Stars Reach News

In our second post, we talk about sound effects. In this third and final post, I’ll talk about voice-over and music.

[h2]VOICE-OVER[/h2]
Voice-over refers to any spoken lines recorded by humans speaking them. This is typically narrative dialogue and exposition, but is also, importantly, the less-important off-hand comments and reactions people utter in various situations, like the NPC grocer talking to an NPC customer or a soldier crying out in pain. In situations where you want to hear people around you, voice-over brings it to the game.
Our plans for voice acting, scripted lines, background NPC chatter... anything like that, are not yet set. We might have none! Whatever we settle on, Stars Reach will almost certainly not be a voice-over-heavy game. But if we do, again, variation will be the crucial factor. You just don't want to hear that guy tell you about how he took an arrow to the knee... one... more... time. I love Skyrim, but I kinda felt like that particular Nord could have had something like forty to eighty different voice-over comments, rather than the... what, two or three? that he had?



[h2]BGM - BACKGROUND MUSIC[/h2]
In the 80’s and 90’s, my career was in music. In the 90's and 00's, I composed a fair amount of music for games. As I pushed my career more towards general audio design and implementation, I took that experience with me and was able to act as liaison/interpreter between team leaders and composers. (Who do not speak the same language) What I have come to believe is the role of music in games is:

• Music creates the soul of the game.
  
• Music speaks to the player on a level deeper than does information.
  
• Music speaks to the heart.
  
• Music supports the emotional experience the player is likely to have. (Not the one you wish they were having!)
  

However, music is undoubtedly the aspect of games which has the most conflicted, unclear, emotionally-charged history. It is difficult because music is a difficult target to begin with (because individual tastes vary so widely). It is difficult because there is no consensus on the role of music in games. It is difficult because we can't just follow the film model for several reasons. And yet, we have to do it, because few companies have the courage to release a game with no music. This has tended to create a fear-based approach to music in which teams look around at reliably-successful examples (cue Star Wars theme) and just do that. Then if it doesn't turn out well, you can at least point and say "Hey! We got triple-A music! We recorded in Prague! John Williams made it! It's not my fault!" (Cue Lando)

The basic problems in game music are:

• Games are not films. They are not linear narratives. You can't control what is happening every second, so you can't guarantee coherence between the music and what is on the screen.
  
• Games are long. Any game team with a budget can commission a great theme song. Any composer worth their salt can put a music score under a cinematic because that's just linear film music. Ad agencies can put music under your 45-second ad. The hard part is what to do with aaaaaaaaaaaallll the rest of the time. The
• other* 99.72% of the player's experience which is neither the splash screen nor a cut scene. This is where the real work of game music happens.
  
• Repetition. Most music relies on certain forms of repetition to be what it is. But this repetition tends to be at the lower levels. e.g. a drum beat, a repeated motif, or a sixteen-measure break which is mostly just the same four-bar pattern four times. At middle levels, you can repeat things somewhat. e.g. a chorus which is repeated three times, or the same guitarist doing a solo in two different places in the song. But on higher levels, the repetition becomes more problematic. If Green Day played a concert and played the same song four times in a row, that would be weird. If Beethoven's Ninth had only two sections and they alternated for ninety minutes, that would be boring.
  

And I don't know about you, but I had more than 7000 hours on my main character alone in EverQuest.



But you can't commission 7000 hours of unique music. Even at the relatively low cost of $2000 per minute of music, that would cost your company Eight Hundred And Forty Million Dollars, and for that money you could buy two F-22 Raptor fighter jets and invade a small country. So what do you do? Maybe you commission about 30 minutes of music and just repeat it a lot? Yeah... about that... see next paragraph.

The over-arching problem to avoid is what I call 'Zombie Music'. (Which is a sub-category within 'Zombie Audio') By this I mean music behaviors which seem to be disconnected from what the player is actually experiencing, lurching about like a zombie. The player becomes annoyed and distracted and is likely to turn the music off, and there goes your $200,000 budget recording with an orchestra in Prague. Music is experienced by people as a sentient entity speaking to them on an emotional level. But now imagine that person repeating themselves over and over like a drunken office-Christmas-party co-worker. You want to get away. Imagine the music telling you about a funeral while you're trying to play Frisbee with friends, or laughing at jokes while you're trying to solve a difficult work problem. Music must be in alignment with how the player feels, and unlike a film, you can't dictate how they're going to feel. You can only make good guesses and be gentle in your musical messaging. It is there to support, not to lead or dictate.

