If I could make three changes to Planetarion, they'd be .....

[Spinner]

The game needs a vision, no doubt. A path ahead, and probably 1, ONE, person making sure any and all changes help the game towards the vision.
In the business, this is what we call a Director or in some companies a Producer.
At the very least, it should have 1 person in charge of game-design (Not graphics, but the design of the mechanics or systems).
Unfortunately, without dedicated full-time staff such a vision is very hard to get in place and near impossible to follow through.
So, unless things change when it comes to the owners involvement, this will never be the case again.

Realistically, I think the best road ahead lies in figuring out exactly what PA is TODAY, the core of the game (rather than a vision of what it should be in the future), and focus further development on making the core game-play more fun / better balanced / better-looking / better whatever.
If the core is combat and stealing roids, then make that more fun. If the core is politics, make sure everyone is involved and make it more fun / better / more challenging / more visible etc.
That said, I do think it is of paramount importance to go over the information-flow and requirements of new players. I have written enough about this in previous posts.

With a narrow focus on those two areas for a while, I think the time is ready to shift all the focus on plain marketing. Force the owners to spend every dime of income from one round on advertising. I have several suggestions on how to market Planetarion based on a no-cure-no-pay model, which means it's free until you actually make some money from someone (give away a cut of the income, 50% of something is more than 100% of nothing), and I know several ways of driving more users into Planetarion...It's not even hard...It just takes a little effort from the owners, some emails and some phonecalls and a little detective-work...

With AD in the early stages of production though, it doesn't make sense for me to help out too much here. But I still wish PA to live...

All the best.

- Spinner