I would say that most players would agree that the biggest issue in the game now is the combat system. I've only been back for a handful of rounds after a long break but I think I've gained a pretty good understanding of the game as it is now. I've been in fams that have finished first, in the middle, and at the bottom of the rankings in these last few months, so my perspective will be one someone with a decent overview of the different sides of the game, but certainly not the most experienced one.

Firstly, it REALLY seems like the NAP everyone and win strategy is actually the most effective way to a top finish. Avoiding conflict (yes, name of the game pun) at all costs and being highly selective in who you fight and when is absolutely key to remaining at the top of the rankings. Any sort of fighting early in the round (first week or two) is extremely destructive since it is nearly impossible to set up a defense that can hold off an attacker/family that is dedicated on raiding. It is also not feasible to hold these planets so the only goal is razing infra and setting the other family back without gaining anything other than negotiating power. My family in this round of Starburst got off to a really rough start since negotiations went south after the other family's leader could not recognize just how defenseless families are at the beginning of the round. Once raiding starts it seems to quickly devolve into a vicious cycle that leaves both families at the bottom of the rankings and in quite a hole to climb out of for the rest of the round. I've heard plenty of explanations about how the game is called Imperial CONFLICT and not Imperial infra-whoring to belittle people who want NAPs. The goal of the game is to get the most planets and fighting very early in the round really doesn't help achieve this goal.

Thankfully, it seems like the vast majority of the player base abides by more rules than the ones currently explicitly implemented in the game. I have been very happy that I have seen not one instance of egregious vulturing. Families seem to leave families at war alone to fight. Farming only seems to happen semi-infrequently and most people actively try to avoid ruining others' rounds. It would be great if the game didn't have to rely on the high standards of players though.

I'd like to lay out a couple of the ideas that I think would help address these problems. They mostly target things that happen in the first half of the round (before the end of the exploration phase).

1. More spaced out systems in the galaxy.

This doesn't need to mean any more or less systems or planets. I think most early aggression is a result of some families starting with home systems that are very close together. The rounds my families have done better in were ones where we did not fight early in the round and did not have to think about other families' cores encroaching upon my own until later. More space between home systems means more time until fighting is necessary and less variance in the "quality" of starting positions on the map between families. The galaxy could be changed to 100x100 instead of 80x80 but with the same number of systems and planets.

2. Higher morale cost closer to the beginning of the round.

Morale really doesn't kick in at all until a couple weeks into the round. I don't think raiding bankers early should be nearly as easy as it is now. The morale cost for attacking could be 2-3 times the normal cost at the beginning of the round and slowly decrease until reaching the normal cost around the halfway point of the round. This wouldn't affect normal wars. It would just make it so that fewer planets would be involved in raids early in the round.

3. Make portals cheaper

As an attacker, finding out a banker is almost completely unportalled is VERY exciting. However, it does come with a moral (morale? haha I get a kick out of myself sometimes) quandary. When a family has multiple undefended bankers more than a couple weeks into the round, as a small attacker in a smaller family, you have the ability to pmode multiple bankers in a day or two. I haven't been able to make myself undo over a week of work from a family by doing this and have stopped in favor of peace after only some of the possible damage. If portals were cheaper, the extreme vulnerability period would end sooner in the round. It would also raise the incentive for bankers to take a break from building infra and dedicating the time to building portals since it would be easier to get fully portalled. I don't think this would deter fighting later in the round in any way. I don't fully understand why portals cost as much as they do. I wouldn't recommend changing the time to construct portals or the scaling with the number of planets owned.

4. Everyone seems to have a PNAP with pretty much every other family by the end of the round.

I have no clue how to fix this. Removing PNAPs from the game would just result in the return of out of game PNAPs. Having more families and more players in the game is the only way I can think of preventing families from running out of people to attack by the end of the round (which I think somewhat encourages farming currently).

5. ??? I'd like to hear more ideas on the topic if anyone has any. At the very least, thanks to everyone who takes the time to read this.

With less fighting early in the round, I think fewer NAPs would be signed and there would be more fighting later in the round, when it is less destructive. I also find fighting that occurs after the end of the exploration phase to be much more fun and enjoyable than fighting that happens beforehand, since there is more skill and strategy involved as an attacker and there is more potential upside and less downside to the family.

-DustyAladdin