Fleet Arena Mafias

Only the third suggestion would make more money for CG, because it would let people target others more easily to hurt their position, forcing them to buy more crystals.

Why would they implement any of the others? To hand out more crystals and sell less of them? Yeah... not going to happen.

Crystal rewards in fleet arena is a good way to reward players for investing heavily in fleets, just like regular arena was originally. Characters have utility elsewhere (everywhere) in the game, so it was no loss to remove the crystal rewards from regular arena.  Until there is another game mode that benefits those specifically focusing on fleets, I don't see them changing that there. 

Have same payout for top 50.  Problem solved.

See the message I just posted for scouted. Reach out in game or find their guild and have someone message them with your contact info. Be willing to adjust po if they have several at your slot. 

Odds are there is a chat. I've been ina chat since ships first came out.. well it took a month and a lot of crystals  every day.. Most chats help coordinate people moving up. Our chat was combative, but now we don't snipe if someone is capable. If they move up regularly for a week or so we invite them to the chat. Only time there is blocking is if the non chat member continually snipes at someone's payout. Even then we reach out since there is probably multiple possible at a time. Heck met some good friends in the chats.

Best recommendation for now is to  try to message some of those in the top 20. See if they are open to you joining. Be willing to adjust if you can. Like your po time.sometimes it's that simple, though I'm sure there are some out there that are jerks.

This was me for awhile fighting 5 to 8 of them a day. Im going to get them one day soon.

This is best suggestion, let players climb whenever and the highest position achieved in 24 hours is PO. Removes all ability to snipe. Also remove timer between battles so players can not snipe whilst on cool down during a climb. Shards can still try to organise climbs for efficiency if they like to prevent everyone climbing at the same time. But outside a shard you should still be able to climb without limits. 

While I agree that Fleet Mafia is a problem that needs to be addressed, forgive me for saying this but, your ideas are simply awful. Because:

• GP, is a measure of your roster completeness not the actual power... By your logic, a 500k Endurance fleet would result stronger than an 400k Executor fleet, which is not the case.
• Skill level? This is not a chess game, There is no skill involved here. In Grand Arena, you win either by having a stronger roster or by having the right counters.
• The Grand Arena is already a mess as it is, putting all the crystals there would further unbalance the game. 
• Allowing an even easier access to payout times would give to some players an invaluable instrument to help them steal rewards from others.

One solution that could alleviate the problem is to remove reward times altogether. Simply track the player's best position over a 24-hour period. Then, even if a player only gets first place for a couple of minutes, they would still be entitled to the first-place reward.

Find a way to re-shard the shards periodically would be a nice to have, but it comes with an high cost, so it is unlikely that we will ever see that. 

The answer to all fleet arena problems is - unsurprisingly - the exact same as the answer to identical squad arena problems. Remove crystals from fleet arena and add more to GAC rewards. Problem solved. Alternatively, like the other reply in the thread says, change payout to rewarding the highest position achieved within the preceeding 24 hours instead of the position at the exact moment the timer runs down to zero. This would distribute a lot more crystals to a lot more players, so it's unlikely that CG would ever choose this solution. 

Given that they already removed crystals from squad arena, it also seems unlikely that they will ever do the same to fleet arena. Fleet arena is, for many players, the main reason to invest in fleets at all and meet the steep unlock requirements for the meta flagships. CG are clearly aware that removing crystals from fleet arena is an option, but they need something to incentivize chasing the fleet meta. If crystals were removed from fleet arena, I bet you that a good chunk of the playerbase would just stop caring about fleets at all and focus on the ground squad part of GAC. 

Save your breath. You're hardly the first person to ask for FA to be changed, chances are you won't be the last. And I doubt CG is going to do anything soon. And believe me, I would be more than happy to be proven wrong. I, fortunately, don't have an issue with mafias (in FA at least, SA was just ridiculous). The worst I've experienced is being pushed back by a player because of those stinking time changes. And it's not that I'm against FA as a whole, even if it's just repeating the same battle several times a day every day. But why, WHY must it be during a specific hour. You could easily be at / getting home from / trying to unwind from work, trying to spend some time with your family, anything. And like I said, changing the time settings will more than likely cause issues with other players who get their payout during the new hour, so that's out. Transfer the crystals to GAC, remove the specific hour thing and make it so you get rewards based on the highest rank you achieved during the last 24 hours, whatever.