Fleet mafia and new ship

Also things depend on how mafia-esque the Shard Chat is. Some chats are nice and are just for organizing payouts. Some can be more exclusive/restrictive, but would welcome players with powerful Fleets. Some will only begrudgingly accept new players they can’t shake. And then the really nasty ones could just have their members attack and timeout so you can’t climb even with a meta fleet.

For what it’s worth, I only joined my Shard Chat after I unlocked Executor (fairly soon after its release) and started accidentally causing them issues by climbing at random points. That was more due to me not understanding what Shard Chats were, and for the most part mine’s been great, but it is a way to get yourself known.