30 min ticks are a bad idea, I had recomended 50 min ticks before. I had played a game that had 50 min ticks and it really isent no differance from 1 hr, however it will give u 4 more ticks a day and it does speed up the round just enough to not throw off anything other then getting more stuff done in a smaller amount of time.
Ic use to be 2.5 months and I cant tell u how many times we were #1 and just waiting for the round to end with 2-3 weeks remaining and the peeps that were in the small fams had been waiting evan longer. Now we waited the last 2-3 weeks for the round to end because we were an aggressive fam and already had everyone dead and beat. it does not take 3 months to finally wina round, if thats the case then you been inactive all round or u just suck and it takes u that long to do infra and get portals.
I dont see a problem with going from 6 to 8 expos a day, because if the bigger fams try to explore too much too soon it will only hurt them UNLESS they got alot of super naps then they might be ok. I always pushed infra 1st and exploring 2nd. Many many times we have had 600 e ships on and ( 18 man fam ) and were only taken turns on peeps exploring every other day till we got our infra really good. We were almost always #1 in nw/infra, but when your also attacking,lasering,portalling,maken units non stop and opp defense then exploring only takes away alot of gc too early on. U could always spot out those fams that were exploring too much too fast and their incomes sucked.
As far as gal sizes.. imo small was alot of fun, but i dont recomend it to this bunch of current ic players. medium was bad, too much small fam raping.. Large was ok and atm we got super large.
I can agree somewhat about smaller fams having more of a chance in a super large gal, it is really a big plus that I dident count on. However when u got peeps in lower ranked fams with 250 planets on 1 guy, hes a big target to be raped as big fams wont lose alot of morale on him vs losing alot of morale on someone who has 30 planets. The big fams in capri atm were lazy this round and just wanted to do more hanging out then anything and that might be what ic is turning into for a while. Thats all fine, but i do believe with 2 weeks left into the round with all these explorable p's that that is not the best thing.
Dont expect every round to not have a stand out fam or 2 thats good in infra and attacking and dominates easly finishing with 5k planets+
Talk it over and at worse atleast lower the planet count by 10-20%.. Atleast have e phase finished by now;)