So, there has been a lot of discussion about the exile system and the general galaxy system.
I've been trying to think about a way of solving this.
The fundamental reason why the buddy pack is still the galaxy solution of choice is that it allows players to have friends and still meet new players. It forces you to get on with randoms, to some degree, and that brings you closer.
I'm not sure if it's worth re-trying a private/random setup (the problem with that is, as private galaxies fail and try and disband, the random galaxies get bigger, sparking a private-disband cycle).
Capping random galaxies both:
1) allows planets to exile into 'new' galaxies and effectively form private galaxies (to some extent, at least)
2) means new players joining mid-round get no support - they won't find it so easy to integrate into the game. Let's face it, the community is the reason why people stay and play the game - even envisaged tutorial systems can't really explain it as well as other players.
Originally I was thinking that some sort of (potentially slowly-changing) system where you had a set of "buddies" and a few others besides that formed your galaxy, maybe where galaxies overlapped
like this (everyone in the green square was part of the green buddy pack's galaxy, red square for red bp, brown square for brown, etc) and random people were occasionally changed out of galaxies as new planets joined, but I'm not sure if this would help to nurture relationships with people out of your immediate "buddy pack", or if you'd just ignore them in the knowledge that they'd be disappearing fairly soon? Also, it'd be difficult to do target picking on an attack, as you'd just be hitting an area on a grid and you'd never be able to take out all of it.
I understand that sometimes galaxies "die", and become inactive, and some players still want to play and should be able to continue playing. The question is then what happens to those who stop playing and how do active players find other active players to play with? Also, what is active - someone who logs on a couple of times a day, once to launch and once to check and recall, or do they have to be on IRC all the time and login 5-6 times a day, or...?
I think that JBG famously won having spent most of the round logging in about a couple of times a day - once to send ships (after someone claimed for him every evening, he sent when he was back from the pub) and then pulled ships if texted to in the morning, so it can be done, but requiring alliance support.
So, anyway, I think that the strengths with the current system are:
-Allows (in theory) for better support of new signups compared to just throwing them in semi-active galaxies of new planets
-Allow for some escape of bad galaxies (self exile costs are lower in smaller galaxies and higher in larger galaxies)
-Allows for some mixture of playing with existing friends and meeting new people
Weaknesses:
-In reality, semi-active new planets often get exiled out of galaxies as they're not so helpful
-The exile system can be used to make something close to private galaxies
-The galaxy system is very dependent on buddy pack sizes, as has been illustrated, which can have a large effect on the round
-When a galaxy mostly dies, it becomes a landing ground for planets exiling around
What other views are there of the current galaxy exiling system, and potential improvements?
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