It would be interesting to find more info. I do not see how that could be the case (well, I do, if I assume it was implemented stupidly, but I do not think the devs are stupid, therefore I do not see how they failed to implement it).

More likely they verified that there is no imbalance therefore this is a non issue and they do not care.

What color the faction is depends on how you define the color of a faction. I personally tend to designate each faction with the color of the stripes that decorate the buildings and the structures on the sides of the mortorroads. Thelodica uses goldish yellow colored stripes as decorations.

I do see and understand your point. And indeed there are rules and exceptions to rules.

In EvE there are a lot of "pet" and "renter" corps and alliances that are fully aware about being in that role and perfectly happy about it too. They do laugh at the monikers and they do consider themselves sort of "business partners" of the leading military organization in the area.

No-one ever said that you call a friend of your enemy a "pet" and by noon next day they failcascaded and you win the simulation.

It's more a question of war of attrition.

Also I did not mean that a leader of an alliance should intervene directly into a discussion on how a fight was conducted (at least not a discussion among the fighters, a strategical or tactical discussion vis.a.vis with the fleet commanders as a post mortem analysis of an operation is another story, but it would generally not involve comments on errors made, just strategical consequences and possible next steps).

However you do not have full control of how your organization grows, how good the different leaders are in building the right culture and all such things. You can have this sort of control in your corp (size 100-150, but sometimes larger and often smaller). You sometimes have it in your alliance (size 1000-5000), especially if it's made of few large corps and is focused (example a 1000 characters military alliance with 3 or 4 military focussed corps in the 200-300 characters each). You rarely have it beyond that.

Immagine this: a powerblock of 15-20 thousands of characters. Three "main" (in terms of military and political strenght, not in terms of numbers) alliances of about 2 thousands military focused, each also bringing in half a dozen or more "pet" alliances and "alt" alliances. Plus some less powerful alliances that are not directly "pets" of those main ones. This does not count the "renters" because they generally do not come into a campaign (may or may not be involved in defensive actions, but generally they only do it if their very territory is attacked).

There may or may not be a leading one, but within the powerblock the leadership is generally based on diplomacy. Those three "main" alliances will have the main talks. The smaller ones that are not pets may participate, but will have lesser diplomatic strength: they are part of the powerblock mostly as a convenience to them as they are aware they are weaker and it's good to be aligned with someone powerful.

No matter who you are, you did not build all of the powerblock. There are different cultures in the different organizations. The "highest" position you may have is that of the leader of one of the three strong alliances and the satellite alliances around you. No control over the other two groups nor over the minor ones.

So let's switch focus to one of those three organizations. You have built a strong military alliance. Probably you have a 200 characters military corp that you lead, there is another, or maybe two other, similarly sized military corps lead by someone you know very well, trust and share opinions and methods with. Then you have a bunch of possibly smaller alt corps (corps with alts of you and your members) each dedicated to something specific. Maybe logistics and transports, maybe industry whatever. Some of these corps may be  for industrial players that do not have a military main. All together you count 1000 mostly military and have been very successful. You control territory and are one of the three "main alliances" (in political and military terms) within the powerblock.

However you also have renters and pets. Let's forget renters. There are, let's say, 8 alliances that live as your pets. You call them "business partners". They live in your territory and help you defend them. They are partly military partly industry. The military parts came along with you in your campaigns. They generally are the same size of you or maybe bigger.

You did not build them. You have little control on their organization and culture. Together they outnumber you three to six times. Yet you are better organized and stronger. You could kick them in their butts any time. They know it. They became your allies because they believed it was much easier to ally with you and share your glory than try to beat you. You did accept them as "partners" because even if your 1000 are better than their 4000, the 5000 of you together are better than your 1000 alone. For similar reasons you then allied with the other three in the powerblock (15000-20000 is still better).

See the difference: you and the other two similar leading alliances in the powerblock are the ones that really did conquer the territory. The "pets" either helped (under your lead) or came along later. Also "renters" are those that exploit the resources and pay you for that. They are not going to come to fight against an enemy that may live far away (possibly they do not fight: they are industrialists or PvE players that are not specced or trained for PvP. They'll fight, maybe, if the fight comes to their home. But like peasants fighting with pickaxes against cannons).

