this game is not only for you.

Hitting active players is not a bad thing. It is a good thing as it requires strategy.

Farming inactive players indifinitely is a bad thing though. It is a no brainer and it is in the expense of the people who use strategy on active players.

It also defeats the purpose of a multiplayer game.

If the great farm nearby has disappeared, I can understand your furstration. Now you need to adapt and find new farms. Someone else will adapt after all and he will become stronger in the end.

So when will this begin on standard as all I see is speed cleaning up.

it looks like they are doing some serious spring cleaning in standard from g1 -> g9, at their current pace probably clearing g3 or g4 atm? no zero point inactives left in g1 or g2 i think

they are. let me ask something:

how is a player to catch up to a bigger one with less capability to crash? to take standard in as an example:

lets use rence [probably the most active newcomer] and ahilles. how is rence ever going to catch ahilles if raiding inactives is virtually nonexistent? all the juiciest targets will not be accessible, right? ahilles can hit virtually anyone he pleases, but not in rence's case. if rence cannot have a hope of catching up, won't it be discouraging?

and when someone gets crashed, why would they bother crashing other people if they have nothing to begin with? the only players who would stick around, with fleets, would be those with big mines. those players are rather in the minority.

someone said raiding is too easy. well, lemme tell you something even easier: turtling.

if most players cannot rebuild lots of ships, then the ones that stick around, will buy up defenses, not wanting to risk their resources. uh-huh. very active indeed. hmmm?

let me put it another way: a fish tank.

all the players are various sized fish. occassionally new players join, as minnows. as soon as possible, the bigger fish want to eat them. because they can. well, there is also fishfood dropped in the tanks, which is inactives. well, if fish food rarely drops in, what will every fish eat? a smaller/weaker one of course! well, let that happen long enough and you will see the smallest fish start to die out. followed by their larger counterparts, as fish [or sharks] begin turning and munching on eachother. eventually there will be a few giant sharks, with a few hermit crabs [turtles] who don't venture out for fear of being munched.

in zorg terms, think extreme without inactives. with several gozar. it shouldn't take a genius to figure out what will happen.

compare the fish tank example to the coral reef, where it is possible to hide from larger predators, out eat them by dining on algea [inactives], and eventually catchup.

ahiles is a bad example, even if he gets crashed, he is dedicated and will continue to raid, nobody except a good fleeter with fleets available to eat can catch him unless he slacks off... for half a year.... or more.

we simply require more players, as long as 2 new players stick around for every old player quitting it will happen eventually.
unfortunately this is probably not the case.

your metaphor is good, but this is also a social game, some of us won't turn on each other.
still wondering who you are though.....

Hmmm.... I see a lot of players who have quit or are inactive on speed server... I also see a lot of players who are considerably more powerful than I... I have been attacking thee inactive's with little to no points just sitting there..(so tempting);however, I am a bit of a competitor... I mean this is a game and the object is to be successful at least and maybe even dominate... I look for those who are ranked close to me just for excitement.. I do not like to bully anyone and I see, that there are some boundaries in place, that discourage this...(grateful)... I must say if not for thee inactive's. I would not be progressing as I am now... I like this game and hope to be a fixture for many moons... I am sure you guys will figure it out if you have not already... I have no complaints other than it seems a little dead... Peace Kings...

@athight: my point is rence [smaller player] would have a ton of trouble, not ahilles. [sorry if i was ambigious]

[and athight, i'll give you a hint. i used to ask really stupid questions.]

the inactive deletion thing tho, it would result in way fewer resources to go around, as crashed fleets would take forever to rebuild.

we should make it much more likely new players will stick around more and the inactive deletion will not be so bad for the game. for starters, a number of buzzards ideas, i think, would help immensely. [tactical retreat, and 70% fleet regeneration]

i should mention tactical retreats do not hurt big fleeters much because they should be able to win handily with 4.9 times the defender's fleet.

to continue the fishtank above, if alliances are not turning on one another, there will end up one alliance that is supremely dominant, and works together to munch up everyone else. hardly beginner friendly, unless you get into the remaining alliance where you may not even need to fleetsave. :/

Zorg wrote: Farming inactive players indifinitely is a bad thing though. It is a no brainer and it is in the expense of the people who use strategy on active players.

It also defeats the purpose of a multiplayer game.

That doesn't address the point that several of us have made though that the strongest players have been able to build big fleets partly/mainly by farming inactives, and now at least for a long while, no newbies will be able to do the same and catch up with them.

You set up a game with inactives that can be raided, now you are saying we shouldn't farm them.. There's something a bit surreal about trying to tell admin that this is a fun part of the game, and them saying 'don't do it'.

Also the above quoted comment is over simplistic, because raiding inactive is actually a competition between active players, to see who can get to the best raids first.

You didn't delete any farms for a year or more and now are deleting nearly all of them.. I don't think deleting inactives is a bad thing per se, but doing none for ages and then deleting 90% is unfair to the newer players. It should be done at roughly the same rate that new ones appear.

@ach; sorry, your point was fine, i just meant that while rence would have trouble, he will catch most of the top 30 easily if he keeps this up.

@impachik; i THINK zorg means that we shouldn't rely on farming inactives indefinitely, we should be raiding the inactives while hunting actives. (not 'don't do it', more 'dont take this for granted')
you are correct that when inactives are plentiful there is competition, however the cost of losing the competition is less resources, where what zorg is looking for is the cost of losing is your fleet (and the cost of not competing is having no fleet).