Allies, Loaders, and Teammates

Allies

You can declare any player you meet in the game to be an ally. This instructs the game not to do certain things which would otherwise be automatic:

You will not capture an ally's worlds or fleets (but your presence will still force an ally's empty fleet to go neutral, unless you declare your own fleet At Peace).
Raiders will not commandeer an ally's fleets.
You will not ambush an ally passing through your worlds.
Your fleets will not prevent an ally's industry from building.

Note that declaring someone your ally doesn't necessarily mean that you trust them or even that you intend to work with them. All it does is disable the above automatic systems against that player, until you declare them no longer an ally.

The other player will not be told that you have declared them your ally. Note that there's no reason to assume that the other player has also declared you an ally!

Loaders

In addition to declaring alliances, you may declare any player you meet to be a loader. This gives the named player implicit permission to load metal from any of your worlds. This is often done to facilitate arrangements with Traders; it may also be offered sometimes during diplomatic talks as an easily-verifiable sign of goodwill.

Teammates

The concept of "teammate" is specific to the RSW Client, and replaces the server-based concepts of "allies" and "loaders".

If you are playing the game using the RSW Client, the default behavior is for the client to manage both ally and loader settings according to your team assignments. If you define a team that includes yourself, any players you also assign to the team will be declared as both allies and loaders. Removing a player from your team will undeclare that player as an ally and loader.

If you prefer to manage allies and loaders explicitly, you can turn off this default behavior of the client in the Teams panel. This will give you more control over declaring allies and loaders, but you will have to remember to do it yourself.

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