Clans need a lot of work. They need to be more interesting. They need to be less potentially broken, making the game sort of easy.

So this is the thread where you say what You want from clans.

This is what I want from clans:

The ability to make a meaningful impact on the world. Some sort of physical change, like the
players ability to build shacks. This has been discussed many times and will hopefully get in.

More locality -
I would like to see clans have hometowns. This is where their clan hall is, and is, at least at first, the only way to access it. Clans get more political benefits from "owning" the town where they are based, but not directly. Perhaps because politicians charge less for building permits? Plus, its a matter of hometown pride.

More exclusivity -
Make being in a clan really mean something. Make that whole thing about "membership requirements" actually meaningful somehow - my proposed solution would also encourage more clans to be made, which is a good thing.

Transcendence-
Allow a clan to reset their buffs, granting some sort of major benefit whenever they do so. Like Drive Kills, but for clans.

How I would set up clans were I doing so -

Each clan starts of as a "group", where you can have up to ten members. This is the "newbie" of the clan system. They also get a clan bank account - these req and cigs can only be spent on clan stuff (politics, buffs, recognition, building) but are permanent.

They can become a "minor" clan, and be allowed 20 members. Clan gets certain bonuses, and a specific "clan hall" they can build in an actual town, similar to the shack system. This would, I think really serve

Finally, they can become a "major" clan, and be allowed 30 members. Clan gets additional bonuses. They get an actual clan building, can build rooms that can be visited (broken into) by other players, and the ability to build special buildings.

To become a minor clan, you simply have to raise enough money a single time, from donations of everyone in the clan. A clan founded by a powerful player should have no trouble getting recognized, but anyone who can build up a little support can start doing clan type stuff right away.

To become a "major" clan, you need to transcend at least once. There will be very few major clans on the island.

But, you might say, that member cap seems rather low! In here is where my ideas for sinks and more clan fun come into play -

For a small amount of req, cigs, or some combination thereof, you can add an additional member to your clan. Note this isn't a slot - this allows you to accept exactly one member. With small being relative. Specifically, relative to how many members you are over the cap. The simplest method would simply be to double the cost for every additional member, but that's probably not a good method. A good method would, I think, be something like tthis - Adding a new member adds the total number of members over the cap to your cost. he clans will find their own "optimal" membership points, where its simply not worth it to add a new member... unless you know that member is somehow worth it.
An example would be if you go pure cigs, and start with 1... that's not so bad. But a major clan adding its 50th member would be investing ... lets see... 193 cigs. That's starting to get pricey, and that's for a major clan, especially when that amount could conceivably be spent on a nice buffs or a new structure.

Clan Buildings-
Major and minor clans should have the ability to expand their town hall, wherever it's based.
For example:
Clan Healer:They should be able to hire a clan healer - Offers cheap or free healing for clannies, depending on the contract.
Bar: Eat some food! Drink some booze! Like the restaurant, you can get buffs and random events, but free once per day! Quality can be improved.
Gym: Works likes Tynans: condition your characters with your high quality weight room, or that new track.

Etc. Etc. I'm sure you can think of a lot more things.

Anyways, that's all my ideas for the moment. I'm sure I'll have more later, but for now I'm interested in hearing what everyone else comes up with.

I'm all for a more 'meaningful' clan system. I like the ideas of buildings etc. However, I would be against the smaller idea. I like the fact that there are 50 peeps in my clan. I get to interact with more people. And let's not forget that a newbie GREATLY benefits from any clan that they are in. If clans were more exclusive and harder to get into, then it would be almost impossible for a newbie to get into a clan.

2 cents from the Fodder Kid

Well, mostly I'd just like to see MORE clans - it would still be easy to get into A clan, and since there would be no cost to start a clan (instead implementing a cost to get it recognized). I'm sure you'd also see, say, a SWEET alliance geared towards letting noobies into their clans, and then helping them out and releasing them back into the wild to start their own clans. Which I think would be really cool.

However, I'd also like there to be clans with reputations, clans people would really want to get into. Clans they have to try to get into. And unlike a hard cap, it means that they always CAN get in if they can prove to the clan they want it bad enough.

I don't think clans should receive so much emphasis. As it stands now, the benefits from a clan are paramount to your performance. There's no reason not to be in a clan, and if we're talking about balance, how do you know whether you should balance the game for people not in clans (overpowered for those in clans) or for people in clans (bad for newbies in general). So, to avoid that, benefits should be secondary, that is to say, they should provide benefits of convenience and things you can do. What benefits they should NOT be are to skill and your ability to fight in my opinion.

Perhaps you could add some sort of npc which grants a boon if you pay for it, but only if you belong to a clan. I could see that, but it would have to be a fee. However, it's still considered a secondary benefit because you'd have to pay for it, so 'benefit' in the long run is disputable, but you'd at least have the option to decide if you were in a clan.

A short post for once, re: Gryph's excellent, incisive work of pure, unadulterated genius earlier in thread.

> Clan bank: There's your req-sink, Dan. I'm in SWEET, which just maxed its bennies, and now I'm saving cigs for a mansion. All I can do with extra req now is gift, or help SWEET takeover more cities, which owing to its cooperative relationship with other clans is unlikely to be the big reqsinking pissing match that Dan had hoped. So now I'm saving a million for a mansion, just to see what that's like. A clanbank would be awesome for that.

