The planet defenses.

[KyleMac]

A lot of talk about victory conditions but no mention of Neptune's Pride where the way to win was to be the most sociopathic diplomat (as long as you didn't fall too far behind militarily). The inclusion of such a fully featured chat system in EotE leads me to believe that the devs want us to go down this route.

In NP Raven's strategy would probably lead to him being the first player eliminated and coming in last place. But even in NP the last couple of days can become very hectic and often players will just surrender since they don't want put the time in and are happy with a podium finish.

EDIT: One thing NP has going for it is that every star you own automatically builds ships (it's a very simplified "4x" game) and there's of course a defender bonus. So if a player rarely logs in his homeworld is probably going to be better defended than a player who moves regularly and has their ships attacking. This means that attacking the homeworlds of even idle players will cost you a lot of ships which you don't want to waste in a war. So the final standings in NP are generally the winning alliance top, the idlers next, and the other players who lost wars last.

I think the strong colonies in EotE is aiming towards this but there probably needs to be a more complicated build queue for the same full effect.