gnihar

And here is exactly where the player base will truly test ATLAS administration and developers if they are determined to fulfill their vision and zealously enforce those rules. If the PVP rules and caps will be enforced thoroughly and end up with dev wipe and ban for unlawful teaming, the risk for zerg will outweigh the "reward" (and they surely already plan and hope to stealth dominate the smalltribe server now using their sheer numbers and by attempting to break game rules and circumvent restrictions), then, and only then, we will see healthy Colonies and Empire used as it should be. In that case, Zerg will be forced to fight another zerg (oh noooo, I know, I know...), because their favorite prey (2-10 people tribes) would be on different place entirely. I will surely be the one to rat the zerg to to devs about rules breaching, any time I can, while at the same time, playing nicely to the zerg in public. And if devs would fail to enforce this, that is, if they wouldn't care, then we will see the final fall of ATLAS.

They can raid your house with a wooden hammer.

Reloading mini game only helps the larger groups to win albeit indirectly. I am all for removing it, and making perks increase loading speed, and that's all.

And Horses might have that deployment time shorter then bears or something, to achieve balance.

Quite so. On the other hand, you can do almost nothing to prevent cannon bear take down puckles one by one with ease while you are offline. Some decent offline defense would be nice, puckles that can go over 45 degrees and be more similar to autoturrets would go great lengths, combined with deletion of cannon bear meta. Let the cannon be deployed from bear not shot from it.

And I sincerely hope circumventing the cap on colonies will be enforced by admins. Otherwise, Colonies will turn into zerg with x companies actually governed by 2 tribes which is toxic and the cause that many of 50k initial solo and small tribes left the game in the first place.

They are only triyng to separate zerg from small tribes. Because zerg have players across various time zones, it is not a big problem for them not to have raid protection. Smalltribes though might not have the manpower to keep watch 24 7 therefore raid windows seem logical on smalltribes cluster. Will that split the playerbase? Yes. Will the player numbers drop due to this? I don’t believe so - conrary might even happen. Will that cause zerg to infiltrate smalltribes. Most certainly so. Will the admins ban cap circumventions? IMO that is the biggest concern here.

I only now stumbled into this, and it is in accord to what I have been thinking as well. Deserves a re-up. Might I add to this brilliant suggestion that cannons should not be as they are now, that is, usable while riding. Instead, they should be deployed from bear or horse carriage and timer added to deploying.

Defensive alliances are not that much of an issue. They are made of necessity and will not damage playerbase much. Offensive ones, though...

Honestly, I don’t think their thoughts were in that way at all. For one, we don’t even have clear lore on existing Atlas, we only know it is not Earth, and some advanced atlantean-like civilization existed prior to human one.

It all depends n how successful will they be in keeping the game clean - enforcing cap rules and anti cheater policies.

Ah so you want the premade factions, like New Providence vs Great Britain vs Spain. Ha! Interesting, but IMO would take away the sandboxy feeling.

Exactly, and it all depends on the admins - will they enforce this zealously enough or not. They have been mentioning caps and restrictions, let us see how that rolls. Not overly optimistic though.

I wish to see 10 maximum and 2 alliances per tribe on Colonies (smalltribe atlas). But that is just me, feeling that there is considerably more solos and small company players then zerg, but most of them have already left. Any abuse of those limitations, especially in offensive wars, should be severely punished to make nice competitive SvS atmosphere.

60 and over in actives is a zerg to me. Anything above 20 actives is. Zerg should go to Empire after update to recruit up to heavens and fight with their own size, not solos and small companies who wish to remain free. We will see if devs would manually wipe those who break size and alliance rules on colonies.

What I am concerned about, is that Colonies do not end up like ark smalltribes cluster: a bunch of smaller companies stealth allied, formed in a zerg way, and attacking newcomers. Stealth allied as in avoiding alliance caps in toxic way. This would be the Empire type of gaming and belong in Empire type server. I envisioned lots of smaller cluster alliances and more diversity in that regard on Colonies, enforced by devs.

Ehh, don’t be inviting that cancer from Entropia and second life into this community please.

I would prefer up to 10, not 50. And a maximum of 2 alliances.

Yep submarine should not be tied to killing the kraken.

Bullet force, it will all depend on how firmly will they enforce tribe limit and alliance limit rules on Colonies. Nobody wants stealth teaming, and if the devs wipe such tribes, and further cripple caps on alliances and tribe numbers, then we are talking about the right direction. In this particular case even I will be willing to adopt subterfuge and act like I accept teaming, and secretly I shall be reporting to the devs.

I agree that whole concept of cannon cart needs to be deleted from the game.

I estimate it will be the other way around: zerg will want to fight against weaker tribes and will infiltrate Colonies, trying to dominate them and be safe at the same time. Server division will fail, and in that I agree with your estimation, as the playerbase as it is is too small for that plan. it could however be sustainable if they: - invest in manual admin effort to admin wipe zerg who try to circumvent the alliances and tribe cap and try to act like several unconnected companies, this is the most important bit, and will demonstrate to playerbase that devs care about small tribes indeed and not only in thought - further limit the number of crew a company can recruit - extremely limit the number of alliances to make it even more annoying for cheaters to pose as different companies - carefully monitor player reports about zerg teaming on colonies and act accordingly (ban all involved into illegal teaming, both zerg and the allies alike) This will restore solo and small companies faith in this game and the direction it is going, and might well cause greater number of returning players. Believe or not, I estimate the vast majority of playerbase in Atlas were solo players and small tribes. Yes, sounds totally contrary to what devs wanted, but that is what they got. My gut tells me it was 70% of playerbase and they all left for pretty much same reasons. And let us not forget the lawless, as the viable refuge for those who do not want to claim on Colonies; lawless bases are nice addition and in spirit with pirate world that is atlas

Overly ambitious and manipulative members can happen indeed (I'd say they are rare occurrence, but known to happen), and indeed they are bolstered by their IRL friends and family whom they also got to join your tribe. The point here is again being fully honest and just, and time and again show your base that you, as the leader, care about them, and in regard of those ambitious players, are willing to give promotions, but based on merits only. I had a single case of a manipulative and quite intelligent guy second guessing my decisions and countering where he could. It ended up in even his brothers turning against him, and choosing my side, and him being voted out of the tribe by, among the others, his own kin. In such cases, hard work, total honesty and power of your reputation and charsima are your shield and your main card. No need to be a manipulative bastard and work on dividing and ruling. Because, a tribe divided, serves nothing and no one. Not to mention crisis situations where a divided tribe will fail for sure. And if you , as a leader were the one who caused that division, you have a double fail.

It is going to get postponed, and quite substantially so. IDK why am I still here waiting for the update however xD

This is where I broke. "Ark meta" became too intense for me and resource draining, it was not even relaxing any more. Therefore I fled and broke that chain. This time though, in ATLAS, I want to focus on game play not discord and having 25 tabs open on steam.