> Clan buildings
- I imagine this will take three forms -- one's a meeting hall for clannies only. Another's a clan school, with a freebox in it for clan crap no one wants (extra grenades, scrap, etc.), which also functions as a dojo that appears in every city, so you don't have to wander back to NewHome to level when you're questing in AceHigh. The third is a clan shop, where discarded weapons and armor from clannies go following the DK (possibly), and are repurchasable (if custom) for Sheila-like rates, or if generic, for Koga-like rates.

I also think there could be clanquests, ala what we get from Dan at the PSK, but ... less individual, or more challenging. There could also be clan "game preserves" where you don't get all the xp you would from hunting "the wilds," but you wouldn't get failboated either.

Also think there should be clanboats. Get on a boat, socialize with friends, and periodically, the page refreshes as the clanboat arrives at its next port of call. I say boat, but it could just as easily be a wagon-train, an airship, or riding a giant robot spider (Do you hear me Joel Silver?).

I'm not at all sure you need transcendance as long as challenges (critters) are matched to your #DKs, and overall hitpoints. There's no reason why Hajen, who stomps around the island with 600+HPs should ever have to face the garden rake at Level 1. Maybe a +17 Vorpal Garden Rake of DOOOOOOM!, but you get the idea.

Okay, I said it would be brief, and I'm almost a liar, so I'll sign off now,

~Crash

What I want from a clan? A sense of community and common purpose.

But at the same time, I don't want 'clan loyalty' to turn into 'clan rivalry.' Or even worse, 'clan feuds.' I don't want SPOON to see CIA as 'the enemy' -- except, of course, in a friendly mock-pugnacious fashion (as Sherpa has been exemplifying lately, so extravagantly and admirably).

It's why I (still) don't like the clan politics module... and why I am worried that the things SPOON does want to excel at will be linked to control of a city as a pre-requisite. Let's be clear -- if it does turn into tooth and claw between clans, SPOON is not weaponless. But we don't want feuds. We'd rather have fun.

What kind of fun?

Well, go look at what happened in Skidge's Kittania shack over the weekend. The SPOON Players made their debut there. We were pushing the technology to its limits, Murphy's law was in ample evidence... but we pulled it off.

What we'd like a LOT would be tools that could let us do a better job of entertaining folks who have run out of turns but don't want to leave.

One thing that would really help in backstage coordination? The ability to send a Distraction to a selected list of your Friends.

Coordinating a group with one-on-one Distractions is a truly hair-pulling experience. Since most of our players were clan officers, we used Clan Distractions as a stopgap, but there are several problems with that. First, it goes to all clan members, which means we were bothering the whole rest of our clan with a bunch of high-urgency messages that weren't for them and wouldn't mean anything. Second, one of our best actors wasn't a clan officer, and so couldn't communicate that way. And third, Clan Distractions come as System Messages, with no indication of who they're from. If we forgot to say who was talking in the message text itself, it could get quite confusing.

We're going to have a Lessons Learned discussion in the clan, and possibly we'll be coming up with other tools that would help. But... this is why we're eagerly anticipating Clan-run Inns. We're thinking, regular (maybe weekly?) dinner theatre...

SWEET LORD JEBUS! YES!

We SOO need to get a group distraction thing going. And if we can take it a step further I'd also like the ability to send a distraction to all on my clan members online if I happen to see that an outpost is going to be lost-o-la to some other clan.


Just more ideas from Ye Olde Fodder Kid (although I think I'm older than many people here)

Just another big yes to what Sessine's on about.
Agreed, that SPOON took what was available to the limit, and that they did a damned fine job.
So, if we're looking at amping up what social tools are available on II, look at their logs, have a smoke, and ponder what more might be accomplished with ... MORE.

~Crash!

I agree with the clan notification/ distraction thing - I'd love to know that some of my clan-mates, who I've not yet really spoken with except to post a couple of wheedling questions in the clan hall, are somewhere, perhaps chatting, perhaps shooting the breeze, perhaps planning to go off and shoot something else...

I'm liking all these ideas for smaller clans, as having been in a fairly large one, with a maxed buff, I know there is little contribution you can have to a clan, and if your clan doesn't really do alot of clan pleb participation, at least that can be seen outside of a clan hall, then you can't really get to know your fellow members (hnarf, hnarf) without waiting for them to reply in the hall, or by distracting them, which I've never liked doing that much.
That's me done talking anyway. Bubye.

I like that idea. This is, after all, supposed to be a war. Why not have a Drive War. Rounds of automated fighting that everyone in the clan partakes in when there is a Transcendence.

Suppose a Clan transcends. Then the clan leader has the option to prepare the members for combat or whatever. Some time period given, then they rush to war. Which is basically a bunch of monster fights in succession, (The drive deploying monsters to protect itself,) And after say, three rounds of non-stop combat from each of the soldiers in the clan, then the remaining alive would fight against the drive itself on a very large scale, requiring say, twenty or so clan members to have a chance at even taking the thing down. Then this would allow the clan to fully transcend and then go out for more buffs, along with gaining a large amount of improbability points (Much like the kind one gets when there is a solo-kill) and those are attributed to the clan in certain ways that are permanent. And the cycle begins again.

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"You saved Pineapple!"