I am glad private galaxies are back, but I am concerned that they are going to be used for lolfencing and make a round that was even worse than the last one.
There are quite a few people, who I like and respect, that think the way to win a round is to "fence and value race," which I would describe more accurately as: "Play like a sissy and n00b bash." When you fence and value race, you ensure that your gal will get few incs by grabbing members of several different alliances, and then you "value race" by going out and bashing n00bs to get the most roids. The goal is to get fat and never be challenged. It doesn't work. It is the reason we wind up in huge blocks pounding our heads off of fortress gals.
So, here is why lolfencing sucks, and no one should do it:
1) When you lolfence you are deliberately not preparing for war. In fact, the goal is to avoid war. People play lots of hugz ships becasue they're good offensively,and they ignore the need to mass kill/steal ships in concentrated numbers. You think this could be avoided by fleet planning, and forsaking hugz. But you have two choices:
Fleet plan for your BP, or fleet plan for your alliance. Choose the BP and you have an alliance with a disjointed fleet that can't wage effective war. Chooseyour alliance and your BP fleet is disjointed and in-gal def becomes less effective.
2) When you "value race," you are deliberately attacking people who are no threat to you. Fine, go pound n00bs into dust. But the alliances that aren't in the lolfences are massing value, building well-planned fleets and laughing their arses off. While you're bashing n00bs, drinking beer from steins and blasting rock music from your computer speakers, your enemies are planning a raid on your galaxy. And when they raid your gal, you are up shit's creek without a paddle.
3) When you lolfence, your gal-mates aren't loyal to you. Then that raid comes, and you're gal-mates say "Sorry, but I have to offer my flee tot my alliance first," you may as well go have a beer and take a nap. You aren't getting covered tonight.
4) When you lolfence, you're left with poo targets. At some point, the n00bs have been bashed. You can go roid every planet that gets 500 roids and land three waves on them, but your enemies are landing on bigger targets. See, you lolfenced too much, so you can't attack the other lolfences or else you'll piss off your allies. Two choices are presented: bash your head off of fortresses, or bash n00bs for few roids.
Your enemies can hit lolfences. And, since there are 4 to 8 alliances in your lolfence, it doesn't look like an act of aggression against particular group. So, they hit you, and you lose 400 roids in one night. Then,
it takes you 5 days of roiding to get them back.
An when it comes to war between lolfence gals, and fortresses? When fortresses get attacked, they ground their fleets and have tons of in-gal def. When fortress alliances attack they do it with a single well-planned fleet. You attack with 40% fi/co fleets, 20% fr/de fleets and 40% cr/bs fleets, so all of their def ships are usable somewhere. They attack with 90% of one meta-class, and you can only use 1/3 of your ships to def.
So, NO FENCES PLEASE! If we fence in these private gals, we're going to wind up in a five alliance block playing catch-up. Prepare for zero-sum war!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHxIssSROjk