Contests bring around players for a short time although it does get the players attention.

You have to have a competition that will keep them around for longer and always keep them interested. Switch it up some.

What you need is a revolving competition for the forums where the person can potentially earn rubies, ships, resources, etc...

Switch it up and people will stick around longer, its like a bribe to the players for being active in the forums. Like make the rule that the player has to of had an account for at least a month in the forums and must post at least twice a day for a week or something along those lines. (I am sure others will help out on this one)

As for in game, some people want prizes for being the best raiders or growers or blah, blah, blah. Simple, give out rubies for the top 5 position of each area or give area specific prizes. For example... If you come in first place for raiders of the week, every player gets 10 elite cargos, second place gets 8, third gets 6 and so on.

Top alliance of the week get a bonus for one week of all production.

People if you can, add on.

I"m happy to see some life in the forums and very appreciative of the Elite Recycle being implemented (though in a beta phrase in Massacre).

I think those are great ideas Fusion.

Thanks Vixen

I think it will help both the forums and in-game as well.

The awards for top alliance of the week would help the newer alliances get a jump in resources.

The ship awards in the other areas would help as well. There should be a top recyclers group as well.

This was suggested somewhere, I'm unsure how safe it is to give rubies out to the TOP players, perhaps cap the number of rubies that can be won by a player over a timeframe, so say 3 of the top 5 had received rubies last week, 6, 7 and 8 will get rubies instead.
If there are some safeguards and zorg is willing to keep an eye on balancing then +1 from me.