or less) later or else an alliance ony have to have many res instead of schips and active people.

It makes me thinking of round 3 but wont certain alliances start farming?

[noah02]

Not really you cant attack your own alliance.

[Ferretus]

I like the idea of buying your way out of your alliance. As regards the fund in general, I'm sketical of its use really. I guess you could use it like Dark Throne does and limit donations to a very small amount a day. Would kinda defuse the point of the fund but would also limit its abuse. It would also allow all players in the alliance to benefit from a player being poached.

Its a good idea but a severe shake up of the alliance system (eg reduce to 50 members etc) would need to be implemented in order for it to be most effective.

[Newops]

i hope the MoD will be screend ,loads of resourses going round then..could make 1 planet big in a instance.

[Troll]

The alliance fund works only if it has a great deal of limitations on it.

Limitations

#1 Resources donated take 12 ticks to arrive to the receiving planet

#2 One donation is allowed at a time so if the Alliance accountant was on the ball the best an alliance could do is 1 donation every 12 hours.

#3 The donations are limited to players in the bottom 30%

#4 Donations are limited to the value of the targets current assets (as in you could double a planets value)


Assuming these four simple limitations are added to any alliance fund it would be very hard to manipulate. There could be no donation defense where an alliance donates to a planet and he produces his own defense via a low production time. This also prevents donating a planet to #1 as at best a planet could only really receive a single max donation before one assumes it would raise him out of the lower 30%

The benefits are there however and perhaps this should be instated.

Alliances could take on lower scoring players that have been bashed or are newer to the game and give them resources as an investment. If the planet is active it would then have more ships and be a larger asset to the alliance.

Bashed players could recover faster assuming the alliance finds there activity level worth the investment

Alliances could issue a tax (would be nice to hard code) allowing for a better overall balanced alliance score. I know a few larger planets that would find this horrifying.

Alliances could punish there players by making them pay resources into the fund for breaking rules. I can see Syn Sid doing this for sure.

Just a thought

[A2]

Originally Posted by Cochese

If you can only donate to people below the alliance average, or something similiar, surely the amount of damage possible is limited?

In the same way as the Galaxy Fund works, except on an Alliance scale you mean.

Originally Posted by Wakey

Now what I think would be intresting would be a system much like the military. When you join an alliance you do so for a certain term (ie 1 round). The only way out of the alliance would be for you to either 1) be dishonourable discharged by the HC 2) Buying your way out of the alliance or 3) having a new alliance buy you out (basically tpay to transfer you)

Only think I can think about that is people would suddenly deliberatley try to get themselves chucked out of an alliance. That would however lead to an interesting situation whereby someone wanted to leave an alliance but didn't want to pay, but the alliance HC didn't want to kick them out because they wouldn't get any resources added to the fund for it,.

[mist]

Originally Posted by Troll

This also prevents donating a planet to #1 as at best a planet could only really receive a single max donation before one assumes it would raise him out of the lower 30%

this only works if the alliance doesn't manipulate its member base.

by kicking everyone else from the alliance someone coud double their size at the end, or more if they did it earlier and had a lot stored. if the alliance isn't going to win then i suspect at least some would be willing to do it to get top planet

-mist

[Kal]

Originally Posted by A2

In the same way as the Galaxy Fund works, except on an Alliance scale you mean.


Only think I can think about that is people would suddenly deliberatley try to get themselves chucked out of an alliance. That would however lead to an interesting situation whereby someone wanted to leave an alliance but didn't want to pay, but the alliance HC didn't want to kick them out because they wouldn't get any resources added to the fund for it,.

maybe somethign interesting here - but maybe if u buy your way out u don;t get the 72 tick penalty, whereas if u get kicked you do (pentalty changes to avoid the vacation mode dodge)

[A2]

Originally Posted by Kal

pentalty changes to avoid the vacation mode dodge

Or alternatively the "vacation mode dodge" could be plugged as well.

