DSyA isn't a new FSy, it is both an Academy and a Farm alliance. To understand why there is a difference, you should consider a few things. In FSy we have started farms late, so they were really weak compare to the servers population, in DSyA our farm accounts can be significantly stronger, and can provide more than resources. If the farm alliances here are good enough they can help to score points in State Ruler for invasion rights for the Capital Clash, farm Alliances might fight in lower tiers of Alliance Duel so they can score points for both Alliance Duel victories, attacking trucks. Our farms might have excess fuel we can use in Furylord damage race. And while they are our farm accounts, we are behind them and we can explain the game to the new players who see our Farm / Academy alliance as their alliance, who can learn from us. They can also win.
DSyA is a real meaningful extension of NDSY in this sense. It should be also a home for anyone who aren't active enough for NDSY but should be in DSY family of alliances. In our guide about looting it is explained that sometimes you want to plunder HQs with your farm accounts, which shows even if we mention farm accounts, you still don't play farmville on them. When a target HQ has only a limited amount of resources and your farm can collect those resources and your main can take the collected amount using less fuel, with less troops risked, etc. that is a good thing as you can use the saved fuel for other purposes, including Capital Clash. If your farm can target some cross server foes, it means we can bring more loot home.
When we are out of fuel or troops in a Capital Clash on one account, we can hop on the farm and target some of the weaker enemies. Yes, a farm and academy alliance is a "B" team, but people who cannot make it in time to chatch some events in NDSY can join DSyA and we can have some of the events at different times, so people can gather some rewards from the events even if they cant do that in the main alliance. Having the events at different times also means you can get the events done both in NDSY and DSyA if needed, and we can maximize benefits this way. If you use Bluestacks or other similar solutions and can have both the main and the farm account together, you can combine attacks from both accounts, and this can help to overcome some enemies.
Our farms should medium strenght F2P accounts, or semi F2P accounts. Yes, they are weakened when we loot from them, but they are strengthened when we loot with the farms, sometimes with the help or protection of our main accounts. They benefit from all our knowledge, they benefit from our protection, so these farms can be better than many accounts in smaller "out of NAP" alliances that are still contributing to server vs server conflict. The more people we can teach for the DSy family of alliances, the stronger the whole system gets, the better for the whole server. So these farms shouldn't be only a source of cheap resources.
Participation goals in DSyA should be lower than what we expect in NDSY, but can be still higher than what you see in some weaker alliances. We have farm accounts, F2P accounts, newbies in DSyA, we might have latecomers too in these alliance systems, but growth, activity is expected and all the rules you would have to follow in NDSY apply there as well.