Thoth

True, I agree that when the game gets that developed the better way to run such a coalition is to simply tax, probably based on property/territory, everyone inside of your coalition and then pay a security corp/mercenaries to protect that area. As the game gets more developed, like in EVE people who want to protect areas of space and maintaining their power/the status quo will form large alliances out of smaller powers and individuals to protect their sections of space. That is usually how such "federations" work is everyone involved pays in a set percentage or price, then the entire area of space is protected from outside forces. Then your biggest threat will be politics and subterfuge. At the end of the day though, if you want to be alone in an ever expanding universe, you will have to always live on the frontier, and the frontiers of today are the city centers of tomorrow. You can either go out and use your position to your advantage, welcome growth and attempt to take advantage, or every time it becomes possible for you to move out further, that is what you will have to do. It will be really hard to live alone in this universe, just like it is in reality except as technology and infrastructure progresses Dual Universe will feature a much greater degree of interconnection. Like I said before, your best bet for a permanent, relatively secure home where you can be left alone, is the outskirts of a major power's territory. Join the Empire, or something like that, where they will attempt to keep a large amount of buffer space around their centers of power. You can live in the outskirts of this space for relatively low cost, you will probably be relatively restricted in terms of how much expansion you can do, and you will still be subject to their government, but you will be secure which will be really important in such an open ended game.

In general, the game will be very punishing for people who want to play totally solo, in the sense of being on your own. I recommend joining an organization that either allows solo operators within its territory, such as the Empire, where you could live on the very outskirts of their territory for low cost, or in a frontier territory, and you would still be relatively protected since as long as you are paying your property taxes they will be obligated to defend you. Plus of course for their pride. I haven't seen many yet, but there will also likely be many "homestead" or "coalition" type organizations made up of people who want to play by themselves or with a small group of people, but will work together for defense. You/they would claim a territory in an obscure, resource depleted section of the universe (think Tatooine in Star Wars) and hopefully be left alone for the most part, just band together for the occasional pirate raid and lay low, make sure that you don't have anything that is worth the trouble of a larger organization taking it from you, and progress that way. That won't be super sustainable though given the nature of expansion in Dual Universe. Because of the high cost to expand to other systems, it will be a while before there are planets that can truly fly under the radar. In the beginning sure there will probably be fewer players, but they will be condensed into a single system with only a handful of planets. It will be hard to find territory that nobody important cares about owning.

So I feel that this is probably a stupid question, but I can't find the answer anywhere. What is happening to the Cinderfall syndicate? Just yesterday it was the 5th biggest Org, but today it looks as though membership suddenly dropped. Is it people joining member organizations? Is it a purge of inactives? Are you transferring to a new org? No big deal, just extremely curious.