Green:
The thing is, it's not the casual player who's on for 1 or 2 hours a night 3-4 days a week that's going to really affect the server. They only affect a server through sheer numbers, ie, one side has lots of casual players, then the casual fleet can really affect a server.
It's the nutters that are on 4+ hours per night, 6-7 nights a week that tend to rule / make headway on a server.
The "current" OOB system, along with extremely high BCH / DN ship prices, that's marganilizing the casual player base, and have led to the severe drop in server numbers.
I've noticed that most people dropping this game are the casual players, the nutters left are in this for the long haul. Of course, once certain nutters drop to casual player status through things like Jobs, Marriage, parenthood, etc., they see what life as a casual player is like, and frequently drop.
Meanwhile, this "build it and they will come" attitude needs to be kept in perspective. How many players who have "left the game" are still checking these boards periodically in order to see if a server to their liking is being planned / scheduled? The alienated playerbase tends not to know that their viewpoint is coming back into vogue and that they should consider coming back, nor do they know that we're looking for more opinions...
And Crim, we need source code for your proposal...