[DISCUSS] Approach on a new system for alliances

[Heartless]

I think everybody should have noticed that a "new" alliance system is badly required.
People are blocking which leads to stagnations and constant bashing of "newbies". All previous approaches towards alliance leaders to stop the blocking failed, more or less.

Therefore I'd like to discuss the system I had in mind and tried to explain a bit in a different thread which is basically against blocking.

From what I have in mind, the core points of a new alliance system would be:

1. Limit Galaxies to members of one alliance only
2. Limit Alliances to a certain amount of galaxies
3. Alliances need to declare war on other alliances in order to attack them
4. Limit amount of alliances that can declare war on a certain alliance
5. Alliances will be revealed from tick 1
6. Allianceless planets cannot attack alliance members
7. Alliances cannot attack allianceless planets.

Let's start explaining those points.

Point 1: Limit Galaxies to members of one alliance only
This is simply required to make blocking less efficient. Blocks share galaxies usually, so it is hard to make them split up.

Point 2: Limit Alliances to a certain amount of galaxies
Also simply required to avoid one block "hiding" under one massive alliance tag.

Point 3: Alliances need to declare war on other alliances in order to attack them
This point solves quite a few issues. Issue 1 would be the "friendly fire" - people will think twice before joining an alliance, this is in favour of every alliance. On the one hand it helps alliances to get rid off "selfish" people which in absolutely no way want to for the alliance but only want to abuse it as a defense source. On the other hand this takes away a lot of incoming from the newbies (unless a certain event occures which I will describe later), so they got a better chance to grow and enjoy the game.

Point 4: Limit amount of Alliances that can declare war on a certain alliance
I am considering this point because otherwise the blocking effect can still take massive effects, i.e. the whole universe would be able to focus on one alliance completely. Can be discussed to be removed though, since it would require alliances to think a bit about their reputation.

Point 5: Alliances will be revealed from tick 1
Yes, I know everyone currently being in an alliance will flame away now. But why does everyone have something against this? Because they have pissed off a lot of people and now they fear to be targetted from the start. Well, I say: Your choice, really. You decided to piss at someone in one round, you should expect him to focus on beating you the next round. It's just fair.
Additionally this could possibly make some of my previous and upcoming points unnecessary as the whole universe can watch right from the beginning who does what. Yes, exactly, this point would mean alliances would be required to get some kind of reputation, as in acting responsible, which is majorly lacking in this game.

Point 6: Allianceless planets cannot attack alliance members
I know, it is debatable. But allowing allianceless planets to attack alliance members would throw up quite some trouble, starting with alliances having people in random galaxies to avoid any limits which were set before.

Point 7: Alliances cannot attack allianceless planets
The reason should be simple, alliances would not necessarily declare war on each other in order to get targets, they would go hunting the randoms and therefore they would just bash newbies until they do not stand a single chance anymore.

Now that all points are explained, I would come to a few exploitation possibilities of this system.
Basically nobody would have to use this system, we would have all people playing on as usual and nothing would change -> the whole idea would be a mess. To avoid this, and more or less force people into using it, there should be random and private galaxies at the same time.
Private galaxies simply need to be assigned towards an alliance upon creation.
Another point would be that alliances should be limited to be rather small, a maximum of 50 people (5 galaxies). The rest ... well ... will it be very hard for newbies to succeed? I am seriously unsure. It would give them the round 1 spirit again, the spirit to get to know other people. Additionally, Random Galaxies should be able to join alliances at a certain point later in the round, for a certain price, for example, 5% of their roids & fleet. This is not a huge price from my point of view, but it is of course debatable.

So now, I know it is a rather long post, I am waiting for comments.

[Razorback]

nice ideas would have worked great in r5 or r6, now its too late because the playernumbers are missing for such a project.

If pa is unable to get more and i mean noticeably more players within a very short time it will die.
Regardless of botplanets. nice ideas or huge changes.

PA needs a newbie protection area this has to be the agenda
to support such a movement you need to offer ingame gifts for ppl investing their time on new players..

While this step is taken you need to remove the chance of bashing but keep the chance of growing alive.
Blocking can be controlled by ingame politicsoptions and by "admins" watching out for rulebreaks.

[Gerbie]

1. Maybe it should not be possible to let people from other alliances join private galaxies. There does need to be an incentive for people to go random. Random galaxies is the best way to get new players involved in the game. other fixes for the shared galaxies problem are already planned to be implemented.