And so, repetition at a high level (i.e. looping a 2-minute song for which you paid $4000) is Zombie Music.

How to avoid? As described above, all-unique music for an entire play-through is usually impractical, and with an MMO that problem is 2-4 orders of magnitude larger. One answer is music which is randomized yet connected to the game experience such that it always sounds appropriate, recognizable, but not identical. This is the method I prefer for MMO's, and the method I have spent much of my career developing. It is not a method I invented; look up Aleatoric Music, Music Concrete, Generative-Adaptive Music, and this:


The basic idea is that rather than playing pre-recorded music, we party like it's 1999 and give the game musical sounds, along with randomization and playback data, and tie the audio playback engine into the game at a very intimate level. The game's conditions alter how the sounds are played, and which sounds are played. The most obvious and classic example of this is combat-specific music. But that was 1985. We can go so much further now.

Stars Reach is exquisitely well-positioned to make compelling use of this kind of music system to create rich aural support structures for the player's experience. We can tie in environmental data to make the music respond to weather, time-of-day, seasons, etc. We can tie in player actions to make the music respond with a gentle congratulatory feel. We can tie in assessments of the level of enemy challenges nearby to create a sense of danger, or ease. Let’s change from major to minor key when it starts raining. Let’s increase the tempo a bit if the enemies in an area are way higher level than you are. Let’s let the player set little melody motifs which will then play occasionally with subtle variations!

Back to the beginning of this segment about music: It can be the soul of the game. All without clumsy switching between over-stated, insistent musical cues which try and fail to dictate your feelings.

[h2]TO CONCLUDE:[/h2]
I feel like my whole career, both of my careers, really, have led me to this project. The opportunities we have here to create wonderful, socially-connected, fulfilling player experiences are unprecedented. This is exactly the kind of project on which I want to work, and seeing it through to becoming a real living, breathing collection of worlds and people will be a crowning achievement for my entire gaming life. From 1975 when I first saw Pong, to now when I really need to be sure to keep doing the daily and weekly Umbar crafting tasks in LotRO so I can get enough luck-stones to fully upgrade my Elven Pickaxe... Stars Reach is all I need to say I really did the gaming thing as well as I possibly could have. :)



[Back us on Kickstarter today!] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/starsreach/stars-reach

Every pledge counts, and we cannot wait to bring you more updates soon. Thanks for your support!

Photo by LericDax


[h2]PART TWO[/h2]

[h3]Now:[/h3]

“So it’s true, then, that the Fae had no homeworld? They lived on Servitor ships?” The Gertan girl – she seemed so young! – looks at Clare quizzically. “Or… I guess that means they lived in Servitors? Since the ships are Servitors?”

“Not all of them. Well, some of them – like Bram – believe that they came originally from the magical world of Tír na nÓg. Where magic worked and they could fly using their vestigial wings.”

“That just sounds like religion? I mean, we had legends of Tír na nÓg back on Kuru.”

Clere chuckles. “So did we, on Earth. I bet you had legends of faeries too.”

The Gertan aide looks thoughtful, rummages in her box, and starts taking notes. Then she stops. “Then where did they come from?”

Clere shrugs.

[h3]Then:[/h3]

“There, suture it good and tight.” The old crone pointed her bony finger at one edge of the cut on her leg. Blood oozed past the stitches, and her skirt was flung immodestly up her thigh, but she didn’t seem to care.

Shae grit her teeth and pushed the needle through the crepey skin. It tore when she pulled the thread tighter. The old woman winced.

Shae flung the sewing kit down. “This is ridiculous. There has to be a better way.”

Rosmerta stared at her. “What better way? We’re out of ointments, child.”

“It’s going to get infected, you know that.”

Rosmerta tsk’ed. “And if it does, I’ll catch the blood fever, and I’ll set out some offering to the spirits of the ever night, and I’ll sing my way through the veil.”

Shae sat back on her heels. “And if it does, I’ll be cleaning up your piss and wiping your arse and then dragging your stinky body to the nearest disposal chute.”

“Ah, don’t do so poorly by me, Shae! Drop me in a recycling vat, please, let me return to the cycle of nature.”

Shae sighed exasperatedly. “What nature? We live inside a giant robot that doesn’t care we’re alive.”

Rosmerta’s eyes narrowed. “Oh, they care. It is part of the Bargain.”

