Many people have been suggesting ideas for legion governments. As I think I have stated on all of those threads, I hate the underlying idea itself. I hate it with a passion. Legion governments are something that I really do not want to happen, depending on just how restrictive they could be.

Let's think. There are two identical legions. One is a Hierarchy, one is a Democracy. Which do you choose? You probably said the Democracy. Why? Because you get your voice heard. You get to be important. You may have just as much say in the Hierarchy legion, and they may be like that purely because they don't want to have a massive wait-time.

So what does this tell us? Hierarchies will be bad for recruitment. Well damn, because it's the only government option that is any good. Why do I say this? Well, I think anyone who currently gets a wide opinion on things from officers or all members are aware of the wait time you can have on input. Often, we end up waiting days to get everyone's input - even if it's only the officers you're asking. Imagine having to wait days to kick someone who was insanely disruptive, stealing planets meant for others etc.? That would suck. That would suck BADLY. Oligarchy or Democracy, either way you're screwed.

That aside, we need to look at the catalyst for this suggestion. The Dysonian incident. In the 3 years of this game, I can only recall 4 incidences of this happening - ever. At least 2 of which were newbie legions promoting someone they shouldn't and suffering immediately. What does this tell us? The system is as good as it'll probably get. The Dysonian incident is all but unique. It's insanely rare and spending time devising a new system to prevent it happening again doesn't seem worthwhile to me. I'm not belittling the incident - it's horrible and I hope it never happens again, I just don't think it will any time soon. Certainly never again on this scale. With seniority rule, losing the base is unlikely, so we don't even have that aspect in play the vast majority of the time. From that point, members will rejoin and the legion will be able to recover - minus some members they couldn't contact. If you have a FB page, then there's no reason why you shouldn't be able to contact them too.

My next point is that once you change from a hierarchy you can never go back. I'm serious. If you change to a democracy, or even an oligarchy no matter how many times it bites you in the ass you can never change to a hierarchy ever again. No-one's going to be like "Yay! Take my power away!", and unless you have more leaders than members (*AHEM* Cosa Nostra *AHEM*). the chances of you ever being able to change it are ridiculously slim. This seems kind of broken to me.

Moving on, whilst I'm sure that this content wouldn't be the biggest job in the world, playable content is something this game sorely needs and I'd much rather the developer(s) focused on improving the game, than adding this unnecessary addition. The system worked for 3 years, we have 1 hiccup and you guys all want to change everything. There was no-one crying out for this when smaller legions had all their members kicked. People are shell-shocked by the scale of the Dysonian incident. That's the only reason you guys want it. It's a knee-jerk solution, and nothing more.

I honestly don't think supporters of the idea have thought it entirely through. They're looking for something to stop future Dysonian incidents, but they're not looking at other aspects of it. This would certainly do the job, but I honestly think there are way too many drawbacks. It's a waste of development time, and I don't feel like it should be implemented.

The only reason I've seen that people would like this is to stop Dysonian incidents. The only reason. I haven't seen a single other reason for this. People have been saying that "There's no reason not to want this as you can stay how you are.". I do believe I just proved you wrong.

The Alternative:
Make the existing positions more customizable. Have a version of "Base Rules" for each position, and perhaps add another position to give us some more freedom. Non-Commissioned Officer was one I've seen in the past.

If the system is not sophisticated enough to mirror my legions already in place governance, then I'm really not interested in it.

Doesn't have to "get everyone's input". Most votes a simple majority would do. And if your leader/officers can't get over 50% to vote within half a day's time, something is wrong with your choice in leader/officers.

That said, I'm a strong advocate of limited exectutive power even in obli/democracy system just in case of emergency. Leaders should have limited actions per day where they can quickly kick someone etc. Shouldn't be so much that they can kill the legion in a day but it probably won't hurt if you allow them to kick a single guy or two w/o consulting rest of the legion(or leader/officer caste)

There can always be compromises between different systems. There is no reason why a system have to be pure hierarchy or pure obli/demo. I'd have to say pure demo will certainly be too slow, even to reach a simple majority. But pure obli OR obli with limited executive power should function pretty well IMO.

I agree that the dyso case is a very unlikely event. But if there can be a system put in that can prevent future cases while having minimal negatives, it would be perfect.

A 2 week period should work, when the member joins they should be able to be kicked without requiring a vote regardless of type of setup .

Its happened to far more then 4 legions. The ones I know of are: The Sith Acolyltes (thankfully they are recovering) Aroarakaehe, Spaceballs, Beyond The Pulsar, and most recently The Dysonians, and lets not forget Decepticons where the leader sold everything and took the funds. Thats from my time on here and just the ones that made forum headlines. Legions are supposed to be a team effort and can't be soloed unlike Exotica(way to go Nam! ) no matter how hard one tries. These members deserve a voice or at least a safe guard so they wont be stabbed in the back as soon as someone pees in their leader's cheerios.

