Nukes are one of the hardest ops to cast, so fails should be expected.

I play every round, and actively look for ways to work with the new system.  Typically I break down my findings and try to spell out new potential strategies (see above) since everybody else wants to go back to the same morale system that they forget they hated....It's like my wife thinking she wants to be pregnant again because she forgets how terrible it was .  Not my fault at all if people don't take advantage

Also Foohon, the mods didn't say they didn't care about the old players.  I personally said I care more about new players than veteran players with bad attitudes

This is a rambling mess...but i'll give it a go.

Penalizing the super active families evens the playing field for the rest of the galaxy.  The fact that you have to worry about the mid ranked families just gives us more competition.  The high activity of a few players isn't the norm, thus if we don't give some advantage to players that can't dedicate 12 hours a day, we'd have no competition.

The war option isn't compatible with the new morale system in it's current state.  Core systems were added because top families were complaining about small attackers coring their bankers, if you explore properly now their advantage in morale is halved inside your core now.  The fact that some top families didn't take advantage of this system, and and are at risk of coring because of it, is a flaw of the strategy, not the system.
current round example (using the average of 20 planets per system):
1967
1152 total planets (as of now)
26 core systems
45% planets protected by cores

1966
1133 total planets (as of now)
15 core systems
26% planets protected by cores

1972
735 total planets (as of now)
23 core systems
62% planets protected by core

If you fill your core, you're not at risk of people exploring all over you.  Saving 100% of resource bonus planets for resourcers while bankers explore elsewhere, leaving holes in your core, is now a calculated decision to not take advantage of having more systems that cost twice the morale to attack.

A similar calculated risk is pop banking. 
As of this tick, I'm the #3 income banker.  My income/(nw/planets) ratio isn't nearly as good this round as it was last round, because since we're in a small family I'm ridiculously defense heavy....but even with that added nw compared to top banker, I'm 60% of his income while being 42% of his nw (If I had normal defense & to/rc ratio I'd be about 85% of his income, but with this current system starting RC heavy to boost research and then deleting them later in the round to replace with to's is the most efficient route). That extra 1.7mil nw + the nw that comes with the farms needed to feed him is a significant drain on your morale.   (we're discussing ways to make pop banking viable)

Another way to save or spend morale is how you use your ops!  If you're in a family that's twice the size of a family you're attacking, do you:
A.  old standard:
PI (5 morale)
IP (5 morale)
cpff or sab (aggressive op, equal to attack)
Clear planet (attacking morale)

or
B.
Maintain infil (5 morale, good multiple weeks)
Use estimation to judge amount of fleet necessary to clear the planet (0 morale)
Clear planet (attacking morale)

Shared portals have been discussed as well, but I think it was decided it wasn't possible.

I'm not sure if the game would be able to register this. (I'm picturing the attack page trying to calculate how to separately account for multiple defenders)  Maybe we could set it up so that it acted like 2 separate attacks...or maybe added a line for "family fleet fight" after the lasers get hit.

Hrm...

Not an option (script limitations)

Not an option (script limitations)

Few problems here:
1.  Less people per family increases the odds that you'll be the only active person in your family.
Example: 1972 this round only had 3 active people for the first month or so, but since we had 3 people working together Scorp, Bud, and myself have been able to set up a decent area for ourselves while setting up some decent econ.  If only 1/3 people in a 5 man family are active, you might...might have 2 players.  There's nothing wrong with playing the game solo, but you're at a severe disadvantage in Starburst...and if you manage to do well you'll be a farmer target since you don't have backup.  The increased size of families is, in part, to decrease the odds of individuals having rounds that are busted from the start.
2.  I've been trying different player spreads for years.  Unfortunately it won't really effect the target issue.  Most player in top families would rather get peace with everyone that can compete with them, and then spend the round seeing who can scrape more planets from the smaller families. 
3.  We don't tend to have a consistent # of players.  Sometimes we have to add spots if we have an influx, and the only way we have to do this is to add 1 spot to all families.

-Note: not opposed to trying smaller families again, experience just tells me 7-10 players works best with our current base.

I get this idea, and I'm not opposed to it...but at the same time nobody is forcing people to nap the whole galaxy as it is.  I'm still of the opinion that NAPS shouldn't be a game feature at all

A system like this has been in discussion since we started talking about redoing the morale system, but at the moment it can't be implemented.

Also, there was worry that too many people would just...not attack anyone.  Which to me is fine, defensive play is a perfectly valid option, but players complain that there's not enough conflict as it is.

Don't believe this is an option.  All the changes we've made so far have been to existing functions, as that's what our devs have time to do.  Trying to link an individual's planet count to morale gain would take time than we have at our disposal.

Another idea that's been tossed around (something similar was suggested as a special op for Rev), don't believe anyone's gotten to the point that they could justify a balance for this.  How hard would it be to cast?  How much morale would be boosted?  How would the morale be boosted?  How much would this benefit top families over bottom families? etc.

===========================================

We have very little control over home systems (we hit a button that randomly spawns a map, and keep hitting that button until as many families have even starting positions as possible.  If we're lucky it happens the first time, but I know I've spent an hour respawning galaxies waiting for something fair.)

If families only had 5 or 6 people in them, and you had 4 or 5 people that you got to actively play alongside, you'd be nearly guaranteed a top finish:p

I fully agree with you about advertising, but advertising requires a budget...which IC doesn't have.  The mods are completely unpaid (I've been mod/fmod on and off for almost 6 years, and I don't think I even have a VIP account at the moment), the only income IC sees is VIP accounts (I don't think that even covers the price of the server, by my understanding we've been running on Stefan's charity for a while now), and he (the owner) isn't really interested in putting the time and money into setting it up as a mobile game or making any serious changes.

We work off some pretty serious limitations...the changes we made were the changes we could get pushed through.  We don't have a team of developers that each put in 10-40 hours a week...we have 1 or 2 guys that give a bit of spare time when we need something done.

Sincerely,
Incredibly frustrated Mod

What needs to be explained?  The only thing we haven't done is spell the formula out for people.

Oh...right....sd

Increasing the weight that nw has on morale will increase overall morale loss, thus not helping your problem (in SN it's already roughly 70%nw, 30%size, and since multiple players have admitted to intentionally avoiding people their size it's entirely possible that we'll install an added penalty for attacking people significantly smaller). 
We will not be removing size from the formula completely because this:
"At 1000+ planets you will have so much NW in planets that keeping a very low NW would make you very vulnarable to attacks from players with equal nw."
Is not true.  You could very easily have less than 1mil nw with 1000 planets if your only goal was planet sniping, since you'd just need enough mfs to support 100 trannies and 1000 ground. (cfs would be pointless, as it makes more sense in this scenario to let your troops disband and to sell iron as you need cash or other resources in order to not waste money on upkeep).  You were #25 in nw in SN in round 18, at ~3.25million.  Removing size from the calculation, it would require you 50+ morale for each attack on this player, and you were tiny nw wise.

HC rev attack is more fun!

"The current morale formula  skews my choice towards low nw, high size players."
This isn't true....NW is weighted significantly heavier than size.  If you attack someone equal to you in planet count and nw, vs attacking someone equal to you in planet count but half your nw, you'd lose less than 1/3 the morale per attack.