and they can still attack if they like ... they'll just have to accept the consequences. It'll be a matter of weighing the pros (being able to attack, gaining planets) and the cons (losing EHR on some empires and losing FHR). The whole idea is to still allow the big fams to attack smaller fams, but to penalize them for it, at the same time slightly equalizing the playing field.

this is just utter bs. If someone wants to keep a honor code going. It should be pure ceremonial. beeing punished ingame because off some bs honor code that some players want to make. That makes no sens.

I appricate the time you put into this to think up a system and for trying to improve the game. But this honor code stuff is only for a couple of players. Doubt its representative

And tbh I think the current system works fine. IF you do something on the border, people will tell you. Spam you in the forums and in the chats.

Let me first state that i myself am fine with the game as is too, but then again, i tend to be in those top fams when i play anyways. It seems however that for an extraordinary amount of time, this honour forum had been up, with no result whatsoever. It is impossible to set up a 'code of conduct' and then expect people to abide with it, it's a war game that we all love, and as everyone knows, all is fair in love and war. So people will take any edge they can get if they feel they need it, and honour is the first thing to go out the window in such cases. It is also quite impossible to enforce such a code of conduct as in a large majority of cases, there will be a good excuse for someone's actions available. The only option you have to enforce it is to make dishonourable behaviour costly to the players involved. Hence a system that will allow for a few transgressions left and right, with barely any cost involved, certainly if you do the right thing once in a while too, but if you consistently rape smaller players, the cost for your empire will quickly ramp up. Once again, i dont need it, but it is the only alternative to endless useless banter about an 'honour code' (and with that i dont mean my idea is the only alternative, i mean making one's actions have consequences ingame is the only alternative, and i just provided a possible idea of how that could work).

As said before didnt do any numbercrunching on the whole thing, nor do i think im the best person to do that in the first place, and furthermore it would have to be betatested extensively to figure out the exact effects and how to best balance them. That said, in response to your questions :

1) EHR and FHR could be displayed as extra stats in the rankings. Whenever a fleet is in place for an attack, not only would the attack button pop up, but also a warning telling the attacking player how much EHR/FHR the attack will lose or gain. Corruption on the other hand would be displayed in the player's council for EHR and in the 'send aid' and marketplace pages for FHR. A benchmark list of what corruption corresponds with what EHR/FHR would be available in the guide.

2) as to allowing some attacks that are strategically sound : first off, attacking players that are only marginally smaller, in fams that are only marginally smaller than yours would give very low EHR/FHR losses, if any. Its only when the size differences start to get significant that EHR/FHR loss becomes significant too. Furthermore, i would make the relation between EHR/FHR and corruption a parabolic function, meaning that 'acceptable' amounts of negative EHR/FHR will give only minute corruption, but when the amounts start to get serious, corruption will start to ramp up pretty fast. As said before, the idea is NOT to keep big fams from attacking small ones, but to stop them from farming tiny fams into oblivion all round long just to win. This mechanic would favor those big fams that use tons of resources on that one war with a fam that is practically on the same footing, while penalizing those big fams that avoid serious conflicts all round and farm themselves to a size win, whereas the current game mechanics do exactly the opposite. It also favors fams that fight wars and stop when theyve won, then move on, over fams that fight wars, then keep grabbing planets till the other fam barely exists anymore. Overall, it should level the playing field somewhat, though without getting TOO opressive and killing gameplay totally.

if you'd make that dependent on the respective sizes/NWs of the fams involved when the attacks start (so the bigger the difference, the sooner the penalty kicks in), then it could work too

[you wont believe but I felt asleep writing this]

Now your idea Tco

I agree with the whole intention of your idea, but it looks hard to implement, and enforcing honor by the game mechanics is something that a lot of people will never agree on it.
I would let the human nature act and just talk about 'natural consecuenses' and, in any case, dont implement penalties for the not honorable, just add benefits for the honorables (so people will tend to play fair).

The variables you mentioned as EHR and FHR I call them just "Reputation" and it's an individual attribute.
The family reputation would be the ratio of its players' reputation when a round starts (sumarize all reputations and divide by number of players in the family).

The "Reputation" is an attribute of the player account (not an empire attribute) and it can be positive or negative.
New players would start with Rep 0, but to determine the value of the eksisting players Rep should be a community affair, not a game mechanism.  And this is complicated, because we'd need a council or a fair system to vote the Rep on each other, and most complicated, serious persons doing this votation with objectivity and not based on personal grudges.

The mod team could elect a group (council) of 25 'trustful' players, mainly vets in the game, and active enough to know most of the community, to place their votes on the player pool, as ezample:

Rate "Pepito" Reputation, from +10 to -10, and write your motivations about your vote, then the modteam determine wether those motivations are legit or not. The vote can be N/A also when the council member knows nothing about the player he has to rate.  Notice this votes should be eztremely objective and based in game achievements, not based in "what you heard about that guy".

All this votes on a player reputation should be placed in the Rep value as a ratio, not as an accumulative value.
So if the council is voting about me, and 10 out of 25 placed their vote (the other 15 voted N/A), then my Rep value is the summarize of those 10 votes divided by 10 (a ratio).  If only 2 people voted, then sumarize those 2 votes and divide by 2, etc..
Now it is VERY IMPORTANT to make this with sense, by separating positive votes from negative votes (make a ratio for positives and another ratio for negatives, and finally contrast the number to get the definitive value).
So if 10 people voted me, 7 gave positive votes (sumarize those 7 and divide by 10) and 3 gave negative votes (sumarize those 3 and divide by 10), so I got +4.2 positive and -1.3 negative, then my Rep value is set at +2.9

Previous step, the modteam rates the council members, and if any of those 25 results with a negative value then he/she is instantly fired from the council and replaced by another.  Because of course the council members MUST be honorable players.

This seems like alot of work and brainstruggling I know, but its doable.

Now nezt step is to rate the players ingame.
To do it we'd need a small council in every gal (it can be formed by the council members or by others they delegate their vote on). Lets say 5 members in PW (playing the round) and 10 members in MW (playing the round), and their condition must remain unknown (and of course they cannot reveal it). It should be recommendable that they play in different families btw, and they must be IRc active with an eksclusive chatroom to discuss every event without intrusions.
Each one of this PW/MW council members has 10 positive votes and 10 negative votes to spare after the round has ended, and they gotta place their votes based on objective events during the round. Not all the votes must be placed but it's important to not forget to place positive votes on the people who played fair, and not only focuse on the bad guys.  In case one whole fam has acted bad the votes can be spared

hmm family p-mode... I like this

minus a tag point for bumping an old thread with spam.

Surely the point of honour is, well, honour. You shouldn't be forced to be honourable and there are already consequences for being dishonourable. Someone will make a thread about you and word gets around about how you are (not gonna point out names) and so if you for example very rogueish and go against your family if you gain this reputation chances are once you join a family they'll kill you off since you could ruin their round.
Of course sometimes people will create threads just because they don't like a certain person but everyone has a chance to defend themselves in the thread made.

If there is a forced honour system then it stops being an honour system and you just avoid doing something purely because it hinders you. And not based on honour.

Some problems like farming I agree are an honour issue and could be resolved but the idea of attacking a lower fam and being punished for it  shouldn't be enforced as its not your fault other families couldn't keep up with your fams organisation (saying this as if you are the top fam) you would basically be getting punished for doingwell.
Hope this makes sense I am kinda hungover.

The Supernova Galaxy is different from the others in that the family is an empire.  An honorable rule would be to make it impossible for a player to declare war on a family (empire) with a NW that is 40 % or less than the empire's own NW.