I completely agree with Torqez. It can be very frustrating and I've been in the family where some players random in and decided not to play at all or attempt to try illegal randoming (random in, delete and re-random, abandon, create new account, random, again and again.....creating multis, leaving family at disadvantaged)

I like to point out few things.

1) There are few bad players that many dont want to play with. I won't names who. But I bet you know who. I won't play with few of those.

2) It is true that randoms come in and decided to stay or not, only when there is already a leader and forum is organized (with starting strategy prepared) and lots of discussion. If forum is empty, that made me feel like this is not committed family. I would delete and try re-random, hoping for better family. This might be solved if all are drafts, but will only lead to another problems of repeating same kind of round (example: winning #1 round after round....remember Playboy era?)

For solutions......that is going to be difficult......i would love to remove 48 hours wait rule. But I think we should allow mods to investigate on new randoms and decide to remove him/her or not. It's hard for mods to do that because what if the random is new and dont know how to communicate???

Another solution....BRING BACK VIRGO for new players and set up tutors per family. Tutors train new players and allow them a chance to connect with old players in regular galaxies. This will reduce the problems with new players who decided that they dont like the game at all.

What do you think?

For the record, feel free to tear my idea to pieces, it was just a thought and hopefully given enough input it could become a decent thought

lol, a whole threat about the fam i'm (Minion) in.

seems like i'm the quilty one here because i seem to always ramdom into an inactive fam I did delete last round before it started only to random into the same fam.
Sad thing that so many players don't even want to play in a not so organised fam. Had my best and most fun rounds in such "under pressure" fams.

But well who cares, stay and keep on fighting.

RL is the limit

Cumsville, your problem is not with the game but with your strategy of putting all your eggs in one basket. Can't expect all the high gains without the associated risk.

On topic:
I think the root cause analysis of this problem is incomplete. You need to ask why do most people want to wait around getting killed off in bad fams at the cost of having a delayed start in a good fam? It could be a combination of the following:
1) Huge difference between big and small fams and impossibility of any true competition
2) Steep learning curve creating a big skill-gap between old and new players. Therefore it becomes unpleasant for vets who dont have a lot of spare time, to play with newbs.
3) The fighting mechanics in the game being too dependent on the economic part of the game - which makes being in a small fam a constantly losing and unenjoyable experience for most people, especially the newbies.
4) Lack of rewards for non-winning teams.

I think this is one of the bad side effects of the deeper game design issues in IC. Any band-aid solution like Virgo or enforced deterrents would just start a cycle of people finding ways around it and mods/devs banning and fixing those ways.

Conclusion: Don't focus on this issue. Focus on fixing the major problems in IC and this will fix itself over time.

There are several problems I see with that Orbit:

1) Leaders removing players until they have drafted the team they want
2) Players like Baratheon getting removed and never having a chance to play (which they do deserve to be given a chance)
3) Players joining a lowbie fam and saying, "Remove me or I won't play." "Remove me or I go rogue." etc.
4) Leaders removing players that want to SS purely because they want to SS

I have read all the posts, and will comment later - theres a few things that I know wont work here based on experience.

But mostly, one main thing you guys should consider is that when you say stuff like not allowing them to play (the inactives) or removing deletes or whatever, then people just don't end up playing.  It's no big loss to them if they dont play that IC round.  THey'd much rather just  keep randoming or not play, up until they find they someone they like, or a fam that is organised.

Least, that's what I've seen anyway.  You can see this with many of the old 'vets' too.

Also it was very common to give up a whole round earlier (when we had reshuffles once 2-3 rounds) to just to keep randoming into a fam you wanted.  So similarly here, I think people just wouldn't care.

It can be done for bottom family to rank up over time and end up in top 10 or possibly top 5. One round, I randomed in last place family and became leader in it. Then we got Star99 who was willing to fight. We ranked up nicely over  time and no longer in bottom families. It was fun. Then next round, it was stay in the family round. We got new player called AC. No one really know who he is. He was from Moldova. He told me he want to lead the economy next round so I was willing to let him try it. Then he showed me his kick ass excel sheet that was extremely complicated with lots of formulas in it. I was impressed. He detailed very good in every step per day to keep us growing. That next round, we won #1 spot in networth and planet size. We were called Red Machines. We were once bottom family last round.

Anyone can do it in bottom family...all they can do is not to give up and give it some fun. Do not stress over on trying to be #1 family. It is very hard to turn around a family that's not active or not willing to play. I depend on randoms by removing inactive players. We need active randoms, not "im just randoming to see if this is contender family and if its not, im just not gonna play...or i just want to play with friends" randoms.

Every round, I ended up in bottom family and try to turn it around. sometimes we dont turn around and it become very tiring. Then I stopped caring about it. It became more frustrating over the years.

Maybe it's time to open a galaxy that's all draft. 5-6 per family. All drafts. Maybe that encourage players to play with friends because it is play with friends galaxy. So we have random galaxy, we have SS solo galaxy. We need to diversify the galaxies.

Btw, I'm bummed out that there havent been 5-6 man hardcore round and we havent had  that for a long time. We need different galaxies opened at a time. But I think there should be two playable galaxies to join but i'm afraid that some players may give up one galaxy to play another galaxy. :-/

The fact remains ppl who are not draft or don't, get into a top fam apond, radoming in either don't play or wait for delete. So either lower the number of fams and increase,the # of players per fam and see if that helps smaller UNverise maybe?.......As to getting more attacking get rid of cores have a week of no attacking at the start of each round speed up the building of portals and lasers , or maybe make it no naps for the first week, so fams exploer into everyones core in the and there will be no choice but to fight! Smaller unverse as well.

