greetings.
I can understand a side getting a contact list of all their allies, and not
a list of all players in a game (such a list like that would show the other
side). But what's the logic of not suppling the neutral details for the
free/DS sides ?
The free and DS should talk to the neutrals, so supplying the neutral
contact details is going to help contact players. For email players this
mailing list allows the neutrals to be contacted (so we just have to rely on
the neutrals talking first), but I would have a hard time contacting a
neutral who doesn't have access to the net.
I would have to email clint a message, have him print it out (free of charge
?), and include the printed message on the neutral's smail turn. And how
would clint enforce the old 3x5 size limit of player messages that I grew up
with ?. I assume he can't, so I could easily type up a few pages of waffle
for clint to print out and send on to the smailer every turn.
This will cause a few things to occur
a) all sides find out who is playing what neutral early on. And we don't
have to wait for the neutrals to contact us. If a neutral doesn't want to
talk to a certain side, they can always decline to talk, or make
unreasonable demands.
b) knowing who is playing a neutral might help knowing who to ask to join
your side (I know of same players that I would rather have on my side than
others).
c) when a neutral joins a side, his address gets taken off the other side
(since he isn't neutral any more). Since the current allies table is
flexible, this shouldn't be that hard to program. A neutral might not want
his change to be noticed, but nation messages generally pick up a change
(that and the other side seeing all those neutral icons changing).
The hard part (IMO) would be to have a table for current allies, and below
that a table for neutrals.
Since I wasn't around when the current allies table was first created, I'm
curious in the logic of why neutrals were not included.
thanks
m
p.s still undecided on the question "Should a neutral get the mailing list
of both ds and free sides" . Physically I don't think its possible (due to
page limits on the account balance sheet that is sent out). Its also easy
info to get (they can ask any of the 10 players on each side).
But if a neutral gets this info, they can supply it to the other side (which
defeats the purpose of not supplying free info to the DS and vica-versa).
So I would loudly say 'no' to the question. But its seems unfair to give the
info to the DS and free which we are denying the neutrals.
pps I'm in a thinking mood after seeing tactically brilliant moves by
several free in G34 last turn 
They also told Clint a lot of