I am going to start allowing some indies in Clan Wars again. The reason I stopped doing that after CW1 was that mikey explained to us that 1 indie = 4 team players in terms of performance, so I chose the 4 over the 1, but now that we have the Anti-spectate mod, we have nothing to lose by dropping two or three indies on our starting planets, because we are gonna have to kill them asap anyway, long before lag kicks in, to get their metal (since our starting planets are always "spawn wars" now, to give everyone an equal amount of metal without having to design five versions of the same system depending on how many clans show).
The main reason I am doing this is to allow some randoms every week in the CW lobbies, because I believe that will inspire some of them to join clans or start their own, like Loren did with NBT, or the two Russian guys who played in Battle Royale #1 did when they joined BSE later that day for CW10.
A secondary reason is to fill the lobby up on weekends with low turnout. I am happy when we get 20+ players, but sometimes we get 15-20, in which case I could fill the extra slots with indies and still get a big game.
And the final reason, of course, is that it's simply a more fun war with the extra chaos of the indies. More ways to ally, more ways to gain an edge, more ways to fuck up and lose. And if an indie ever wins Clan Wars, that will be awesome too, and a great advertisement for the event. If a lone player can win, it means anything can happen any given Saturday, and that's fantastic.
Please note that, unlike what I did with CW1, in which I preferred established players as indies, this time I will prefer COMPLETE AND TOTAL RANDOMS. This is because established players already know about Clan Wars, and they know the clans and the clan leaders, and can join a clan whenever they want. If they are not joining clans it means they don't want to play as part of a clan, so we gain nothing by allowing them to play as indies. E.g. flubb asked me to play last week as an indie, but I said "no, join a clan", and that is what I will say this week too to every established player who talks to me. When we are done setting up the clans in the lobby (and AFTER we have picked our correct colors), I will simply open up a couple more slots and make the lobby public for the couple of minutes that it will take us to fill them with randoms, and then we'll start playing.
And yes, I know that if flubb or any other known player is determined to sneek into Clan Wars as an indie, they can do it by just changing their name, but then they will have to wait in the lobby for the exact moment when I will open it (IF I open it, because the weeks that we get a lot of clans and players I will NOT be opening it, due to performances reasons), and beat all the randoms who will be trying to get in. And they will have to do this every week, if they want to play every week. And they will do it for what? So they can be killed in less than 10 mins because they are alone? So if they want to do it, I can't stop them, but I am not endorsing it, and I won't help them do it.
So I am really excited about the possibilities in this, and I look forward to letting some indies in the lobby this Saturday. Tell me your thoughts on this if you have any, and let's see how it plays out!