Family size and nw is taken into account more than individual, so if you're in a family that's twice the size of anyone in the galaxy that you aren't napped with, it'll cost you more morale to attack or op them. 

This is exactly as intended.

Relentlessly hitting people smaller than you is fun?  There are 2 families that are head and shoulders above the rest of Starburst... they absolutely have the option of going at it for the round.  If they want to plan on a major eor war (I assume? unless it's a pnap, in which case lol) and try and hold the rest of the galaxy hostage until that, then they're saying they don't want to have any fun til eor .

So we get punished for our early activity and skill is basically what your saying lol yes we wanna have a fun EOR war, No we do not want freshly expoed planets picked off for spread, and then our family spend 3 times the morale as a whole when you factor in PI's and attacks. Also no we do not want to hit smaller families, but if they are going to do us dirty then yes we will defend ourselves. This systems broke UD. The grass wasn't greener on this side of the morale formula. Let's keep working at it

Because I like to pretend that IC is going to survive longer than the next 2 months, which requires new players.  Our player base has spent years using new players as farms so that they can win in size, and we're trying to make that more difficult.

I defend this formula because I've played with it in multiple roles, and know factually that it's not the formula causing problems.  I've been the #1 family, I've been in the middle, I've been in the bottom and the only real problem I've seen is when a super active attacker gets into a tiny family and goes ape shit in a top family's core, which is what the core system mechanic is meant to slow up. 

We have less than 100 players now, rewarding mediocrity is the only way to keep this thing going.  If you guys can find a way to stop the top 10-20% of players from chasing away the 1 or 2 new guys we get a round, then by all means step up.  At this point I view giving up on this morale formula the same way as giving up on IC, which isn't something I'm willing to do yet.

It's absolutely a challenge or opportunity to adapt

Or by being conservative with growth, finding creative ways to have increased production without massive nw & planet needs, taking into account that the family's overall nw and planet count will effect everyone's morale losses (playing as a pop banker will increase morale losses by 1-4% per attack due to increased nw.  Families must decide if the increased income is worth the morale loss), assigning people to do hard ops (since we adjusted the intel ops to only require 5 morale it's basically the same as 1 op/tick), decide who morale planets are better for (is it better to continue automatically giving them to attackers, or is it worth an opper having double morale allowing you to cpff more portals and need less attacks overall.  This works wonderfully, the round I did it we were able to cut our attacker's morale costs by about 68% by having twice the cpff/sab power.)

I'm definitely biased in this discussion.  Then again, I see that you're still trying to play as a small pax in a big family... no wonder you're bored

This discussion should have happened years ago.  But at that time the vets regarded noobs as liabilities, even killed them off.  Fams were stacked with vets, leaving noobs to fill-up their own Fams.  Fun factor of the game for new players was sabotaged for the sake of satiating vets' egos, who, by the way, were the mods / designers of the game.  They made changes to suit themselves at the expense of noobs' fun factor.  When some players who saw what the problem was stood up and said something vets mods simply didn't listen / care, and even ended up banning / harassing those players who were only trying to save the game from its ongoing implosive destruction by the vets / mods.  They didn't listen because their egos dictated that because they were the vets / mods, they knew better.

Well, now IC has come to the point of finally realizing the truth of what I (and others) had been saying for years.

And what do I have to say now about how to fix the problem? 

I've already said what needs to be done, years ago.

Want me to say it again? Okay.  Get Stefan to send money first.

The current morale system is a step in the right direction, but is only one of many needed to restore the noob's fun factor so this game starts gaining player membership again.

Alright, I'll just adapt by leaving the game. I'll adapt by not playing this crap game you've made it become. It was bad before, now it's worse. Congrats UD, your hard works paid off.

Yes it's boring playing the same way Gwyenedd becuase that was the way it was intended to play. I'm a progressive person in nature. I've challenged myself in my career, and I've challenged myself to grow as a person in life. But I loved IC, I came here to suggest my ideas. I get told to adapt. I get told that you guys have played rounds of this and the discussion of increasing morale planets is just now coming to the table. You all obviously love IC and its community, working for free. You say this is innovative, players say it's crap. You all become stubborn defending this idea, players still say it's crap. My suggestion Gwyenedd is that the devil is in the details. Your own mods can't even explain the new changes in a 100% accurate way. How do you expect us to get behind it? If your going to change a core mechanic of gameplay, change everything it deals with, at the same time, or don't change it at all

Your core system for starters.

1. One Round On / One Round Off:   Have one round with this system, then one with the old, and so on.

2. Two Rounds:  Running at same time, one old, one new.

3. Smaller Families:  I say 5 man families all the way guys, I mean it would create like 5 or 6 new families and with a more target rich environment the morale wont matter as much.    That by increasing the number of families you increase the number of targets, rather than just 2 top families their might be 4, rather than 3 mid level families their might be 6, there is always going to be someone to hit and would make it a lot harder to NAP half the galaxy.