[mist]

are there any statistics on how many planets change alliance during a round?

i'd not have thought there were enough to justify all this thought, and this will have no effect between rounds

-mist

[Kal]

Originally Posted by mist

are there any statistics on how many planets change alliance during a round?

i'd not have thought there were enough to justify all this thought, and this will have no effect between rounds

-mist

quite a lot do move around between alliances, not that many big planets though.

[BCEagle]

At least big when compared to top 100, but if you are in a small alliance and a 1million player leaves because he was accepted into a better alliance, it often hurts the smaller alliance significantly.

[mist]

Originally Posted by kal

quite a lot

quite a lot being how many, roughly? like, 25%, 30%?

-mist

[BCEagle]

As an example I am in a galaxy with 50-60 members and we have had 18 drops this round, this is probably higher than a high ranking alliance's drop rate, but 33% in any alliance is shockingly high.

Almost more importantly this would make it so the alliance you chose met something more than it does now, which would be cool.

[wakey]

Originally Posted by Kal

maybe somethign interesting here - but maybe if u buy your way out u don;t get the 72 tick penalty, whereas if u get kicked you do (pentalty changes to avoid the vacation mode dodge)

I dont think buying yourself out of the alliance should remove wait period tbh, this should be the benifit of another alliance buying you out BUT perhaps it could be that buying yourself does give you less of a wait period than being kicked.

Perhaps something like this

Kicked - 72 hour wait, no resource costs
Buy yourself out - 36 hour wait. Costs you resources
Buy out by alliance - No wait (or maybe a small 'paper work' wait so that alliances cant buy defence when in immediate trouble). Costs alliance

While it would depend on the circumstances the alliance buy out should generally costs more to account for the lower waiting time.

As for A2's comment about people trying to get them kicked, your possibly right they might do that but then again if you want to leave and do this your playing a dangourous game. Not only will you be allianceless for 72 hours but if your overly obvious about it you risk seeing yourself frozen out so throwing a hissy fit wouldnt be wise would it. And if you want to leave and dont want to pay yourself then you always have another option, get the alliance you want to join to buy you out, if they want you enough they will as it will be a smart investment.

Originally Posted by mist

are there any statistics on how many planets change alliance during a round?

i'd not have thought there were enough to justify all this thought, and this will have no effect between rounds

-mist

Your right that it had no effect between rounds and alliances will still lose members at this stage BUT its not quite as damaging for an alliance at this stage. Losing members is never good especially if they have got some experiance but between rounds all members are pretty much equal and you can prepare for any lost experiance so it has lesser impact on the alliances round BUT mid round this isnt the case. Suddenly losing a bigger member puts you on a major back foot and as the round is ongoing its alot harder to adjust and make that loss up

As for figures as Kal said its not something that happens between the top few alliances as much as they have less or no real draws above them. But the further you get down the list the more it becomes an issue and infact the bigger the impact often gets. Simply the greater 'bigger' alliances you have above you the more to draw members away there is and the larger the problem gets.

Its simply something that helps weaken the lower end of the game which doesnt help incoming players as alliances lose alot of assets in this way and while compensation isnt going to be as good as having the member it does at least help soften the blow

[mist]

how much compensation are we talking?

even in a 50 member alliance, members are only going to see 2% each of the cost of a buyout. even for a planet that's twice the alliance's average size that's going to be a 4% growth for them if the planet has to be bought out at cost.

wandering off on a wild hypothetical for a moment, i'm going to assume that people want to do as well as they can for the investment in the game they make. this means that they're going to want to be in the best alliance. obviously, supply and demand takes effect here - if you're a bad or inactive player the top alliances arn't going to want you. anyway, this should result in alliances having members of roughly equal ability - obviously some will be a little above and some will be a little below, but over that's what i'd expect.

given this it seems unrealistic to expect good players to stay in crap alliances. infact, it seems rather unfair to expect it of them. you seem to be thinking of the alliances here, spare a thought for the poor guy who knows a decent alliance wants him, knows he could actually be having fun, yet is being held back by this attempt to make lame alliances better than they can be.