Shae kept her face impassive. “Of course, the great Bargain struck with the Old Ones.”

“Yes!” Rosmerta said, drawing herself up. For a moment she looked like the witch from the House of Magic that she once was, before dwindling away to frailty. “The Servitors keep us all alive, because that was the Bargain struck with their masters.”

“And what we did we give those masters, in this bargain, eh? Because if I’m to believe these bedtime stories, we must have struck a deal. We are bound by bargains, aren’t we? Isn’t that another part of all these old stories?”

Rosmerta looked at her, then came to a decision. “Here, help me up.” Shae got under the old Fae’s arm, and Rosmerta grabbed her walking stick. It was a prized possession, made of actual wood and worn smooth with handling. “Let’s go.”

“Where?”

“It’s time you understood some of the House of Magic.”

The paths through the Servitor ship were dark, because they did not need light to follow their programming. Rosmerta led Shae on an unerring journey, up levels, past huge empty spaces where drones floated in endless zipping rows on endless inscrutable journeys. She led her past cathedrals of circuitry that glowed in colors Shae could not name. They stepped over a river of liquid that folded their souls as they passed over it, like fingers running along the inside of their spines.

The whole way, the stitches came loose, and the leg bled more, and Rosmerta limped more and moved more slowly.

“We should go back,” Shae said. “I’ll never find my way home if you can’t guide me.”

Rosmerta cackled. “Just follow the trail of blood, my dear! But worry not, we are here. This is our chamber of mysteries on this ship.”

And there past the doorway, was the dazzle.

Shae hadn’t seen it since she was a child and was orphaned – and never like this. The glittering black velvet and spray of gemstone stars. The diffuse tendrils of heated gases billowing in cosmic winds. The room was a semi-circle, with vast windows onto space.

Standing around the room were Servitor types she had never seen before. Some were shiny and clean, and some were rusty. They had blades for feet and vicious corkscrews for fingers; antennae like insects and energy pulse cannons as forearms. Some hovered folded into balls, and others loomed, frozen mid-gesture.

“The House of Magic tries to keep the memory of our magicks from Tír na nÓg alive. But none of it works here.”

“Because magic isn’t real,” Shae said sourly. All this mysticism talk was ruining her amazement at the view. She gingerly walked past all the immobile Servitors. They were powered down, and she had learned early in her life to recognize when the robots were blind to her passage. When she reached the windows, she laid her palms and the tip of her nose against the window and stared into the abyss.

“None of it works here,” Rosmerta said. “But any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

And with that she took her cane and rapped it smartly across the head of one of the Servitors.

Shae turned in horror. “What are you doing?!?” She ran towards Rosmerta, but the old woman waved her off. It was too late anyway, as light flickered on under the joints and in the oddly shaped face of the Servitor. Limbs reconfigured with sine wave slides and servo smoothness, and the vast head turned.

“Organic,” the Servitor said. His voice was metallic, and Shae shivered. They talk?

Rosmerta inclined her head. “Servitor. I invoke the Bargain.”

“There is no justification. Statistical models show that a sustainable population of your species exists on many worlds.”

Rosmerta calmly said, “Our local communal knowledge store is at risk of criticality threshold loss. Information transmission must be permitted to preserve cultural identity, per the Bargain.”

The Servitor paused. “Localized knowledge of historical data is not critical to maintaining species level knowledge.”

“Our social structure requires one node to maintain privileged data for each established population center.”

The Servitor nodded. “This is in our data store. Clarify the risk.”

Rosmerta hiked up her skirt, and extended her leg. “This node is at risk of neural collapse, in the event of contamination by foreign organisms causing systemic collapse.”

The Servitor extended one of its impossibly jointed arms, then extended a projector digit from its forearm and played a beam over Rosmerta’s leg. “Organic entity is correct that invasive species have begun colonization.”

Rosmerta said again, “I invoke the Bargain. I must have time to transmit knowledge to a new node according to our traditions.”

“Oral transmission is inefficient. If this younger organic is the destination node, we could simply copy your neural net and overwrite.”

Shae shrank back. She couldn’t quite follow the conversation, but that didn’t sound good.

Rosmerta shook her head. “Not acceptable within our cultural norms.”

“Very well. We offer a solution.” The servitor extended his arm towards Rosmerta’s head. Once extended, the forearm unfolded into a fan of six hyperprojectile cannons, and they began to spin around his arm. As they sped up, they charged up with an eerie glow.

