@Pak

Sounds like the leadership is leaving room for doubt. I've led a very successful alliance in a game where you had zero control over when attacks on your territory would happen. The game had multiple servers so it was on a smaller scale, about 800 members all told. Half or more of those members were in 'minor' guilds, but no one ever felt like those guilds were not doing their share, at least not in my guild, and if anyone among them ever felt that way they kept it very quiet... obviously. That's simply a matter of following the views expounded in your first link logically. People aren't going to doubt the value of their input if they can rationalise it away, and it's pretty damn easy to rationalise utterly baseless (whichever way you look at it)words from an enemy.

That first article almost caused me to not read any further btw, it was pretty much common sense. The only reason I did read on was due to the fact that someone had managed to verbalise things most people take for granted, which is quite difficult to do. I've read several others now and they've been better, interesting although I wouldn't say terribly enlightening. I quite enjoy the high drama of massive alliances dissolving, so the 'case study' types are my favourites so far.

How much does a t4 long range demob slow you by?

Yeah sounds kinda like calling someone a noob after they just smashed your face in really. Just a word used to insult, but kind of counter to logic.

So basically it's a term you use when you want to insult someone for being in a small corp? I'm just trying to figure out how exactly someone came up with the idea that a small corp allying with a large corp is worthy of a negative term. What is bad about it?

What was different then that made ictus imba?

From what he said, sounds like LWF is still going to be a mandatory fit, but the gap might close significantly between t4 lwf and low end ones.

If t4 is 15% reduction, you have to squeeze t1 t2 and t3 between 1 and 15%. 1% would be completely worthless with the added penalties, so I'm guessing they'll start a few points in. Maybe 7.5/10/12.5/15% reductions? That would make t3 very viable and t2 feasible for cost. Remains to be seen how they'll go about it though. It could end up more like 4/7/10/15%, which I doubt would change anything.

In my opinion, the penalties should be cut by 50-75% and the mass reduction should be cut by 75%. The major cost of installing it should be the slot it occupies, and the bonus it gives should be small enough to balance with that cost. That's the first method that occurs to me in order to change them from a requirement to an option. They shouldn't be a standard fit, they should be for bots dedicated to speed and/or economical in their module application. Such a major advantage from one slot will simply cause players to play around any penalties you apply to it. Balance the advantage with the opportunity cost of not installing something else there, rather than penalties on the item itself.

The demob penalty in particular is quite meaningless. At the current mass reduction levels, if you don't equip it and they do, they don't need to demob you anyway, so your lack of vulnerability to being demobbed isn't exactly helping, unless you're also demobbing everyone you're facing.

Size restricted teleporters could be fun somewhere down the line. Some teleporters could have decayed worse than others and only be capable of transporting bots up to 4m hit size.