The Definition of an Alliance, and the rules regarding those

[Tietäjä]

Why am I posting this?

I am not posting this thread to accuse certain alliances of breaching the rules defined by the multihunter team. I am not posting this thread to put pressure on the multihunter team to enforce announced alliance limits, rules, and terms of EULA towards the given alliances in question. To underpin my point, I am leaving the names of the alliances in question out of the thread. Hence, before you turn this thread into a flamefest, block me with a bunch of negative reputation, or assault me with personal insults, please take this into your consideration.

This isn't an attempt to paint alliances whose actions are refered to in this post as cheaters. This is an attempt to create a discussion regarding the alliance limits and rules, their reasonability, and the ability, willingness, and attempt to actually enforce the rules given to alliances. This is an attempt to generate a discussion whether or not the given limits to alliances are reasonable, applicable, and enforcable as they are.

Case #1. It's fairly public knowledge, and it's been reported to the multihunter team on several occasions, that a given alliance harbors out-of-tag planets that have a fleet composition in a sole attempt to defend the alliance. It's an acknowledged fact that the given alliance uses this planet, these planets, whatever the true number of them are, in order to defend their tag players from losing asteroids, thus score, fleet potential, value, and value potential. It's also a known fact that the multihunter team feels that repetitive instances of a planet defending a given alliance out of tag, out of cluster, and out of galaxy, is allowed to continue, thus not found breaching the rules. Even if the given planet would, or will be closed after repeating it's actions times and times, the benefit would already have been claimed by the alliance given (which is, according to very undeniable evidence, covering incomings on it's various members using out of tag, out of cluster, out of galaxy, support with the fast defence ships [such as the harpy] able to cover definate types of incomings). According to undeniable intelligence, these actions have been repeated over and over again, and the multihunters have been informed of it. To add detail, the given alliance in question has it's tag limit full (70, the allowed amount of planets for an alliance) at the time of posting, and it's been verified that this(these) support planet(s) are not members of the given alliance, tagwise.

The conclusion: there is no sufficient evidence. It this a confirmation to a claim "Yes, you are allowed to have out of tag support planets to defend your in tag members, even if you are tagged to the maximum tag size of 70, in a repetitive fashion, until the multihunters feel the benefit has already been claimed for enough, and it's time to disallow it". If the claim represented stands true, it should be taken as a statement that an alliance, be it any alliance, is allowed out of tag support for a given amount of repetitive sequences, until closed. And, that no actions will be taken against the planets reaping the benefits of this support. The claim I represent breaches the rules announced by the head of multihunters, yet it's being currently allowed. Yet, nothing has been done about it.

Case #2. It's also fairly public knowledge (assuming you are one of the people who have competitive, vast intelligence details available) that a given alliance hosts more than the allowed 70 planets. The given alliance functions in fashion of selecting it's planets that are allowed in to the alliance tag amongst the planets that fare best scorewise. The planets with poor score growth potential are to be removed from the tag of 70 planets, and replaced with planets with better score growth potential. Even so, the planets removed from the alliance tag continue to function within the alliance (to an extent, perhaps not defending, but at least functioning in attacks organized by the given alliance). This leads to a conclusion that an alliance may have more than the given 70 active planets working solely for the alliance. It has not been confirmed by the alliance in question, that they repeat and function in this fashion, in regards of the planet(s) in question, but there are solid intelligence backing up the fact that a tactic of this fashion is being used by an alliance with it's tag full of the given 70 players. This claim, as the previous one, breaches the rules announced by the head of multihunters. Yet, nothing has been done about it.

At this point, the readers of my post may be thinking something in lines of "He is accusing given alliances of cheating, and posting this thread in order to put rules enforcement pressure on them". This is false. I am *not* posting this thread to generate pressure, or a flame fest, on the given alliances in question. Why I am posting this, again? I am posting this to create a discussion of the hardcoded alliance limits. Whether it's reasonable and fair to announce such limits, and yet not supervise them in obvious cases. Whether it's reasonable at all to announce such limits to alliances at all, as they are perhaps, by the given intelligence, details, and reports to multihunter team, reasonable. If it's reasonable at all to define such limits to all alliances, while it's proven impossible (or just solely not in the interest of the team in responsible of enforcing rules the given team of administrators announces) to enforce the rules defined. The obvious follow-up is, whether the alliance limits should be defined at all, given that they're to a very large extent not enforced by the team in responsible of enforcing them.

