OK. PLURVIOUS definitely has a point there. Even if every ship did everything right and followed the best game strategies we know of now, the keys to the game are APs + TIME. That time element cannot be magically dismissed. Even hard working lower ranks will not catch up with hard working higher ranked/more time ships unless the higher ranked/more time ship stops seriously playing the game. And, of course, the higher ranks ships have more planet slots available so they'll draw more APs, so the disparity can only continue to grow.

But, on a slightly different tack, the issue that worries me a little more is the trend for some of the newer content to have increasingly high energy and/or resource demands. Some of the recent dailies and new LMs have very high requirements. Although not killer problems to most decent rank 1K ships, I worry that we might start discouraging people below 1K as it becomes harder to complete the new dailies or succeed at LMs (or even complete tasks). How many rank 500 players will be able to complete an LM with a 14 or 15K energy requirement and a very low energy-to-experience ratio, I wonder? Personally, I love the new content and rewards. I just worry that we might end up sending lower ranks running for the exits and discouraging new ships too much and end up with an ever shrinking player pool.

Yea, I don't think Dan is doing much (if anything) to attract, help new players. All the new content as of late has been geared towards high rank, high energy players. He probably did some short-sighted math and concluded that's where most of his GP revenue comes from

Minions eh?

Just because this top minions actually know how to play the game to its fullest and also know how to get 700+ aph per planet for sure it will get ppl talking about it.. For some unknow reason this folks got together at EotS and made this happen.. and yes most of them were leaders and officers in other legions that they did left behind for some strange reason..

But wait for some reason they are the top legion also.. for quite some time now...

Very odd , very strange and so unbalanced towards the rest of the galaxy... Dan needs to do something about it

Plamok, hopefully you read this and hopefully you remember me from RoO.

You were a larger ship with better productions and more time played.
The difference between you and myself? I listened to the advice that was given and was never so sure of myself to just be stuck in my ways. There were a few occasions I tried to give you advice on planet builds, you didn't listen. You were fine with "good enough" instead of trying to be better.

Plamok isn't alone in this aspect. Most players I meet don't wanna hear about improving their productions, they just wanna hear "yea, that looks good."

The idea that taking some time to sort your planets and slowly go back through them in an orderly fashion making them better is absurd and a waste of time. Why bother making your VL 3x terra make 350 arti/hr when it is already making 200/hr. An extra 150/hr won't help me... This mentality is the problem, not players like me.

In one of the rare instances, the tree and I are in agreement. pumping your planet production isn't hard, and it doesn't need to cost GP. A VL VR arti planet should produce at least 200 APH, this is with a couple structures and some chassis you get in your pull. These are easily replaceable so not worth losing production out over defence, little things like that add up in a big way.

I think one of the problems many of the old players have is that they have been playing GL the same way for the last 4 years. GL in 2014 is NOT the same game as GL in 2010. So much content released in the last 4 years has changed the game.

Case in point: why do high ranks/long time players put defense on their planets? In 2010, putting 30K defense (after legion bonus) on a planet made it virtually invincible. Today, that's a 90% chance for many of us.

When ships put up enemy scanned planets up for sale, I just laugh when I see planets with less than 100K defense on it. Why?

1. Because there's a good chance it will be stolen/bought by a ship in one of the top legions.
2. Because of the space dedicated to defense, there isn't much production on it, which makes the owner weaker in the long run.

If you want to be awesome at GL, get out of the past and adapt your playstyle and planet builidng strategies. Otherwise, you will be left in the dust by the rest of us who are more efficient and will have no one but to blame but yourself.

As someone who started in late 2012, I used to be of the mindset that newer players would be forever disadvantaged compared to older players, just because of arty production--all other factors being equal, my ship will never have the attack, defense, hull, shields, and probably energy (though that's less important as I can maintain enough to autorank regardless) of someone who started in 2010, hasn't taken any breaks, and optimizes their planets as I do. There is no hard power cap as in most games (although the further apart two ships are in strength, the less impact further gains have because the combat formula is multiplicative).

