I think you missed my point, which is, I don't think any races needs to be added to the original 3 kitty empires. Period.
I don't care if you have the Gorn as a separate playable empire or combine it's shiplist with another empires. Whether it's 5vs3, 4vs3, or even 3vs3 with combined shiplists, the original 3 kitty emipires should stand on their own. The pilots (emphasis mine) of those 3 empires have proven they can compete even in the past servers when there were 3 sides. Reducing the next server to a 2 sided affair (which I totally get because of pilot numbers) and adding another race to the kitties side is too much in my opinion.
IIRC the Kitty team for AOTK was 1/3rd the then-active playerbase, right???
Yes, in the last AOTK server, the kitties pilots were about 1/3 of the player population. So what. That was then, not now. Our player population has changed alot since then.
That's it. Don't add another race to the kitties side. No matter how you breakup their opponents' shiplists I think you find that their will be a good balance of pilots
Uh, you cited above that you were only wanting the original Kitty playerbase that won AOTK 2 . Now you're believing the playerbase will naturally shift around to provide equal sides...
I would only like to see the original 3 empires for the kitty side. And yes, I do believe that the playerbase would shift to provide somewhat equal sides. (they are never completely equal as we all know) I have already heard several non-kitty empire pilots mention that they would like to fly with the kitty's side for AOTK3.
AND, I would love to see the Feds and klingons sided together. You make up plenty of storylines about how all these un-friendly races have allied to stop the kitty invason.
And this portion hints that you don't want "native" Klinks and "native" Feds to do the drifting you're citing above, you'd rather see them actually put aside their differences and play well together (something that I would love to see someday too). Well, since the "natives" of those 2 races easily comprise 50% of our playerbase, how do you get 2 equal teams, utilizing all 8 races, when one side's got 1/2 our players in 2 races and still needs to fill out 3 more?
Ok, several things here. I would like to see the Feds and Klinks on the same side. Yes, I do think it would be a great opportunity for those players to fly together, but I do expect to see some drifting from those playerbases. Just because I think it would be great that those two empires fly together, doesn't mean that they think so.
I'm also not sure whether the Feds and Klinks players comprise 50% of our total playerbase now either. Adding in the Gorn and Hydran empires certainly doesn't add many "native" players, and the Rom playerbase is not what is used to be. Wiith players drifting over to the kitty side, I don't really think there would be a major player desprepancy between the two sides. Just my opinion. It's very possible that I'm just hoping that it would be true.
In the end, I'm sure the admins will decide to split the races so that it is the most agreeable to the majority of our playerbase. And I might just be in the minority this time.