I, personally, am in favour of removing the hardcoded tag limits at large, as it has proven impossible, uninterested (or any given reason, which remains unknown to me) to enforce the given rules. Or, if the rules will eventually be enforced, the expected chances are, that the alliances benefiting from the "breach" of rules have already gained a level of benefit from "cheating" (which I refer to as breaching the alliance limits defined by the multihunter team).

Why do the limits excist?
Is it reasonable or possible to enforce these rules?
If the answer to the latter question is "no", the obvious follow-up to the first question is "there is no reason, because the limits will not be enforced".

What does the Planetarion community at large think of it?

[Monroe]

I think hardcoded allaince limits are fair in the sense that any team should have a limited number of players allowed to score points, otherwise the winner is just the ally that can get the most number of decent planets in tag. What I think you are really objecting too are the support planet rules and how difficult it is to clearly define and enforce them. In my personal opinion support planets should be allowed as long as they are actually being played by players and are not one guy with 100 VNC server sessions running controlling them. I personally don't see a balanced way they can really be enforced, and allies are always going to be looking for ways around the rules (as you pointed out in case #2). I don't consider either of the cases you sited as cheating, but just attempts to circumvent the alliance limit in a creative way, and imo I don't think it is worth anyone's time and effort to go after these types of cases. Just let the game be played, as long as the 'support planets' are equally available to all allies (at least in theory) then there should be no complaints about them being unfair.

[JonnyBGood]

Originally Posted by Tietäjä

Why do the limits excist?

Moaning 1up twats circa r15(?)

Is it reasonable or possible to enforce these rules?

No, they're based on ideas of "intentions", which cannot be reasonably proven most of the time.

If the answer to the latter question is "no", the obvious follow-up to the first question is "there is no reason, because the limits will not be enforced".

The limits aren't clearly defined so how could they be enforced.

What does the Planetarion community at large think of it?

Paging The Community!

[Tietäjä]

Originally Posted by Monroe

Just let the game be played, as long as the 'support planets' are equally available to all allies (at least in theory) then there should be no complaints about them being unfair.

Good reasoning. At the moment it seems that they are "unofficially" allowed.

Originally Posted by JBG

Paging The Community!

I expected this. Funny, thank you.

[viC]

Unlimited alliance sizes [as its pointless enforcing them] but make a planet's alliance tag always visible to everyone.

Perhaps limit how late into a round a planet can tag up [is this already in place?]

That would rock.

[Tietäjä]

Originally Posted by viC

Unlimited alliance sizes [as its pointless enforcing them] but make a planet's alliance tag always visible to everyone.

Would this solve anything regarding the issues mentioned?

[Kargool]

If this is a big problem, I would recommend someone to present proof to the accusations. And if an alliance supports being crooks, the said alliance should hold members that should have some dignity to speak up about the gray zone activity that is going on.

In regards to alliancelimits. I do not belive in having unlimited alliances due to several reasons i've mentioned time and time again. However, I do see the point in your views, and think that there need to be made some actions towards avoiding oogooa defence, maybe even hardcode it.

[Tietäjä]

Originally Posted by Kargool

If this is a big problem, I would recommend someone to present proof to the accusations. And if an alliance supports being crooks, the said alliance should hold members that should have some dignity to speak up about the gray zone activity that is going on.

As said, I don't want to turn the discussion into a flamefest of accusing alliances of whatever. The multihunters have the evidence presented to them, or known by them, whether they will act or not is for their judgement, not ours. Regarding "dignity", it's fairly safe to say the factions in question are at least aware of the activity going on, and choose to allow it, or go into extents of organizing it themselves.

In regards to alliancelimits. I do not belive in having unlimited alliances due to several reasons i've mentioned time and time again. However, I do see the point in your views, and think that there need to be made some actions towards avoiding oogooa defence, maybe even hardcode it.

Hardcoding OOGOOA defence out sounds very harsh, and goes even further down the road of hardcoding any piece of cooperation in the game. Of course, at first it might appear that hardcoding it off would solve lots of issues, but on the long run, it may just generate more. As hardcoding tag limits seems to have createn.

[Kargool]

Originally Posted by Tietäjä

Hardcoding OOGOOA defence out sounds very harsh, and goes even further down the road of hardcoding any piece of cooperation in the game. Of course, at first it might appear that hardcoding it off would solve lots of issues, but on the long run, it may just generate more. As hardcoding tag limits seems to have createn.

