I had a random thought last night.
Players dont like to be raided to nothing right but thats a big part of war these days. I believe families should never be hit passed the point of return. Besides for changing player attitudes an answer has been very hard to come up with.
What if we increased the price of fleet majoly to make main attackers jobs not to do massive raids but to remove attackers and force everyone to fight.
Portals could be made for only attacker races and expensive as well or just super expesnive so nobody but attackers are fully portaled.
Lasers would become the main line of defense
The trick would be finding the proper cost that would slow attacks but not make them a stalemate.
This is just a rough and would need lots of work but its a thought to a new roote