Or make changes to ICO which allow players to make private flags against other players accounts (not player names) giving them the choice to enter into another game with such players.

Steam and RelicOnline use Friends Lists which work well for a player that uses the system lots but its not so good for the casual gamer and it tends to promote rigged or bias teams where experienced friends naturally prefer to be on the same team.

I also agree with Darvin3's point, in many ways having idiot players gives you something to aim at hehehe so don't limit your ability to fight them just make it an informed choice.

Well, it is a strategy game after all.  Sometimes it makes strategic sense to spam and sometimes it doesn't.  Knowing when to do that and to what extent is part of the strategy.  I tend to favor a no holds barred set of rules for the game play except for actual cheats such as using the Z-axis for a game designed and intended to be played in an XY plane.  How would you determine how much of one ship type is too much and when someone is breaking the rules?  Also spamming out a single ship type is actually potentially dangerous for the spammer since it can be countered by someone who knows what he's doing.

I don't completely understand people's problem with feeding in team games.  Isn't deciding who should be fed by who and how much and when part of the strategic aspect of a team game?  If the guy who is getting fed starts to lose, it could be disastrous since those resources might have been put to better use elsewhere.  Also, feeders tend not to have much in the way of fleet and are very susceptible to getting hit over the middle.  (That's actually very common.)  In many games I ask other players NOT to feed me unless I ask for it when I think that the money and resources would be better used elsewhere or given to another player.  Feeding the wrong guy too much could cost a team the game.

As far as rushing goes, one solution might be play custom maps where players start near their allies and at a comfortable distance from opponents.  An organized community could promote the play of custom maps.

I can't help you with the game times.  The private connect-to-IP club that I know of comes out of the U.S. West Coast.  However, that shouldn't prevent anyone from setting up a European club.  As far as an ICO-based players club goes, times shouldn't be an issue since games would be set up spontaneously just like how the are set up spontaneously now on ICO, only members of the club could play in them.

The biggest problem with this sort of thing is getting the needed critical mass of people needed to make these sorts of things successful.  However, if enough people respond to this thread an express interest, it might be possible to get an ICO-based club going.  People could start out by using my custom map pack where players start near allies and where different sides of the map are pretty much balanced:

http://tinyurl.com/Sins3

Well, I would certainly hope I would be one of the "teens who qualify."

At any rate, some sort of system would be nice.  Perhaps at the end of each online match, you could rate the person in multiple ways.  I mean, you can skip it of course, but let's say you played with someone who helped you quite a bit.  You would want to give them credit for it.  However if you found someone who swore every other word, used the Z-Axis, and bragged upon winning, you are obviously going to record that.  So, let's say that the following are the things you rate them on:

Strategic Ability: Also referred to as macroing, this has to do with their overall ability to play the game.  Players who are awesome strategists are incredibly hard to beat as they will outproduce you every way.

Tactical Ability: Also referred to as microing, this has to do with their ability to control individual ships.  Good tacticians can often defeat a force that is far numerically superior.

Knowledge of the Game: This has to do with your sheer knowledge of the game.  JJ, Darvin, Amish, and others would score quite high in this as they are masters of the game mechanics.

Team Play Capability: This is related to how well someone works with other players.  This is basically how well they work on a team.  For example, someone who falls in as a feeder because they don't want to fight even though they are on the front line would be scored low while someone who would submit to whatever role they were put into would receive a higher score.

Agreeableness: Basically, how friendly someone is.  If someone has an incredibly low Agreeableness score, they could essentially be blacklisted as opposed to someone who is very helpful who would be highly recommended as a nice person to be around.

The first four categories would be used to determine skill levels of players, ensuring that games would have an opportunity to be balanced.  The final category would be listed separately and would show whether or not someone would be fun to play with.  I mean, sure, you can ignore the rating, but for new players who are likely to get killed their first few games, it would be nice.  Losing is a pain, but when you lose to a jerk, it just amplifies it.

Please note however that those five categories were just things that I pulled off the top of my head.

I don't completely understand people's problem with feeding in team games.