Any specific problems comes to mind?

[Phil^]

Originally Posted by JonnyBGood

Moaning 1up twats circa r15(?)

The alliance limits were introduced much much further back then that as far as i recall - around the r4-8 range
its the specific ban on support planets you are thinking of

If alliance limits are removed, as you propose - then dont come crying or moaning when an opportunistic alliance or set of alliances abuses it to create a super-tag/block for themselves to dominate the rest of the game.
70 people with -1 eta is one thing, 150-200+ with it is another entirely.

[Tietäjä]

It limits tactical allianceplay (tag controlling, that is). It causes people unable to cooperate defensively with people outside their alliance (and galaxy and cluster; before you fire at me for controversy, I am "in favour" of more flexible cooperation and teamplay, and less artificial unenforced rules and hardcoded settings). These just for the first glance, and it's hard to evaluate the real effect of such a setup on paper (as it probably was regards to the hardcoded taglimits, support planet rants, and whatever that evidently arose round 15).

edit.

Originally Posted by Phil

If alliance limits are removed, as you propose - then dont come crying or moaning when an opportunistic alliance or set of alliances abuses it to create a super-tag/block for themselves to dominate the rest of the game.

Aren't they already doing that? It's just limited by the tag size, but a single alliance can, will, and does have more "a few more" firepower than the given 70.

[Phil^]

i was thinking more in terms of the eta advantage for defence rather then the co-operation in attacks.
At least with the status quo there is a limit to just how useful they can be if not part of the tag. ( not to mention, not counting towards the alliances score )
In order to be of use in defence, support planets need to be active, have low-eta fleets and have the stats in their favour .
As part of attacks, support planets are just the same as cooperation with another alliance as part of a block

[Tietäjä]

Originally Posted by Phil^

i was thinking more in terms of the eta advantage for defence rather then the co-operation in attacks.

Attacks are a the application of force of an alliance.
Defences are a gadged for an alliance.
That's how "modern planetarion" is often seen to work.

At least with the status quo there is a limit to just how useful they can be if not part of the tag. ( not to mention, not counting towards the alliances score )

There's another look into this. To win, you need the best score. The only method to have the best score isn't to gather most roids through galraiding, trashing your enemy is possible too.

In order to be of use in defence, support planets need to be active, have low-eta fleets and have the stats in their favour

One of the given cases I described represents an active support planet with fast fleets. To name a few, harpies are very effective in stopping xandathrii frigate fleets, terran battleships can't do much against rangers, shadows, dealers, and scarabs can dish out damage to cruisers, bombers, corsairs, and vendors can work against frigates, spiders and banshees against destroyers, spectres and pirates against battleships. A planet fleet composition of which consists of 200 destroyers and 20,000 harpies is something of what you may consider "different".

As part of attacks, support planets are just the same as cooperation with another alliance as part of a block

Yes. Except that as discussed in the thread regarding the given subject on alliance discussions, creating a block, mind managing one, is a task itself that requires political ploy and cunning. Recruiting 120 is a bit of a different story.

[Phil^]

creating a block ( jesus are people actually advocating their return? ) is trivial.
All it takes is a few HC from alliances to go "wanna block" , agree and to just go along with it till the end. They dont need to do all that much additional management since all defence and attack control structures already exist. In terms of defence - one large shared def chan will do. In terms of attacks it just requires coordination by BC's so that they dont piggyback each other and generally aim to land on different targets at the same time to maximise the effect.
Its not a matter of recruiting, its simply a matter of cooperation with other alliances and so extremely little skill, cunning or political thinking is involved.

Blocks benefit those who belong to the larger one -alone-. Noone else benefits from blocks, and remember they were attributed to killing the game a few rounds back.

Recruiting 120 people is similarly trivial. Hell, i got a mass mail from wolfpack earlier this year inviting people to return.
Storing email addresses of past players for your alliance and emailing them doesnt seem too hard to do...

now, recruiting people who have never ever played the game before is somewhat more tricky. After all whats there to offer them?
Pa as a game, is dying along with its genre. Browser based games are a thing of the past. New people are more interested in things like fps or rpg games ( like wow )

[JonnyBGood]

Originally Posted by Phil^

The alliance limits were introduced much much further back then that as far as i recall - around the r4-8 range
its the specific ban on support planets you are thinking of

I assumed he meant the support planet limitations rather than the more general "alliance limitations", which certainly did not exist r4-8. Tags which forced alliances to use them were introduced in r10 with PAX. If any sort of limits on what were previously tags existed in PA they were absurdly high as mad cows had above 600 members in their tag in r6. Tags back then of course not being associated with realistic alliances.

