This is what the players have said they wanted. I am not doing it on my own whim.
I sympathize with your situation, but consider that:
This decision isn’t coming out of nowhere. If anything, it’d be unfair to not do this given the player votes.
democracy sucks!!! wow now i realized that was only 1 vote difference!!! and i can blame sunstorm now because he voted for a 3rd option. dont give people options…omg
If you want other rules, just make a galaxy with assimilation rules. It doesn’t make sense that there are rules, but then mid round you change them. Imo.
Also 50% of the votes shouldn’t qualify to make a mid round change like this imo. The fact that people who want things to change are more likely to vote than those are not should be considered.
Agreed, a poll like this is absolutely biased.
I would actually cheer for not making any of these changes during a round. We shouldn;t change the rules while the game is being played.
Instead, determine how this should be dealt with starting from next round.
[I realize this after the fact - and I’m now aware I voted the wrong option]
I normally prefer not to do mid-round changes, but this round is a unique case given the returning player influx.
This was considered, and it was determined that the vote was sufficient feedback still.
I understand that some are not happy with this change. However, this entire discussion was started because several people (including recent returning oldbies) were not happy with things as they were. If we had this vote and decided against it despite the majority, those people would not be happy that their voice isn’t being acknowledged.
No matter what we do here, some group of players are not going to be happy. In an alternate universe where I said “hey guys, let’s not do this”, we’d be reading different posts in this thread from players complaining that I am ignoring consensus.
Try to please everyone and you will please no one.
Anyway, like I said, mid-round changes are not typical, so @Orion and @Hala rest assured that this isn’t a new trend.
if u sort the guys in bottom fam by NW and not by planetcount and i get the guy with 1M NW and 16 planets who i bombed into galactic overseers protection then u will have to endure me compaining for the rest of the round, kindly consider 
Players complaining? I don’t believe it! 
Correct me if I am wrong, but wouldn’t assimilation always occur mid round? I don’t see how waiting till next round to implement this will change anything.
I think they mean it being announced mid-round vs knowing about it before the round starts.
As someone in the bottom fam, this will be interesting to see how this works, considering smaller folks in the bottom fam are likely to be feasted on in shared systems by former family members.
Indeed. We’ll be balancing to account for that; smaller peeps in the bottom fam will go to the higher ranked families, so if that does happen the aggressor will also be attacking a larger family.
On the flipside, the larger members of the bottom fam will land in the lower ranked families as they will be needed more there.
A lot will also depend in what families you all end up with and a lot will depend on the sort of naps the bigger fams got with each other.
I just consider this like a galactic event, throw some unexpected twists (unexpected when you don’t pay attention to this thread for 9 days) and see how families react.
Yeah, I see it kind of like that too, but I can understand the viewpoint of it being preferable to even know it’s possible before SoR.
This first time is definitely unusual given the context. In future rounds we should be able to set expectations better up front.
Alrighty, so the assimilation has been completed. I’m going to post an announcements thread so we can continue the discussion there. This thread has served its purpose in terms of the original poll.
Thanks for your feedback, everybody. Any disagreements aside, it is always useful hearing from as many players as possible. I’ll see you all on the follow up thread.