I am toying with the idea of joining the Gallente side of FW.
From the posts so far, I deduce they are somewhat in need of fresh meat, is that correct?

Generally, are the factions currently unbalanced or not?

Gals are not as outnumbered as you might think despite what Militia numbers might show. Caldari has always had a large inflated number base that has loads of guys that never do anything related to the PVP side of FW.

You might look at fights like the battle report of the recent fight in Enaluri and think Caldari have overwhelming numbers advantage. What that battle report didn't show, was the fact there were easily another 40+/- Gals with-in 1 to 2 jumps of that fight that didn't get invited by the cool kids til they knew they were losing.

There also seems to be a lot of little clicks in Gal Militia where various groups don't really work so well with one another. With Caldari for the most part we have done a lot of work to get everyone supporting one another and at least somewhat on the same page with one another.

2nd thing is a lot of the Gal corps have swapped to Minmatar Militia to leech their cheap LP store so they don't have to put in any effort defending space, but they still stay up in Gal space with the Gal militia supporting them with numbers.

Hey, I like fighting for the underdog, more opportunity for glory!

Caldari are still outnumbered

Then join Amarr or Caldari. Gallente seem to be vocal about "being blobbed" now when Caldari can sometimes match their numbers and in general dont behave entirely in scrubby fashion but in reality Caldari are still outnumbered and outgunned most of the time.

Blatant lie. Never have been, honestly. Just had more mission runners than fighters.
(Check my killboard when I first started Faction War for proof. Majority of the kills in Orvolle, Osmeden, Mesybier, Pemene, Villore, and Caslemon... mission runners. And that's just the ones I caught in that part of space.)

Confirming, that Gals are being beaten by high sec mission runners..

Haha.
That's a negative, Ghost Rider.
Open your eyes and read along.

(looks at dotlan and previous posts by other members of Galmil yourself included) yup your getting beaten by high sec missioners and a group of pvpers with less SP and less Isk..... as Marshall Zhukov once said "Quanity has a quality of its own"

Oh?
You must've missed the part where I pointed to the influx of new corps along with the missioners swapping to plexers due to the ease of plexing, then. ^_^

I don't know about less SP or isk (as far as my in-game player is concerned). I'm not even a year old yet. :P

but in their smugness squids might at least have the decency to admit the fact that two day old chars being able to capture basically any size of gal plexes vs caldari plexes requireing decently skilled chars did add to squid sucess just a tiny little bit.

Not really wanting to repeat what's been pointed out in other parts of forums, but in their smugness squids might at least have the decency to admit the fact that two day old chars being able to capture basically any size of gal plexes vs caldari plexes requireing decently skilled chars did add to squid sucess just a tiny little bit.
Oh, and don't get me wrong, kudos to you guys for getting coordinated like you did.

Perhaps you should drop this line and just admit that your week old farming alts can also capture any caldari plex too, unless you dont know how to fit you boat or what skills to train.
...
You and I both know that farming character will not stick around to fight anyway and even if you are in pvp fit, 9/10 players wont engage bigger boat in plex if they are also dealing with npcs shooting at them.

Oh?
You must've missed the part where I pointed to the influx of new corps along with the missioners swapping to plexers due to the ease of plexing, then. ^_^

I don't know about less SP or isk (as far as my in-game player is concerned). I'm not even a year old yet. :P

Yet you talk about how Caldari " Never have" been outnumbered, as if you have even the vaguest of clues.....(not)

They haven't.
"Oh but they're not all active."
Yes, we've heard that before several times... as if they're the only one's with inactives.
(Is there even 1500 active members in any one militia?)

A 4 year old war you have been involved in for a few months. You dont have a clue....

For instance: I look and see that in 2009 Caldari captured every FW system available to them. Would they have been able to do that without a numbers advantage?

Perhaps Caldari had more numbers back then than gallente but I doubt it. Main difference was that most of the gallente militia sat in Tama, camping nourvukaiken gate and laughed "Lol, plexing, it does not matter, we wont help you" to their fellow militia members who got constantly curbstomped by likes of PERVS, 22nd, CAIN and others everywhere else outside Tama.

Another difference back then was that it actually took you days, weeks, even months to flip a heavily contested system. I'd actually say numbers played less part than will to persist in plexing.

Gallentes can say "downtime plexing favoured Caldari" and for a while I believed it but such was proven to be a excuse much later when Gallentes were willing to use atron alts by their dozens to shift plexes around from uncontested systems to contested systems (thus undoing our work) when we were attacking Viriette before new plexing changes appeared.

Once again, it comes down to will to persist in your chosen goal. (and ability to fund more alt accounts than your enemy as was the case what gallentes did during Viriette offensive).

We can talk all day long about the best places to farm, but you should know a couple of things:

1.) Minmatar doesn't need anyone showing up just to farm isk. If you're not contributing to PvP you're just watering down the market, so we don't want you Than again, we can't stop you either, and it's not like watering down the markets is going to leave us penniless. You may not receive a warm welcome in the minnie side, but the Caldari seem to be a lot nicer about teaching people how to farm the system for profit, they'd probably do more than we would to help you get set up with the right strategy.

2.) The day-old alt farming game has gone on far too long, and its at the top of my hit list. You can get all excited to farm all you like, but know that the days of blitzing plexes in 10mn warp stabbed frigs are limited. This activity has plagued Faction Warfare for ages and measures will be taken to kill it in the next expansion. I'd rather be upfront with everyone on where I stand right now, rather than have everyone continue in a "race to the bottom" and get too invested in a farming playstyle that essentially has a death warrant on it.

The ways to accomplish this are being discussed in the official thread on the subject, accesible here:

FW: rebalancing NPCs and you

Confirming if you are a Caldari plex farmer that you can also fly down to MInmatar space and farm their plexes receiving Caldari LP's. As Caldari space gets too crowed with farmers we will make sure to send them down to your space just like I see you guys doing in your Militia chat with your farmers, by telling them to come to Caldari space.

Except you might have to actually put a tank on your frigate and train something other than afterburner I and hull upgrades I since the rats will *gasp* do damage to you.