And as Shae screamed, the Servitor vaporized Rosmerta’s head. Then he vaporized the rest of her.

As he did it, Shae kept screaming, eyes shut, weeping, curled into a ball on the floor. She braced herself for the heat of a beam, for the sensation of molecular disassembly. She screamed until a hand came down on her shoulder. “Hush, girl.”

It was Rosmerta’s voice.

Shae opened her eyes. The Servitor was quiescent once more. There was a carbonized shadow on the floor. And outside the windows, peaceful endless space floated as it always had.

“What… how…?”

Rosmerta grinned. “The House of Magic never has figured out how to make our spells work here. But we have learned something of the magic of the Old Ones, and how to make the Bargain work for us. This, we call ReLifing.” She looked better than before, less drawn, less ill. She tugged up her skirt and showed up her unblemished leg. “See?”

Shae looked at the grinning old woman, and was suddenly furious. “You mean, you have had healing here this whole time? You have had the ability to bring back the dead? Like those children’s mother?”

The grin faded from Rosmerta’s face.

“You mean you could have saved my parents?” Shae was weeping now, pounding her fists against the old woman’s chest.

“Hold, child,” Rosmerta said, and took her in an embrace. “It is time that you heard some difficult truths. This is not truly power. We exist by sufferance, and by the will of vanished gods. We can rules-lawyer at the edges of the Bargain, but not much more. And this, I will teach you.”

And with that, Rosmerta and Shae talked into the night, and Shae learned what was traded by the Fae, how to bargain with the Servitors, what became of the Old Ones, and, some say, she learned the location of lost Tír na nÓg.

She also called Rosmerta a fucking asshole at least five times.

The Stars Reach community is growing fast, and it’s time for our first-ever Community Goal!

If we hit 5,000 backers on Kickstarter, we’ll unlock a Cinnamon Bun Hairstyle for all players in Stars Reach!

That means every player gets this iconic look, thanks to the support of our amazing community.

How do we unlock it?

If you’re already a backer, share the campaign! Bring your friends in.
If you haven’t backed yet, now’s the perfect time! Every pledge gets us closer.
This is just the beginning of what we can build together. We’re so grateful for your support! Now, let’s hit 5,000 backers and unlock this reward for everyone!

—---

Community Goal Incoming!

Reach 5,000 Kickstarter backers to unlock Cinnamon Bun Hairstyle for ALL players!

Already backed? Share the campaign! Haven’t yet? Now’s the time! Let’s hit 5K together!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/starsreach/stars-reach

It’s been a bit since the last update, but we wanted to make sure it was chock full-o-goodness.

So here goes:

[h2]SEASONS (PART 1)[/h2]
Getting our worlds to have active seasons turned out to be a thornier problem than we thought it might be, but the first part is done now, so we’re rolling it out.

This initial part is purely visual. It’s also highly accelerated in time so that you can see the passing of the seasons in each playtest. Later on, we’ll make the timeline much more realistic and customize it per planet.

[h3]RIGHT NOW:[/h3]

A game day is eight minutes long (4 minutes of day and 4 minutes of night)
A season lasts three game days (so 24 minutes)
There are four seasons in a year, so a “year” lasts 96 minutes.
Therefore, in a two-hour test, you’ll see all four seasons.
This isn’t how the game will end up later on. This is just for testing.

“Spring” : Grass grows back after the harsh winter and gets thicker. Foliage reappears on the trees. The trees eventually get to the lushest green of any of the seasons.
“Summer” : Grass starts to get browner and the trees are still green, but not quite as lush.
“Fall” : Grass starts to fade back and the foliage in the trees gets more sparse (if the trees are deciduous or don’t like the cold).
“Winter” : Deciduous trees get barren, the grass turns white and brittle and things look a lot more dead.
What’s coming in Seasons, Part 2?

The world simulation will respond to the temperature variations happening in the seasons and water will freeze in the winter.
Rain and snow will fall periodically in the appropriate seasons.
Different planets will have different seasons and temperature curves.
We’ll improve on the foliage appearing/disappearing.
But enjoy the first part for now!

[h2]SKIES[/h2]
There’s not much to say on this one, but the art team has been busy! Go visit the various planets and see the differences that skies, fog, and new celestial bodies can make for each of the planets. We think you’ll like it!

