I was thinking maybe we are doing this wrong. A band and a clan should be separate groupings with different missions as a band has no chance in completing some of the higher reward structures.
We should be able to registered a band as being your close in-game friends once and never lose that format unless it’s dissolved. So you would have your own mission and reward set just for that band number limit.
That band should then be able to join a clan or leave a clan without interfering with the band’s group structure. These larger mission and rewards would then be calculated using base 4 math (i,e band limit numbers.)
So instead of having to manage the individual you manage a group of groups and they can independently decide if they want to carry an inactive member or not. I think this would make the general structure of clans more friendly for players.
Going on from this a clan would roughly be a joining of 5 bands keeping the numbers the same. This kind of mimics the medieval fiefdom structure where a lord has his vassals with their own territories. I think this would make it easier for people to manage the clan system too as it keeps the uplevels separate from the smaller more independent groupings. It would also give us an excellent opportunity to relook at the reward structure as bands as they are now have no way of completing some missions. I’d love to see the bands be more relevant in the general game structure too.
The other thing I was thinking about is can we modulate the clan size by the amount of bands it contains while adjusting the mission goals. So you have a structure like small, medium large, huge clan keeping with the base 4 math structure. The mission and reward system can work along a similar structure.
Sorry if this seems a little discombobulated kind of writing it free form while I think.