anyway, going back to the idea of buying out at cost. frankly, this seems unrealistic. if you make the cost high enough to have an impact on the smaller alliance i doubt the larger one will pay it. they'll tell the person that they can join next round. so, what's this person doing to do? they're in a crappy alliance, which they know they're leavin next round and untill next round they don't have a chance of being any good 'cus their alliance is crap. what're they going to do? how active are they going to be?

overall, while this is a lovely idea i think the practical aspects of it are... impractical

-mist

[Cochese]

I think the ideas of being able to pay an "alliance tax", and espeically being "fined" for violations (ie, caught three fleet attacking, you get fined x amount of resources or somesuch) are interesting.

[mist]

as farming's illegal nowadays, it would present an alternative to the old 'you made a bad, so they get to roid you' thing.

i'm not sure an alliance tax is a good idea. i've always been against taxes on the basis that the resources are far better spent actually building ships and such, rather than sitting in some fund. plus, what would an alliance tax be used for? i can see the small alliances using it to help out people who've been attacked, but what would the big ones use if for? my cynical side suggests it'd fund scan/covop planets and, depending on restrictions, be used to boost people up the ranks

-mist

[Cochese]

The tax, like the proposed galaxy tax, could be optional.

Yes, it would most likely fund scan/covop planets, but that's partly what the alliance fund is for anyways, and that's probably what the big alliances would use it for too. I know as a scanner last round, I could have seriously used alliance donations for the dozens of scans I would do.

The restrictions on it would be as A2 suggested, like the galaxy fund: you would have to be below the alliance average (ie, the scanners or people having a lousy round) to recieve donations.

PA is still stuck between being a team game, and one aimed at the individual. Things like the alliance fund are imho, first steps towards truly making it an integrated team effort--which it should be.

The benefits are not solely for the big alliances...even the small ones would find this useful I'm sure.

[noah02]

Originally Posted by BCEagle

As an example I am in a galaxy with 50-60 members and we have had 18 drops this round, this is probably higher than a high ranking alliance's drop rate, but 33% in any alliance is shockingly high.

Almost more importantly this would make it so the alliance you chose met something more than it does now, which would be cool.

Damn How did you get such a big GALAXY?
Hehe.

[BCEagle]

Originally Posted by Cochese

The benefits are not solely for the big alliances...even the small ones would find this useful I'm sure.

I agree with you here, in our alliance we would like to set up a scan planet but many of the active players are too valuble and inactives are worthless and don't have enough income to be a good scan planet, with donations we could just present it as an option, so they can have a big fleet but also do a bunch of scans, and good call on galaxy, I meant alliance.

[mist]

Originally Posted by Cochese

Things like the alliance fund are imho, first steps towards truly making it an integrated team effort--which it should be.

this is probably why we disagree on a lot of things, i don't think you should have to be in a top 5 alliance to play

-mist

[Kal]

there is a difference between team work and being in the top 5 alliances.

[Hellcat]

On the topic of the "People breaking alliance rules on purpose to get kicked - therefore avoiding the cost of leaving their alliance"

What people are missing is that the planet will be alliance-less for 72 ticks - the HC's have his co-ords - and an alliance attack could be arranged to collect their monies in the form of XP and roids.

Then the planets that took part in the "lesson" could donate back to the alliance fund (if the funds lost by his kicking were that desperatly needed)

Overall I think this idea is fantastic. I have a few small planets in my alliance - mostly new players and free accounts - and if I could donate to get them bigger they might do better (hopefully ) and get addicted to PA giving a bigger playerbase

I think hellcat has really got a point there.

[mist]

as far as i'm aware, all the comments on a charge for people alliance hopping have been from people from relativly small alliances, tho without tags i'm not sure

anyone from a large alliance want to comment on what they'd be willing to pay for a member, rather than just getting them at the end of the round?

-mist

[Sovereign]

Hi... soz, I didnt bother to read the complete thread, but an alliance fund is a very good idea imo.

