Sounds interesting, great to have a new universe at last and will take a look
- I like the idea of expeditions being more worthwhile. This needs to be balanced against other aspects of the game, though. One way to do this could be to ensure that expeditions were less worthwhile than raiding some of the time but if raiding is bad, they are the better choice (could be hard to predict..). Alternatively, they could be better but slower than raiding, or more of a gamble but approximately the same outcome overall.
- I like the idea of including storage dens and defence regen. However, 90% sounds like a bit too high a level for defence regen.
- I don't really see the need to remove the bashing rule. It's not that difficult to avoid hitting someone more than 5x, especially with the automated warning. Plus, if there is no bashing rule, then even with 90% defence regen, it would be possible to remove pretty much all of someone's defences while they are offline by hitting them repeatedly.
- I'd agree with Pulsar's points about ensuring that strategic aspects of the game such as fleet pts update, lanxing etc continue to be viable for the fleeter. Most of us enjoy the hide-and-seek aspect of the game.
- Ruby moons... I think it's too hard as a newbie to get a decent moon, but agree with Pulsar that ruby moons of 9.9ish make it too easy to hide fleet. Why not make ruby moons smaller, like 8k or something, so they are good but not indestructable. Make 9k moons a matter of luck and pretty rare.
- Don't agree that defences on moons are a problem - they are hard to build on moons because of the space limits for shipyard level, no nanite etc. It is actually pretty rare for someone to build a really strong shell of defences on a moon - and if they do, hey, well played.
- I do like the idea of an increased role for IPMs.
- One point that has been made repeatedly is that the big players get so strong that nobody can pass them. The strongest fleeters eat the smaller ones and it becomes next to impossible for anyone to surpass them. I agree with points made by others e.g. DREDD that there should be some cost to a large empire, otherwise you end up with a huge fleet and huge mines and no significant disadvantages. Realistically, in real life, it is not easy or cheap to hold together a large empire/army. Perhaps planets could sometimes go rogue and leave your empire or something!!
- Another possibility for the above point is to have maximum levels of certain things e.g. number of lunars/RIPs, meaning that you could potentially end up with a group of large players all of similar size to each other.
- Certainly more needs to be done to make it easier for newcomers to get started, I like the idea of tutorials perhaps with ruby rewards (or just start with more rubies!). A mini fleet as a starter would be good too so that you can actually do something besides build mines, as would more res at the beginning. Some thought could be given to encouraging alliance building among the noobs, as the social aspect of the game keeps people playing - a ruby reward for starting or joining an alliance, perhaps?
- I like the idea of the new ships. Also, need a rethink on certain current ships. Who uses heavy fighters, cruisers or bombers? And even destroyers are not much used, with fleeters tending to make masses of lunars. Agree with the above point about bombers possibly playing more of a role v's defence regen. I'd suggest making cruisers a lot faster so that they become a viable option for raiding or even for ninjas (with a large number of them).
- More thought needs to be given to the clearing of old accounts. It has been said many times that the clearing of inactives spoils the game a bit... It's not just the amount, but a bunch of zero point inactives are boring to raid, and it is a shame to kill off more established accounts (and those guys are more likely to return, as I did recently!). Perhaps time limit v-mode too, to 2 months max, with rubies an option for unlimited v-mode, so that the universes re not full of blue players and it encourages ppl to return too.
I'm sure I could suggest a lot more! Anyway...