If alliance limits are removed, as you propose - then dont come crying or moaning when an opportunistic alliance or set of alliances abuses it to create a super-tag/block for themselves to dominate the rest of the game.
70 people with -1 eta is one thing, 150-200+ with it is another entirely.

What an appalling thought. A group of people attempting to win a wargame through weight of numbers. I'm sure the universe will never recover. It's also rather unlikely to happen, although that depends slightly on implementation.

Incidentally I don't propose abolishing tag limits. Tags with real bonuses are a cool enough idea. It's the forcing everybody to conform to a set standard of playing rather than offering specific incentives towards playing a particular way that I dislike.

As an addendum regarding a different post, blocks don't kill the game. Stagnant politics kill the game. To be honest I'm not really sure if stagnant politics is more or less interesting from a metagame perspective than a round of gal raiding.

[Tietäjä]

Originally Posted by Phil^

creating a block ( jesus are people actually advocating their return? ) is trivial.

Funny you should say. Perhaps the people who originally advocated against blocks did in their "final rounds" attempt to create ones themselves. Follows...

All it takes is a few HC from alliances to go "wanna block" , agree and to just go along with it till the end.

Often proven difficult along the recent rounds. To elaborate, Sid failed to create one against eXilition at round 18. On the other hand, Night-Sky, Paisley, and Virall managed to block that round.

Blocks blocks blocks

Allright, we can go down the block path on another thread, please. How do you feel about the fact that the given alliance rules are nigh completely unenforced? Do you think that's just okay, or is that a *hint hint* to abolish these rules at large, once again?

[Phil^]

Originally Posted by Tietäjä

How do you feel about the fact that the given alliance rules are nigh completely unenforced? Do you think that's just okay, or is that a *hint hint* to abolish these rules at large, once again?

Annoyed. If i were still a hunter i would be getting the banstick out and hitting people over the head with it very very hard for using support planets

edit: I do not advocate removing rules when the inevitable result is that the game ends up an even larger farce.
It would be better to encourage people to play nice through insentives instead however that rarely works because people always try to push it for further advantages and end up ruining it for everyone.

The tag eta advantage was supposed to encourage people to play in tags with a size limited to make it fair for all, it hasnt worked. ( and support planets are the result )
XP was supposed to offset losses from people losing their fleet and quitting the game, its been perverted instead into another means of winning a round while remaining untouchable to those others you would be beating in the rankings ( but lets not go there -again-. Thats another thread )
buddypacks were supposed to allow people to play together with their friends, while getting random people in their galaxies to learn from experianced players. It hasnt entirely worked although it has helped a bit. People either exile the new players out, exile out themselves and in both cases whine about "how the gals suck".

If the carrot doesnt work, then the other two options are the stick, or to just close the game down as it becomes increasingly chaotic

[Kargool]

Originally Posted by Phil^

Annoyed. If i were still a hunter i would be getting the banstick out and hitting people over the head with it very very hard for using support planets

Sadly the current multi hunter administration suffers from sheer lack of ability to do anything except sitting there saying huh, or come with rude remarks when someone points out an obvious cheater to them.

[Phil^]

then apply to be a hunter yourself ?
edit: and dammit stop distracting me with this thread
Im supposed to be revising for the exam I have tomorrow :P

[JonnyBGood]

I'd say it's rather more likely the administration is not exactly sure what they want to do. Of course this has a lot more to do with the fact we're playing a browser-based game with an unsustainably small community in 2007 and pretty much everything short of investing big wads of cash is just going to end up being irrelevant. I'm sure the spectacular rise in numbers associated with rounds 16-20 can be directly linked to the fact that so many people read up about PA and thought "hay, that support planets rule sounds pretty confusing, maybe signing up and attempting to understand it is a quick and painless method of committing suicide".

Realistically alliances and tags are not the same thing. Alliances are freely formed groups of co-operating individuals. Setting an artificial ceiling on this is just going to result in people attempting to work around it because guess what, people prefer to play the way they want to, not the way you tell them.

[Tietäjä]

Originally Posted by JonnyBGood

Of course this has a lot more to do with the fact we're playing a browser-based game with an unsustainably small community in 2007 and pretty much everything short of investing big wads of cash is just going to end up being irrelevant.

