[Declined] Sponsored galplaces

[Gerbie]

Every round we see several people sponsor their galmates by upgrading their accounts. Ofc this is good for business (Jolt). One of the problems with upgrading your galmates is that they might go inactive. For this reason I would like it if it were made possible to upgrade "places" in addition to planets, so if they go inactive and get exiled, another planet landing there would automatically receive the upgrade.

The system would require that only free accounts land on these spots. Since free accounts are often less active, I think it would only be fair to have two types of planet placement, with a higher chance for an active free account to land in a sponsored place than for an inactive account. People who don't sponsor then get both upgraded accounts and free accounts. The free accounts will be less likely to be active than without such a system.

I'm not sure what to do after tickstart though. Accounts started during the round might decide to upgrade, so placing them on a sponsored spot might not be wise. That would leave the exiled free accounts as most likely candidates to join the sponsored places (unless we allow self-exile for free accounts).

An exile will have major concequences for the sponsored player: further tech tree advancements may abruptly become impossible.

[mist]

hypothetically: someone upgrades all the free places in their gal. this means that they get the best pick of the free randoms. this means that someone who paid for their own account will have worse randoms. somehow, this seems rather unfair. i think you'd have to upgrade a spot, and then if someone who's paid lands in it - tough really. plus, this sounds suspiciously like buying success, which people tend to object to. all this would tend to indicate that you can't make and distinction between paid and unpaid places when deciding who gets them, which would make paying for them before you know who will rather pointless

that asside i don't think it's a terrible idea. implimentation shouldn't be that tricky really, just got to have a lookup table for sponsored places that's used when a freebie tries to start a research

-mist

[Kal]

i;m not a great fan of this idea - someone convince me, or declined it will be

[demiGOD]

decline this and approve the credit bin - same purpose (i think), its just the credit bin has more human interaction and lesser margin for error of upgrading an inactive account

[Rc mayhem]

decline. I can see it causing more arguements that it saves due to either getting best randoms, so buying success, or losing credits due to paid landing in the slot. Also if you only allow frees to land in that spot then the gal most likely will get a worse player.

[noah02]

Hey Kal they said Decline
Put if it wasnt for god113 thread i might have made an opinion about maybe's etc...

[Kal]

declined