Here comes the party crasher.
Some things I observed:
In extreme, some never have any interaction with any active player until they pass 10k and get crashed. Raiding the inactives is far more easier and profitable than attacking the neighbor active player.
A lot of people quit after they get passed the 10k mark and get crashed for the first time by someone with 100k points.
Someone once had 130k fleet points and less than 10k buildings+research+defense. Ask PK his highest fleet/building ratio.
Out of dozens who register in a day, only a handful tries to play. Less people continue playing. And their progress varies greatly. If you had 7k points, it would be hard to find an active player you can attack that is on your range.
Some 10k point noob will still be a 100k point noob.
There was a proposal before of 2 lvls of protection. Like 0-10k points then 10k-100k points.
IMHO changing the player protection won't really change anything significantly but it may help.
Players just need to understand that getting crashed is a part of the game. Fleet saving too.
With the moon destroy missions:
Most players without 250 rubies forget that moons are only temporary.
Most players have less than 6 moons that they can use for FSing.
If the issue is to make harder the searching for fleet, a safe way to FS would be a better suggestion. (Let recalled deploy missions become invisible to the lanx)