I hope you're not saying the it will end up being irrelevant anyways is a kind of a valid reason not to do anything about the entities breaching the given set of rules. If it was, why bother setting up rules anyways.

Realistically alliances and tags are not the same thing. Alliances are freely formed groups of co-operating individuals. Setting an artificial ceiling on this is just going to result in people attempting to work around it because guess what, people prefer to play the way they want to, not the way you tell them.

Agreed.

[JonnyBGood]

Originally Posted by Tietäjä

I hope you're not saying the it will end up being irrelevant anyways is a kind of a valid reason not to do anything about the entities breaching the given set of rules. If it was, why bother setting up rules anyways.

Nah, that was just a sidepoint for the applauding masses who follow my every post (hello jester!). What I think should be done can be extracted from what I said in my last two posts above this one.

[Monroe]

For the record I agree with JBG (no I don't follow you around reading every post you make, sorry Jester). No police state mentality is going to 'improve' the game, this has been tried many times in real life and it has only led to really bad tempers as well as shortages of gasoline, food, other raw materials, etc. Incentives may or may not work, depending on how the community perceives them. As for ally caps, given how small the game is now they really are a must, back when the game was 10 or 15k people forming a meaningfully large block was virtually impossible unless the game had stagnant politics (which it did at times). Given the fact that the player base is now under 2k allowing anything larger then the current limits, at least in a single tag, is just asking for trouble. For futher discussion see my origional post.

[Almeida]

Originally Posted by Tietäjä

Why do the limits excist?
Is it reasonable or possible to enforce these rules?
If the answer to the latter question is "no", the obvious follow-up to the first question is "there is no reason, because the limits will not be enforced".

What does the Planetarion community at large think of it?

No i don't think that it is reasonable to enforce that rule.
the rule itself is poorly designed and as long as humans who have ties to the community enforce these rules there will always be some bias in a few decisions. (for example jerome said something like this about Phil^ regarding his times as a MH: "even when i was in 1up i thought he was pretty biased")

PA team could sooooo easily fix ALL the troubles coming with support planets.

hardcode it, so you can only defend your gal/ally/cluster. delete the rule that got introduced this round (the thing with beeing a support planet when you help an ally with your attack fleet).

edit: i think that the alliance limits should be kept though. or we will see 1 ally gathering the 200 most active players which would lead to a round full of boredom.

[Monroe]

Originally Posted by Almeida

hardcode it, so you can only defend your gal/ally/cluster. delete the rule that got introduced this round (the thing with beeing a support planet when you help an ally with your attack fleet).

I have heard this arguement several times and it makes me cringe every time I hear it. For one it won't actually stop support planets, just force them to be more creative, ie makes sure they have a support planet in each cluster (not hard to do with a little exiling). Secondly you are forcing people with hard code limits to play the game a specific way, and not allowing organic friendships to form which have always been the basis of PA. One of the things that drew me into PA way back in r1 was how I was able to meet people and play with them accross clusters. While the game has changed just a little bit since then the ability to help anyone I want whenever I want has been one of the fundimental basics of the game and I feel we should think long and hard before altering this basic game concept in code. Now if we want to create incentives to encourage certain tactics that's worth discussing, but hard coding tactics is a bad idea imo.

[Tietäjä]

Originally Posted by Almeida

edit: i think that the alliance limits should be kept though. or we will see 1 ally gathering the 200 most active players which would lead to a round full of boredom.

True. This still doesn't remove ability to pull stunts such as making two tags, or just recruiting tons and tons of flak to hang outside the tag, and manage it tagwise, which is happening with the case #2 mentioned.

[Almeida]

personally i don't mind that; i always enjoyed rounds with a block war much more than a round with "fluid politics" but that's just me.
as long as those two tags can't defend each other it basically isn't much different from two alliances blocking (maybe better organized, but that's all)

i understand that not everyone feels that way, but i got absolutly no idea, how to successfully prevent what you mentioned in case #2

[Hideo]

If you're going to give alliances benefits for tagging, then semi-forcing them to work within that group of people alone to succeed doesn't seem unreasonable to me. Indeed, there may be ways to make the advantages such that less experienced tagged alliances are more competitive (though of course not on even footing) with more established untagged alliances. And if the big boys tag they are somewhat restrained. ATM it's a cake-and-eat-it-too situation.