Without any mention in patch notes, and
as originally reported the 500 member fleet cap had disappeared several months ago, but appears to be back in force with Season 11.5.
No players were randomly removed, but just as if you were at 500 in the days of old, you cannot invite new members at that point.
It was never stated officially whether the lifting or reinstatement of the cap was intentional. However, as it has been more than 6 months when de facto no cap was in effect, some warning (or at least some clarification on Cryptic's intent) would have been nice.
Playing since January 2010. STOwiki administrator. Accolade hunter.
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Fed Armada:
Section 31 (level 730, 2700+ members)
KDF Armada:
Klingon Intelligence (level 699, 2100+ members)
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By the way, the biggest fleet I've ever been in had 293 members and did pretty well with just that. Don't know what they have now, but it's a significant number.
I have confirmed fleet of size 200+ cannot invite additional players. Presumably cap is now around 100 -- which would indicate its in error.
My STOwiki page | Reachable in-game @PhyrexianHero
Fed Armada: Section 31 (level 730, 2700+ members)
KDF Armada: Klingon Intelligence (level 699, 2100+ members)
Hmm our Fleet has over 1200 members
Considering that fleets have been able to expand beyond the 500 cap since the armada system launched 9 months ago it may be best for community relations and those fleets who are above 500 to push the fleet cap to 1,000. Otherwise it will lock down hard those fleets vastly above 500. I know of one fleet in game with 2,616 members, a number of that size I believe is an outlier but I would say most are under 1k so I think most could be comfortable with a raised cap of 1k given the situation.
9 months is a very long time to not address a reported issue from 10.5 to becoming a major bug issue with 11.5 when nearly all fleets are shutdown from recruiting. The consideration of a middle ground is advisable given going back to the 500 cap could be very disabling to many fleets and their operations not to mention player morale to the game.
The ball on this is in Cryptic's hands.
Original STO beta tester.
If we have a cap, I think that'd be a fair one. With Season 11.5, it was erroneously set to ~100 so hopefully Cryptic will address this soon.
My STOwiki page | Reachable in-game @PhyrexianHero
Fed Armada: Section 31 (level 730, 2700+ members)
KDF Armada: Klingon Intelligence (level 699, 2100+ members)
Resolved an issue which was blocking Fleet invites if the Fleet had more than 100 members.
The Fleet is once again capped at 500 members.
It is unfortunate Cryptic is not bumping up the cap after having removed it since October.
My STOwiki page | Reachable in-game @PhyrexianHero
Fed Armada: Section 31 (level 730, 2700+ members)
KDF Armada: Klingon Intelligence (level 699, 2100+ members)
Do large fleets cause server instabilities or something?
I've only seen Cryptic answer this once and it was back in July 2012 when the fleet starbases were first added:
Q: (ufpdodgers) With Fleet Starbases on the horizon and currently being tested on TRIBBLE, will we ever see the Fleet Cap raised above 500?
Dstahl: Currently, the answer is no, but the nice thing about MMOs is that nothing is ever final, so that may change in the future. We’ve looked into average Fleet sizes and while there are a few large Fleets, the vast majority of Fleets currently contain less than 25 members. Thus, it is a game design decision to keep the current Fleet Cap of 500 members.
Clearly it is possible for them to increase the fleet size into the thousands, but they choose not to. This may be so that armadas cannot have thousands of members in the alpha fleet getting a larger XP bonus while they all contribute to the gamma fleets getting the larger dilithium discount. Or maybe because Cryptic's never really looked into it.
My STOwiki page | Reachable in-game @PhyrexianHero
Fed Armada: Section 31 (level 730, 2700+ members)
KDF Armada: Klingon Intelligence (level 699, 2100+ members)
That's a very old response from the good old days with Dstahl as Mr EP. They used to listen to "real" players feedback back then. I totally agree that 500 is not enough and should be increased at least 750 or even 1Mil. They have increased the exchange cap to reflect current times. I guess they are NOT very optimistic that many players could log in this MMO. Oh well that's coming from the top.
Bug, here's yesterday's patch notes.
Or it's an optimization problem. The more members you have in the fleet the less the individual contribution by each one generally is. So with THOUSANDS all competing for projects then what chance does each individual member have at gaining enough FC to buy anything of note? Practical none. Sure, projects will be completed in no-time at all, but to what purpose? Most people in the mega-fleet wouldn't be able to enjoy all the benefits.
The current fleet cap (all technical discussion aside) might just represent a balance between cost and contribution opportunities. Hence something like Admiralty, which allows for bigger fleet communities (argument one for bigger fleets) but while also scaling up available fleet projects to make sure that system doesn't break down (or at the very least require a dedicated team in the fleet constantly cycling small fleet projects).
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Wow -- that's pretty crazy that literally half of the bonus (the other being dilithium discount) of being in an armada is non-functional after 9 months.
My STOwiki page | Reachable in-game @PhyrexianHero
Fed Armada: Section 31 (level 730, 2700+ members)
KDF Armada: Klingon Intelligence (level 699, 2100+ members)