New Game Mechanic: Forgotten Colonies

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    • New Game Mechanic: Forgotten Colonies

      As empires expand to new frontiers and greater riches, it is not uncommon for far reaching colonies to be forgotten. Those without contact from their emperor for too long often forget about their master, and reestablish relationships with their neighbors.

      This idea aims to address issues older universes have with accounts ending up in permanent, inactive, vacation mode, and causing the universe to die out due to lack of activity. The only way to address these universes is via a merge or by introducing new players, but the latter is difficult as new accounts have limited mechanisms to catch up to older accounts.

      To solve this, I suggest the game mechanic of "Forgotten Colonies". A Forgotten Colony is an account that has not been accessed for 28 days or more and is in vmode. These colonies are "swapped" our for "event planets", and have special restrictions on how players can interact with them. When a player logs back in, the Forgotten Colony disappears and the planet is in the normal vmode state. Should an account emerge from vmode, their original ships/defense/resources are not affected by the Forgotten Colony's presence.

      Forgotten Colonies can only be spied or attacked, and are not eligible for transport missions. Additionally, each Forgotten Colony can only be attacked once per day per player (but an active player may attack each of the forgotten colonies of a vmode account).

      Forgotten Colonies have no defense or fleet, and a 0% chance of counterespionage. Resources collect as Mines, Power Plants, and Solar Sats originally on the planet are set to 100% production (even though the solar sats are not visible for attacks). Resource collection is capped by the original planet's storage facilities (with den protection set to 0).

      These attacks also do not follow the traditional resource capture rules, and instead behave as follows:

      * Any account that would be considered to be in newbie if the original account were active captures 100% of resources
      * Any account with a lower econ score than the original account captures 50% resources
      * Any account with a higher econ score than the original account captures 10% resources.

      This mechanic will make it easier to smaller accounts to grow, while not providing a significant boon to accelerate large accounts. Additionally, it may provide training for new players on mechanics of raiding, and encourage them to be more aggressive in searching out inactives to grow faster.