As mentioned form the get-go, I loathe mid-rules changes but first time mechanics and all, some a clearly necessary for the goal of balanced play and the simplest rules possible while permitting complex play.

I'll miss the outcry but it does screw based on timezone and it's real purpose was always just to give people an idea how people are bidding, most players don't have a bidding strategy yet so its not really helping.

So, Auctions are now all silent, and all full duration. Auction numbers are now simply Round#Letter, 3A, 3B, etc. Phases are Early and Late, and will probably go as Sunday Evening start, early end Wednesday Evening - which is one of my busier nights typically so reports would still go out that night just a bit later. Gossip will simply trail the start of each 2 phases, round deadlines will be a murky 'saturday night', though the round deadline for this round will be Sunday 9 PM still. Rounds really need to end on weekends, they take time to deal with, not that much but it's a rare sunday I can't find a free hour or two, whereas weekdays can be pretty busy.

Other changes - since the spreadsheet makes life so easy for some things I will institute a couple of the changes I'd been leery of. None of this happens till round 3 and formal rules changes will occur then, these are just 'highly probable'

Combat - The troop limit will be raised to a non-C dependent value, probably 30 legions, and upkeep will be instituted, probably at 100 MS per legion, including elites and upgrades but not militia. Militia will be capped at 3-5 per location, not sure about limit yet.

Irrelevant to current players but I will also change starting legions from CC to be either C+3 or C+starting Locations.

Will tinker with the Weapons factory, tokens, and way militia are bought, I may simply make them available for purchase at say 1000 MS the auction some of at MB 300 each round. I might simply change the Def Upgrade to allow a player to make a unit of militia somewhere too

Currently everything that goes unbought or is liquidated goes into a NPC pool, I've decided not to bother with grudge rules, they'll simply be divided up to reasonably non-hostile NPC factions under my control who will act intelligently, reasonably, and sanely, probably use one or more of the unused factions. Which means if you liquidate something and attack it, you will provoke them and they will respond better than ye olde dumb computer would.

I will probably adapt the intrigue actions like gather Intel and assassinate to stack similar to how multiple attacks on the same location work. In a seizure for instance, a second force striking the same location in a round has the defender's BS at a -2, something that may come up soon obviously. Be noted, in the same spirit, that under current rules you can only move a number of legions per round equal to your Combat score, that this specifically means "Send", it has nothing to do with how many troops you can actually attack with. It merely controls how many troops you can order to move from point A to point B, there is no limit to how many units you can have fight in a round. If John Sends 3 legion to Smirno and Bob sends 3 Legions to Smirno, they will both attack Smirno, one after the other, If Bob sends 3 legions and transfers them to John that round, nothing in the rules that I recall prevents John from attacking with 6 Legions on Smirno. Nothing prevents John from keeping those legions either.

Embassy Bonus - I haven't decided the exact algorithm yet, but this will be an additional income source to help offset troop upkeep and will be slanted towards diplomacy score and do away with the Diplomacy bonus on planets and electors, which I've decided is too abstract and prone to generating circular references. Current Formula that is the leading candidate is DDDCI*Locations*10 MS... which works out, with average score being 2 (not player average, what a 2 indicates in terms of skill) as being exactly 100 MS per location, the cost of upkeep on a single legion with presumed 1 legion per location being the 'average' peacetime garrison. The main runner up is a legion upkeep cost of 200 MS with DDCI*Loc*25, or 'average' DDCI of 8 and 200 per location. Not the obvious bonus to diplomacy, and this income would be a separate one. Suggestions still welcome, the flavor is increased contributions and bribes and extortion from others from your 'perceived power', being a skilled diplomat is very helpful, as is having a lot of stuff. Option 3, slighlty more complex (which is only a concern regarding players since I use a spreadsheet meaning I only have to write the formula once) is DIxVotes + DCxLocations, but both would have different cash modifiers, votes being more plentiful than locations, so it would probably be something like DI x Votes x 5 MS + DC x Locations x 15 MS. Note that all of these favor diplomacy and all would replace the weak and murky Diplo bonus to votes. It will invariably be calibrated so that a 2/2/2 faction would be able to almost exactly pay for troop upkeep with it, if they were doing the 1 legion per location thing.

The last thing I will definitely be tinkering with House Raids, likely changing it so they do damage to Wealth and local Legions (currently the case) and suck out a percentage of everyone non-location based incomes... which would be stock income, this embassy income described above, and the player's Homeworld income.

Thoughts?