* Communications & Military officers are no more. They have been replaced with an advanced "Permissions" system, whereby the leader can specify the exact options available to any and every member - eg you could have an alliance where only the leader can do anything. You could have 5 members all capable of viewing military outgoings. You could have everybody able to do everything. You can also limit members a bit more than default settings normally allow - you can prevent members from seeing alliance incomings, or from viewing "Officer Only" threads - if you are recruiting new members whom you don't fully trust, you may find this useful. Almost every option related to "abilities" in an alliance are configurable for every member.
* As part of the new permissions system, members can have an optional "Priority level" attached (any number between 1 and 255). This is used for cases where one member tries to kick another member for example - they can only kick people of lower priority (not equal or higher). Likewise for the "Can become leader" option incase of leader absence/deletion - the highest priority member with this permission will become leader if they are available (or selected at random if multiple members have the same level and are set to be able to become leaders).
* All members can have a "Title" set (either by the leader, or anyone with appropriate title permissions). These titles are visible only to other alliance members, and you can use them for any purpose you wish - to mark "ranks" in your alliance (eg Captain, Sergeant, whatever...), or for silly/fun things, to mark people who need to attack more or who are perhaps on temporary "probation" as a new member etc.
* Alliance incoming fleets can have "notes" set next to them (by anyone with note permissions), this could be for example something like "Fake incoming, ignore", "Send more hippys here", "Last tick defend this" etc. Note editing uses new Azzjax implementation, so no page reloading every time you edit one.
* Recruitment is now done through a process of members "applying" to join your alliance, and a member with appropriate recruit permissions either accepting, or declining, the member application. If the alliance reaches maximum capacity, people can still request to join, but you will be unable to accept any. A player can only be requesting to join a single alliance at a time, and must cancel one request before requesting to join another. All old "recruit permissions" stuff has been removed - it's up to you to filter out who you do or do not want to join from the applications. Alliance password has been removed as it is not needed for the new system.
* Alliances no longer need HQ buildings, or the "minimum member limit" (5 by default on world 1), for most features - eg all alliances are now visible in the alliance list even with only 1 member, all alliances can use alliance mail/news, all alliances can set banners and flags. The only exception to this removal of most limits is sending units to a HQ - an alliance still needs to construct "Empty Land" alliance development to be able to be targetable by mobs, and the HQ and/or member limit is still needed for war declarations to be possible.
* An "Alliance Logs" page has been added, this will be used similar to alliance news, but is not visible to anybody outside of the alliance. It is to be used to log things such as member joins, member parts, permission changes, fund donations, tax rate changes, and similar things that relate to the management of the alliance but do not need to (and should not) be viewable to anyone else through spies.
* You can join one alliance directly from another, without having to go solo first. If you're in an alliance, and apply to join another direct - and they accept - you will instantly transfer from one to the other, without any requirement to go solo first. Going solo does not reset the timer which limits how frequently you can join alliances - only actually joining an alliance (changing tags) resets this timer (which is now 6 hours for the frequency with which you can join a 2nd alliance from joining your previous alliance, and 24 hours to re-join an alliance you were already a part of within the last 24 hours - reduced to 1 hour/6 hours respectively for private worlds).
* Tax rate can now go up to 25%.
* You can now kick players who have had their ID's/accounts admin-locked.