Changing Alliances

Orion's Belt Blog

December 6, 2010

Changing Alliances

Filed under: Alliances,ChangeLog — Nuno Silva @ 8:25 am

Several reports have been sent saying that players are constantly leaving their alliances and joining their “sister” ones.

Well, i have been watching the lounge for some time and in fact this is happening. And, of course, this isn’t right…

So to dissuade this measure, we are going to add a one week cooldown when you leave/join an alliance.

You, like in any other game, should have one and only one alliance. You should be jumping from one alliance to other almost every day.

Comments (23)

23 Comments »

Nuno,

Interesting idea… I think we all know why this happens. But what about those players that are leaving one alliance as a promotion to the next? I’m sure you’re aware by now that some filters are in place for new recruits. RL is the filter for DS… Foundation had adopted Polity as a filter when the Fyn accounts were disabled… Teams Pineapple & Turnip have this kind of relationship… and so on.

So, when the “filtration” is complete, what are we to do with the new recruits? When we want to promote a recruit from RL, we must leave that recruit without an alliance for a week? But it’s so dark out there alone… so cold in the rain… and we can’t even lend a blanket?

I’m not sure I like this idea in its entirety. I can see the necessity for the implementation of such a change, but I think we should add something to the equation. I propose the following modification:

A player may change alliances instantaneously at any time without an interference of a cooldown. However, the cooldown begins at that time and, for the next seven days, the player may not switch again. If the player leaves the newly joined alliance (voluntarily or involuntarily), that player may not join any other alliance until the cooldown has passed.

Such a modification will allow us all to “filter and promote” as necessary yet still prevent the constant jumping between alliances that has come to your attention. Can you make something like this work?

Comment by Redwulfe — December 6, 2010 @ 11:55 pm
As Redwulfe said, the period should start when a player joins and never when he leaves, but this brings a question… You let a player join… He starts doing stuff you dont like, etc, now you can’t kick him out!? And if you can, ppl will kick players to continue the same strategy… I’m thinking of solutions but nothing comes to mind =/

Comment by reborned — December 7, 2010 @ 3:23 pm
@reborned – I thought of this too, so I threw this into the last message: “If the player leaves the newly joined alliance (voluntarily or involuntarily), that player may not join any other alliance until the cooldown has passed.”

In other words, I wouldn’t say that a player can’t be allowed to leave an alliance or that an Admiral can’t kick the player. But, it doesn’t matter how a player leaves. The cooldown is still in effect.

To illustrate the point, let’s assume that I want to promote my secondary player, Equinox, from RL to DS. Equinox leaves RL, joins DS… the cooldown starts. The next day, Danceman sees the change and decides that Equinox should stay in RL, Equinox gets kicked by Danceman. The cooldown is still in effect, so Equinox is stuck without an alliance until the cooldown is over. Only after the cooldown has passes, Equinox can join RL again.

@Nuno – Any input?

Comment by Redwulfe — December 7, 2010 @ 5:31 pm
@redwulfe I like that idea

Comment by Danceman — December 7, 2010 @ 7:17 pm
Hello all

@redwulf, that a good idea. In fact me and reborned had been talking about this feature and we reach the same conclusion has you. The cooldown starts when he joins. If he is kicked the cooldown continues.

Thanks for the feedback guys. I’m going to implement this feature than along with a surprise

Comment by Nuno Silva — December 9, 2010 @ 7:37 am
@Nuno – Great, I’m glad I could contribute something useful. A surprise, you say? Oooh… -big grin-

Comment by Redwulfe — December 9, 2010 @ 6:49 pm
surprise? oh boy…what is it? the 1500 orion deal? don’t introduce surprises on this discussion! I’ve been sidetracked….

the jumping issue:

As I see it, I agree that the jumping prevents a problem for ‘promotion’ issues. And it is a cold, dark and lonely universe. Tough cookies. You get your blanket after the cooldown. The biggest reason to do this alliance jumping is to skirt the AH rules.

So, to use your example Redwulfe…Let’s say you leaves DS to join RL to get some radon that Equinox deposited there because you need it for a devastation. If the penalty is only when you join, you get that radon immediately and can fire your devastation…exactly what this measure I thought was designed to prevent. If you have to wait a cooldown, maybe someone else gets it, maybe it becomes less important because the universe has moved on…

If everyone knows it it’s a sister player sitting in cooldown…they won’t attack them most likely…Our universe is big, but not that big..We know who the players are.7 days is a bit much maybe..but Any reason u leave an alliance should be a cooldown.

