The reasons behind it's existence make no sense Dan said the Npc pool needed to be diluted

I think Dan's reason for not "fixing" the high-rank NPCs is that he wants us to buy GP.

High-rank players are active and more likely to buy GP. Therefore "encourage" them to do so. Pretty simple. Remember, the entire reason behind all FB games is profit. The answer to why anything is "to make more money". The game creators may not always make good decisions about how to maximize the money they make, but money is always the _intent_. Maybe Dan thinks that he needs to make GL progressively more difficult to "normalize" the playing field? If he does think that, it's because he thinks that leveling the playing field will produce more overall profit than not.

We can rant all day on the forums about problems; it won't be a "problem" for Dan unless it corresponds to a loss of income from GP.

Of course it's game economics!
About a year ago I read a PHD paper on facebook games from an economists perspective. Fascinating (BA'87 in economics).
Dan could do better but he could do much worse.
I give Dan a grade of 'B' from a players perspective as an economist.
It's damn hard to get me to part with my hard earned money and Dan's managed to get me to spend more money on his GL game than I have ever spent on a computer game (Sid Meir had recently held the top spot with all the Civilization games)
I can only imagine how hard it is to find the right balance in providing in game items (npc/missions) versus selling artifacts for GP.
I started and got my first 3-5 QSE's before Dan changed and made them the tiny 1% of Troop Carrier's. I've had 96 Terra-formers and not one QSE dropped yet. So I think I'm due. I've also bought plenty of them (have rift planets).
If I was DAN I would really want to encourage the serious players to spend money (ie very high rank).
Maybe what he ought to do is create a new mission that creates a rift like artifact for players that have reach various milestones -
Certain Very High Rank
X number of PvP kills
X number of NPC's kills
X number of Metals (all or a number just below all)
X number of planet invasions
X number of planet scans
then your allowed to purchase say Humongous planet device (HPD) for 100GP which increases the size of a planet 2 rather than 1 as the QSE do.
something like the rift mission
10 HPD creates a rift2 artifact which takes any planet and rifts to a size of 100! with production increased by 40x artifact only or 20x all three R/M/A.
of course the planet would have the size label of Humongous rather than 'Mega Colossal'
Just an economist thought's on how to get very high rank players to part with more money.
Those of you about rank 2000 - what are your thoughts? Can Dan get you to part with more money than your already parting with (towards GP's for GL game)?

On a side note I dream of a day when Dan creates a iPhone app for GL - he should sell it for $50 with 500GP thrown in for good will as a gift to the app purchaser (I prefer to purchase in game currency through my iOS device rather than Facebook - always get the same terms or better). This way only serious long term players will purchase it and probably give Dan real feedback in the comment section and star ranking. (forget Android because it's to easy for a hackers to steel the code; also the security for Developers is lacking - especially the certificates) see http://goo.gl/leQONx http://goo.gl/cZZvlz