As for the worry of people choosing democracies over other forms of government as seen in this thread:
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=34546 most people will probably either stick with the hierarchy system or go oligarchy. I might've missed it but I don't see anyone posting saying they want a democracy so I really don't think there will be many.

Recruitment wise (which seems to be your main worry) we have the recruitment center coming in this month which should make recruiting easier regardless of government type(or at least I hope it does). Theres also the forums and in game officer comms.

This part though Thunderbolta I like:

Big +1 to that from me. The part about scrapping the government idea..nah.

There's a reason any organization needing quick decisions doesn't use democracy for them. The only action I could see not being throttled by a day long vote would be removing players (and sometimes that could require immediate action) and that could just be circumvented by only keeping a few friends as officers to overrule the others.

For dealing with inactive leaders I'd just put in an automatic promotion for the next oldest member if the leader goes inactive.



I'd like this for limiting access to things like base abilities, base locks, pacts, invitation, kicks etc. in case you want people to do specific things but not others. BEHOLD THE POWER OF DELEGATION!

I can't wait to see which legions collapse under a soft democracy

I'm with TB. This seems like a waste of programming time. It's just a knee-jerk reaction to the Fall of Dysonia. Monte's gutting of Spaceballs didn't prompt this, nor did any of the other instances of mass-kicking. A change being made because something bad happened to the Dysos, to me, is disrespectful of all the others in similar circumstances.

I also don't see any need for customizable/more legion positions.

agreed, only change that should be made is that inactive leaders can be demoted and the longest officer turns into the leader.

They don't seem that all important, especially when you'll have to wait about 12 hours (oligarchy and democracy) to get majority input. Mass-legion purging is the result of putting someone on the throne that wasn't fully ready to cope with the power. Training legions will have to steer clear from Democracy because of noobs, some legions will have to steer clear from Democracy because of shady people. All legion governments will do is over-complicate unnecessary things. No one wants to wait hours to scrap a module or lock a base.

It's not that I'm unwilling to give up power at all. I explained in my post why I don't see not changing as an option, whilst I just can't see olig/democracy as being particularly viable. What do we change to if we don't like all 3?


From what I read, that isn't at all what happened. It may be your opinion that he should have resigned, but the fact he chose a different course of action over simply quitting is not proof he was unwilling to give up power. I kinda get what Blitz did, and why he did it. It wouldn't be my choice of action at all, but there we go.


4 was just what I could remember off the top of my head. Of course there are more.

As to hierarchies being bad for recruitment, you're not comparing two equals there. In the current system, you'd go for the 1000 over the 100-200s. But if you had the choice of a democracy, an oligarchy and a hierarchy between three identical legions, which would you choose?

And as you say, if many legions run as an oligarchy or a democracy already then why do we need this? We ourselves mostly run as an oligarchy. If this were implemented, I would stay as a hierarchy at least until more was known about what exactly we would have to vote on. Trouble is, if kicking people is on that list (which considering the knee-jerkiness of the situation, it will be), I can't see it being practical.

Let's start off by saying not everyone is online at all hours. I have about a 7-8 hour period most days where I can get online. That means for 17-18 hours a day, I have no idea what went on except by secondary sources and the comm archive - which doesn't even cut it. Let's say person "Y" is being insanely disruptive at what is for me, 3am (11pm server time). I won't have a clue what went on, so why would I vote? If an officer tells me: "He was being really rude to everybody and swearing." It might have been something really small.

I'd also like to point out that we don't know all of the full details ... what if there are "preferences" for what gets voted on, how much time to vote, or how many votes are needed?

As long as we have a chose to do it or not and can keep the old set up. im fine with it.

Just dont Go making it. 65GP item. Unlock ( unsertname ) government. OR Change Govorment type. 30 GP.. ya he probably will.

Not interested in a democracy, this is a "War" game after all, and I like a legion to have officers with various ranks and responsibilities, I think this makes the most sense. No matter the "Gov't Type" I think that some people will get pissed and do stupid things, you can;t guard against that unfortunately, but there is something to be said for legion memberss having a way to over-turn a legion before it is disbanded.

I co-founded The Dark Side with Baltar to make a legion where anyone could do what they please without getting too smacked around by Dysonians looking to gank low-level players, but that in no way means that the average legion member should be consulted about everything we do as a legion, despite our original policy being you can do what we do as a legion or stay out of it.