Comment by kelleybest — December 10, 2010 @ 7:05 am
@kellybest that I know of, you can’t deposit with your secondary accounts or can you ?????? Equinox is a secondary account of Redwulfe. I could work the way around, Redwulfe deposit radon and equinox uses it, but we already all do that if we are in the same alliance, so whats the difference?

Comment by Danceman — December 10, 2010 @ 7:48 pm
But i do agree with pyro, something fishing is happening:

this player __vonmecheln has jumped in two weeks 4 alliances and also asked DS and ASP to join. You never see him being kicked out, maybe is abandoning but no system lounge message. What is this brazilian doing???? hmmmm

Comment by Danceman — December 10, 2010 @ 7:56 pm
@DM,

the difference is exactly what you said. The SAME alliance. Jumping alliances to skirt the AH rules, in my opinion, should be discouraged. And no there is no way to do secondary account that I am aware.

The __vonmechein thing is weird. I noticed it too. i don’t know what is going on with that guy.

Comment by kelleybest — December 10, 2010 @ 10:21 pm
But anyway Nuno, just a suggestion, you shouldn’t be so controlling (not that you are, just a reminder in the back of your head on every decision, if it isn’t already), the flexibility brings new ideas. I don’t think it was that much of a problem the alliance swapping, i think it gave more life to more alliances that were died.

Of course, maybe I’m missing something I haven’t discovered (being in different alliances could trigger some unknown not thought out features), actually I think I never left the Death Squadron since I joined it.

Yes Equinox would do it many times as our enemy alliances (polity swapping). But Redwulfe was trying to help our newbie players in the Relic Lords (which he knows I don’t agree but thats another subject).

But I do think that those died alliances after a while should be deleted or maybe be owned by someone, there using up good names. I know its not that easy, players may come back a year after. *sign* But it is sad to see does died alliances. Oh well, i guess nothing can be done about that.

Comment by Danceman — December 11, 2010 @ 6:38 pm
LOL yet again his fifth alliance in two weeks

Player __vonmecheln joined the Free Force Of Venus alliance!

I guess i wants to try them all

Comment by Danceman — December 12, 2010 @ 9:06 pm
Yet another alliance, its his 6th

Player __vonmecheln joined the Destroyaz900 alliance!

Comment by Danceman — December 19, 2010 @ 11:01 am
And again, 7th: Player vonmecheln joined the Corsários alliance!

Comment by Danceman — December 22, 2010 @ 3:47 pm
Nuno,

The bug with vonmecheln aside… when will this cooldown for alliance jumping go into effect?

Comment by Redwulfe — December 22, 2010 @ 7:31 pm
First let me thank you all for your feedback.

Regarding the subject, we are currently on vacations and new developments will only happen in the new year.

Until then we are planing 3 thinks: 2 surprises and 1 server change. So just after that we will update Orion’s Belt with the new features like changing alliances.

Comment by Nuno Silva — December 23, 2010 @ 7:51 am
Thanks for the reply Nuno. Good to hear that you guys are taking a little time for yourselves. Enjoy your vacations and have some fun! We’ll all be looking forward to those surprises when you return.

Comment by Redwulfe — December 23, 2010 @ 6:32 pm
i love surprises

Comment by Danceman — December 23, 2010 @ 9:10 pm
thanks Nuno….enjoy your holidays..

IDK what the Brazilian (vonmeichen) is doing, but he’s not going to be happy. He goes through 7 alliances and then decides to attack me inside of a friendly alliance?

he makes me laugh..I was targeted…. He’s only been a player for 480 days of which about 95% he hasn’t been around….and then suddenly comes back and attacks me?

I smell a rat.

Comment by kelleybest — December 24, 2010 @ 12:01 pm
@kelleybest – Well… Foundation is crawling with them after all.

Comment by Redwulfe — December 28, 2010 @ 10:52 pm
@ redwulf… Whereas all the rats in DS / RL left when they realised that the ship was sinking?

Comment by Mikeveal — December 30, 2010 @ 12:14 pm
@Mike – Who said the ship was sinking? We’re just having some minor engine trouble… -chuckle-

Foundation’s little life raft, on the other hand, is heading for an iceberg. There isn’t much to do now that your baggage is weighing you down…

Comment by Redwulfe — December 30, 2010 @ 7:15 pm
Oh, a Titanic reference? That makes me very sad.
My Great Grandfather is on the Titanic.

Comment by Mikeveal — December 31, 2010 @ 11:26 am