Agreed and I like it. Even big players will be vulnarable to the end. Almost 90% chance you won't hit a portal. As defending will get harder, people will be forced to be more offensive early on. It will make it alot harder to ground run also

It won't change my gameplay much though. I think last time I played I barely made it to 24% portalled (241 systems with 1 portal) because of most resources went into combat

I see no added value in new units and changed combat dynamics.

Giving portals range would make them even more powerfull. Less portals and more ping pong is the idea here.

I don't like the limit on portals, but I would like capital ships.

I don't like limits on how many a player or fam can have.

Carriers would act as movable planets whose stationed fleet can attack any planet in the system in which they are hovering.

If carriers are like movable planets, destroyers would be movable laser traps, protecting them and planets where they are hovering.

Destroyers on offense would act the same as a fleet of bombers, with enough of them able to destroy a carrier.

Capital ship battles where carriers are involved on both sides could result in the capture of carriers.

I wrote a long post last night about this, and worked a lot of things out. It could work.  And the same encoding that is currently used for portals, planets, lasers, and bombers could be used for capital ships.

If there is the will to incorporate capital ships, I'll dig up what I wrote last night (battle scenarios).

What would be the overall function of having capital ships?  The only game dynamic that I see is that the introduction of capital ships provides fams a better way to secure planets that aren't lasered / portalled / yet.  This could be useful.

Actually, they are.  I've got it worked out.  It's actually rather simple.  It would be fun, and it would bind fams together.  I'll just go and make it happen somewhere else.

Or produce it myself.

Any developers want to help?

That's the thing, though, the way I'd incorporate capital ships would be to use existing processes.  Accordingly, how it effects existing processes in terms of code is negligible.

Essentially, the code's already written for the introduction of capital ships.  Just gotta do a bit of copy / pasting, cross some t's and dot some i's.

Here it is in a single sentence:

Carriers are to portaled planets as destroyers are to bombers (on offense) and lasers (on defense).

The whole point of limiting the portals is to make the game about strategy rather than pure numbers. Someone with 1,000,000 NW will know that they will suffer if they attack someone with only 300,000 NW just because a large section of their empire is lightly defended. Tweak the numbers for moral and construction costs/time and it could work. The goal would be a ping pong type a war, a war that is decided as much by pre-war planning as by the actual fighting. Right now a war is generally decided the first few hours, if I know what timezone you are in I can plan my war to destroy you before you wake up. If we slow the tempo of wars so that they can last longer, end up with evenly matched opponents hammering each other in all out war for weeks on end  and the incentive would be for people to pick wars with equals because you will have the same advantages and disadvantages whereas picking on smaller enemies will give them an advantage and you a disadvantage which even though you might win can critically weaken you.

For Capital ships though, I am suggesting capital ships as a way to shake up the status quo. You can have them as numbered fleets instead of carriers. You can already send a fleet to attack a planet, why not make 5 permanent numbered fleets that allow only say 20% of your total fleet to be in each fleet at anyone time and you can send them to a system instead of a specific planet. When you attack from that fleet the units return to that fleet.

The whole suggestion for capital ships is to add another dimension to fights which would augment portals in peacetime. If your family is at peace you will station carriers/fleets in systems that have no portals, hell make them mimic a portal, if someone attacks your planet in the system the fleet/carrier is stationed in x% of the carriers ground and air will be involved in the defence of the planet.

The code is made apparent by the game's design; one does not need to see the code with one's eyes, but one's MIND.

Next question

/me closes eyes, returns to contemplative zen state

Aren't Defence Stations an example of a fleet/capital ship? So Instead of destroying 15% of the attacking fleet they can instead hold 15% of your own fleet, and instead of being a family asset it becomes an individual empire unit? Change the values of the DS and we have the capitalship/fleet.