So you somehow lead a force of 5 or 6 thousands and represent them within an organization of 15-20 thousands. And you have maybe 2 or 3 thousands more that will not fight but somehow you still represent them (the renters). And all you directly controlled and built in terms of "culture" is a 200-300 characters corp. At most a 800-1000 characters (including alts) alliance where, however, you are just directly organizing just one third or one fourth of the people, and the rest are under other leaders that built their corps independently (but you are united because it turns out you learned to know, like and respect each other, and they recognize you as the one representing your alliance).

The above is, more or less, the most common setup. It's not the only one. There have been forces lead by absolute dictators. And there are forces with a totally different organization. For example the alliance of the author of those articles (The Mittani) is atypical: 7000 characters in an alliance of 90 corporations, but the main force is a corp of 2600-2700 characters, a couple of specialized military corps with about 150 characters, a once external military corp that later has been accepted in the alliance counting 450-500 characters. All the rest are industrial and logistic corporations. That alliance historically had very few (if any) pets and renters. They did, however, have allies (as in partners in a powerblock) and occasionally considered "friends" other forces.

Remember also that, when someone is very powerful, the rules are sometimes a little bent. It is not unheard of to go with the rule: you are an ally so I'm not going to invade your territory, but I will eventually roam there and kill you, your pets and your renters if I'm bored.

EvE is harsh. There's no really safe area (think of it as there's no PvP flag and you can actually kill someone in alfa. There will be consequences, but if you really want to do it and are willing to suffer the consequences, you can do it). The metagame is the rule. No matter who you are, you WILL have spies and enemies in your organizations. And they may be closer to you than you think.

Suspect and fear is your daily breakfast. If you do not have the balls for that, go back to WoW. Yes it's a game. Yes, if you are considering suicide for what you lost, you need help IRL. But even if it's a game, it's going to be a hard game. It takes years not only to train the characters, but to build an organization that has some chance of being among those that make history. And your enemies are up to the bar.

Let me tell you of one "emergent gameplay" as they call it. A leader of an organization eventually pissed of a small corp. They decided to pay mercenaries for revenge. The mercenaries accepted. They created new characters. They infiltrated the organization. They gained respect and friendship from them. They gained power. A couple of them became leaders. One became the "second in command". When they felt ready, they organized the trap. Stole the organization assets and destroyed in an ambush the ship of the leader proceeding to kill her afterwards.

You may think she was gullible. She wasn't. She just befriended and trusted someone that turned out to have a secret agenda. A mercenary paid to bring on a revenge. It took him a few years to earn her friendship and respect. Him and his corpmates actually dedicated most, if not all, of their game time over a few years to that very thing: infiltrate her organization and act as dedicated loyal friends willing to work hard for the growth and prosperity of the group. Except that they were actually on a mission to destroy.

Consider what Winter Solstice wrote: it is a game. And this means people are willing to behave differently than in real life. Sometimes they will be like kids even if they are adults. Sometimes they will do things that would make them criminals and possibly bound to psychiatric care, if they did it in real life. But exactly because this is a game, they are not crazy or criminals. One is not following an obsession if he spends years to organize the doom of whatever you have spent years to build. He's playing. You spent years to build pixels. He spent years to destroy your pixels. He's not mad, if you cannot stand the idea, you are the one with a problem. (I do not mean you personally, I'm using a generic "you" here).

So, in such a universe. In such a reality. How sure can you be that if you enact good leadership your organization is not going to fail cascade? And how sure can you be that those words from your enemy did not play any role, maybe a small role, in your failcascade? After all even a billion pounds is still made of pennies.

It would be much more interesting to have the exact opposite: you use up a module slot to gain the ability to activate the teleports silently so that the guard in the watch tower actually needs to watch.

Again it's a question of scale. And also a question of how tasking the mechanics of the game are. 800 people on the server is nothing compared to EvE territorial warfare. Not even the kind of warfare they had a few years ago (and that's what we are talking here, today things are still different). With 800 people on the server a "large" force (numerically) counts in the dozens. If you have a corp of 100 members, it's easy to summon a group of 70 or 80 for an organized fight. Harder, but doable if you are good, to summon a group of 70 for a three ours fight each day for a month or two. But things do not scale. With a corp of a 1000 it's not easy to summon 700-800 for a fight. And very very hard to do daily for a month. Go up another order of magnitude and with a 10000 strong corp you'll find it very hard to summon 8000 once. No chance to do it repeatedly.

