in the last two games i have played the first players on the board ring fedspace with fighters and attempt to destroy all new players entering the game. in addition they quickly destroy all ports in fed space.they lurk in fed space protected by a positive alignment,(usually in starships). the tactic is extremely effective. too effective in my opinion.if you attack the fighters your alignment goes neg and you no longer are safe in fed space . if you are destroyed you return in a scout with little chance of rebuilding in one day and no safe haven .
my suggestion is this , update the game so that deploying fighters adjacent to fed space drops you alignment in porportion to the number of sectors blockaded. i suggest factorially , 1 sector would only drop your alignment 1 pnt but 10 sectors would drop your alignment
10*9*8*7*6*5*4*3*2*1=3628800 pts. the pirates would no longer be safe in fed space, and would loose the use of starships.
if the fighters are corp all members drop in alignment.
while not eliminating the tactic i feel this would even the playing feild a little .
i used to love the game , but when i don't even get to leave fed space before effectively loosing , why play??

ps yes i bought a scanner first thing . no it didn't keep me from being destroyed.

Now adays it requires scripts to crash through these blocades. It sucks i know. I am starting to make some games where things like that will not happen or you get booted from game. They will read the warning before entering and if they break the rule they are terminated from that game. It is what us sysops have to do from time to time to let some people get more experienced.

Jerry
sysop coastgames.com

You are saying that on the first day of the game these other players are into starships and have the resources to kill all of the other players? If they can do it, why can't you? Sounds like this is a high turn/unlimited game that you joined late.

Word of advice: Play in lower turn games (less than 1000) and start on the first day so you can get yourself established before anyone else is strong enough to dominate.

Oldtimer, you know better than to say only a script can defeat fedspace blockades. A simple macro will suffice.