(SORRY FOR THE REPOST, DELETE THE DUPLICATE ABOVE WHICH IS BROKEN)
Thanks to everyone who participated, although most of the time opposing clans were crumbled and only in the end they joined forces to take their place in the galaxy. Given enough time they would disassemble our bases, as we almost all stopped playing now. Esp. rising power of very active Pirates, DrK and ITAFF. And thanks to our devs for their dedication too!
I promised I will give some feedback at the end:
- new interfaces, half repair cost, slow ship production, no ship engagement, homeworld planets changes are cool
1) same faction research shared : this will lead to obsoleting the research concept in a few turns, pity. It did even in clan tech sharing. Techs need more improvement and I would welcome their stronger impact on gameplay. Would it be technically possible to have different cost for techs ingame? I mean: clan that owns Krow tech can build it for 90% cost while other without blueprints of Krow pay 5k metal ingame. That would give tech structures completely new meaning and importance.
2) Planetary defense grid {PDG} should cost much more if it can completely prevent any ship attack. If I get it correct, you must conquer neighbouring planet in order to invade PDG planet, right? And insurgents are still able to bypass defenses ? Then at least set every artefact planet to have at least 3-4 connections with other planets else they can be blocked (see cornered Jarra for example
http://zero-k.info/PlanetWars/Planet/3013 ) The clan which sets homeworld at Artrabur and set PDG will block tech victory...
3) Insurgents attacking strongest faction - this is rather silly rule, discriminating the winning side by burdening them with insurgents (which is serious threat and advantage against winning clan, contradicting starship and defense concept). That exposes expensive and bloody earned structures to destruction with random factor. I think that 1v1 newbie fights overnight triggered by insurgents should not be able to devastate 50k structures of defenseless owner, while other factions have to put their expenses and much effort to destroy a single wormhole by ship bombing..This is unbalanced, I suggest giving the owner of planet possibility to hire Local militia -protection against insurgents, PDG protection etc.
4) Another insurgents problem is their stuck point, when for example all the planets in galaxy were protected by garisson, but single planet was vulnerable to insurgents. The map was stuck all the time at DSD map discouraging players from joining. The same might happen with lowest IP rule, cycling few maps on weakest planets for days.
5) Also the discrimination of winning side is the way to PW stalemate. Insurgents erase winners progress towards all victory goals. Not even it's unfair against winning side, but it prolonges the season making whole PW eternal and thus boring. If we want to keep PW attractive, it must be full of action tactical turn-overs and have accessible victories. PW season that takes thousands of turns bc of constant nerfing of winning side or halting victory conditions (making them nearly impossible) will lead to dead point - galaxy constantly divided to rigid areas without any important changes. Let the seasons to be dynamic, allowing more victories (that's what clans are attracted to - everyone wants to win once), maybe even by decreasing the number of planets.
6) Same with the upkeep cost, it makes things more realistic but also complicates metagame and contributes to stalemate, complexity.
7) Homeworld feature must be deleted when the planet changes owner, allowing the defeated clan to set HW elsewhere.
8) Currently the faction system should be only 2 sided (max. 3) because the community can not support so many fragmented parts and it better suits two sided team matches. It would be very interesting if maps could be played = faction based FFA. Two sided PW would be the simplest way how to divide players and distribute to 2 teams ingame. Last season had two totally dead factions while other factions were represented by single clans and few one man army clans. PW needs centralised player groups able to compete against each other.
9) Clan concept needs to be supported, one of negative factors is metagame complexity imho. I suggest removing a few marginal concepts (decay, taxes, shadow influence...) or making clear summary manual about how those things actually work.
10) One-man-army clans should be discouraged, we need to push those players into other clans, making them more effective. Also WTF is that? I thought smurfing is wrong.
http://zero-k.info/Planetwars/Clan/359 
11) Balance issues - it still happened that ELO balance has overridden faction alignment which caused awkward situations whether players should be loyal to faction or play against allies. There must be a strict rule about this, 100% balance according to loyalty. Also when there were 5 players present, lets say two Valhallas and three randoms, the game was autobalanced 3v2 with only two randoms on the other side (2 valhalla and one other player in one team). This is wrong and should be 3 randoms against 2 clanned.
12) Planetwars really needs minimum level/XP/hours restrictions as newbies strongly discourage experienced players from playing. In order to compensate newbies, other "Training servers" competitions or more singleplayer tutorials could be implemented. For example - 1v1 newbie competition "Rookie wars", with some (simple) metagame focused on training and upper limit equal to PW minimum requirements so veterans will not interfere. By focused training I mean for example Scythe+Sniper combo mission, using the artillery mission (disabled all other units!) etc. something that really helps improving newbs gameplay and teaches them basics.
13) News update: All implemented fixes that have impact on PW should be updated at news screen, last season's rules were pretty much out of date (taxes info to name one) confusing not only me.
14) Spider models seriously need distinguishing/characteristic marks.
15) Eco victory conditions have been repaired but they need a little fix with minimum assets, else they will be won in 23 turns ;) Or congratulations to free machines?
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What a wallpost lol... That's all from me, I am retiring as leader of V and most of my girls probably too. Thanks again,
see you later I hope!
