Alliance or corp is just semantics. It's a loose gathering of players.

What's the price of having a large corp's players held back by an artificial limiting factor of a clone supply, when you could bypass it by splitting into multicorp? PC as is sounds to me like a very much split promoting thing. The only way to bypass it.

Now what happens if your large corp loses the initial district over and over, never making it into a phase where you can afford to send in any other players than your A team? The rest leave. You actually ELIMINATE the risk of this by splitting, instead of "risking more". You see which one of the corps takes off best and make it your main corp eventually.

Long example, no need to quote, just to put the point in numbers.
A: 1 corp
B: 4 corps who just bring mercs from main corp to fights

Flip1 (get clones, get district):
A = 100 clones and district
B = 400 clones and 4 districts

Flip2 (first expansion attack):
A = 200 clones and 2 districts
B = 800 clones and 8 districts

Whats to stop a corp making a dummy corp to attack a bottleneck time and time again and auto losing. If you want to lock one district, it would cost a net 9 million a day to lock one district. Which if it is the right planet, it would be protecting other planets through attrition and the real enemy wouldn't be able to launch an attack, because the dummy corp gets an hour to re-queue up a fight. Thus delaying death through using a 1 man corp that dies 100 times a day.

What if the attacking force losses, other corps can queue an assault? Or does the hour to start another fight only happen if you win?

Maybe a queue system for attackers, once an attacker loses a fight, the next attacker in the queue gets the option to attack and so on. Or maybe a silent bid system where corps put forth extra funds that no one can see, whoever puts forth the highest silent amount gets the right to attack that district. The bid system could be isk or clones, any clones used in the bid get lost as a "side" conflict on who gets to attack. Only losing the difference of the side bid verse the second highest bidder.

That actually sounds pretty balanced.

It introduces a small advantage for the defender (by making attacking more of an economic investment), but also guarantees the defender can't game the system to cowardly ends.

You're going to get attacked either way, but it ensures that the person who wants the attack most pays the dearest price.

A dummy corp attacking just to lose will be instantly down 20M isk. How long can anyone keep up throwing 20M isk around every day just to keep a district locked?

The issue is if you are in an opposing faction's space their NPC faction forces will still attack you, regardless if you are doing Dust FW at the time. You also can't cloak in opposing faction space, which would give an advantage to FW players that are in the region of their aligned faction.

20 million for the starter pack. 5 million if you kill all 100 clones and let none get wasted in the MCC. The final 6 mil comes from the district producing at max cap 60 extra clones, cause if it lost the fight, it would lose those clones and the dummy corp is preventing the district from losing. Total net lose. 20 - 5 - 6 = 9.

EDIT: Note this scenario could be used to protect a money farm located behind the district being locked and/or delay while reinforcements showed up.

And then they target another district on the planet instead for the same price because there aren't any real "bottlenecks" as such in the way you're thinking. Or someone else attacks one of your other districts. Or you realise that you didn't have your full clone count for the district yet and that 6 million you're earning back doesn't count. Or you realise that there's no efficient method of transferring that money between Corps so while your Alliance as a whole isn't losing money, the "defender" Corp is.

The 5 million goes to the main corp, not the dummy corp. There's no way to put more money into the dummy corp from the main corp's winnings (actually, just thought of an exploit that would allow this - damn!). And yes you're assuming the district has the SI that increases production - without it you'd only earn 4 million worth of clones, making potential lose of 11M by your maths.

Also, remember that you can only attack if you have 100 clones to move. If the dummy corp loses, they need to either buy (-20M isk) or produce another 2 days (3 days without the production SI, which costs 100M isk) worth of clones before they can attack again. By that time I can assure you another corp has been waiting to jump on the bandwagon and attack for real in the period that your dummy corp is restocking clones.

Now, as for the exploit of actually being able to transfer isk between corps (and I can't see a way to stop this) - corp A gives one merc lots of isk, that merc quits corp A and joins corp B, then donates that lots of isk to new corp. Pretty simple really; can't be detected, can't be stopped, not even really an exploit.

The problem with being attacked before restocking clones still stands.

Ok, there are some bottlenecks, so a planet with 5 districts would lose 45 mil isk a day, but could be protecting a 25 district planet, so the costs could be worth it. Also, a big corp could make 45 million in a day easy through instant battle matches..

As for transferring funds, its easy. Give 20 million to a corp mate through the give money from the corp menu, and then have that guy leave and join the other corp. Once he is there, he gives the money through donate, and heads back to the main corp to get more money for the next day.

If a corp has no district, it can buy 100 clones and attack absolutely anywhere it wants, thus circumventing any potential bottlenecks.

Ok, there are some bottlenecks, so a planet with 5 districts would lose 45 mil isk a day, but could be protecting a 25 district planet, so the costs could be worth it. Also, a big corp could make 45 million in a day easy through instant battle matches..

