Last round of PW basically ended up with 2 factions anyway. The trueborn+empire alliance basically led to licho invading my planet twice but i got more IP than him even though he won, because he was playing alongside the trueborn.
He even raged and changed the balance weights, which only made things worse for him, because now the trueborn were with me and he got all the rubbish, reject players and really imba matches (which is how i won).
2 factions solves this as long as the player counts are even and there are plenty of mercenaries (they should be 33% of players, so that even if no members of the other faction are online, they can play vs mercs), but needs different victory conditions (eco victory is especially illogical, as all you need is for one faction to win the first couple planets and they will be the only ones with cash, duh).