We should better reward players who contribute to the community and game in non-monetary ways. Although funding is critical, it’s just as important when players go above and beyond in their contributions to the community itself.
There’s a ton in IC that can be done to improve it that has nothing to do with writing code. A point system is a great way to reward and incentivize everybody to help grow IC.
This is more than just forum tag points and titles. Non-Paying players should have the ability to access to any paid perk. The way we do this is by making all of our perks something that can be awarded via a point system, and having donations be a way to earn additional points.
Example: Custom Galaxies
Example: Custom Galaxies
Right now, you can run a 1v1 custom galaxy for $1. That’s very inexpensive, but still more than players should pay if they’ve already added more value to the community than is required to play.
Instead of putting this behind a paywall, we can say a 1v1 custom can be had for 10 Imperial Conflict Points (actual conversion tbd). Players can then gain points by doing helpful things in the community. Stuff like:
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Helping with IC-Radio (looking at you @Random, @Darrk, @MTG_Dad, @Hala, @audiodef, @DustyAladdin)
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Helping with the IC-Wiki revival (that’s you @Terror_of_the_Night, @toXinLT, @Deadringers)
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Being active in the forums
- this would attach point rewards to the existing forum Trust Level system
- we could award additional points to those who report bugs or answer questions
We have an entire subset of players who have helped with IC ways that are just as important as money, and we’re long overdue for recognizing that with more than just a thank you.
Although we did used to have a “tag point” system, it was only ever used for forum titles. As cool as that is, there’s a lot of potential to give players something that actually has monetary value.
Something like this would help the players who get the points, and it would help me because they’d further take on helping new players in my place, and obviously it would help the community grow together. Everybody wins!
Monetary Donations are still helpful
Monetary Donations are still helpful
I’m not trying to kill donation incentives. 
Rather, they would become a way to get more points faster. So if you wanted to run a 10v10 custom but didn’t have enough points because you used them for something else, you could still donate to get you through.
Any Patreon subscribers would automatically get a number of points added to their account every month based on their donation level.
We would still likely see a drop in Patreon subs as a result, but that’s still a net gain if it means that more players are recognized for their contributions and incentivized to get more involved.
Retroactive Points
Retroactive Points
Best of all, we would be able to award points retroactively. For example, did you know that years before our current version of IC-Radio, we had a different incarnation more focused on music and actual DJing that a player named @KHobbits helped with?
Or how about the original ic-wiki.com and all its contributors? Or @Primo and his holiday themed home page banners? Surely players have earned something by doing stuff like this.
Giving points retroactively would also help you if you’re a Patreon because instead of losing your perks once you cancel, you would keep all of your unused points. Right now, several former Patreon subs can’t use their perks when they really should be able to.
Some of the groundwork is already in place for this. When all base perks were made available to any Patreon sub, code was updated on the backend to understand a modernized concept of player permissions.
There is no need to manage any of this manually, and the details are for the most part already figured out.
The challenge is a matter of priority. To that end, I’ll let you help decide how much this is needed compared to other things. 
Vote for this feature to raise its priority and get it done faster!
