Yeah, I just launched 20 raids in galaxy 1 of standard. I was able to farm all effective targets from systems 1-1 to systems 1-120. I was stooping to lows of raiding targets that had less than 400k metal regularly for this exercise. On a good day I launch 80-120 raids. What this means is if the rest of the game became like G1 I would be clearing out 4-6 whole galaxies in one day as per my farming routine.

I don't see how more than a handful of raiders can enjoy the act of raiding in this environment. Fortunately not all galaxies are as empty as g1 yet. Time will tell, but these are just my thoughts.

I agree with Talim, inactive raiding (at least the big, interesting inactives) is a fun part of the game... players and alliances compete to be in the top 10 each week raiders, therefore keeping players active and interested.

And as he said, "I have been a serious raider for two years. It took two years of raiding with no major fleet crashes to catch up with the bigger fleeters" ... supporting the original point that Prometheus made that the current clearout disadvantages newer players, who will no longer have the chance to do what Talim did and build a strong account through raiding.

Just don't delete them all at once like this - it spoils the game. Like TheGoat says, listen to your customers.

Well said, Talim, and Impachik. Consider this, allow the rabits to prosper and expect the wolves to thrive. If that analogy makes any sense, shouldn't the idea of increasing the quantity of inactives slightly be seriously considered?

If the goal is to increase the number of long term gamers on the standard server, then this simple idea has merit, right?
If the goal is to make the game more interesting with action and battles, wouldn't this encourage more pvp battles, due to increased newbie growth and beefing up the foodchain?

Just more food for thought, pun intended :]

in the sense of 'listen to your customers' i agree, however who are the customers and who are the freeloaders?

technically I am still a freeloader, I'm planning to buy rubies the next time there is a special or something (hoping for christmas).

in that sense we can force zorg to leave our farms at 50 rubies per (accounts come with a base amount so its less tho right?), however that seems a bit steep to me.

zorg would be an amazing game if there were 10 times the players, regardless of the handling of inactives
the number one goal of all players should be to keep new players, perhaps its time to form a council of some kind with powerful alliance leaders from each universe (1-3) (or a representative, some people are busy ) to talk directly with the admin. that way theres roughly 10 people all of whom represent multiple peoples opinions. (even cut it down to 1 per universe perhaps), that way when an idea is suggested to the admin more than half of the people that are being represented agree...

perhaps we can find more effective ways to keep players and if there are more actives we won't be too worried about inactives

For what it is worth I spent about $140 on rubies this year. More than I planned but meh.

something else to consider potentially: delete enough inactives and you make it significantly easier to hunt people's fleets, as there are fewer places to fs to. i don't see that happening so much here, with the highest rumored rips to be 1k, but in say, extreme... that would make it real tough considering the size of the fleets... no-one should have to bend over backwards for maintainance :/

in this server, a more relevant issue [warning, slight amount of sarcasm ahead]: if players are forced to rely on their own mines for growth... then any player not scrambling to raid all the time will grow significantly less... which is much more boring with less to do... which may well lead to many leaving out of boredom rather than... ragequitting, which is a fantastic improvement i'm sure :/

also, if players, new and old alike, cannot grow or recover quickly by raiding, the fleeters would have... dregs to hit... not too appetizing :/

to give an example of the above. in extreme, there is a certain player who DOMINATES the top-battles. this guy raids like crazy, but the main reason he is crashed so many times... is that 1. he seems to have gotten on the bad side of gozar, sprog, and torgard, not being in their alliance. this however is not very important unless 2. he raids like crazy, and then becomes worthwhile to hit rather soon after being smashed... if said player could not grow quickly... everyone would twiddle their thumbs - him because he has to wait ages to get a significant fleet again, and 2. the guys who were hitting him have to wait just as long to bother hitting him again. the smaller players who don't raid as much won't bother...

slow growth also leads too... way fewer moons [no-one mentioned this yet to my knowledge]. lets be honest. most people will not buy rubies, even for moons. certainly not for a game which seems stacked against them [as a certain alliance leader in standard told me].

so... moonshots. how much do they cost? 3 million or so debris, right? now accounting for df, lets say, from battleships [assuming the defender builds enough defense before being smashed and quitting]. so 53 battleships = 2.5 million metal, half a million crystal. now the df is sixty percent of that, so each ms loses the players 1 million metal, and .2 million crystal. consider now, that moonshots typically take 5 shots or more right? so we're looking at 5 mil metal and 1 mil crystal out of our own mines... most players can't do that in a week with their mines... and if new players DON'T GET MOONS QUICKLY they get crashed rather easy don'cha think? well, if they cannot stay safe, why bother to play this, especially when they cannot grow quickly?

yes, it is possible to still grow quickly as a new player, by only hitting actives, but how many can realistically do that? not everyone will end up crashing and growin like, say, symbolseka.

for what it's worth, i'm a relatively small time player, you likely see a lot like me around [though not all of them go v-mode]. the only time anyone did a serious hit on me was:

1. during the sga vs ds war, and someone kinda defence bashed, and i think destroyed a couple hundred bombers/destroyers. at the rate i grew it would not have been rebuilt for... months... simply because i wasn't raiding and only using my mines :/

2. during warmongers vs shining winds - deidara hit me for a bunch of resources i was dumb enough to not use up*rolls eyes

and finally, 3. drj got 27 elite cargoes, and 40 mil resource stolen i think. i would STILL be rebuilding the elite cargoes if i was forced to use my mines [remember, i cannot hit ANYONE without some ships.]

if you delete inactives, the actives, especially the big ones, are gonna run out of real targets soon.

I see some people talking about relying on their mines if the inactives are cleaned up.. Lets not forget that in standard at least, the cost of mines easily outstrips the resources gained very quickly, even using rubies for +25%.

Yep, for the next day I decided not to bother raiding because the resources out here are boring.. Will I miss out? yes but just on scraps.

Don't forget that not all inactives are wiped, but at the rate its going there will be few enough that a handful of the top raiders would be capable of monopolizing them.

to be honest it would be nice to see inactives wiped if a new one comes to take its place.

Moons are fewer making hiding fleets harder. that makes things like fleetsaving way harder as all fleets have to fleetsave farther making it easier to destroy them after deuterium runs out.
then the strongest fleets would be the only existent fleets because they are strong enough to survive but the weaker ones will be eaten.