Looking at large alliances, most tend to have two or even three wings. It was once my personal belief that the more wings an alliance has, the more powerful they are. Now in somecases, if all the wings are well experienced and active, that would definately be true. but looking at numbers and at what I am going to say below, I now believe that two to three wings are most effecient.
When looking at a two winged alliance, the first thing to look at is numbers, when full, two wings consist of 60 people. Now, I believe that jobs can and should be porportoned into three types. The first is Raiding, the second is Escourts/Hunters. The last type is auxilary craft such as traders and resourcers, repair carriers, minelayers, planet builders, etc., etc. Now, when looking at 60 people in our two wing alliance, I think that for optumum results, jobs should be split into thirds.
If we have 20 people in Raiders, thats 4 raid teams of 5. Which is the max amount of people allowed in combat on one side. If we had 1 team or 5 raiders on at all times (I know this isn't very plausible to do because of time zones and locations, but if it was) they could have 6 hor shifts. With 20 other people as escourts, u can have a full escourt team on to cover those raiders. The last 20 are obvious the specalty ships as well as other people leveling up.
Trading for money after your alliance has a planet or two built up can and in most cases, is considered obsolete because a well built planet can easily make enough money to keep u outfited. So the real main reason to be in a trader or ressy is to gain levels.
Now if we add a third wing, and split it up like the other two, we now have 6 raid teams and 6 escourt teams, and 30 aux. craft. Your firepower has just been increased by 50%.
Next is the reason for 2-3 wings being most eff. . .
We add a fourth wing, spllitting it up as before. Yes we now have 8 raid teams and 8 escourt wings with 40 aux. craft, but u need at least twice as many planets to keep the alliance moving. We also only increase are fire power by 25%. Each wing added increase need for planets and you increase fire power by less and less. The only way I see to counter this is to increase your portion of aux. craft
Rover of Imperial Dreams