I actually don't see how this makes it a socialist game.
I really disagree with fleet costs rising due to nw / rank.

The 48 Hr inactive bit, maybe not giving expos but unused resources would be decent.

I've always thought that cores should be defined. Then noob A.) knows where to explore first, B.) Naps become easier as there is no argument of where cores are.

My response was not mean, it was true. If you take that as mean then that is your own problem...not mine. The idea that we should "cater" to inexperienced players or penalize the top fams is absolutely the worst thing you could do to any game.

If people want to make things more balanced then they need to train new players how to play and get them interested in being active. That is the whole point of a game from a "owner" perspective.

1. Attacking galaxies
2. Eco Galaxies

There needs to be those things where people can join and play competitively in order to train them in each particular category. Virgo was a flop and for good reason...the tutors were not great, they didn't care, and the players didn't feel like they were part of something.

So as of right now the newer, less experienced players get driven away by the old vets who just crush people. But if you change up too much stuff to favor the new players then you got all the old players leaving and then the game completely dies.

Better ideas are needed...

As for the ideas themselves:

We actually discussed something similar to this to address the problem of people family hopping before the round starts.  It's a rather disruptive issue, but we understand why players do it.

Our idea specifically was to split the pre-round phase into two: one for registration/filling up and the other for pre-start planning

For the first phase, everything is actually hidden.  Rankings, map, fam page, even empire page.  The players are all "blind" and all they know is that they have successfully joined the galaxy.  Nobody sees anything until this phase ends.  This prevents players from saying "this fam sucks there's nobody here" and leaving, which is devastating for newer players within those families who don't understand why people keep leaving.  Plus, this also means that all the fams would actually fill up.  Right now, what you end up having is a smaller family that has multiple people come and go.  This would prevent that from happening.

If you want to draft in with a buddy, you would "double up" with them and the game would be smart enough to account for players coming in as pairs.

The second phase would be more like what the current pre-round phase is like.  All at once the galaxy, map, family members, etc would be revealed to everybody.  Players wouldn't be allowed to delete at this point.  This would also be where the other draft feature "draft into fam number" could be used.  Spots would be reserved for this.

This would solve the exact problem you describe, where smaller families are left in the dust because people keep leaving them for better prospects.  At the same time, this would solve the problem for active players who don't want to be in a family with few players.  On top of that it would allow all players the exact same amount of time to plan their BOR activities.  If a family still sucks, they will still start badly.  If a family is still good they will still be rewarded for their skill.  This removes the "luck" that is currently involved.

I'm more with Satanic Spawn on this one.  This is more of a design problem that should be addressed via a mobile interface.  Rushing to get to the market early is part of the BOR excitement imo.  I'm not sure if we should curtail that.

This is a great idea.  ATM inactives are deleted after 2 weeks.  We should consider sooner for BOR given how crucial that time is.

I had an idea similar to this for "core suggestions" that would highlight systems around your HS for any number of ticks away.  This wouldn't effect any actual game functions, but would rather give everybody (not just new players) the ability to visualize the immediate area around their family for a given radius.

This is actually similar to what overbuild penalties do.  I'm not against this concept entirely but we would have to do this in a way that doesn't just entirely screw the top fams.  Satanic Spawn is right that this would effectively be punishing families for doing well.  I like the intent of this but this idea specifically concerns me.  We could probably try solve this issue with a more conservative approach.

This goes back to my first point, which would make this unnecessary.

Thanks for the ideas, it's very helpful to have player perspective on these matters.