Hey Dave, we're honoured to have you with us!
I was googling for references to the game this morning, and I finally came across this thread. 44 pages of messages!
How many other references did you find? I can't imagine the game has taken off that quickly that there'd be a lot.
It seems like new players are too easy to pick off, would you all agree with that? I should probably make it a little more difficult to do.
Agreed. You already have access to a few stats (those on the Scoreboard), perhaps you can base things off that? Maybe an "hitting above your weight" bonus to attack power and accuracy? If I'm battling for my life, I'm going to make damn sure that missile hits its target. Or what about utterly decimating populations if you outclass them too much? So if uranus and his few thousand society levelled empire goes to attack a new player and their society level 50 planet, his fleet would bring the population down to 500 if he succeeded in capturing it (maybe even knocking the society level down a bit). That would encourage people to fight with empires of their own strength.
If your empire is decimated, how about being able to start again with a bit of a bonus? Perhaps a few turns worth of resources/society level/etc for how many times you've been destroyed? That way if a new player is destroyed within their first few turns, they won't be put off starting again because they can bounce back fairly quickly.
Another idea I had was asking people to wait before joining. Once you have X people waiting they all spawn in the same part of the galaxy, meaning they're less likely to be put near someone who can squish them. If they don't want to wait, then make it clear they might be slotted in between two big guys who just want another planet.
