Report: Understanding The Age And Size Of Factions

DECLASSIFIED

REPORT ON THE SIZE AND
AGE OF ESSALONIAN FACTIONS

OFFICE OF THE GOVERNOR,
POLITY OF COPTOPIA
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BACKGROUND
After a long, long period of inactivity, the founding members of Coptia returned to MassiveCraft to find that their old faction had been disbanded, the land claimed by someone else, and all their most valuable possessions seized in the takeover. Luckily, during the same period of inactivity, server policy had changed to make factions free to create. The two set out to create a new home, the Polity of Coptopia. After initial setup and construction period of one week, the Governor commissioned this report, to better understand the diplomatic landscape, with the following questions as goals:

1. How many factions exist today?
2. How many factions have been created in the past month? How many are older, well-established?
3. How many members does the average faction have? How large are the largest? How many are only one member?

MEMO ON DECLASSIFICATION
This report was created to benefit the Polity of Coptopia in recruiting and diplomacy. However it was declassified out of a sense of civic duty to the larger Factions community. Reading the forums, there seems to be some general sense of anxiety about the health of Factions; I believe this data shows that concern may be unfounded. At the very least, this information can help guide a more informed discussion about whats working, and whats not. Of particular interest is 'how well are we attracting and retaining new players' - for example in a September announcement discussing future content updates, MonMarty said:

So, how well is factions growing? How many young new factions are being started? How many members do they attract? How much of the server is part of its oldest factions? These are important questions - and the age and membership of factions is a very useful metric on our scorecard.

METHODOLOGY
All data was manually transcribed from the DynMap, into records held in the Office of the Governor, where they were later analyzed. Care was taken not to omit any faction, though it is entirely possible some errors were made. The Office believes any errors, if they exist, are not significant enough to skew this reports major findings. It should however be noted that this report represents only a snapshot - the current state of the server - and therefore provides limited insight into other areas of interest: the activity, growth, death, and behavior of Factions over time.

MAJOR FINDINGS
This report had many findings, but will begin with the answers to its primary remit above:

• At time of reporting, there are a total of 241 factions with active claims on Essalonia, with a total population of 875 members.
• This implies an average membership of 3.6 members per faction.
• Almost half (44.81%) of all factions are 'single-member', these factions represent 12.34% of the Essalonian population.
• Almost half (49.94%) of the Essalonian population lives in factions of between 2 - 9 members.
• There are only 19 factions with over ten members, these represent 37.71% of the Essalonian population.
• A total of 39 factions are less than one month old. The oldest factions are 18 months old, and there are 54 factions of this age.
• The youngest factions (<1 mo.) have a total of 105 members (12.00% of total Essalonian population)
• The oldest factions (>18 mo.) have a total of 335 members (38.29% of total Essalonian population)

FIGURE 1.
Number of Factions
**Value in table represent the number of factions at that age-size combination



FIGURE 2.
Number of Members
**Value in table represent the number of members in factions at that age-size combination




ANALYSIS
It comes as no surprise that most factions are either extremely old, well-established, and entrenched --- or brand new. Clearly some major event happened approximately 18 months ago, as no factions show ages older than this date. The large number of factions 'founded 18 months ago' are all likely older, legacy institutions. These factions represent a very significant (38.29%) portion of the total population.

On the other hand, many new factions are constantly being created by ambitious upstarts and new joiners. Most of these will not survive in the long term. More research would be needed to confirm, but it seems that about 40% of these will close each month, for the first five months of their existence.

Roughly 12.34% of the population lives alone, in single person factions. This figure may be misleading, as it includes 'DR' or 'AF' factions, which are clearly vassals or subsidiaries of other factions. From a diplomatic standpoint, it is unlikely that any of these people are interested in engaging in meaningful diplomacy. Small factions, those with 2-6 members, represent another 35.43% of the population. The remaining half (52.23%) of the population lives in factions of 7 or more.

It should be noted that member counts are not perfectly indicative of activity - one faction may have many members who are inactive, or alt accounts, while another faction may have fewer, but more active members (who are therefore more able to gather resources, levy troops, etc.).

NEXT STEPS
The long-standing foreign policy objectives of Coptopia are peaceful, but expansionist - actively seeking new land, recruits, and trading opportunities. To that end, the information contained in this report will be utilized by the Diplomatic & Recruiting Services Department as they see fit. Contact Governor DeliFool (/m s DeliFool <msg>) with any inquiries.

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Figured it was something like that, thanks for confirming!