It has been mentioned and discussed before, but it would be nice to reduce the number of inactives in a couple ways:

Reduce HW defense, if someone hasn't logged in for a year start reducing their planets at the start of each month, could reduce defensive resources by 20% and non-def by 10-20% depending on if want to make them more lucrative. I'd even be willing to go two years on it, just something to reduce it.

Another inactive thought, delete all the accounts that have not logged in for a year and have less than 1k points, I think Iiri has said before that they don't take up a ton of room, but I get tired of seeing all those zero score people at the start of each round on the leader board and I just like to take out the trash now and then.

Here is a link to a spreadsheet I made where you can play around with HW values and the percentage for depletion of defensive and non-defensive resources

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/174goT8fut1r5gLAe20ER-IEIj-Q7aEdCo41o-d0RAe8/edit?usp=sharing

It would be nice to get rid of SP planets which are in all reality HW's that players lost because of failure to up-grade their account. I am not sure how many are out there- but they do exist.

__________________________
"Is not easily provoked"
Translated:
It is not good to wake a sleeping bear

Yeah, I have three of them left on my list, not sure how many others around, one of them fairly lucrative if it wasn't SP

the SP hw can be taken by the aliens, they lose all resources and become a regular alien though so not a big issue.

I like depletion by inactivity, whatever the time frame is.

Im up for the idea original idea posted by cajin.

Also with regards to what Tom said, to add on, I wish players did not to lose planets by signing in 5 days late. Give the player a grace period. I think it is unfair if a player accidentally clicks planets instead of upgrades and loses a possibility of 25 hws.. At least display a warning or something confirming the action, like the oblit or leave a planet warning.

watupdogg: isn't the 5 days a grace period? Technically, I'd normally divest them of their planets via cron job. That might actually be more fair overall. I should probably sort planets somehow instead of by random if I'm not already.

__________________________
SkyLords Head Programmer

Spelled: I I R I (not irii, irri, or iri).

Force of nature.

We need a warning though. And instead of random, make the player lose planets after the first 25 on the list if you know what I mean.

Could we have the planets of inactive players become uncolonized planets after x amount of time?
For example, their troops and energy drain from 1.5 years to 2 years, and at the point their defense resources are depleted, the planets return to uncolonized, keeping their resources?

A few problems with this that I've thought of so far...
1. Less incentive to attack if you can wait and get resources for free.
Possible solution being, resources could be automatically cut in half when it changes to uncolonized.
2. Coding on this probably isn't as simple as the current change of ownership script used for over the planet limit transfers to spc, at least, since uncolonized isn't a player it might be difficult, but I can't be sure.
3. Uncolonized planets are not able to be found by nearby or probe, this can be a pro and a con. Placing invisible ships at all of your homeworlds would enable you to colonize the planets if/when you log back in, otherwise your resources could be lost to the unknown regions.

__________________________
We have wings on our backs and we have horns on our heads, our fangs are sharp and our eyes are red, we're not quite demons or the one that fell, so choose to join us or go straight to hell!

Loyal as any dog.

To your second point - uncolonized is just the null owner, iirc. Ironically, SPC is actually kinda a pain instead of the other way around . (It has special cases all over - aliens as well).

To the third - I've suggested before making greens probe-able, and have been strongly opposed. I'm feeling that green planets fill a useful niche in the current game design as it stands.

My own suggestion is an E siphon ship. Stick it around a planet, and over time the cargo fills with E which was formerly on the planet at some rate (maybe 1 upd/ship). The planet owner can log in and pirate the E back and destroy the ship, but inactives would not. This would potentially reduce by up to half the defense of inactive players.

__________________________
SkyLords Head Programmer

Spelled: I I R I (not irii, irri, or iri).

Force of nature.

Well that would be kind of nice to be able to steal away the E, though depends on if have to leave the ship sitting there, thus making it pirateable/killable by anyone