STAR and PACT

[TeaLeaf]

As requested at the semi-official BBQ meeting, I have been back in contact with STAR regarding the Alliance.  This is their current version of their articles.

[pdf]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2805949/Star%20Citizen/STAR-GoverningArticles.pdf[/pdf]

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/orgs/STAR

Terms have not changed since initial discussions earlier in the year.   They remain committed to working together and still ban piracy.  They have no intention of changing either.

Reminder: STAR run the Reddit Star Hangar ship sale group.   You'll recognise a lot of names in the org from their Reddit names.

Currently have 9 member orgs:  

[TBSI] Black Star Initiative (204)
[SGHQ] Sturmgrenadier (167)
[BFFC] Babylon For Free Constellation (36)
[ZARODINU] ЛЕÐ"ИОН “ЗА РОÐ"ИНУ” (126)
[INTN] Intelligence Industries (232)
[FOFF] Fork Off (73)
[BNMC] Black Nova Mining Corporation (14)
[BURNED] Burned Renegades (24)
[BLUETOPIA] Bluetopia Network (15)

STAR post that they "have one of the largest capital fleets in the game with 12 Javelins and 40+ Idris in addition to great camaraderie!"


The other org I posted about, PACT are generally not taking on orgs with less than 500 people.  However, STAR describe PACT as not an alliance but a treaty, therefore STAR have no issue with people being members of STAR and signatories to the PACT treaty.    STAR maintain good relationships with both Imperium and TA who are key players in the PACT group.  More info is here: https://www.pact-sc.org.  I have a discussion booked with Ephrain (their currently elected bossman) tomorrow afternoon and will report back.

In the mean time, if you agree with the STAR option for the moment, please post your YEAH in this thread.   As before, we can bail at any time if we do not like it.

[OldBloke]

Happy to persue this line. Thanks TL.

[Obsydian]

Thumbs up from me.

[TeaLeaf]

Meeting with [SUN]Tannhauser/Ephrain today.  His role with PACT is the admin and membership enquiries.  

Tann is an american chap in his mid-thirties, PACT council members range in age in a similar way to dMw (ie from late teens to fifties), but with a common thread of maturity.   The chap who held the PACT admin role previously was a retired USN officer, so they have a wide range of membership ages within the member groups.

PACT is a not an alliance, it is a voluntary mutual defence treaty.   Voluntary because you do not have to go on ops.  They focus on:

• No piracy.
• Not supporting any alien faction which has hostile intent towards humanity.
• No wars between members.
• To provide relief to fellow PACT signatories where they are in distress or grave danger.

Current signatories to the PACT treaty are:

Imperium (3831)
Systems United Navy (393)
Eternal Vigilance (66)
Association of Capitalists, Explorers and Soldiers (350)
Terran Colonial Forces (39)
Tiberium Corporation (22)
The 19th Corporation (44)
The Horsemen (17)
PMC Quasar (215)
BROADSIDE (10)
Tactical Advance (1053)
Intergalactic Trading Corporation (616)

As you can see, the range of org sizes is pretty big, but closer to ours than the average suggests!   Time zone coverage is also pretty complete, with only the far east asia not covered.

They operate a council, with voting rules.  Each member org gets one vote, but they try to operate by consensus.   Meetings tend to be once per month on a Friday night at 2200 or 2300 UTC (depending on daylight saving time etc).   Additional meetings might be called if action on something is needed.

There will inevitably be some PACT ops but it is voluntary.  However they would look for some kind of activity level and support on ops as there is no point them allowing people to join PACT, gain the benefit of the protection but then not contribute to the defence of other members.  He said nothing is cast in stone at the moment, but said "e.g. we might ask for someone to show up to 50+% of ops".

Finances seem to be fairly simple.   If you put 75% of the money into an op, then you would be getting 75% of the tail end.   As PACT does not really exist within game, there is no overhead to support other than what you do.

Membership process: they provide a questionnaire for us to fill in, we spend a period of time discussing the answers we give (and any follow-up questions).  Eventually we get to a position where we get called to a council meeting (we can bring more than one rep if we want) and discuss with the group on TS.  Once everyone has had their questions answered they go away and vote on whether to grant membership.  If accepted as a signatory you are immediately a full member of PACT with according voting rights etc.