The mechanics of territorial control also are important. "No control on when an attack comes" is not sufficient context. What are the consequences of the attack? If a single attack can grant the enemy your territory, you can get it back as easily.

Think it in the context of the old EvE warfare. To control a territory you needed to control the majority of the moons. To control a moon you need to have a POS deployed there and keep it there intact for several days. Only one POS can be deployed at each moon, therefore it's either you or the enemy. Getting a constellation requires control of dozens of moons, each a potential target for the enemy. Destroying a POS requires a double attack: first round you put it into reinforcement. This makes the POS invulnerable for a number of hours (how many depends on how much fuel the enemy loaded in it).

Dozens of targets to be taken. Each requires a double attack. You decide when the first strike comes. But the enemy decides the timing between the first and the second. If you do not show up exactly at the correct time for the second attack (and bring enough power to actually win it), your first strike was useless: you will have to redo it. If you are successful you need to deploy your own POS and fuel it. Then defend it. And also keep it fueled (logistic nightmare in and by itself).

Both the first and the second attack may require an hour of firing by a fleet if there's no one defending (those structures are tough and also have automatic weapons). If the enemy actually shows up it'll take longer (and the attack may be unsuccessful). You need to destroy several dozens of those. AND to deploy and defend several dozens of your own. And then defend them. For days or weeks. And you are, maybe, 20-30 minutes away from the closest place where you can dock, repair and resupply. Capital ships made all this a little less of a problem, but there was a time when not many corps had capitals yet.

Add to the above the fact that a defending force may well deploy several dozens of ships. Often counting into the hundreds. And they are, by definition, "close to home" (logistics, resupply, time to redeploy when you are killed etc.).

The leadership required to organize and execute a territorial conquest, while keeping valid defense in your own territory and while keeping the logistics, the industry and the cash flowing to support that all, is not simple. A small but strong alliance with focused players would count 1000-2000 and lead a block of allied alliances altogether counting 5 to 10 thousands. And would rarely face a single enemy, but multiple forces on multiple fronts (while generally only focus to win on one front and just defend positions on the others).

While it appears "logical" that whatever the enemy says is not to be believed, you, as a leader, are going to face internal struggle for power (multiple), discontent about how a fleet commander conducted a fight, burnout from the struggle (in a campaign, if you do not keep it up for a long time, all you did so far becomes useless. And if you do, success is still not guaranteed), conflicts between the PvPers crying for more numbers and calling the industrialists and logistics to fight, and the industrialists and logistics that are not interested in PvP. Or the industrialists lamenting lack of local defense/logistics because the fighters are away from home.

One tactic used by small forces to defend was ... do not defend: go harass the enemy industrialists until the fighters are called back home to defend. Then disappear so that the fighters get bored and come to fight you again far from their home. Rinse and repeat until the internal struggles between these two groups are so strong that your enemy becomes weak (of course you need a few spies in the high and respected ranks of both the enemy industrialists and the enemy military, to help not only gauge the current situation but also slightly push the struggles up a notch).

I do not doubt you were (and probably are) a good leader. But I hope I did picture you what the reality was in that kind of warfare. And if I did it right, you'll understand that things are not easy. They seem very obvious when reported. But aren't when you live them daily.

All hindsight is pretty much common sense.

They are not enlightening because they are hindsight and reports. If you had lived them, they would also have a small "enlightening" flavor. Also these all happened a few years ago. Today most of the dramas happen in a slightly different way (exactly because today all those psychological mechanisms are well understood by most leaders, if not by most players). Also the current mechanics of territorial warfare are different. And the numbers involved are different too. It is no more possible, today, to have a chance in territorial warfare with a couple of hundreds of underskilled players just because the are very focused.

It's a question of scale. When the game mechanics are such that keeping control of territory requires being able to deploy a hundred people for a few hours of fight and you only have partial control of when the fight happens, things get tough.

In the times when those terms began being used, a campaign lasted weeks or months. Fights happened daily and the mechanics required double-assaults: first you attack and put the enemy structure in "reinforced" mode. Then you come back when the reinforced-timer expired and destroy the structure (and replace it with your one). You decide when the first attack happens. The enemy decides how long the reinforced timer lasts (but must do it before your first attack or). Taking a territory required taking control of dozens of these structures and keeping it for several days.