Also I was thinking maybe it wud be nice to av cargoships to transport roids and/ or ships to another planet.
Then keeping in mind there cannot be transports when an jumpgate opened with hostile fleets in the galaxy. Also, transports can be intercepted or something. Just an idea... Could make PA a bit more complicated,wich should rock.

[Veil05]

Originally Posted by wakey

1) be dishonourable discharged by the HC

maybe you have to pay a fine also. and until fine is paid, u cant join another ally?

[The_Mad_Keg]

hey, i like the idea.. just one comment, about the one donation every 12 ticks. quite often more than one planet in an alliance will be hit at same time, so rather than have only 1 donation. how about a max limit on how much can be donated per 12 ticks, so that if several planets are attacked, resources can be spread amongst covering them. thought they would get less res than if it was 1 person, least allows some re-building to take place

[Chika]

i think its a bad idea. For the simple fact that it is easily exploitable, and HC's can donate early to one planet that they favor to win.

[Banned]

Originally Posted by Chika

i think its a bad idea. For the simple fact that it is easily exploitable, and HC's can donate early to one planet that they favor to win.

Yes, the 'all eggs in one basket' strategy is always a winner.

[wakey]

Originally Posted by Chika

i think its a bad idea. For the simple fact that it is easily exploitable, and HC's can donate early to one planet that they favor to win.

As has already been mentioned there would have to be strict limits on donations to keep it in check. For example a limit on the amount that can be sent, how many donations in total can be sent and how meany to each planet ect. All features are abusable but this is one which can have the abuse limited a fair bit

[Ali]

I like...

[Ali]

From lookinga t all the suggestions above I believe the best way to have it would be as follows:

A person when he joins an alliance becomes committed to that alliance as suggested "like the military" and can only get out via.

1) be dishonourable discharged by the HC
2) Buying your way out of the alliance
3) having a new alliance buy you out (basically pay to transfer you)

I believe everyone is thinking of a one lumpsum type payment but I believe a penalty like 5% of your resources get donated if you leave and so on, maybe for a certain number of ticks. The penalty/cost would be different for each situation.

1 - The HC's would vote to "exile" you out of their alliance. If you are kicked from an alliance you should have to wait 72-96 ticks to join another alliance.

2 - If you want out of an alliance you should have to wait 48 ticks and have a penalty maybe even for the whole round of 2-5% of your resources to the alliance you left. If you leave another then you pay that fine to the 2nd alliance also. This way people would not want to leave alliances and would show some loyalty. This would make alliances get money into their fund for the rest of the round as compensation for a person wanting to leave and make allianc ehoping something discouraged.

3 - If another alliance wants you that alliance should have to pay a lot and you should also have to agree to pay a certain amount of res per tick for a certain amount of time. Both should be set by your current alliance HC maybe and have some sort of limit so the alliance having you now can't be ridiculous. Sort of like they can choose that the new alliance must pay 2 million of each resource, and you will have to be penalized 3% of your res for 100 ticks. Then the buying alliance HC's click agree and you as the planet click agree (in alliance section somewhere) and the transaction is done immediately.

(discuss?)

A fine will be able to compensate for the loss of those big players since players like the top Xan right now who has almost 7000 roids can make around 2.5mil res a tick would be paying (if 5%) 125k res every tick into the fund of an alliance he left. This is a penalty to him for "breaking his contract" of staying with an alliance and is something that if 125k was given to smaller planets could get them up enough to offer defense in alliance and so on, rather than just being a burden on an alliance. Using fund to help teh smaller end (like under avg alliance score) is definately a good thing.



---



Alliance fund,

Should work a lot like Galaxy fund ... used by HC's to buy a new member, and should only be able to be donated to those below average and so on. If you can only donate to those below average it will only be feasonable to donate in the lower part of an alliance to help build it up. This should be capped at like maximum donation of 5 million resource and once you hit the cap you can not donate for a week or something to same planet.

(discuss)...