I have thought for a while that this would be an interesting concept, but did not decide to share it until the radical changes to SB.

First of all I would like to say that I would not suggest it be more than an experimental galaxy where we can decide how people like it, or simply offer a new game mode to people who have been playing the same game for years.

The basic idea is that there would be 4 "pacts". Each "pact" would be an automatic group of families that are permanently allies.

As an example, you could have 4 "pacts" of 3 families with 6 members for a 72 person galaxy. [obviously this can be changed accordingly].

I would suggest 1 or 2 drafts per fam to make sure there are not super pacs (pun intended)

then the idea would be let the pacts help where they see necessary. For example keep one fam super small so retakes are expensive, or keep balanced and work on spread (and then work on making 1 small fam for fights/retakes [if moral stays the same])

The biggest thing that stumps me on this ides is how you would place fams in this type of idea. If it is completely random, 1 fam of a pact could be completely surrounded by enemies (which may not be the worst thing, they could do opps etc. but with large fam sizes that fam would get bored)

Other ideas I had would be start everyone in a cluster of systems in the direct center of the map, therefore everyone has to move out

Or, if you have 4 pacts, you could  start each pact at a corner of the map. my concern with this specific set up is that it will seem as just 4 huge fams equidistant apart.