Now that there is a 20-player fleet action, I want to establish a procedure for organizing teams to minimize the time we spend trying to get people into a fleet action, so that we can pew pew as quickly as possible. Due to the nature of the Reddit fleets, we never schedule pre-determined times for these events, meaning they are almost always impromptu, so being organized is a little more important for us. Following is what I believe is the easiest way to organize these large groups together.

1. Make an "interest check" call in RedditChat and Fleet chat to see how many people would even be interested in a 20-player fleet action. If you only get 3~4 people, try again at another time; but if you get 7 people on the initial interest check, there is a good chance that you'll be able to fill a lobby within the next ten minutes. At this point, do not create a lobby and/or invite anyone just yet.

2. Everyone who was initially interested should start forming normal teams and claiming Alpha, Beta, Charlie, and Delta groups. The leaders of these teams will be squad leaders. These teams should advertise for their squad, saying something along the lines of "Need 3 people for Charlie group", and whoever wants to be on Charlie can simply say "charlie" in chat. Once all four teams have at least four people in them, the event organizer can create the lobby.

3. The event organizer should now create a private lobby for Fleet Starbase Defense. Make sure you set an easy to remember lobby name (e.g. 'Reddit') and password (e.g. 'bacon' or '1'). The organizer only needs to know four names: the names of the four squad leaders. Click the 'Invite' button at the bottom of the lobby window and check only these four names, then click on 'Team Invite'.

4. If you've done everything correctly up to this point, then the lobby should now be full or almost full. If there are still a few empty spots remaining, make a general call in RedditChat and Fleet chat and invite any interested by right clicking their name and 'Invite to Challenge Match'. The organizer should also take this opportunity to tell everyone the name of the lobby and the password for it.

The point of these four steps is to alleviate some responsibility from the event organizer and place it on the squad leaders, and so that people know what squad they're on.

Once the game has launched and loaded, it is also common for some people to get booted from the fleet action (this appears to be a bug), which is why I recommended choosing an easy lobby name/password. If you've been booted, open your PvE queue window, click the 'Join Existing' tab, and look for the lobby. The fighting won't start for about 1 minute after the fleet action starts so you have time to re-join it.

If you have suggestions for improvements, or just general comments/questions, I'm open to them. Otherwise, happy hunting, and don't forget to use Enzo's fleet defense guide!

Edit: I also highly encourage everyone to use our Mumble voicechat server, which makes these events much more fun and organized. Even if you don't have a microphone or simply don't want to talk, you can connect to listen.