As for transferring funds, its easy. Give 20 million to a corp mate through the give money from the corp menu, and then have that guy leave and join the other corp. Once he is there, he gives the money through donate, and heads back to the main corp to get more money for the next day.

20 million for the starter pack. 5 million if you kill all 100 clones and let none get wasted in the MCC. The final 6 mil comes from the district producing at max cap 60 extra clones, cause if it lost the fight, it would lose those clones and the dummy corp is preventing the district from losing. Total net lose. 20 - 5 - 6 = 9.

EDIT: Note this scenario could be used to protect a money farm located behind the district being locked and/or delay while reinforcements showed up.

Except if its another decent sized corp that doesn't feel right about making a dummy corp and moving members. They are stuck going through the bottleneck. I for one will never leave my corp. But I would pay isk to another corp to cause havoc on the back lines of said corp. But I would prefer to do the dirty work myself.

In fact it's actually a 7 million net lost isn't it?

5 million from winning + 6 million from the production of 60 clones + 2 million due to 20% of the attacker's clones being transferred to the defender = 13 million.

... I for one will never leave my corp. But I would pay isk to another corp to cause havoc on the back lines of said corp. But I would prefer to do the dirty work myself.

Django:
As for the first few weeks or months, I don't care about short term, I am a Duster for life. It could also happen on a small scale though, where one strong isk corp denies a large corp that one last district to complete a planet and move on. Instead they stuck trying to kill a small corp they could easily take out if not for a the loophole of attackers right to launch another attack back to back to back. Theoretically, a bunch of small corps could work together to do this to a large corp and the large corp could never fight back. Unless the small corps run out of money, but 9 mil, like I said before, is nothing for a decent corp to pull down in a day if they really wanted to.

Where am I assuming no defense? This is a separate matter from the first, which can happily be put to rest (exp growth non issue with 250 planets).

The issue is (read carefully):
Big corp cannot use numbers advantage because it only gets 100 clones to start with.
Lot of small corps can use numbers because they each get a start.
Big corp can become lot of small corps and for most purposes merge by ringing players regardless of which small corp is fighting.

With this in place, do you think it's wise for a corp like PRO with 900 members to rely in 1 starting location and 100 starting clones? They could split and profit:
GÇó if one start fails, they have more to switch to
GÇó by having more attack opportunities they can put many players in use
GÇó the players that aren't their prime have their place, as fights abound. less fights that are more important (one corp needs to win, if you have multiple corps a loss won't bring the whole thing down) would mean that only the elite are allowed to fight for the few district fights (few because of clone amount)

This makes splitting a rather mandatory practise for big corps. In fact most corps would be best off with alternate starts just to see which one takes off best. Trust issues? Use alts as directors.

Where am I assuming no defense? This is a separate matter from the first, which can happily be put to rest (exp growth non issue with 250 planets).

The issue is (read carefully):
Big corp cannot use numbers advantage because it only gets 100 clones to start with.
Lot of small corps can use numbers because they each get a start.
Big corp can become lot of small corps and for most purposes merge by ringing players regardless of which small corp is fighting.

With this in place, do you think it's wise for a corp like PRO with 900 members to rely in 1 starting location and 100 starting clones? They could split and profit:
GÇó if one start fails, they have more to switch to
GÇó by having more attack opportunities they can put many players in use
GÇó the players that aren't their prime have their place, as fights abound. less fights that are more important (one corp needs to win, if you have multiple corps a loss won't bring the whole thing down) would mean that only the elite are allowed to fight for the few district fights (few because of clone amount)

This makes splitting a rather mandatory practise for big corps. In fact most corps would be best off with alternate starts just to see which one takes off best. Trust issues? Use alts as directors.

Main corp loses - alt corp that's doing better becomes main corp.

As opposed to only corp fails - restart.

In the alt scenario you are playing multiple times more players, too. This makes corp members stay. A month of not being allowed in PC because A-team needs to use clones makes members leave.

Lets look at the problem with this argument:

I don't think there's a problem here at all. I see a trade-off, which is exactly what we want from the game.

As I understand the argument, large corps have to decide between alt corp (high admin, fast expansion, weak defense) or single corp (low admin, slow expansion, stronger defense once established) strategy. Smaller corps don't really have this problem.

That's wonderful isn't it?

No right answer, and bigger isn't entirely better.

I don't think there's a problem here at all. I see a trade-off, which is exactly what we want from the game.

As I understand the argument, large corps have to decide between alt corp (high admin, fast expansion, weak defense) or single corp (low admin, slow expansion, stronger defense once established) strategy. Smaller corps don't really have this problem.

That's wonderful isn't it?

No right answer, and bigger isn't entirely better.

What happens if PSN goes down during a combat window, but not DUST 514?

I could see this happening and messing up lots of plans and timing. Maybe some get in before PSN goes down, but not kicked out of game, and get to attack a district without the defenders being able to log in to put up a fight.