Functional Alliances

[Nephadral]

This suggestion supports the following three ideals:

1. Teamwork over individual achievements.
2. PvP over PvE
3. One account over many alternate accounts.

What I suggest:

a) At the beginning of each new round no one but the alliance leader belongs to an alliance.  Others may join an alliance once they have reached commander level 1 (except the official training alliance).  Once someone has joined an alliance for the round, they cannot leave or be kicked out. (Perhaps a 1 year rule in SOWARS)
b) Alliances gain bonuses as a group.  The alliance gains a bonus for each counter attack signature on its members, up to five count toward the bonus per commander.  I.E.  an alliance with 6 members, each with 3 counters ON THEM = 18 % bonus.  An alliance with 20 members, each with 1 counter on them = 20% bonus.
c) The alliance bonus is applied to ALL members.  The bonus is applied to all galaxy structure production and the SAB (where available)
d) Alliances are ranked based off the average member power of the top 80% in the alliance.  I.E. only the top 8 in an alliance of 10 would be counted.
e) Round rewards go to both individual commanders (like it is right now), and also to all members of the top ten alliances (I.E top alliance gets $100 split 20 ways by its 20 members, so $5 each)

What this changes:
I) Alliance members will have to learn to trust each other and work hard to help each member of their alliance to succeed.
II) One individual will struggle to keep up with alliances who get large bonuses.
III) Alliances will have to PvP to get a bonus, and they will have to use their counter attacks to keep other alliances from keeping their bonuses.
IV) I imagine that since no one can leave an alliance, there will be no entry until someone has proven themselves capable.  This will make it difficult for an inactive alt to gain acceptance into an alliance.
V) The commander ability to increase maximum alliance size becomes useful.

Okay, there is my idea.  I am sure there would be some tweaking to be done, but I thought i might put this out there.

Most of the ideas come from another free online browser based space MMORPG that has THOUSANDS of very ACTIVE members.

[FTP]

Alts will ruin it... you can just get in an alliance with 19 alts... you sue the alts to get counter attacks on them to get a nice boost at your own account...

[V]

Then either get rid of multi accounts all together (would be easier then Emi thinks to code, as I could probably get the code for him)...
OR Make the boost you get based upon the money power someone kills...
I have been thinking for a while how cool it would be to have a system whereby the alliance gets a sort of CP and the leader has a terminal where they can upgrade things alliance-wide... The way you come by that "CP" is by the money power the alliance members destroy... for instance you could do like 10% of all losses go into an "alliance bank" or 10% of all CP used goes into an alliance bank... etc etc... you guys can perfect the idea, but alliances are ... well, could be better in this game... right now you pretty much get in an alliance for fellowship if you're not a noob... as they dont offer much help/boost/teamwork as they stand

[MasterJohn2]

Seems to much work, emi wouldn't accept it period, players have it too easy to gain credits and max as it is.

[V]

way to be a pessimist mj   

[Saturn 7]

A few issues.....
Firstly making it impossible to remove someone from an alliance could cause big problems. No matter how careful you try to be, someone who turns out to be a totally uncontrollable nutter may slip through. Alliances could get ruined by just one individual like this. Also someone joining an alliance may find out that they do not fit in and if they couldnt leave they may instead quit the round or even the game.

Next, imposing PVP as a gameplay on an individual isn't entirely fair if your refering this to include SoMain. There are people that prefer more PVE but not to the extent of playing on the PVE server. Main is supposed to be a mixed server that caters for both PVE and PVP.

I like the idea of an alliance pool that the leaders can assign to various bonuses that help the alliance as a whole.

I'm not sure about sharing alliance ranking winnings, this could encourage 'hangers on' to try and join only the potentially top alliances, and get rewarded for doing little.

I do agree that Alliance rank should be based on an average of its members, that way if just 1 member gets a top 10 but 6 or 7 get top 20 spots, their alliance could get rewarded with a higher ranking than just the one person in the top 10...... This will encourage much more team work to bring lower ranked alliance members up in power.

Good that you posted this idea though!!

[Grondavor]

I definately agree that something should be added to cause alliances to actually work together, and possibly get bonuses, because as manna said earlier, they aren't of much use currently except for fellowship.  I also agree with Sat that the bonuses should not be entirely based on PVP, as some people dont like to do PVP, rather it could be based on a mix of PVP and PVE, or the alliance pool(i like the first idea better personally, but dont care too much either way).

The alliances getting award money seems like it would be cool, but there would be several loopholes to get money for doing little work as somebody pointed out earlier, but could work if we do something to fix that.  I definately agree alliance power should be based on average power of the members.

There are some really good ideas in this thread and this could DEFINATELY lead to some major improvements in the game, because alliances really should have a point other than socialiozing.

[Jan`go Vhett]

So I agree we need alliance-wide bonuses.
I think maybe killing an alien or encounter higher than the alliance power could earn bonuses for doing PVE and killing say 50% of an opponents FP in PVP could earn bonuses.
I also think there should be alliance wide research only not have only the leader decide it but have everyone be able to put what they want toward it.
We could have some of the buildings I have seen proposed added for alliance research possibly or just straight bonuses similar to mothership modules and commander abilities.
Most of these loopholes, as I see them, could be plugged by having alliance Leaders who are un-afraid to kick members.

[jessiedog]

always been a big supporter of alliance bonuses. honestly, theyre not that big of a deal. not to be self-serving or anythin, but PoF did a pretty d**n good job of working together even without any physical bonuses. All the good alliances have, amagnon's group, tzarkoth's group...

as ftp said, alliance bonuses will simply be abused.

[Spayed]

yes you can gain alot by simple working together.

mem showed that to perfection..

i have liked the idea of alliance bonuses for a long time. we would have to be careful to try and make it harder to abuse.

[V]

who tf is PoF?

[Spayed]

its a wars server alliance.

[Fester]

I have said before that anything that improves the function of alliance in the game is a good improvement, however as sat has said locking either an alliance or an individual into a long-term stay could be problematic.

One way to look at this would be that an individual looking to join an alliance would have to pay a joining fee either in resources, cp or credits that would go to the alliance treasury to be used to develop alliance wide bonuses. This means that people joining would have to make some effort the ensure they are joining the right alliance for them. This joining levy would not be refundable if they leave.

Also as the alliance increases in power the joining fees should increment proportionally, which should stop people jumping into successful alliances for the sake of it.

Joining fees would be returned however if the alliance (leader) opts to remove an individual.

The resources and funds available could be used to develop a territorial element to the game with alliance controlled regions to be protected.

Next idea, a new search function be added to the ship list (currently either public or private) of Alliance, allowing you to search for designs that are produced by your fellow alliance members. Using this option would divert a portion of the royalties to alliance coffers.

Seems I'm thinking of a lot of work for the alliance leaders 

[Nephadral]

as far as not being able to be kicked from or leave an alliance goes, this idea to to entice the alliance leader to be very selective in who is allowed to join the alliance, and for the alliance to be highly motivated to ensure that the new member is brought up to speed and given every needed to be successful.

However, because 'moles' will occur, I could support the idea that a player can only join 'one' alliance per round.  If that alliance chooses to 'kick' the player, then that player has lost the privilege of being a member of an alliance for the round. (in WARS I still say that movement between alliances can only occur yearly, there should be more of a risk of espionage is WARS, and more of an incentive to screen alliance members)

[Spayed]

i like the idea of a joining fee fester. and also alliance bonuses should be earned by both pvp and pve. also with the option to donate your own money/cp/resources to further move along the alliance production.