Alliance sizes

[silverx2]

I hate to sound like a broken record, but at what point are we as players going to become ok with shrinking the alliance sizes down? this game there are only 2 full alliances, and maybe enough people to make half a third alliance.

Things are going to get really really boring really fast with only two alliances

[RCK]

I hate to sound like a broken record, but at what point are we as players going to become ok with shrinking the alliance sizes down? this game there are only 2 full alliances, and maybe enough people to make half a third alliance.

Things are going to get really really boring really fast with only two alliances

I was going to make alliance size 15 when i designed the map... but i got told it was a stupid idea...

Need I say more

[silverx2]

its just people think there are not enough "leaders" to lead more alliances, when really the case is i dont think there are enough people that wants to take the leftovers and then get worked over for an entire round.

2 alliances makes for very stale gameplay, even with a 15 member limit we will have at most 3 full alliances an a 4 semi alliance.

Id really like a game to be made where alliance sizes are single digits in size

[RCK]

Id really like a game to be made where alliance sizes are single digits in size

The problem with that is for most alliance activity you require at least 9 ships (for either planets or ports)

[silverx2]

those would need to be adjusted of course.

[Beausoleil]

I tend to agree with you, Silver; it would be nice to have a third (or even fourth or fifth) strong alliance in the game.

I disagree, however, with the idea that we need to make alliances smaller. The issue here is with the number of active players; something that may be resolved by upcoming advertising campaigns and further refinement of the game and its community.

Making alliances sizes smaller may make the number of "big" alliances go up, but the quality of those alliances would suffer; PBs/PRs would become rarer, owing to the need for EVERY member to coordinate their personal schedule around ops (which is hard enough as is). One or two of these "single-digit" alliances may thrive, but it'd be at the cost of the others, since serious alliances wouldn't have the room to recruit and train new or inexperienced players.

In short, it'd be a surface victory, and the unresolved issue of a dwindling player base would still be unresolved. I say we treat the cause and not the symptoms by attempting to revive the active player base.

[silverx2]

meh I hope I'm wrong.

[JettJackson]

those would need to be adjusted of course.

Adjusting the game because of alliance size would be a huge undertaking and heavy code work, and not needed, maybe trying to recuit players, and promote the game would be a more rational idea.

[silverx2]

those would need to be adjusted of course.

Adjusting the game because of alliance size would be a huge undertaking and heavy code work, and not needed, maybe trying to recuit players, and promote the game would be a more rational idea.

while this is the ideal solution, it is also the one in which you put all of the eggs in one basket type situation. You sacrifice current players potential enjoyment on the hope that a future advertising campaign is going to bring in more people, when for all intents and purposes the game has been losing players consistently(my opinion no real facts, but based on player numbers). This means that even if people do join there is no guarantee that enough of them would stay. At this point in my view you are looking at needing 50-100 new really active players, and now in this sort of niche market i don't know what the chances of that happening is.

On the other hand you can plan out ways to keep the current player base, and balance the game around what would ideally provide the most fun, active environment, while also hoping to find a way to get more players back in the game, and then allow for a natural growth of alliance sizes again based on player base.

[Beausoleil]

while this is the ideal solution, it is also the one in which you put all of the eggs in one basket type situation. You sacrifice current players potential enjoyment on the hope that a future advertising campaign is going to bring in more people, when for all intents and purposes the game has been losing players consistently(my opinion no real facts, but based on player numbers). This means that even if people do join there is no guarantee that enough of them would stay. At this point in my view you are looking at needing 50-100 new really active players, and now in this sort of niche market i don't know what the chances of that happening is.

On the other hand you can plan out ways to keep the current player base, and balance the game around what would ideally provide the most fun, active environment, while also hoping to find a way to get more players back in the game, and then allow for a natural growth of alliance sizes again based on player base.

From an engineering perspective, it's never a good idea to redesign a system around attributes which are prone to change. The player base, in this case, is such an attribute; it's makeup and size will change, even though it often seems as though it won't, and gaming the code around what it is now could have disastrous effects for what it could be in the future.

There is also no guarantee that changing the alliance size would actually result in the game getting better; it could just as easily make the game worse. It's not worth the risk in finding out, given our already low numbers. Unless a lot of other people stand up and say they feel strongly about changing the alliance cap, it's probably best to leave it alone.