Do you want to pander to a few people trying to relive the past or do you want to use the base game trying to make a succesful game? That is the question you should ask yourself when adding/removing features.
I see ways for IC to lift on the succes of the overal online/f2p gaming community but that will not happen this way.
You are describing a false dilemma imo; there’s no reason we can’t successfully do both of these things.
“Fog of war” is a valid mechanic in military strategy games, which the limited map approximates. I wouldn’t say that’s “reliving the past”, but rather favoring a different type of gameplay.
I see IC gaining from configurability, which is why this is was built in as a galaxy setting. I think we will be more successful if we provide a variety of gameplay types instead of just galaxies that are mostly clones of each other.
The question isn’t whether or not we’re going to have this feature; we already have it. Rather, the question is do you think we should have it for our primary galaxy?
Imagine you are a new player, you don;t know what endurium is because it doesnt exist. You don’t know if you need wizzie or agents ops (why is there a magic bonus but no agent bonus, are wizards better?) All you know is you have 1 planet and you want more.
You figure you need money, it can be made with population or with factories producing cash. A sane person would figure cash factories would just introduce inflation of 10000% per year so taxing pop makes sense for a sensible person who doesnt know all the rules of this game.
After realising cash factories are better you are finally getting some stuff going, you got octarine now (wtf is that even?!). Now imagine this new guy got through all that, I mean it takes dedication when there are so many good and accessible games out there, and this guy loses most his planets because he didnt know he was supposed to click on 5-50 systems every day atleast to protect his systems while this game supposedly takes place in a time where you colonize planets in only a few years!
I hope you see this just isn’t a good game mechanic and it only panders to people who compete on the fact they have the time to do meaningless tasks. If you don’t see what I am trying to say then I am afraid your judgement is clouded, maybe because you don’t play the game, maybe you think the quality of your code is going to make the game good (sadly it won’t quality doesn’t matter), maybe you just want to make the current players happy but I guess it means for me the experiment is over and after Ultimate i’ve played enough games of IC. Back to just Chess as a brain teaser 
How original. As if players currently playing aren’t similarly affected by their own biases.
Perhaps you’re misinterpreting your own opinion as an objective truth, when it isn’t? There are clearly plenty of players who favor this game mechanic, which is my entire point: we should embrace allowing players to play different styles of games.
I see your point, but I think you are arguing something that isn’t what this topic is about. You’re discussing the merits of a feature that we’ve already implemented and talking dev strategy in a topic that is about player choice.
Let’s ask this another way: which of these scenarios would you prefer?
Thanks for taking the time to read it atleast, good luck.
So no answer to the question then, or did you just want to rant?
If you understood my viewpoint you’d know both points are equally bad and should not be pursuit.
I understand your viewpoint (opinion), and don’t even disagree with it entirely, but it is completely off topic. This thread isn’t about dev strategy or overall game direction, it’s about a specific galaxy. Perhaps your rant is better suited in #support:feedback?
As a side note:
This is so golden. Just earlier this week I got:
I’m just that good of a dev 
I can simultaneously cater to only current players as well as only catering to new players lol.
@otteN - I think you’re right about making things easier for newer players, or just players in general who don’t want to go through the process of checking systems every few ticks. (Even if this is not that time consuming as some seem to claim, though sometimes tedious)
But it’s undeniable a lot of players (old and new) like the sneaking around and the opportunity to get some spread around someone without them noticing, or at least buying time to set up a laser trap, rather than just defending your huge ass core and depending on infra simply to get the biggest fleet to bust someone’s portal.
My point, this makes the game more challenging, but also adds some additional aspects to attacking (or rather brings them back to life). There should definitely be a place for both, as in different galaxies.
I think having the option of a galaxy with said feature and a galaxy without aid feature is the bestoption - not sure we have the player base to get both active enough but I like the new features of the map but agree that it is to easy to find out your shares so a galaxy option (outside of HC) would help give people the option of where they want to play (if not both)
Thank you for engaging me on the content, I believe there are people that like the sneaking thats why I started with:
Let me ask you guys this, would you rather have this game on hard mode with current player totals or would you prefer a light version with 10x the player count?
Light version would be - remove LQ, remove TO, remove most ops, remove morale, remove families, bring back alliance (so FFA but you can ally other players), remove naps, remove soldiers or droids and keep 1 ground unit, full yama, full top lists, only custom races. You get the idea…
again the choice is hard mode with current players or light version with 10x the players, whether or not you believe the changes i just suck from my thumb would bring us those 10x players (i believe they would).
So basically you are suggesting a completely different game? 
Sure if those changes make it completely different to you than you can see it as that.
So please everyone feel free to make a choice and maybe one day a game might come into existance that would be just that. Simpler with a healthy player count.
your planets belong to me @otteN
If you dont like the sneaking, dont like the attacking, if infra is what floats your boat. U can still do that, and as a banker you will be the player that feels the impact of hidden map the least. Also there is manthano where u can infra and not be attacked etc… 
. see @otteN
I have no problem performing with the current setup, I don’t just give feedback to make my own position better.
I’d actually like to see a healthy game that would bring some competition/challenge to the table.
There is no fun dominating 10 people when you could dominate 10000.
But if you can’t dominate 10, how will you dominate 10000?
And yes those things make it completely different. You basically want to play Kings of Chaos.
I could teach you how to dominate one day Orion. We start with 10 then we move to 10000.
maybe you should start with dominatiing those 10 than ? we still have not seen that yet 
And if your refering to Ultimate, u being on top is far from domination, that me alowing you to live so you will be my planet farm later. also i think why ur whining now is u feel the challange the hidden map is offering in ultimate. its not easy being #1 in a hidden map galaxy is it?
It is actually too easy it is emberassing, please don’t feel the need to allow me to live.
This is fun