My planet has a slightly less "cuddly" population.  They are commonly called the Langoliers.

Both excellent ideas, Saturn.  I would also agree about the nebula idea, Grondavor.  If a counter wasn't involved, I could follow the logic that leads from loss of marine life to nebula.

  Sorry for the sore fingers. 

The issue I was trying to address is that although marines are expensive, they don't constitute a "material" loss, and therefore are purposefully left out of emi's calculations in regard to counter-attacks.  Monetary loss does not justify the huge advantage a counter-attack gives you in the game using the current rules set.

I figure marines are part of maintenance/upkeep.  If you have to resupply them like you would soldiers dying or getting sick on a battlefield, well that's just part of the cost of being at war.  And that's what this game is supposed to be about; not building stations, planets, or ships while collecting credits.  It's supposed to be a universe torn apart by war and every man/alliance for themselves.

Now to be truly long-winded:

Now, let's consider your example that you put out and the reasons things happen the way they do.  Player A donates and zeros the other players before reserving ships.  So, I agree that if players b, c, and d wait, then finally get some new ships out and ignore player a, then what will happen will be exactly what you just posted.  However, if they wait until player a is losing turns because he's afraid to bring his ships back out, then eventually he'll have to do something or spend the rest of the round hiding.  When he brings his ships out, they have a target to hit back on.  The game currently gives huge advantages to counter-attacks, but then take them away after 24 hours.  24 hours is a small price to pay for the protection of reserving your fleets.  The problem is that counters are too powerful.  The cost of defending against them is too small.  If you increase the cost of defense (you don't gain turns while reserved, or you don't gain planet/station credits), then you end up stopping all PvP.  However, if you take away counter-attacks, or reduce the advantage they give, then you've made the attacker much less likely to reserve his fleets in fear of the counter in the first place.  This encourages attacks AND attacking back as both sides have a chance of doing damage without either side having a definite overkill button.

Nebs, counter-attacks, and ship-reserving  are what remove true PvP from this game.  When people stop attacking people because there are very restrictive limits on who can attack who with what, they can't hit anything meaningful because of p-ship overuse, and when they finally do some damage, they have to hide everything and stop playing for the next 24 hours because you just gave the player you hit a free pass to do their best with absolutely no restrictions, then you end up with a game that becomes more comparable to farmville than space combat.

If adding in nebs, attack power limiters, counter-attacks, and ship reserving, actually helped bring people to the game and keep them here, I'd be all for it.  But it doesn't.  That's why there's been no significant growth in this game in quite some time.  The fun has been taken away to protect new players, but since the new players are still being hit and there's nothing fun for them to aspire to, what's in it for them to figure things out?  Worse, since the fun is gone, the old players are leaving too.  Protecting the weak does not a good strategy game make.  It simply makes for a dull game that's not worth spending months figuring out the finer points in order to become more competitive.  This could be partially alleviated if you left it as it is on SO Main and actually did something with WARS.  Turn wars into the persistent world it claims to be, but make it just like main.  Add more alliance-based combat options, remove all attack restrictions, nebs, and fleet reserving, and turn the players loose who've spent the time to learn to fight.  Now new players aren't being hurt and experienced players can truly test themselves against each other and other alliances.

Completely off-topic now, if I were the one designing the attack options in this game, I'd make ships have cumulative damage that needed to be repaired, and make them harder to actually destroy, then implement it in the WARS scenario above.  The end result would be a more realistic space war game along the lines of Evony.  Alliances could work together to attack - or defend - players.  Multiple attacks would be needed to inflict severe damage, but ships could be taken.  Stations, mines and planets could also be taken.  Everything would be out in the open and you'd have to scout someone to know what they had, with chances of inaccurate scouting reports or your intended target being reinforced by his alliance.  Now THAT would be a game I would pay to play.

I think there are enough counters in this game as it is.  Personally, I'd like to see them go away completely.  In any other game, when someone attacks, you're welcome to attack back, but you don't get advantages simply for being a victim.  That being the case in this game, fine.  The game is what it is.  I won't whine about it.  But, let's look at this in detail:

The offensive player who multiple attacks your ships to kill off your marines and empty your mothership vault is losing marines and credits, too..not to mention the turns they're wasting doing it this way.

Also keep in mind that the game provides a structure within which to play.  Using this structure well is what makes a good player.  The first person to come up with the idea of a p-ship had a huge advantage over other players.  They had found a way to help protect their expensive ships with cheap, disposable ships that, when killed, put them into a nebula.  They've been used for many rounds now.  You failed to use them properly (by your own admission), yet you want the person who capitalized on your mistake to be punished for it.

The game also gives you the option to have more marines on your ships, either by having marine bays, or by adding to your commander's Special Board Fleets skill.  The more marines and shields you have on your ship, the less you'll lose when someone tries to board you.  This translates into not only less of a loss for you, but the attacker has to spend more to kill or take your ship.  Make it too expensive for him and you'll prevent the attacks entirely.

All that aside, simply keep more credits on hand to replenish your marines.  How many times do you think someone is going to waste turns hitting you over and over for no gain and large losses?  Especially at this point in the round.

Oh no!  I lost a few marines because they did their duty and DEFENDED MY SHIP.  Please - someone give me a free shot at the player who exploited my mistakes, worked within the structure of the game, and used strategy to play a strategy game!  Better yet, take away his ability to hide in a nebula while I hide in mine.  That way I can use an alt to take out all his protection, then come back to my main account to zero him with my counter.  Oh, I know!  Let me power up with 10 million kamikazi's and nuke him from any power level I want, because his neb doesn't protect him anymore, so I really need to have the attack limits removed as well to take full advantage of his audacity for actually allowing my marines to try to defend my ships after leaving myself wide open.

Get real.

Great idea, Zim.  Although it sucks losing a ship or two to PvP, it's really what makes this game fun.  Too many times I've watched games go downhill because too many people whined and moaned that they were hit and the designers tweaked things to have less PvP (this game is borderline right now).  Let me tell you: just building ships, mines, and planets makes for a BORING game.  Don't believe me?  Try out the PVE version of this game.  I actually looked forward to someone popping one of my stations just for something to rebuild.

I'd say lesson one of PvP is to SCOUT with a ship that doesn't do any damage.  That way, you'll see what the other player has without killing his p-ships and sending him into a nebula.  When you know what he has, you can figure out what it takes to do some actual damage.  I'd much rather gain credits taking out someone's lead ship (or all of their ships) than lose turns just giving them a counter-attack by killing a p-ship.