That's not a flaw of the feature, it's a consequence of using it. Just like the fact that I can target someone when they lob a CM at my ship. That's not a flaw in CMs, it's a consequence of their choice.

As of right now, the consequence of auto recruit is so huge that the benefit is not worth it for any sufficiently established legion. Only rookie legion with nothing to lose might get something out of auto recruit. I believe that's quite a waste and can be made better.

Perhaps it is only intended for new/low ranked legions though. Someplace where they're not likely to have a leader or officer on most of the time to get potential recruits.

Alright, let me put it this way. Auto-recruit means "let any eligible ship who applies in". Seems like the double edges of that sword are obvious. When you decline the option to review applicants, it's like you've hired a full time "accept button clicker" as an officer.

The same "exploit" could be done by a ship applying to many legions currently and hitting elites or planet shares as soon as they get accepted, which if they apply to all the top 50 legions might be pretty quickly. If they did it for long enough then most legions officers and leaders would know not to accept them. Unless you had an automaton clicking accept.

That could be true. I'd guess Dan is aware of the problem by now, if it was not intended this way. It would be nice if he could come out and say either "oops, I'll make it better" or "open is for newbie legions and it's fine". Frankly I nor anybody else cannot possibly know what the true conceptual goal of a feature is, whether it's meant for all or just some.

Auto recruit has its bonuses, you can go join each legion and talk to the members and offer them a chance to join your own legion.

this is poaching/theft of members

I've noticed a couple times that because the legion I'm visiting chose to use AutoRecruit when they posted a recruitment ad; a player from another legion (not going to say who or from what legion) just hopped in, took an alerted planet meant for another member for himself, and left the legion all within the span of a minute. There's really no way to prevent someone from doing that other than to halt any sharing until the recruitment ad expires and I'm sure this is probably going to happen to several other legions out there as people figure this trick out.

So I propose a new mechanic to be introduced where the recruit must wait 24 hours before that person can take an alerted planet or take part in an NPC alert to prevent such theft; but only if that person was brought in via AutoRecruit, there would be no wait time with any other method of recruiting.

Think of it as a probation period; it's long enough for existing alerts to expire, as well if it's a well known enemy to the legion he can easily be kicked during the wait time. On the flipside a leader trusts the recruit he/she can prematurely end the probation.

This just made my day

How is this a Flaw no one forced anyone to use this feature.. It can happen the same thing as a normal way of joining the legion..

This is priceless.. Who ever did this props to them..

Darky thought I did it, but it was just blackfox being paranoid, no planet was taken...although it can happen.

this is brilliant