[Mzyxptlk]

I am in favour of making resources count for the same amount of value no matter where it's located (ships, production, constructions, etc..), but if we want a game in which it pays off more to attack planets your own size than it does to bash newbies, then that doesn't do the trick.

XP was introduced to make hitting big planets profitable in order to protect smaller planets, but has failed utterly. People have realised that value is more important than XP and thus it doesn't protect newbies in any way. Over the years it has been reduced to a niche strategy for stubbornly aggressive players who don't like defence and for end of round score boosts for small alliance players.

Instead, we should look for (part of) the solution in the area of a variable max cap formula.

As for the stats, the obsession of both PA Team and the community to get new stats every one or two rounds is nothing short of retarded. You don't need new stats to change the metagame, one only needs to look at Starcraft to see the evidence of this: the strategies in that game have shifted dramatically over the last 4 years, while patches only addressed exploits and bugs, while not influencing normal gameplay. The fact that it's percieved to be different for PA is because game development has for a long time been without direction or vision; the stats have been the one thing about PA that's been easy to change and as a result has become an (ineffectual) replacement for game design. There's nothing wrong with having the same stats for 5 rounds in a row with only minor balancing fixes, as long as they're fun to play with.