Hmmm, that's a good point. But when I voted c it was with the assumption that inactive player gets a week moratorium before I start attacking them, at least that's how I've been playing. I think low pop outpost should have a protection time of at least a week from the time when they first go inactive. So the effective farming time for other players is more like 3 weeks. As it is, the only way low level player survives is by relying on the good grace of higher level players once they're out of the initial protection status, especially now that population difference effect is halved. Its not a very good way to attract casual gamers.

Well I don't want to turn this into discussion about protection status but that's my rationale behind 4 weeks.

The only reason I care about inactives, is for food and bc. Give me other sources of those resources and you remove the need for all this.

I don't even see why they need to be removed at all, just removed the 'player owned' status to something like 'abandoned colony'.
Surely it is better to leave them where they are so they can be farmed/colonised. During a war, these inactive colonies could be strategically important for colonising in enemy strongholds and add an extra dimension to game play.

Eventually a galaxy would become full so the developers would either have to make the initial galaxy much bigger or start a new one - players could be playing on a number of galaxies at the same time if they wanted to.

i agree.
i vote for 1 month.