Star Trek Gamers - ClanBase

General Clanning

Expanding Your Clan

If you have just started your clan for Legacy or any of the older games a time will come when you think to yourself "should I branch out into other games?".

It's a question that a lot of clan leaders ask and it's one which requires a lot of thought.

Before you even think of expanding your clan into another Star Trek game or a game outside of Star Trek you need to think of some basic questions first.

1. Do I have enough members?
   
   For a clan to expand into other games you need to have the member base to play those games.  However, even if you have a good member base of more than 20, if all of those 20 have the new game you want to expand to you need to make sure that the other games you are covering wont start to suffer from a lack of people playing it.
   
   For example if all of your member base has Star Trek: Legacy and then you decide to move into a future Star Trek game or a game outside of Star Trek and over 3/4ths of your Legacy players leave, it means that only a small amount of your clan will be left in Star Trek: Legacy, when this happen you are more likely to lose more members as the people in your clan that play Legacy see less and less people from your clan play the game.
    

2. Will there be a lot of interest?
   
   This point works both ways.  Interest from your own members and interest from future new members in the game you are moving into.  The basic rule of thumb when moving into a new game is ask your own members first to see how many people would be interested.  After that form a small group of 5 to 6 players to move into this new game to check it out and see what the clan world is like.

Moving into a new game is much like adding an extension onto a house, you have the base of the clan and you are deciding to build an extension onto the back.  Of course when you build an extension you move items from the old house into the new extension.  This basically means that when you move into a new game you sacrifice some of your players in your Star Trek game who move into the new game.

This can mean only one thing...you need to recruit...a lot.

When you have decided to move into a new game it is always the best option to recruit in your older games before you move into the new game.  This means that instead of having 20 members and half of them moving into the new game, you might have 30 members with only 10 of them leaving into the new game therefore leaving your Star Trek game with the same base of 20. 

Doing this every time you branch into a new game will mean that your older member base still playing the older games wont be sacrificed when you do expand.

The next big question is when to expand into a new game.

There are several theories to this.  The main one being the minute a really good new game comes out, when this happens moving into a new game as quick and as fast as possible is always the best idea, the main reason is the large amount of free solo players who are just waiting to be recruited into your clan.

The next theory on moving into a new game is when your own members start to get bored with just playing one game in your clan.

Either way, if you prepare in advance before moving in you wont suffer any of the growing pains that a lot of clans suffer on moving into new games and expanding their clans.