General Information:

When was your organization founded?
How many members do you currently have?
What is your primary focus as an organization?
What are your long-term goals as an organization?
Are you active in games other than Star Citizen?

Philosophy and Policies:

What is your policy on multiple accounts/alternate characters?
What is your policy on membership? I.e. are your members allowed to have dual memberships with other organizations?
What is your policy on "military intelligence", and how does your organization define that term?

Interest in PACT:

How did you learn of PACT?
Why are you interested in PACT membership?
What do you hope to gain through PACT membership?
What would PACT gain through your membership?

PACT & STAR: his view was that being a member of both *might* work, but that it was unlikely as they want to avoid conflicts or pulling other alliances into war.   E.g. If you have a conflict of interest would your priorities lie with PACT or your alliance?  Being a member of just one seemed a better solution.



My 2 cents:
I quite like this one now that I have spoken to their rep.   In fact I'm more tempted by PACT than I am by STAR and am of the opinion that we'd get more benefit and keep more control by signing up with PACT than we would from joining STAR.

Your thoughts please chaps?


Edit: my earlier post said that PACT do not take orgs with less than 500 people, this was info provided by STAR and clearly is not the case.  PACT's minimum is actually 25 and they have some that are lower than that.

[OldBloke]

Interesting stuff and a new direction to consider.

Could we have a TS session to discuss? Much easier than trying to do it here.

[OldBloke]

On TS now if anyone want to join.

[TeaLeaf]

A good link to PACT policies:

https://www.pact-sc.org/faq.php?cat_id=3

[OldBloke]

Had a good briefing from TL and I am more inclined to go the PACT route.

I love their ethos (no piracy, maturity etc.) and the simplicity of what it is they offer and how we would be expected to contribute.

[smilodon]

I obviously have a lot less information than TL but I am immediately struck by the fact that the first two Organisations mentioned have 3000+ and 300+ members. I cannot see how any Organisation with those kind of numbers can run a meaningful group/clan/guild. That scares me somewhat.

[Obsydian]

I obviously have a lot less information than TL but I am immediately struck by the fact that the first two Organisations mentioned have 3000+ and 300+ members. I cannot see how any Organisation with those kind of numbers can run a meaningful group/clan/guild. That scares me somewhat.

It's not actually that bad - remember the 10% rule!... Depending upon timezone coverage, an org can really only expect maybe 10% of its membership to be online on any given night.  There may be more on a CTA or on the run up to a CTA when logistics are require to move equipment into place for an op, but 10% is usually considered 'good'.

That, and the fact that these large orgs tend to have a pidgeon-hole policy where people sign up to be part of a particular division. A bit contentious in my view considering we don't really know much about the gameplay at this point, but it allows the membership to be broken down into manageable chunks under the control of one or two leaders.

Besides, this is still pre-alpha, and we still don't have any proper org tools or alliance tools, and many people have simply joined the first or the biggest org they can find.  I expect, long before we go live, that many of these large orgs will splinter and some will simply implode (remember Blue Horizon?) before we cross the finishing line.

Funnily enough, the list of signatories for PACT contains many of the orgs I shortlisted to join before I found smd joined dMw

[smilodon]

My point is that there cannot be any kind of quality control when you have hundreds or thousands of members. You recruit, they sign up, they're in! Which is the complete opposite to the way dMw works. It makes a clear statement about the leaders of the guild in question "we'll take anyone, no QA involved."
That's not a group that if feel much affinity for. That being said I'm not playing SC at all anymore or really following the development either, I've pretty much lost interest in it at the moment. So I'm probably not best placed to voice a strong opinion. If TL feels that they are the best option then I defer to his wisdom

[Obsydian]

Ah, I see where you're coming from now.

Yes, you have a point, especially with the way things are at the moment with regards to the development and the lack of proper org tools, and many orgs are simply on a feeding frenzy of recruitment simply to lay claim to being the largest around.

I believe that that will all change when the PU goes live and people start interacting with each other for real.  I predict that not only will many of the members of these huge orgs jump ship and join other, but there will also be a culling as individuals' true intentions come to the fore and the leadership determine who they believe to be the 'bad apples'.