2. There already is a limit to prevent people from hiding under one alliance tag. This limit should stay. We don't want one super-alliance to dominate the game. I therefore don't see the need to implement this.

3. I don't see any need for this either. It doesn't help solve any major problem.

4. Say the limit is 5 alliances. TFD 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 (all 1 player strong) declare war on TFD 6. (Ok, maybe 2 of them merge to declare war on the alliance ranked 100)

Hmm enough comments. Back to playing my PA clone.

[ComradeRob]

Originally Posted by Heartless

Limit Galaxies to members of one alliance only

Definitely an idea worth trying. It's not unfair, as it treats every alliance the same way. Mixed galaxies are always used as the reason why blocks can't split up, so eliminating the mixed galaxies would help the blocks to split up (in theory, at least).

Limit Alliances to a certain amount of galaxies

I'm not sure if this is a good idea or not. If implemented, the limit should not be set too low. My main reason for this is that many older players may choose to play if offered a place in a good private galaxy. Setting a limit on the number of places available will also serve to limit the number of players in the game.

Alliances need to declare war on other alliances in order to attack them

Might be a good idea... but it might also reinforce blocking. It encourages alliances to focus on attacking a small number of other alliances (presumably alliances weaker than themselves). I could imagine a situation where the top alliances simply refuse to declare war on each other. Giving HC absolute power to ban their members from making non-approved attacks would remove a lot of the fun from the game imo

Limit amount of alliances that can declare war on a certain alliance

What if that alliance is #1 and can only be defeated by the combined efforts of several other alliances?

Alliances will be revealed from tick 1

This could be a good idea also, but it does remove the fun of the first week or two when nobody knows what side everybody else is on. I don't think it would be a huge improvement overall, but it might be fun to try for a round.

Allianceless planets cannot attack alliance members
Alliances cannot attack allianceless planets.

The game is small enough these days without more artificial restrictions on targets, in my opinion.

[mist]

this has all been said before, so i refer you to this forum for reasons it won't work. particuarly posts by sid

writing it again won't make it any more feasable.

-mist

[wakey]

Sorry but alot of these ideas are seriously flawed.

Originally Posted by Heartless

1. Limit Galaxies to members of one alliance only

So what happens if you want to change alliance or your alliance disbands. You going to force these people to then either play outside of an alliance or force them to be automatically moved to a galaxy from that alliance. This whole aspect is just totally unworkable

And how are alliances supposed to recruit throughout the round, it might be fine for the larger alliances who have their members locked in from day 1 but the small alliance need to grow throughout the round. Unless people who join an alliance are automatically moved from their galaxy and thrown into some random galaxy of that alliance thus moving them from their group of people they have become friends with, you either have to immediatly give membership to the whole galaxy in that alliance even if the players dont wish to OR you have a situation where one person joining an alliance results in 9+ players not havinga choice as they can only eb recruited by one alliance

Originally Posted by Heartless

1. Limit Alliances to a certain amount of galaxies

And who does this actually damage, once again small alliances whom are always more streatched out than the big ones

Who are you really damaging

Originally Posted by Heartless

1. Alliances need to declare war on other alliances in order to attack them
2. Limit amount of alliances that can declare war on a certain alliance

So FAnG declare war on a smaller alliance early on whom are easy roids for them, this smaller alliance wants to attack back on some of the smaller FAnG but doing so for a handful of targets in their range isnt viable so they have to sit back so they have to just sitback and let themselves be hit with no means to make any hits back without wasting a valuable war spot

Originally Posted by Heartless

1. Alliances will be revealed from tick 1

You did play round 2 didnt you? If so you have a short memory because what actually happened here was all tags were public, the big alliances used these to take out the smaller alliances quickly while those smaller than them immediatly know to stay away from their galaxies. This leads to the big growing while everyone else shrinks

Originally Posted by Heartless

1. Allianceless planets cannot attack alliance members
2. Alliances cannot attack allianceless planets.

So what you want to do is split the game in two, havent you ever noticed that playing numbers are one of the vital parts of this games success and your just wanting to halve it. Also havent you noticed that Alliances themselves arent actually bad, alliances are ones of the things that makes the community good, the problem of alliances is just the win at all cost tactics that some employ.

What would these two parts acheive a) a handful of alliances remain playing, you kill the rest whos members all goto play as allianceless players or b) People whom are officially allianceless will continue playing with others and alliances will just once again be an external factor that theres no control of. You simply cant stop people working together