[h2]PUBLIC EVENTS[/h2]
We built a bunch of new underlying game infrastructure to let us roll out a wide variety of public events in the future. These events happen periodically (not constantly) while you’re in the world, adding variety to your normal activities.

The offerings in this update are just the start, but even so, we think you’ll enjoy them.

[h3]METEOR STORMS[/h3]
There are a lot of different kinds of “meteor events” that can occur: Cosmic ray barrages, acid rain, ice storms, hot hail, anti-gravium falls, regular ol’ meteors, and the dreaded megarock events. Some of them have devastating effects on tunnels and overhangs, some deposit huge chunks of resources on the planet and some are just plain old wreckage. Duck for cover or run to be the first to take advantage of the windfalls they bring. You decide!

[h3]BOSS SPAWNS[/h3]
The bosses on the planets have been removed from their permanent spawn positions…but they aren’t gone from the game! Instead, they now come into the world as public events, either from underground, out of hibernation, or even descending from space. When they do, the TPL will send out a broadcast warning that one of these new terrors is rampaging and they’ll set a waypoint so you know where to go to help destroy it (or you can just avoid that spot if danger isn’t your thing).

Be warned. We’ve tinkered with the bosses a bit. You may get a couple of surprises.

[h3]REFORESTATION[/h3]
The TPL is being monitored by the Servitors on a constant basis. When a planet starts to fall below an “acceptable” threshold of health, the Servitors warn the TPL to “do something about it before they are forced to do so”. Right now, when the TPL is warned about the number of trees being too low in the world, they sponsor a Reforestation event. Players are rewarded with Ranger XP for participating in the Reforestation event, as well as normal Forestry XP for planting trees. The event runs for a duration, and if the forests are brought back up to par, the event ends successfully.

If the event fails, the Servitors will make a red mark in the log…and that will come back to haunt you later (after we get the chance to add more systems in a future update).

There will be other “planetary health” events later on. This is just the first in a series.

[h2]BUG FIXES AND GAME IMPROVEMENTS[/h2]
We’ve done a LOT since the last update. In no particular order, here’s a list of bug fixes and improvements we’ve made to the game since then:

• You now have a Title Object in your inventory. If you right-click it, it opens a UI widget that allows you to select from any title you have earned and display it proudly for all to see.
  
  
  • You have the option to “Remove Current Title” so you display no title at all.
    
  • You can earn titles by defeating bosses in Boss events and participating in a successful Reforestation event.
    
  • The Servitors also granted you one complimentary title so you don’t have an empty list.
    
  • If you gift the Title Object or delete it accidentally, you can make a new one at any Toolmaker station.
• You can now craft Drone Lights!
  
  • Drone Lights are a recipe that all players know. You can make it at any Toolmaker station.
    
  • You (currently) need five Tier 4 Metal and one Anti-Gravium to make it.
    
  • You right-click it in your inventory and it auto-equips. It lasts for five minutes and then expires.
    
  • It lights up the area around you! (And now that we have it, we can make nights and caves darker again in a future update!)
• Survey nodes are visible at a shorter distance, but audio cues while using the Pathfinder have been greatly enhanced to make the task of finding a survey node a more interesting and fun experience. So turn up your sound and go find those nodes!
  
• We now do client prediction on movement and projectiles! More work is to come, but you should notice significant improvement on most projectiles and specials (although we still have work to do to predict homing projectiles).
  
• Day/night cycles are now synchronized by the server. If you see daytime, then so does everyone else.
  
• There is now a text search field on many screens (like crafting terminals, inventory, etc.) where you can sort the results seen by what you type.
  
• We killed the dreaded targeting bug that plagued us during the last update.
  
• The tutorial text has been updated to be a bit easier to read and with lore based on the TPL having written it rather than the Servitors. (Expect more dramatic first-time user experience improvements in near-future updates.)
  
• The Paver can no longer be used on a Homestead you do not have permission to edit.
  
• If you’re not sure what world you’re in, you can type “/world” or “/whereami” in chat and it will tell you.
  
• A new alien tree has been added and is visible on Gaiamar.
  
• You get Botany or Forestry XP when planting seeds from a Xyloslicer (depending on what you plant).
  
• You can now see climate information on the HUD when you have the Harvester equipped and if you have the “Farming” node unlocked on the Botany skill tree. (This will be more useful later when we roll out the Farming skill tree branch, but it’s functional now.)
  
• When someone gifts you items, you’ll now see those items registered on the left side of your HUD (where you see gathered resources listed).
  