Many fights are therefore bound to happen outside your primetime. It's not unheard of late night alarms for an EvE fight. If your enemy has 5000 players and is somewhat organized, he may well be able to deploy a hundred at almost any time. And several hundreds in his primetime.

You may be able to win with only a few hundred players, but only if you convince them to be available daily for a few hours and keep doing it for weeks or months. And also be willing to come online in the middle of the night. It's easier to get the numbers if you have a few thousands of people who joined your ranks, instead of just a few hundreds. But more people are harder to control.

With few thousands of people it's no more a question of "doubting their rationality". You are guaranteed to have all sort of people around. Including many that are not rational.

The dynamics of a group of 100 players are not the same of the dynamics of a group of 1000 or 10000.

And when you have fights of 100-200 people per side with the timing of the fight not 100% under your control, you are talking of 100-200 out of a group of very focused 500 or normally focused 1500. When those fights happen daily for weeks and are sometimes logistical nightmares (as in when you die you need to travel for 30 minutes in hostile territory to join back your group), things get worse. If you can still ensure numbers in the hundreds daily, you have either a very large group or a very focussed one. Neither are easy to keep going. Especially if you know for sure that you have a few spies among your ranks that covertly work exactly on that: defocussing and demotivating your group.

The "persistently very active" numbers are always 'small'. As for yelling 'noob' to someone who beat you, that's exactly the point. Except that you are not doing it under delusion. It turns out that, given the numbers, you do not need to 'hope that someone believes you': you are guaranteed it will happen. That's why you do not do it under delusion but as a deliberate tactic.

Read the links in my previous post.

Eve terminology.

Derogatory name for a corporation (or even an alliance) that is considered worthless and weak but lives and prosper in PvP areas thanks to the protection/benevolence of a bigger and more powerful one. It especially applies to being weak/worthless in terms of political power, not intrinsically in terms of economical or military one (note however that those things are related: superior economical and military power generally also implies political power, therefore the lack of the latter is also generally considered to imply lack of the former).

Pets will "obey" orders from the more powerful force and have compulsory participation in military operations organized by them, in exchange for the "permission" to live in and use the resources of the PvP area they jointly control.

The derogatory "pet" moniker is not to be confused with the (sometimes also used derogatorily) moniker "renter". A renter also has permission to live in the area and exploit the resources (sometimes with specific limitations), but it is not generally required to participate in military actions, except for those of "territorial defense" of the specific area they are renting and, occasionally, bordering areas. However "renters" do have to pay a weekly or monthly fee for the privilege of living there and not being attacked by the main controlling force.

In simpler terms: "pets" are allies but with no (or very limited) political influence. "renters" are exactly what the name implies: people that pay for not being attacked.

Does that mean that having a current game economy is something that will actually happen in the future? <smirky grin>

Here I am waiting for them to introduce a firearms specialized mech with 10% per level falloff, 2% per level firearm damage, 3% per level speed bonuses. And call it "Falcon".

Because of Vaga.

Fuel is not a NIC sink. If anything it is a material sink. If fuel is not tradable from player to player and only purchasable by NPCs, then purchasing fuel would be a NIC sink (purchasing it, not using it).

A lot of people use to say that losing robots (or ships or whatever) in PvP is a NIC sink. It isn't. It's a material sink. Actually if there's some sort of insurance then it's a NIC faucet.

In terms of global economy, NIC faucets and material sinks act as an inflationary force while NIC sinks and material faucets act as a deflationary force.

An economy is stable if these opposite forces cancel out (are balanced) AND there is high money speed in the markets. If there is not sufficient money speed, the economy is stagnant and prices will fluctuate wildly independently of any balancing forces. Such fluctuations cannot be controlled by balancing/unbalancing. With high money speed however the economy will tend toward stability in the long term as long as inflationary and deflationary forces are balanced.

Remember: NIC sink is a simple action that removes NIC from the economy, not something that removes it from you. If you buy stuff from another player the only NIC sink is any taxes/market fees you pay, not the price of the item you buy. Using fuel is not a NIC sink as there no NIC removed from the game when you use fuel. Buying fuel from an NPC is a NIC sink, not using it. Buying fuel from another player is not a NIC sink (except taxes and market fees).

1) Can you at least confirm whether most of the crashes are due to an "out of memory" condition or to something else (like an invalid dereference)?
2) What heap implementation are you using? Is it MS C++ standard one or are you using a custom allocator?