However, ship strength is not the only, or even most important factor. As far as targets on my BT, they are as they were for everyone except the very first people to play the game, a mix of newer, older, stronger, and weaker players. Some slow ranked players are much stronger, though they also pay a price in long-term arty production for staying artificially low and having fewer planets. I am currently rank 704 and there is no shortage of easy badges on my BT unless I have no scanners equipped.

In terms of comparison with much older players, while it is true it would be inefficient for me to badge them normally, that is not an issue as badges are plentiful as is. I assume what is upsetting for most people is when there is some drama, griefing, planet theft, legion alert or something of that nature that results in a one-sided beating by a much higher-ranked player, that they have no means to fight back, but this is not the case for any reasonably well-built ship that is more than a few months old, and here's why.

1. Hacking, the only thing of real consequence of PVP. Older players usually have a larger number and percentage of better planets. If I with my piddly 34k arty production per hour get into a zeroing fest with someone who has 170k APH, I have a much greater chance to uncover and take super cloaked or otherwise very good planets, which I can then either take myself, offer to my legion, or sell if I'm unable to do it myself (and even as a SSB, my buffed invasion attack is currently around 30k, enough to take with at least decent chance, most non-bricked planets.) Who cares if you get disabled a few extra times if you swipe a maxed arty planet or two in the process?

2. Arties. I have yet to come across a ship, even with 10-20x my strength, that doesn't take max damage after at most 30-40 EMPs, and most older players, at least those that have never reset, have huge ships, whereas I am a SSB/Hybrid. Almost every 3-4 year player I have gotten into a fight with has been a colossal galaxy destroyer and then some, meaning I hit them for 3000 plus per hit and they hit me for 520 per hit if they have at least 50-60k attack (or EMP me as well.) It costs me less E to disable them than for them to disable me, in most cases. While that takes away from max actions TM-wise, most people do not generate 100+ actions a day unless they go on a long PVP run, which they usually do not while engaged in this type of combat with somebody. I can reliably disable someone with EMPs twice a day and still have enough actions left over to zero their hacks as long as it's timed properly.

3. Small ship. For whatever reason, very high rank SSBs are rare. I've never seen one on my BT or been attacked by one after an alert, and I have been alerted to 60-80k average strength/1-2k average rank legions many times. I'm guessing small ship builds didn't become popular until more recently, and so most of them out there have reset and therefore do not have the benefit of 3-4 years of arty production yet. The ones I have seen are mostly no more than a couple years old. If a high level small ship is attacking you, disabling it may be too much of a waste, but they are not perfect. As they cannot equip as much scan/cloak gear, they are easier to hack without debuffing, or with less debuffing, meaning more chance for a crit and less wasted TMs or actions if debuffing. Their attack will be comparatively lower than a large ship until very late game, so more defense/hull to bleed their energy works just as well. If you've built your own ship small, the amount of energy required to disable it increases exponentially as long as you keep your arty production (and therefore hull increase) high and you don't rank up so fast that your damage cap gains outweigh your hull gains. Larger ships have the advantage of higher attack and more energy (better reactors)/more efficient energy use on NPCs, bases, and badging, and being able to use higher buildable modules without having to reinstall and repair them constantly, but if your concern is pvp with players that are much older than you, small would be the better build (unless you don't care about disabling at all and want scan/cloak as high as possible at all times), and very few people seem to have made proper use of it.

I'm not sure how close to the 4 year reward I am now, seeing that I need to hit 400 to get the 3 year one first, but I did reset after getting *very* far, knowing full well that I would never, ever catch up. That's not the point really. I think the difference is one of the things that makes the game wonderful. Space is endless and vast, and there pretty much always should be someone older or stronger or smarter than you somewhere.

The problem I see is the herding of Elders, and the selfish hoarding of information that is otherwise terribly convoluted and difficult to research. This is one of the few online games that actually requires patience and study to succeed, and finding good social support structures is increasingly difficult. Add to that the growing trend bullying seems to be taking from the middle downward, it's not looking good for us. The view from up there was better, even if my ship was weaker then than it is now.