That is because as far as I know unless things have changed in the last little whole a family needs to have possession of 70% of a system to have a DS there. As far as I know the only system that can have multiple DS's is the home system and only 1 DS is actually operational at a time which means that the other DS's are inactive.  So why not have carriers in the same manner?

a carrier 1;1234xy1(5);23;99 => carrier belonging fam 1234, empire xy carrier 1 of 5 in system 23;99
a carrier 1;2223ab4(5);23;99 => carrier belonging fam 2223, empire ab carrier 4 of 5 in system 23;99
etc…

Instead of destroying 15% of all attacking forces, they can hold 15% of the entire fleet the idea would be to take existing systems and repurpose them.

(1)I'm not a programmer so my opinion might carry a lot less weight on this but I imagine allowing DS's to be individual weapons and with the capabilities mentioned above.
(2)Battle reports and battle dynamics will for the most part remain the same. We can look at having destroyers inserted in to combat in other stages but if we just decided to make destroyer vs destroyer then that means we add a level before ground vs air( space to space combat) and it would be the same as air to air or ground to ground… you have x destroyers(with bonus of -15 attack due to size) attacking y destroyers(+15 attack due to being significantly weaker). Determine winners/losers and their losses and nothing else will be affected by that stage of the battle, everything else will continue as normal.
(3) for damaging carriers, you can have a formula with attackers and their destroyer strength plus any bonuses/penalties,defender and their destroyer strength plus any bonuses/penalties then have a formula to determine what the chances of damage are and throw the dice.

eg. two even empires go to battle:

Space Phase
22 attacking destroyers were destroyed from defending fleet
15 defending destroyers were destroyed by the attacking fleet
The attacking carrier suffered 20% damage.

The attacking forces were relieved when they didn't have to fight any laser turrets

Airfight 
0 bombers crashed from defending fighters
1 fighters lost dogfights against the defending fighters
0 transporters didn't manage to hide from the defending fighters
3 defending fighters were shot down by the attacking air forces

The final phase, groundfight
1 attacking soldiers ate lead from the defenders
1 attacking droids malfunctioned
1 soldiers died in the fight to defend the planet
0 droids failed in their program to defend the planet
0 soldiers died on the planet they were stationed to defend
0 stationed droids failed in their program to defend the planet

After the space phase, nothing else changes.

The attacker gets 20% damage to his carrier which causes lower speed and capacity requiring say 1,000,000 gc 50,000 iron and 10,000 end to fix(an example).
We can have 99 levels of damage(1%-99%) or we can have 2 levels of damage(50%, 99%) before being destroyed. So the numbers that have to be saved are few.

If we have 1000 players with 5 carriers each then all you have to save is:
Empire xyz has 5 carriers…@0% damage-1 @50% damage-1 @99% damage-2 Destroyed-1
so the system has to remember 5 values that may fall in one of 4 categories.

So the number of variables that have to be saved are:

(number of players X 5)X(Number of categories)
ex: (1,000 players x 5) x ( 4 categories)
=20,000 pieces of data.

That is like having 20,000 more planets in the galaxy, instead of remembering buildings the game saves damage level and stationed forces.

I stated IC at the end of Beta 1 played for a few rounds before having to quit. Over the last 10-15 years I have come back to play a round or two every once in a while. The most exciting time in IC that I have experienced was during the Beta rounds before everyone settled down. Having some new components in IC might shake up the game and bring back the excitement, if there are only roughly 100 players left in IC when at the hight IC had more than 2,000 obviously IC has lost something, maybe offering people a challenge might be the one thing that brings everyone back.

Oh, and as for there needing to be more variables, a new space phase for battles, data problems, etc..  these are a non-issue.

You would need no new battle phase, nor any new variables, nor all that much more data to process.

Carriers would simply function as a planet with stationed forces (on defense) and a portal connected to a secondary fleet (not main fleet) on offense.  Destroyers would function as lasers (on defense) and bombers (on offense).

As for battle reports, you might want to rename 'air' fight to 'orbital', and have the system factor in and maybe differentiate the attack-power used battles by destroyers' lasers / bombs and carriers' forces.

