Well, it seems my fear that this is another game that operates mostly on raiding other players and raiding various NPC players. I was hoping it was not balanced with that in mind as the main way to accomplish things.

For those not familiar with economics and what not... the notion of using war and conquest to fuel your economy is a flawed one to attempt, as you run into the issue of "running out of people to conquest". Right now the game is operating on raiding inactive players and bands of pirates... but there are two issues with that.

1) Raiding inactive players kind of results in a game that you can only do well at, provided nobody else wants to play the game.

2) I've not really seen much of any bands of pirates--because players have gotten REALLY good at killing them.

3) Adding more bands of pirates is going to be problematic, as it is going mess up the balancing of economic stuff in the game.

Now, I suppose some might complain that a game being at odds with various economic models is not a bug--but for persistant multiplayer online games... it actually is. It is an issue that has messed up Neopets, Gaia Online, Eve Online, World of Warcraft, Everquest--and name a game, and they have had glitches in their economic models that have lead to hyper-inflation.

This is a set of issues that the game is going to continually run into, unless the game's balance starts to take a more realistic approach to how economics operates. I mean, at least enough on the background so the day to day players don't have as many issues.

I'll keep working on doing well without that many raids--as I'm kind of smack dab in-between some rather active empires... and I really don't like playing a game that requires nobody else play for me to do well. It feels like I am doing something wrong to get good.

It is not a bug.