I have serious issues with the planet cap. Why is it so hard to find more and more planets, especially when you have 20 enemy occupied ones? You only GET one planet per 4 levels. This makes your initial picks obscenely important and really unfair if you have bad luck. The only options are to spend GP or reset your account until you get lucky enough.

My solution is simple: Politics

We could have a system where you have politicians on the payroll for your planets to be governed. The more you have, the more planets you can control. Too many planets and they start rebelling against you.

Think about how it works now. You have all these planets and one captain commanding thousands of people. That doesn't make sense to me. So you have politicians. They would have to be given every level, earned through missions or (my preference) included in your crew.

Then change scanning rules. Larger planets would be easier to find (think about how many small exoplanets we have found so far in the real universe) and smaller planets would be easier to cloak, this would make EVERY planet valuable, not just the ones with high resources or size.

Next: Change colonization rules. Beginning players would not be able to colonize gigantic planets because they would not have the politicians needed. Plus it would cost more per planet size rather than the number of previously colonized planets.

I think this would make the game more fun, more interesting and most importantly, more realistic.

Any thoughts?

I think their are some good ideas in what you have proposed, but that would require a complete overhaul of the current system which I don't think would be feaseable.

nonononononono! I dont want to lose my very massive planet! nonononono!

I'm sorry, i didn't realise we were playing Operation Flashpoint here... (which is a terrible "realistic mil sim" btw)

Games don't need to be realistic... games need to be fun and easy to play.. but not ridiculously easy. There will be winners and there will be losers. That's how a game works, or, in a sense that's how it should work.

Either way.. -1 to all ideas above, i just don't like it.

I am not demanding it be realistic so much as coming up with an idea for making planets more than just good luck charms that generate a need for GP because the majority of them are completely useless.

Seriously. I have scanned 33 planets so far. I have colonized 3 of them. What is the point of having a game where 90% of the resources (if you will) are completely unused? It is really just kind of silly if you ask me.

I know this would be a complete overhaul. I was just putting it out there. There would need to be compromises for established players. People should not have to worry about holding off on colonizing because it will cost money or a reset to undo mistakes.

Then there is the underutilization of smaller planets. Perhaps...we could do the following:

Every level you gain an amount of planet size you can acquire. This is separate from the current system completely.

The biggest planets you have count toward the current 'free' planets. Meaning on 1st level you get 1, 4th you get 2 etc. This would prevent established players from being robbed. Furthermore, if this were implemented and the cost to colonize reduced, these established players should be reimbursed credits to compensate.

Since this would not adversely effect anybody, it would suddenly create a huge demand for small planets as the established players suddenly can colonize hundreds of planets each.

The first month would probably be awesome as the PvP explodes into an all out war.

We could even make it more interesting by creating a galactic log that shows who conquered what planet etc.

Come on, imagine the chaos! It would be awesome!

Normally, I tend to argue for or against an idea point by point, but in this case I think this will suffice...

No.

Sometimes, a simpler system is what we need. Remember this is a facebook game, not a hardcore game. It's got plenty of strategic elements, and although I usually play hardcore sims with lots of math etc, I prefer to just colonize when I have a slot, done.

+1 to my idea