[Banned]

Thanks for your post Viper, there are many interesting points here.

Originally Posted by Viper

So, basically you buy (buy, bid on, the precise mechanics of how the price is arrrived at I will slightly ignore) other people's planets into your gal. I have a feeling that the smaller planets that you want to encourage being bought in and trained will just get left in the market-garden/exile gal, whilst experienced players will just use it to create the private gals which were broken up, albeit at some cost.

This is basically the system. Upon examining it under the light of day it seems like a simple inversion of the current exile/placement system. While it doesn't have any explicit incentives to train newbies, I still think it would be far better than the current system. I'll detail why below.

Big gals are unlikely to benificently buy small planets, esp when they could potentially spunk their wad on one nice planet than a bunch of less good ones. The only way big gals might be interested in buying small planets would be e.g. if someone they know is joining the round late, or restarting for whatever reason and then again the whole point of this is defeated.

I think what we would see is that the universe would run out of good players early on, and that the later players bought into big galaxies would be 'newish' players who are showing potential. These would then be given the chance to build contact networks for joining better alliances and so on.

I think this would be beneficial.

Surely, to make the gals take a chance on the smaller ones you have to offer an incentive to take them on, not make them pay for the 'priviledge'? I know the suggestion wont go down all that well as its dumb as hell, but you really would need to be paying gals to take small planets in and grow them, which, of course, would be easily abused. How would you decide what to pay - flat rate or related to what else is on the market? Ramping scale over the round to reward gals that take a chance on a small planet late in the round? Would you get paid for all planets? Say #1 exiles, you get paid to take him in? If pay is proportional to other planets available, if #1 exiles all other planets essentially become worthless.

You're basically restating what I was trying to communicate with the middle half of my long post earlier. I've had some basic ideas, but most of them are abusable in that it's generally easier to identify friends who will do well than newbies who are likely to do well.

Perhaps one solution to attempt to give a reward but reduce the risk of abuse could be the gal 'buys' a planet as already suggested. The gal then has a short time (say 5 days) in which the planet for reasons that become clear cannot exile/be exiled. The planet's value/score is then compared to when it started, and an amout of what was paid refunded. So, say the planet's value/score (whichever the most appropriate is decided to be) is increased by 40%, then 40% of the price is refunded. Probably would be best to set this a bit lower so it wouldnt be necessary to double a planets value/score to make your money back, and give them the chance to actually make money overall if they do their job well.

I like this, but I don't think it should be based on the short term. It suffers from the same problem I described above.

Why not just change the existing exile system to relate the exile cost to the value/score of the gal so make it more costly for t10 gals to exile hoping for better players, and more costly for a top player landed in say a #50 gal to exile again hoping for better.

This would be a great improvement over the current system. Appocomaster: if you're looking for a simple quick-fix, start here.

Its harder to abuse this I feel, as it would require the value/score of whole galaxies to be manipulated.

I think that to look at what the system I described would benefit, we should look back to the beginnings of private galaxies. The first private galaxies were semi-private like the current BP system. (Someone correct me if I'm wring here.) After round 2, galaxies were allowed to carry over to round 3, keeping whatever planets they chose. Through this and some sign-up timing, people could reliably land a few planets in the same galaxy, if not all 25 planets.

The reasoning here was that people who wanted to play together should be allowed to. There was no worrying about newbies being integrated at this point. In round 4 fully private galaxies were allowed. Newbies who had built contacts in r2-3 were able to put together private or partially private galaxies. Again, newbie friendliness was not taken into account. And in fact it remained this way until r6, when it had become clear that p2p was causing the player count to dwindle.

The problem identified prior to r6 was that private galaxies were exclusive. They were formed at the beginning of the round and stayed the same (bar *cough* account trading), What wasn't taken into account was that it was not often that all 25 people knew eachother from the word go, and that often it was a way for people to get to know eachother better. This let people move from sub-communities and onwards.

The real problem, however, was people who signed up late (which is about 50% of the planets at the end of current rounds) or were unable to build full private galaxies at the beginning of the round. These people were shunted off into shitty random galaxies that were doomed to failure by the fact that even the most half-assed private galaxies were likely to be less inviting targets.

The problem I identify here, which is apart from any incentive to train newbies*, is that new players are given a vastly inferior play experience to people who have private galaxies. The current system seems to be the compromise that worsens the private galaxy player's experience as much as it improves the random player's.

What my system does, that no private galaxy system earlier has done, is that it allows new players to work to even the odds in the current round, as opposed to the next one. People who are trying to get to grips with the game can band together and learn together, rather than rely on the charity of experienced players that they might be able to self-exile to.

This system is better than people forming alliances, because not as much entry-level activity is required to defend ingal.

Yes, this does mean that we need to balance against the nastiest top galaxy that will be made. This is why I think there should be a starting limit that increases as the round progresses. This starting limit can be very low, but I think that galaxies under the size of 10 start impairing the enjoyability of the game. Attackability of galaxies can be balanced with stats if done right (eg make 0-loss defenses inefficient, so that a single ingal fleet doesn't ruin your day).

* Remember, the only real reason I brought this up is that the current system is defended by people who maintain that it's the way to train newbies and integrate them into the community. I think these people are wrong and that their mindset causes a bad galaxy/placement system to be perpetuated.