[t3k]

If you increase the number of asteroids 'floating about', and decrease the cap rate - it could work. Although, 3 tick roidings work better with half-hour ticks. Imagine launching a BS fleet, to land 3 ticks. That's you pretty much done for the day. That's crap! You should have more to do in PA to keep activity up, not less. And lol, 24 hours for a defense mission?

The fewer ticks spent at any one planet on any one attack, the faster the overall game will be.

What will happen to alliance raids? The bigger alliances aren't going to hit the same planet for 9 ticks in a row (3 'waves') or they'll have bugger all people home for any raids the next day, unless of course the people on the 3rd wave were quite content to be 3rd wave every time they launch. So, instead of doing multiple waves, they'll just hit more people. So yes, this will favour the top alliances more without requiring any extra activity from them.

Tell you what though, if you want to remove prelaunch and do a round of half-hour ticks - I'd play that round with your 3 tick attacks and 6 tick defs!

...if you made asteroids cheaper to initiate without compromising their yield.