I can fill in this one.  Feeding destroys game balance by allowing players to spam or fast tech in ways that weren't intended by the developers.  Normally, you'd have to develop your economy a bit before you could start spamming illums or whatever.  But with someone feeding you, you can completely ignore early expanding and focus entirely on spamming units.  You aren't supposed to have a fleet like that so early, and thus easily crush people who were playing 'normally'.  It also puts Team Feeder ahead in resources, as the player feeding can stay at 0 upkeep while the other team will all have to buy fleet cap upgrades.  Team Feeder also gains further resource advantage as they only have to purchase one set of upgrades, while the other team must all buy upgrades to keep at the same unit power.  The only way to stop it is to do the same thing yourself, which leads to unsatisfying games one way or another.  You'll notice the vast majority of modern RTS' have removed this option entirely, because no good ever comes from it.

I've played large arranged team games in Warcraft 3, the only other played RTS I can think of that still allows resource transfers, and the same thing happened since that game uses similar upkeep mechanics.  The team playing normally always loses to Team Feeder.

/signed

Now that I get the impression that there are guys lurking these forums who might actually have the same POV like me, I support your efforts to form such a club and would like to request a special sub division for "mature, epic, continuous, casual, no feed, no spam" gamers  

On second thought I guess not playing "team games on small maps" but "FFA on huge maps" would actually help a lot to form such games I have in mind. 

And at the end it's gonna be published on "ratemyenemy.com"? I don't think this is the way it should be. Who should give these ratings? The other team? By what criteria? Do you want to be rated by others judging your play style? So if you don't feed, you are a bad team player. If you don't spam you are a bad strategist. If you lose it obviously is a lack of knowledge. And so on.

Furthermore you need lots of players (probably more than the current overall online community) to have any use of these ratings. Imagine I am looking for a game with players who are good at "macroing", bad at "microing", average at "team play", whatever "knowledge" (what's that category good for anyway?) and very "kind". To find such a game there need to very many open games with different skill sets which requires even more players.

I can't say that this thread has resulted in a flood of posts from people who would be interested in something like this, but I'm glad to see that some people think it would be a good idea.  Unfortunately perhaps less than 1% of the people who ever purchased Sins read this discussion forum, so although I'm sure there are enough people out there to support and populate a thriving multiplayer clubs community, it's probably never going to happen on a large scale since they'll never see this thread.

Online Sins is almost a lost cause at this point.  People will play TCP/IP with friends, but ICO just never took off.  I like Sins, and never hesitiate to recommend it to friends looking for something different, but just doesn't work well as a competitive game.  And there's a massive snowball effect at this point, as the only people who do still play online play with other experienced players they know and curbstomp the random novices.  These people were just looking for a fun game, they have no interest in playing Illuminator Wars.  They tend not to ever come back after that; not the mention it's not easy to find a game in the first place.  I've tried several times, waiting for 10+ mins, found nothing, and never returned.

PUG is probably the best way to keep things relatively even.  You can always suggest 1212 or TvB but someone will complain it's stacked and then you will have to PUG it to keep them happy.  Actually, in one case we actually did end up TvB after a PUG...

Anyways, here are two suggestions to speed up your PUG:

1) volunteer to be captain, then (this is the big one) offer the other captain first pick.  Deciding who picks first is one of the biggest delays in PUGs.

2) check out people's records BEFORE the picking process begins so you know who your picks will be if you are captain.  If you suspect you will be captain, go so far as to write down your order of preference for picks so you can just list them off when it comes time.

Can't solve everything; personally I think PUG is a necessary evil if there's no obvious ways to split the teams evenly.  Certainly if it's done right it should be pretty quick.  The alternative is to play 2's where it's pretty easy to get consensus.  People don't seem to like 2's, though.

I remember Centurion used to promote MP by claiming the interaction between Humans (as opposed to Ai vs Humans) is much more interesting, quoting a game where an opponenet said to him :imagine a great big space penis coming up behind you....

well, its not entirely true, i was playing a Distant Stars map of our Solar System, and as it turned out, the planet Uranus became a frontline planet...

every 5 mins had the AI saying "Im coming for Uranus" or "Uranus will be mine"...

I could barely stop laughing long enough to beat back the invasion attempt =P

LOL.  I guess if I had more time in the games I would give my planets funny names, like "Beat it, Jackass".

At this point, I think that a better AI is probably more important. I mean, lets face it, multiplayer for this game didn't take off. A better single player AI could very well be a better selling point than upgrading the multiplayer.