Topic: Mentorship
Here's my last idea to help save / build IC player membership.
Allow a mentorship function, whereby a player chooses a family member to be a mentor, and by selecting a mentor, there is joint access and management of the player's empire by both player and mentor.
Whatever the mentor does is recorded in both the player's and mentor's in-game personal log, so the player can refer to the log when asking the mentor (via in game message) what they did and why.
This would allow a new player to learn how to play in a regular galaxy with help from a veteran mentor. This would also provide the family a more productive and effective empire, which would work against the tendency of new players being seen as liabilities to a fam rather than as assets.
One misuse of this function would be veteran players who don't really need mentorship using the mentorship function to have other more active family members just manage their empire for them. But, again, is this so bad?