• The Gravity Gun no longer affects other players. (Preventing unwanted PvP in PvE-only areas.)
  
• Planting radii have been added to trees (like with plants) to avoid overcrowding. (This was an oversight when planting was added for bushes and flowers.)
  
• Creature loot drops were improved (previous implementation had a lot of them dropping only one of each item…this is fixed now).
  
• Creatures are more aware than they were previously and will react to you more often.
  
• Goji Berries (the fruit) are now harvestable.
  
• Goji Berries, Strawberries, and Cactus Fruit now have individual inventory icons.
  
• Field of View can now be enlarged up to 90 degrees. (The previous maximum was 75 degrees.)
  
• The chat pane no longer scrolls to the top if you hit ESC to close it.
  
• Mushrooms are now harvestable.
  
• Feline friends are now inhabiting the portal areas. (Taming them will come soon.)
  

[h3]KNOWN ISSUES[/h3]

• Oops! We left the stub of the Farming skill tree in the build. You can play with it if you want, but honestly, it does nothing useful in this version. We recommend just avoiding it for now.
  
  
• Space around Zaraxa seems to be unstable and travelers might experience difficulty traveling to the planet. (In other words, you may crash when portaling to the desert planet. If that happens, just restart and you’ll be there. You won’t have to portal again. We’re going to kill this bug someday soon. We think it’s caused by all the shifting sand, but we’ll find out.)
  

The clock is ticking, explorers.
Only 18 days left to back Stars Reach on Kickstarter. With seasons rolling in, meteor storms raging, and bosses emerging from the depths or descending from space, the universe is evolving fast. You can be part of shaping it.

Join the adventure. Shape the world. Secure your place before time runs out.

[Link to Kickstarter]

When players get together into friend groups, they often form a Guild in order to share common goals. The guild structure lets them communicate and share resources more easily, and in many games, it also lets them share a guild hall and guild logo.

[h3]GUILD TYPES IN STARS REACH[/h3]
Our plan is to support several types of player organizations. Regular guilds are the sort you are used to from other games, and we see the function of these as primarily social. Because of this, we let you join more than one!

We are also planning on having two more guild types: armies and companies. You can only belong to one of each of these new types of guilds. Both require exclusive membership in order to minimize obvious cheats and keep things fair.

Armies can declare war on one another and companies compete economically instead, and have some special functions related to that.

Lastly, players can also form governments, which are sort of like guilds, but they are based on where you declare your citizenship.

In Stars Reach, we don’t really have the concept of a “guild hall”, but guilds will often organize to govern an entire planet. They can create a visual identity for themselves (via clothing, armor, and/or spacesuits) and they can also visually brand their spacecraft and equipment.

In many games, there is also the concept of a megaguild, which may have hundreds or even thousands of members. It is extremely likely that these organizations will be present within Stars Reach also.

[h3]ALLIANCES AND BENEFITS[/h3]
But megaguilds are not to everyone’s taste. That’s where Guild Alliances come into play.

Let’s say you’re a small- or medium-sized guild running a single planet (or even a couple of planets), but your guild wants to start a trade collective beyond your current reach or a self-defense force to protect your solar system, something that would normally require the coordination and resources of a much larger guild (like a megaguild). With Alliances, you can reach out to other guilds and formalize friendships and bonds between your groups, becoming recognized publicly to any outside forces that your guilds cooperate with, while still retaining their own individual identities.

The Alliances structure provides you channels to formally contact other guilds, start conversations and agree on Alliance identities. This gives your trade discussions more weight, allows you to set up mutual pacts of your choosing, and eventually, when PvP is prevalent in more solar systems, even create military agreements.

It also lets you unify those different organization types into one larger entity: a player organization might have a social guild at its heart, but also include an army and/or a company.

Direct benefits to Alliances include:
An alliance-specific chat channel
Alliance tagging on your character’s nameplate so it’s visible to others (when you so desire)
Alliance logo and colors that can be branded on any guild’s equipment, uniforms, spacesuits, or starships. Even settlement buildings can bear their signature logos.
An alliance roster so that alliance members can be contacted by any other alliance member.
An alliance-specific newsnet channel.
Alliance-specific mission boards, banking functions, and more.

Thus, you can participate in most of the recruiting power and political might of a megaguild while still retaining the cozy friendship of a small core of players, as long as you can balance the personalities and relationships between the guild leaders and keep your Alliance together…which is a game unto itself.