John I've been saying this months ago. I think it's going to take the complete breakdown of the entire mining sector for them to see it. Don't worry though, it's only about a week away now. Once all those original CEO mining corps close down, the entire mining sector will be in massive shortage, forcing them to create resources to keep the world economy from crashing. To give you an example. FB only has 1200 oil corporations left. I own 800 of them, and they will be gone in around 7 days. The situation on LU is similar. I own over 50% there and will be losing them all soon. I imagine the other worlds have the same issues.
Waging C3 wars that escalate in difficulty and eventually reach a maximum point where you can't wage C3 wars anymore is not a sustainable solution for players to acquire resources. What happens when I reach WL25? I can't get resources anymore. That's stupid. Also when I took WL20 down, it cost I think around 20 trillion dollars in arms. I would need an insane amount of natural resources to even make it worth it. There are 2 solutions to this problem in my opinion. The first is to allow C3s and free players to tap into their natural resources. The second is to allow players to wage wars at WL3 at any time, regardless of their war level. I don't understand how this is not technically possible. Just create a third button on the declare war screen, Current WL | WL3 | Cancel.
I absolutely love this game, but sometimes I just can't understand some of the decisions that are made. Some of the "features" this game has are actively sabotaging the success of this game in my opinion. These features are strangling all forms of player interaction and suppressing the number of active players. I wish the developers were more open to what the players are suggesting. We also want what is best for this game. And to give you an example. Look at how many people used navies before my suggestion to allow fleet customization was incorporated. Here is a hint, the answer is literally 0. Now, almost every major player has some form of navy, or is planning on having one. It took over a year of posting on the forum to get this feature included, and it has revived the navy side of this game, which was essentially dead. Also, look at what is happening on FB. Just the prospect of removing war level restrictions is creating a flurry of activity on that world and it hasn't even taken effect yet. Imagine if this happened on the other worlds. How many more players would be interested in this game and becoming paying members?
Almost all of the major players in this game are on the same page about the damage war levels are doing to this game. Also, all of the major players have expressed concerns about what would happen to the mining sector after the CEO corps close down because we know there is no realistic way to acquire more resources outside of the periodic rounds of new deposit discoveries. I think it is worth listening to what your big players are saying.