4. One NAP Rounds:  Just bugger off NAPS just allow 1 NAP per round then really no one should complain they have no targets.  Does not stop you messing the leader and arranging a mutual "cease fire" but always leaves the option of war as well.  That may however cause to many people to "Turtle" rather than jump for spread, still can't complain about lack of targets.

5. You Attack Me I Attack You:  I think this out of everything is my favourite option because to me it makes sense.  Okay if I was a "Big Nation" then sure if I attack a really small nation for no reason then my people will get upset, it will cost me huge morale, fair enough I get that.   IF HOWEVER that small nation attacks me first, then game on beeeeeach.

That yeah okay Mr small attacker if you don't attack me I can hardly touch you, however if you do attack me then my morale cost to hit you back do lower dramatically.   I mean what was wrong with that?    Hey my people didn't want war, they didn't want to attack you, but hey you attacked us first now my people are painting smiley faces on missiles

6. Faster Morale Gain:  Maybe a system where you get a faster morale gain depending on the number of planets you have, that would mean it will still cost a big player a ton of morale to attack smaller ones but you could attack a few more times.  Like as it stands a small enough attacker can attack you 100 times and you can do 1 retake a day, 2 if your lucky.   If you got a slightly higher morale regain for been bigger maybe you could at least do say 10 or 15 retakes at least, even it out a little.

7. Morale Op:  To complicated (I Know) but I have always loved the idea of a healer like operations in IC, things that you can cast specifically on family members only.   Boost speed / increase armour / shield fleet / but sure one of them at least could me boost morale so that bankers sat around with little to do could at least ramp their attackers morale gain.

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Think my conclusion overall is that if people did want to turn IC around then it would take far far more than just changes in morale, that the game needs advertising better, better training available, videos teaching people how to play IC.

But personally I'd just opt to redo the entire game.

Whilst some people would say this style of game is dead, its all xboxs and high graphic games now I still believe there is a solid future for tick based strategy games, that if redone on a more modern level it could again grow.

For many years people have said what they want from IC and most of the time those voices "Now Gone" have cried for new units / new ops / new buildings / new tech options / better chat / varied galaxies / new races.

Perhaps another idea would be to have "Faction Wars"

That if the mods could place the starting worlds of families then that would be kind of great.  I would assume they simply picked where a home world would be but not actually know which family would get allocated that slot.

In which case you put 4 families on one side and 4 on the other side and have 4 v 4 with no morale or seriously reduced, rather than having to pick targets its simply "them 4 families over there need to die" think it would be fun to try that.

Why not have some kind of team galaxy like that as well.   

In SN it matters how you play
In SB it matters how your family play
In ?? said faction galaxy it matters how the families your faction play

No you wouldn't need have a random family as player numbers in the 8 or 10 families could be increased / decreased to fit player numbers.   5 a side sounds good to me, you should get 2 decent fams, 2 moderate fams, and 1 smeg fam on each side.

If I could change one thing however it probably would be smaller family sizes, I'd rather play alongside 4 or 5 other players and have 15 families to fight than play with 9 players and have 8 families

Thank you Epiknicedude

I made a few mistakes in that post as it was 4am but think I got my points across.

I mean I don't always agree with the game changes or with the mods but I do back them and trust that any change they make it done for a good reason / with good intentions.   Few people have proved to be as dedicated to this game.

My entire point been, I'd rather NOT get upset / kick off / get frustrated about morale.

But simply find a way to "Work With It" so sure we KEEP morale however the mods desire.

But we also make a few tweeks to make it more workable as well, which is my fair 50/50 like opinion.

BUT YES............

SMALLER FAMS:  I believe would be a strong way forward.

I think a 5 man family size would create 5 or 6 "New Families" and then Morale wouldn't matter as such as there would always be someone in NW range to fight, and yeah it would make it more difficult to NAP everyone.

YOU HIT ME FIRST:  I think is also another great option.

Right back to school yard mentality, who through the fist punch?  Who through the first rock?   

I think about this and the more I think about it the more it settles with the real life.

If we think in our recent history, in the second world war for example then......

France - Actually had the biggest army at the start of the war but sat back and waited to be attacked.

Russia - Had the biggest population, but again mainly sat back and waited to be attacked

USA - Probably had some of the best technology but again sat back and waited to be attacked

Once attacked however each one fought back harder.

Pearl Harbour is the prime example, Americans were screaming "No War, No War, No War" then in 1 day an entire country turned around and said "Why aren't we at war yet?"

The "Retaliation Strike" is a very powerful thing.

In like one day alone about 4 million people walked out their jobs to sign up for the army.

Just because a much smaller nation had attacked them first

Anyway I'll shut up but yes I'd be more interested in finding a way to better the system that's in place.   Shouting about it / stressing about it / leaving the game for it doesn't really help.

If it was my choice I'd go for smaller fami sizes first and see if that has an impact, if not try something else and so on