Survival Guide - Dust Settles: Alliance Messages and Forums

Table of Contents:

Purpose:

Your alliance has two primary ways of communicating with all members at once, alliance messages and alliance forums. Messages are a sort of news-post style system for posting snippets and really important messages for all to see. Alliance forums are for more detailed discussion, planning etc.

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Notifications:

Whenever a new alliance message or forum post is created, you will see an update on the right-hand side of your screen telling you how many have been posted since you last read them. Alliance messages act like news posts in the sense that unread messages will be shown in a brighter orange whereas old read messages will show up as a sort of brownish orange. Once you have read the messages they will change to a greenish yellow to remind you that the message is new in comparison so that you can read through multiple pages of posts (if your alliance is particularly chatty) without risking marking them all read. Forum posts will show up in bright green in the main sections and with the red "New" at the top of the appropriate individual posts until you mark them as read using the "Mark All Read" link at the top.

When one of your alliance members is attacked, either by standard army or special ops, you will receive a message about the attack at the top of your game screen as you would when you are attacked. Of course the message letting you know that an alliance member was attacked will be much smaller and much less detailed than one letting you know that you were attacked. This message will only tell you who was attacked, whether the attack was ops or battle, and who was the attacker (if that was revealed).

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Using the Alliance Message System:

If you need to tell your alliance about something new or update them on something's status, just go into your alliance message page, and click "Send an Alliance Message" at the top of the page. A form will open where you can type your message and post it for your alliance to see. There is no special formatting yet available for these messages (links, etc.) so post URL's if you need to send someone to a specific webpage. Once you have finished typing your message, click "Send" and your message will be posted for all in your alliance to see.

To read your alliance's messages you will use the "Messages" link in the Alliance section of your bottom bar to get to them. Once you open this page, the newest messages will be displayed first with the oldest messages displayed in pages farther back. Use the links below the messages to navigate to older or newer messages or the drop down box to skip to a page farther away. New messages that show up orange when you first enter this page will show up highlighter yellowish when you switch to a new page until you log back in. Old messages will be shown in a brownish color like the one above.

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Using the Alliance Forums:

To get to your alliance forums, click the notification on the right bar to open them in a new window. Make sure you click the link for alliance forums instead of the link for the main forums. There are four rooms standard to every alliance forum, General Discussion, Strategic Planning, Requests, and Data Dump. The General Discussion room is for the random tidbits and conversations that don't necessarily have any significant impact on the rest of the alliance. Strategic Planning is for discussing and assigning tasks, positions, masteries, attacks, etc. for each alliance member and setting up certain tactics for the game. Requests are for those times when you need to set up an aid run, merchant package, etc. The final room, Data Dump, is for sharing of large amounts of information such as battle reports, spy reports, etc.

Once you click to enter a specific room, you will find the individual threads for that room. Click on the title of a thread to open it and read it or click "Make a New Post" to start a new thread of your own. If you are reading a thread and decide you want to add your own insight into the conversation, click "Post a Reply" which can be found at the top or bottom of the page. You must be inside the thread that you want to reply to, to create a reply instead of a new thread.

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Locked, Sticky, and "Hot" Threads:

There are a few different things that can differentiate a thread from a standard one. First there may be locked threads in your alliance's forums. These are threads that for one reason or another, the owner of the alliance decided to lock so that no one else could post a reply. This may be a thread used to show a guideline or structure for a post or it may be because the owner felt the thread was out of hand. A similar, owner given status is a sticky. Threads that have been marked as sticky will remain at the top of that room until the end of the round or until the sticky status is removed. These are generally important threads that everyone will need to look at, at least once. Either of these can be given or removed only by the owner of the alliance. If you are the owner you will see extra links at the top of the page whenever you open a thread that will allow you to lock/unlock or sticky/unsticky a thread. You can also sticky a thread or lock it when you create a new one, or lock an existing thread when you reply in the preview step.

The only other status (other than unread/new) that a thread will ever have is "hot." To reach this status a thread must have at least the beginings of a second page worth of replies. Highly active threads will have an exclamation point beside their name in the main room before you enter the individual thread.

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Creating a New Thread or Reply:

When you want to create a new thread or reply to an existing one, click the appropriate link to open an entry form. If you are creating an entirely new thread, you'll need to type in a title and message at minimum, though you can add a subject as well to describe in more detail what the thread is about. If you are just replying to an existing thread, there will only be a text box for the message. Once you have your message typed and ready to be posted, click the "Preview & Send" button at the bottom. This will take you to a quick preview that will allow you to look over the message with all formatting in place before you put it up so you can see if anything needs to be altered. If you need to fix something, click the "Edit Message" button, otherwise click the "Submit Final" button.

You have a few options for special formatting for your posts.

[u]This tag set underlines whatever is between the tags.[/u]
[b]This tag set bolds whatever is between the tags.[/b]
[i]This tag set will make whatever text is between the tags italic.[/i]
[color="#FF8C00"]This set will make the text between the tags whatever color you set between the quotes (").[/color]
[link "http://www.dailywheel.com/thegame/manual"]This tag will turn whatever text is between the set into a link to the URL you placed between the quotes.[/link]
[quote]This tag set will place whatever text lies between these quotes in a separate table cell with the text in italics.[/quote]

You'll want to make sure you remember to end the tag properly so that your entire post doesn't end up in bold or something similar. Also make sure you spell the tag properly, especially the quote tag, or your post could end up looking a bit different that you intended. If you are using the color tag, you can use a web-appropriate word (like red, green, blue, etc.) or hex code (like #990000). Check out this page or this one for some common colors (listed by name and hex code usually or just hex code) that will work through HTML. Be sure to check the text in the preview to make sure the color is visible on the background and that it looks like you were expecting.

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Alliance Attack Messages:

Unless you and all of your allies happen to be lucky enough to be in a position where you are surrounded by nothing but friends who won't or can't attack you or happen to be out of range of everyone else, then at some point someone's going to be opsed or attacked. You will be able to keep track of attacks made on your alliance members through notifications and the Alliance Attack page linked on the bottom bar. Each notice of a new attack will tell you which ally was attacked, who attacked them (if that was revealed), when the attack occurred, and whether your ally won or lost.

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