Kenny

remove prelaunch and people will just start attacking earlier... DCs get their work finished earlier. All in all - people can go to bed earlier.

prelaunch is a useful feature, sure... but it's to the detriment of the game. It's like giving a retard and gun... the noises will make him giggle but he's going to hurt somebody eventually.

with prelaunch gone it will favour the people who are willing to stay up later to launch attacks... i.e. the people with the most commitment to the game.

At the moment nobody defends anyone any more. People pre-launch their attack fleets then bugger off to bed. Then they wake up in the morning and complain that they get incoming that goes uncovered. It's the ultimate hypocrisy, complaining that nobody else is putting the effort in that you can't be bothered to.

As the game goes - PA is now all about gaining roids. You've always needed to gain roids to win, but there was at least some balance of gameplay before. Personally, I think prelaunch should be removed because it encourages non-committal attitudes to the game and rewards people for being lazy.

Alternative: Limit the prelaunching feature to just 2 ticks - that should easily allow people to still team up with different eta's without one having to stay up later than the other, while not letting somebody go to bed at 10pm and have their fleets launch at 4 in the morning, while expecting some poor bugger to stay up and make sure your planet doesn't die.