And so for a capital ship fleet battle (which would only ever happen at a planet), where the capital ship fleet is on defense, the system simply adds the forces from the carrier and whatever forces are stationed on the planet and the lasers on the planet and the 'lasers' of the destroyers as the total defending force, unless the attacker has elected to 'make capital ship fleet primary target' (there'd have to be a little check-box for this which is revealed only if the attacker has successfully done a sense system for capital ship fleets op) in which case, the carriers are the planet being fought for, which, if there is an attacker win, could be CAPTURED, just like a planet can be captured. 

All the code (aside from the need for a few check boxes and such), all the variables, you have it already.

When on offense the destroyers are, essentially, just bombers, and the carrier, just a local portal sending a fleet to attack any planet in the system.

A carrier should be able to replenish its forces from any forces stationed on any planet in the system.  And so one last thing that would have to be done: another little check box in  planet view called 'recall to carrier', which only gets revealed when the player who owns the planet also is in control of a carrier in the same system.

One last thing and I'm done with this:

Carriers can be destroyed.  Their carrying capacity is like their hit-points.  It can be diminished by bomber fire (either from bombers or destroyers).  As a carrier gets bombed, it loses not only the units but also the carrying capacity to replenish them.  So, say a fleet of say 3000 bombers hit an un-escorted carrier.  And say a carrier can carry 5000 bomber attack power worth of units and have the equivalent carrying capacity.  Well, the carrier loses 3000 bomber attack power worth of whatever units are on the carrier, along with the capacity to replenish that amount of units from any forces stationed on any planets in the system.  The carrier would have to hover at a fam (or allied) planet to recover its carrying capacity.  If say 5000 bombers (or 5 destroyers) attacked an un-escorted carrier, and that carrier lost all its units and carrying capacity by pure bomber / destroyer fire, that carrier would be destroyed.  However, carriers would usually end-up being captured rather than destroyed, because fleet set against them would usually include transports.  And just like a battle for a planet, a battle involving a carrier (or carriers) on defense could end up with multiple carriers being captured rather than any of them being destroyed if the attacking 'ground' forces protected by enough attacking figs and thus were able to sneak past the carriers' defending figs.

Destroyers, likewise after being damaged by laser fire (like any fleet of bombers are damaged up to a maximum of 70% damage after meeting laser and fig fire during an assault) would have to replenish their attack power by hovering at a fam or ally owned planet for a certain duration.  Just as a fleet of bombers aren't completely destroyed by figs and lasers, neither is a destroyer.  But just as lasers are completely destroyed by bombers, destroyers if attacked by a sufficient number of other destroyers or bombers would be.  And so, when on offense, bombing lasers or attacking other destroyers, the destroyer won't get totally destroyed by the return laser fire, but only lose its attack power (up to a maximum of 70%).  It would have only 30% attack power left over (or 300 bomber attack power) for a subsequent attack the subsequent tick, AND it would be left more vulnerable to being destroyed that subsequent tick (if it lost 70% of it's attack power from laser fire from ground lasers and figs one tick, the next tick it could be destroyed by a mere 300 bombers, where usually it would take 1000 bombers to destroy a destroyer).

There are a few more details to be explained.  But it's all worked-out.  All very simple.  Not much encoding necessary, mostly existing processes are used.  And it wouldn't give too great an advantage to the vet-stacked fam, either, as capital ships could be captured, and / or easily-enough destroyed by sufficient bomber-fire.  And their expense could be such that risking having them captured would deter spreading them out and thus making them vulnerable to being captured by a small amount of traditional forces that a small fam could easily build.  Rather, fleet commanders would keep them together and safely under central fleet command control.  They'd thus most likely only be used against a large fam's large enemies.  A large, vet-stacked fam pummeling a small fam of new players with a huge capital fleet that the small fam could do nothing about simply wouldn't be something a large fam would bother doing, I don't think.  I mean what would be the point if the expense of building such a huge capital fleet would be so much more than the expense of the traditional fleet that they could have used to pummel the small fam?  Capital ship fleets would be used to secure otherwise impossible-to-secure systems, usually during a very difficult war against a very difficult foe.