I also anticipate that orgs will start to employ more rigorous QA approach to recruitment, especially if espionage and org theft is going to be a thing (and it looks like it will), so orgs will not only want to recruit quality personnel for specific roles, but will also want to protect their assets and org info such as supply routes, private contracts and treaties, etc. And will want to root out spies wherever possible.

At the moment, this far out from going live, it simply doesn't matter who you have in your org, as long as they're not being a dick of the forums and giving the org a bad name.  There's no point worrying about quality right now as there's not really anything to judge quality on, so you're left with quantity.  At least if you start with a largish group you can pick and choose who the leaders will be, who the core loyal troops are going to be, etc.  People who then show that they're not such a good fit can simply be asked politely to leave or not invited to org ops until they either get the hint or simply get bored and leave.  There's all sorts of ways to handle it, really.

Ive been in corps in EVE with thousands of members, and each and every one has been vetted and approved before being allowed to join.  And then they start with a low rank with limited permissions and roles for a period until they have proven their worth, and even then have to show commitment before they are moved up the ladder. This is all accepted as part of the culture and I anticipate it being the same in SC.

Bottom line, don't let the numbers or the topic of QA foil you: they don't matter right now and by the time they do matter, things will be under a lot tighter control.

[TeaLeaf]

+1 to what Obsydian wrote.

The only question that raised its head overnight for me was 'what do we want from an alliance'.   Yesterday the bit that I thought we wanted was the mutual defence agreement.   Overnight I thought more about whether or not there were other aspects of the game that we would want:

STAR Alliance is an alliance with multiple STAR branches handling every aspect of the game:

STAR Forces
STAR Navy
STAR Army
Recon Service
Exploration

STAR Industries
Production
Mining

STAR Logistics
Transport
Special Transport
Secure Transport

STAR Finance
Trade
Bank
Marketplace
Lottery

STAR Sports
Racing
Arena Commander

STAR Diplomacy
Diplomatic Corps
Human Resources

Each branch is run by specialists who know exactly what they are doing and how to accomplish the mission in the best and most efficient way!

I'm not sure that we will need help with all of these, or indeed even with a majority.   I'm also worried that as the structure gets ever more complex, that we get closer to having to pigeon hole our org members and what we do.     This was one of the factors that led me to prefer the PACT simplicity, it provides a mutual defence agreement and we can then work on coop with whomever we want.  So my conclusion was that for me personally, at this stage, the important thing is the defence treaty, not the ability to be part of an alliance that ran a lottery!

The STAR finance also began to worry me more once I had seen the simplicity of the PACT system.   Iirc they are talking about STAR ops having profits returned to STAR, with a % going to the STAR Council for global objectives, the remainder going to STAR Division & Bracnh leaders for them to spend as they saw fit within their area.   The more I thought about it, the more I thought this would be a mess.

This then led to to assess the sheer size of the proposed STAR offering.  When we first discussed with them it had (iirc) 5 divisions, which has now been broken down into many smaller branches with branch leaders, division leaders and council.  I'm not sure they have the numbers to support this structure and the management overhead must be pretty huge in my humble guesstimation.

So, that's a little more about why I changed my mind and concluded PACT might be better for us than STAR.  Keep in mind, we might not even get into PACT, so STAR might still be the option we end up with.

So the conclusion is?



Btw, some of the PACT questions are simply a 'have you searched through and read everything on our website' questions as the answers are often in there.  Sort of like our 'WoW application test'.   It amused me!

[OldBloke]

I still see PACT as the best fit as things stand. A division-based alliance might suit us better when game mechanics are better known but for now I like the idea that we can call upon much larger orgs to aid in our endeavourrs.

[TeaLeaf]

Unless I am badly mistaken, can I assume we're all agreed to apply to PACT in the first instance (we might not even get in!)?   If so, here's a draft application form which I started completing.

Please can I ask everyone to review and input used google's 'SUGGESTING' edit mode (click the pencil top right) to add your suggested changes or insertions.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MiuuC6rckKqQeehzDXEtS5V2J6nMYaquMZaCHyfXuh8/edit?usp=sharing

Thank you!