Starting A Clan
A comprehensive guide by the staff of the STG...

The Weekly Clan Founding Plan...

Pre Founding | Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4

Week 3 - The clans growth and stability starts

So, your clan has now reached it's third week. It's at this point in time that things start to either go great, or go bad.

By this time your website and forums should be online. If they isn't get a new webmaster.

By this time you should have at LEAST got a couple of new recruits from your efforts of Week 2...if you isn't then you seriously need to have words with your designated recruiting officer.

By this time you should have had a couple of diplomatic breakthroughs with some larger clans...if you ain't then you need to take a serious look at your diplomatic division.

By this time you should be using the other resources of the Star Trek Clan Directory...if you ain't then you are MAD! It's for FREE!

Right...now onto a new clans biggest problem at this point in time...boredom, site updates and recruiting.

If you have some new members (this also should effect the rest of your members) you need to first of all sort out your forums and game times. Firstly...your forums. You need to have a general chat place where other clans can come in and chat with your members. You need a diplomacy forum for other clans to come in and chat about diplomatic stuff. You also need a PUBLICLY viewed general divisional clan forum. General Divisional means that any news relating to a particular game your clan is in gets posted there, that way your members and the visitors of your forum can go straight in and see the latest happenings of your clan.

You also need to make sure your website is constantly kept up to date on the front page and diplomacy page with the latest happening of your site. The biggest problem I have seen with new clans websites is a lack of updates about the goings on of your site. You should set a target of at least one weekly news update on your site. This lets the other clans see that your clan is active and gaming freely in GSA.

Your fleet by this time should be communicating with each other in your forums. If you find that most of your members ain't saying much in the forums and you ain't seen some of your members for days on end then you need to bring the following rule into effect...weekly report in's. Set a forum aside for your members to report in. If they don't report in for a whole week, then they are marked as inactive, if they don't report in for 2 weeks (without a good excuse) then they are booted out of the clan. The last thing you need is a bunch of members that don't show up in the games you are playing.

Recruiting by this time should be a department all of its own. BY the third week you will need 2 people actively recruiting in the games you are playing. Also add a recruit form to your website by this time as well.

Organise weekly training games in the games you play for members of your clan or new members. Also organise monthly or bi-monthly meetings of your clan so you can start to discuss the dealing and workings of your clan with the members.

Above all...BE SEEN IN THE GAMES!

If by this time other clans don't see you or your members much in game lobby's or actual games then your diplomacy sidewall drop down dramatically.

Week 3 is all about making your clans foundations solid...

Week 4 is all about building on the foundation and looking to the future...