How is it that even though the newbie missions require someone to take 25 planets before entering the real arena, there are people with 1 or 2 planets? I realise if a person is defeated they come back next round with a planet but here are planets where It says they can't be attacked because they joined yesterday. now that is a serious flaw if a newbie ends up in the real arena before they have 25 planets...

They have no such requirement. To pass the missions, you must have 15 planets at at least one point, but it could go down after you reach that point. They are kicked to the real arena after two weeks regardless of mission status or their number of planets. Anyone who is trying to play the game can probably get 25 planets no problem in the new arena. Breaking chains might be a little harder.

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The folks with one planet generally created an account and then never even tried to figure out the game. After some period of time, they get automatically dropped into the real arena, and one of us finds a system with one green, one colonized planet, an SPC planet and a single small transport.