rogander

But then you're still forcing smaller companies to join alliances AND pay taxes and do whatever else they are told to do, or else they will be wiped. It'll basically turn into extortion. So you'd get smaller companies doing harvesting work and not having fun so that those in charge of the alliance can take their work to battle and have fun. And at that point there would only be a handful of alliances since any smaller ones would either be absorbed or stomped out.

I don't see the issue with that. "Only a barracks" sounds easier to destroy than a mega-fortress owned and operated by several hundred players. A side benefit is if an "ally" company comes to aid, they won't know who is who, since there wouldn't be green or blue text highlighting friendlies. And even if you don't agree with that there's still the advantage with not being able to spawn on ally company boats.

Easy communication isn't the issue, it's the mechanics. I cannot imagine the logistics, or safety, of having pin-coded doors and inventories between many companies and hundreds of players, so resource sharing would be very hard. Could it be done? I guess.. but it'd be a nightmare, especially if those pin codes got out. Also not having access to hundreds of beds on various islands and ships would go a long way. The way claiming territory works would also be effected since multiple companies can't occupy a claim and have it the claim change owners. I fully disagree that it wouldn't hinder mega-companies.

I know (see above). I was just providing factions as an alternative to alliances as a way to curb megas from dominating. Just because mega-companies can't be 100% prevented doesn't mean there's no point in trying to do so at all. It's not about fully stopping them, it's about making it much more difficult so that smaller companies have a fighting chance.

To provide a common goal you can choose to work towards (that would yield rewards if certain conditions were met). Is there a point to alliances that extend beyond having common goals but with protection against accidental damage?

But you'd still be able to destroy same faction rafts... or anything else belonging to a company in the same faction.

Not at all. The extent of game coded factions would be to give companies a common goal and incentive to work together while not forcing it. It wouldn't allow other companies in the same faction to access buildings or resources. I'm not sure how they could grief anymore than they do now.

But why have player run "big groups/alliances" that you have to join when game implemented ones would (i imagine) work better and be more fair? I know people will always find a way to coordinate, so mega-companies can't be 100% prevented. But it would go a long way to balance the game imo if it were much more difficult for them to steamroll medium to small companies.

I disagree. It is a long process to wipe company bases in Eve. Eve also allows for large scale battles without player limits afaik, where as in Atlas a whole Company can sit in a server and have their way with whatever is on it. And Atlas will always have hard player limits in zones, there's nothing that can be done about that. Eve's gameplay also functions in a way that small to medium sized companies don't get steamrolled by big ones just for the hell of it.

And i know part of the game is to allow Companies to take over large portions of the map, and then duke it out with other large Companies. But maybe a better alternative to that is to have each Company choose 1 of like 5 pirate factions and reward factions for how much of the map they control, which would give you that ebb and flow of map ownership with other factions but still allow Companies in the same faction to fight.

Some amount under 150. Maybe with some sort of flexible limit of how many players of a certain company can be in 1 zone at the same time depending on how much land they own in it.

Isn't that part of the problem? If they're facing resistance in a zone couldn't they just have a large amount of people spawn in the one zone they want to take over and just wipe it?

A company with 404 players in it with 172 active is ridiculous. They could literally occupy over a full server and wipe anything in it without needing to fight for it. Please lower the max company player number, and perhaps add restrictions on alliances too. Because at the moment unless you're a large company you're gonna get wiped from your home, probably while you're asleep.