[Sentient]

I'm not sure what it returns, but I know it won't let you do it. You get an error in the debug console. I just wrote code that used the GetAlliance(), commented it out, then wrote code that sets the alliance manually. For release, just switch back to the GetAlliance() code.

EDIT: I looked through the source code and it turns out that GetAlliance() returns 'kInvalid' when you aren't hooked up to FMS. So you're still going to need a set of release code and debug code.