I just had this idea from hockey. You know players get time out, get in fight, or whatever, they go to penalty box. Well, this give me an idea...why not add "bench lineup"?

What is bench?
1) Leader placed them into bench due to inactivity or going rogue.
2) Leader can ask mods to investigate for possible multi.
3) Bench allow available spots for active randoms, just to filter players.
4) Some players can give up planets to others before going to bench and have a "vacation" (some people have study before tests or whatever life issues they have, like family death...etc)
5) For new randoms, if no communication upon joining, can place into bench and activate 48 hours warning before auto-delete (leader pressing activate  button)

Maybe add three player spots in bench.

The only rules for sitting on bench:
- no income
- no attack / no ops
- cannot build anything
- no aiding
- if still have more than 1 planet, still under risk of losing planets to attacks regardless, its family's responsibility to retake them

For investigation for multi, mods can remove and block randoms from the bench. It can be done if leaders ask mods to check. If no proof of multi, mods cannot do anything, but allow leader to activate 48 hours warning before auto-delete.

I'm sure it can be abused, but what do you think? This is just an idea. :-P

If you get random, no communication attempt, u can "mulligan" the randoms. You have three chances to get potential and willing to play randoms.

If you allow the first 1-2 days for ppol who want to draft a fam together to let them make a fam, so there are only active fams after 1-2 days because it are all drafts, (like orbit said) and after those 2 days have past and there are already active fams let ppol random that way you start in a active fam (if there are enough ppol who make a fam) will be a struggle at first but after some rounds ppol will play more together and you get the same 2-3-4 ppol in each fam but with different randoms each time. i think this way ppol will less delete because they have an active group of players right away and for the ppol that wanna play together they get a chance to  have fun each round, (they keep trying to random each time if they are not together anyway)

and for the less active ppol you always have fams that have a lower amount of starting ppol it would be a good idea that the leader of that fam (should be the most active else the others didn't vote for him i guess) should get the missing resources from the players that don't wanna play. so that all fams have the same amount of starting res even if they have less players, 

for expo's maybe its an good idee to make a limit on fam expo's based on the whole fam as 1, because if you only have 5 players and the other fam has 8 you lose 3x8 expo's each 24hrs, somehow those expo's should end up spreaded among those 5 players so they have the same amount of the other fams so that all fams have (if they build them that is) the same amount of expo's each day. ?

just some idea's have no idea if its possible ;p

The problem with small families is, no one wants to be in them.  Most people seem to just join, take a look at family chat (if there is one), family forum, the activity of the family, and if the players in the family are known.  Who wants to be in a family that's probably going to get stomped on by the top families?

IC has become a stomp fest of big families crush small families.  I know this was always the case, but it seems to be more widespread now due to the current set of rules and the lack of players.

Here are the changes that I think would vastly improve the game and keep players from leaving.

1)  Illegal Alliances needs to be revised.  Make it illegal for the top 5 families to make alliances or something.  It makes little sense for two small families near each other watch each other get destroyed by a big family, seems better to join together to have a fighting chance, maybe even deter the big family from attack.

2)  Self-Sufficient member tag.  IC is designed to be a team worked base game, but this leaves huge disadvantages to families with less players.  A small family becomes small mostly because they have less players or their players are not as active.  I know its probably against the rules to remove a SS player, but they are driving the family down because they are taking planets away from the family without actually contributing to it.  Also, the SS player's NW is added to the family's NW artificially increasing allowing more big families to be able to attack them.  A SS tag should remove the member from the family's NW and remove the ability to aid the family (also make it so you cannot remove the tag for at least a week or something to prevent exploits)

3)  Family Bank / Aiding.  The concept behind the family bank is sound, as it attempts to make use of all family resources to its fullest without having every member to commit to IC like a full time job.  However, it's also what is making the game boring and driving players away as it pretty much turns players into mindless people following whatever leader says.  I propose that there should be a fee to send aid between family members based on the senders NW size.  I think this would reduce the reliance on family bank and also reduce getting one player super big feeding a bunch of small attackers so they can meet the 35% rule.

4)  Small Family disadvantages.  When a big family attacks a small family, there's a pretty low chance the small family will prevail.  For a big family, it's better to just bash a small family so hard to ruin their round and for the players to quit, then you can have free roam over their core.  A small family needs better ways to fight back or at least not totally get owned.  I think the 48 hour rule should be removed if a small family attacks a big family.  Most times its the big family attacking the small family and the small family attempts to fight back which then further extends the 48 hour rule.  Sometimes it's better just to roll over and die and hopefully drop low enough that they can't attack... which is quite boring...

I know a bunch of these proposals are quite drastic, but the current set of rules are pretty much benefiting large families bashing smaller ones.  Most IC rounds goes as follows, rank 1-3 bashes up rank 7-20, grows bigger, then rank 1 family fights rank 2 at the end of the round.  Some families complain about IC not being a challenge, but they should think about is who they are attacking. A 8 person family attacking a 4 person family isn't going to get much of a challenge.

Oh, this is probably a side track, but there should be a round where you are limited to the number of portals you can build based on your planet count.  Also make it free (or cheaper) to send reinforcements to planets .

Also!  It would be awesome if moral was a mixture between family NW and player planet count

I randomed in from a good computer, Fam sucked so got a delete reset and re-randomed into a semi-suck Fam, got home and still cannot build etc on my phone so didn't bother logging back in. One day I'll be back....