this is a good question Torqez. but to dissapoint you there is no good leader. because even if there was a good one, he managed to be good for 1-2-3 rounds, after all got broken. it is too much ego after 3 rounds under 1 commander and the things aren't working as good as were.

a good leader ( for me ) was thorn (with cop/circleofpower) as help. he was active, knew all the tricks in game (with a little help of PP), he knew how to negociate, how to coordonate players around him, how to settle and organize the fam (not only his, but his allies/there were 3 allies in triang ), he was active in forums, and other good things.
what he was lucky.....he had 6 active players around him, that were his neighbours and friends in real life.

you need a lot of things around you to be a good leader, and most of time, it depends on how the guys from your family are. if you get orbit and baratheon and PP in the same family, you will never be a good leader

Leaders are pretty rubbish, and currently since no leaders are capable of leading i suggest just removing leaders and allowing diplomacy in basis of family votes to determine each situation.

No Render,  whats terrible is watching the same selective bunch of noob vets trying to lead families each round and each round ruining the round within the first week. 

IC is not about the best econ,  it's about the best all round family.  But current leaders just want to do econ to win.  And then they believe themselves to be good leaders,  they are not.

Joe, always so grumpy. Lighten up man

The burden of leadership is too big for most people to wanna spend time on, atleast when doing it alone. Some fams have no problem delegating the responsebilites to capable and willing fam members but the fams that does suffer alot.

So how about as an internal family mechanic, the interface lets you manage "roles" of different aspects of leadership to different fam members. Have 1 player assigned as head of Relations, who makes naps, declares wars etc. 1 player assigned to manage the familiy infra building (assuming most fams still use the fam bank model), 1 Navigator, a player to do set up family cores and scan them reguarly. And so on, for each aspect of leadership. Also make it possible for 1 person to hold all these roles, if they are willing and the fam deems them capable.

A good leader already does that, spare the tasks, keep the krew entertained with goals or 'missions' appart from the tedious login-ask_for_bank-build-read_instruktions...etz
Also keeping a good sphere at the zhatroom is key, same as koordination and solidarity, bekause Solidarity makes Solid family. 
The goal is to involve them all like a real team in a projekt, that's not to win the round, its HOW you enjoy to win the round.

I think you dont need an internal family mekanik to manage roles, the leader is the one to do that

Lee i agree with you but partial.
in my first rounds in triangulum, we had specific roles, based on activity.
i was the one responsable with spec ops. i random infiltrate all players from a family to see what they have (eco, buildings, resources) and so on.
a friend of my was responsable with core checking. everyday using vip he was making list of systems with top 15 fams.
another one was responsable with magic (pax) he helped me with ops and killing pop bankers.
and the list can continue.

Orbit is right....but only if you have a fam of pro players who like the game very much.

the game is a little too hard, and if you have big infra is hard to put someone down.
i played another online game like IC, but it doesn't matter how many "planets you had" in any time of the game another fam could bring you to nothing a little easy. that way everyone was always ready

Yep, and that's what I'm looking for help with.

It is not the leaders who should be blamed for focusing on econ Orbit. They want to win the round, or end as high as possible. And since strong econ is a must-have if you want to win the round...

So, like Lee said, it is the game who should be restructured (if you want it to change). Don't blame the player, blame the game.

Easy

IF a family's NW is under a certain % of the opposing family there at war with the smaller family get decreased unit/build costs and the higher NW family receives Unit cost penalty's, the bigger the margin the bigger the penalty and so on. this would create chances for smaller fams to hit bigger fams without them being fed on 1st. War Dec would be needed.

As for infra, it needs to be overhauled completely and including again decreased infra costs for smaller family's and higher costs for the top fams ect, this will balance economy's between the whole galaxy, this would have to be automatic, im not sure about %'s but thats me 2 cents.

overall i think that would bring better game-play, and keep new players, because as it stands it may look great but the core game-play stays the same and new players feel surplus and leave.

#could all be abused.

Like most features in IC then

and no the empire size costs dont mean jack, becuase for a good while into the round only researchers are making big infra jumps, for bankers, bankers build expos whilst its cheap....by the point u stop using researchers ur family all has sick science anyway so they become surplus, they get abused fast growth and outgrow the galaxy u know how it works mate uv been in my familys many times.

that itself is abuse when you think about it. abusing a feature to do big banker jumps cheap avoiding penalty's for a faster start

and this is what the problem is. Infra, Jumps, all of it.

This is a good idea, but let me tell you how its perfekt:  add a building top, allow planets only be OB to 100%, in the way a planet sized 250 kan only support a maz infra of 500. 
The differenzes between top fams and midtable fams wont be so big, the NW gap for attaking will be reduzed and there'll be a lot more konflikts/wars and for onze what makes the differenze will be the amount of planets you have, and the 'builders' or 'researzhers' job will be limited (so they dont feel like slaves anymore?)

I don't really like the idea of limiting OB.  I mean, what's the point?  Economy "is" still an important part of the game.  We just want less focus on it, right?  I mean otherwise, we may as well just skip explo phase, randomly allocate planets to everyone and give them prebuilt 300% plaents with infra.  That way people can get into the fighting straight away..

No, but, it "is" nice when a coordinated fam, with good strategising can gain superior advantage through Eco - it's just we need a less focus on it - not to get rid of it completely.  Also, being eco focused, is still viable part of the game (we still want bankers to compete with each other, make money, produce resources etc - not everyone likes to attack).

Like I said, I think we just need to shift the focus away from it.  Ie, make it less dependent on the success of your fam.

Perhaps increase OB% costs (e.g. reduce planet sizes by half).  That way it's going to get really expensive to OB really quickly.  Don't know, I'm sure there are other ideas!  Another one could be (don't know, just thinking out loud), that regardless of individual networths, if a small fam takes a planet off a bigger fam, they always keep the infra.  Whereas if a big fam takes off a small fam, they lose it.  This way small fams attacking bigger fams (even if they jump an attacker big to do so), will have a jump start in consolidating allt he planet gains - assuming they keep them).

Altruist, will reply to your post later.