Why Public/Privates don't work (at least this round)

[Monroe]

So before the round I stated in several threads that public/private galaxies were a bad idea. Many disagreed, but I think now many people have seen how publics tend to dominate by the end of the round. What people may not realize is that the public/private system is highly abusable, and I put together a plan at the beginning of the round to do so, but I have held off posting it for fear that someone would use it. But now that the round is mostly over here is the plan I purposed to the CT HC:

"I had this idea before the round, but it wasn't worth considering until we knew the number of public galaxies in the uni, which is 28. First a little background. The number of public galaxies is fixed at 28. This means as new players join the uni or people exile out of private galaxies rather then new public galaxies being spawned, the size of the existing galaxies increases. Public galaxies started with 12 or 13 planets, now 3 days into the round they have 16, twice the size of private galaxies.

Right now public galaxies are by in large newbie galaxies. With a few exceptions they are fairly unorganized, however right now we have 5 of them where CT members are the GC. This means that if we could control these 5 galaxies and start exiling out of them we could exile the entire ally into these 5 galaxies. Coupled with our newbie friends in these galaxies we could easily have the biggest galaxies in the uni making us damn hard to hit.

Right now if the entire ally exiled out of private galaxies (45 members) it would take on average 5 exile tries to get into one of our 5 galaxies. With roughly 60 CT members that would mean 10 CTers and 10 non CTers per galaxy RIGHT NOW. As the rounds progress this number will only go up, especially if we invite our friends in our BPs to join us. Because of the size of public galaxies and the general activity level of CT it would almost guarantee us t50 galaxy status for all 6 galaxies, maybe even t10 (assuming no one else tries our stunt).

This plan would work on the following assumptions:
1. The 5 gals where our members are the GCs (REMOVED) actually have control of the galaxy and could exile planets as needed.
2. We pick up at least one more gal where we already have members and take over. We would want at least 6 gals to spread ourselves out in.
3. No other ally does this first
4. The member base is willing to leave their private galaxies
5. The member base is active enough to do this in a coordinated manor (roughly all at once)
6. We are able to keep this secret long enough to execute it (no more then a couple of days)"

For reasons that are not mine to divulge the CT HC team decided not to implement this plan, even though it had a high probability of success, it also had a very high probability of ruining the round. If every major ally followed this plan the entire uni would have been crammed into 28 galaxies... now wouldn't that have been fun.... None the less I wasn't the only person to figure this out, and several "fortress" public galaxies have appeared (just look at the t10).

Some of you may decide to say "well hey this is just because the system of public/privates wasn't balanced, if it was more balanced this wouldn't be possible." My big problem with this is I don't believe that it can be balanced in such a way to make it inherently fair, the player base will always attempt to follow the optimal path, whatever it is. So it is better to make all galaxies equal then to try and balance two different systems.

So what should we do? Either go back to buddy packs, which while clearly not perfect at least put everyone on the same footing. Or go to a pure random setup but lower the self exile cost and allow those that wish to, to pay the price of exiling around for a while to end up in a decent galaxy. Anyway in order to limit the length of this post and to not weary the eyes of my readers too much I will end here. Flame away!