Registered to the board purely to give my opinion on this. I'm in Virgo, and those merger plans suck incredibly hard, and will shrink your user base both in size and in type of player. I have been playing ogame since 2007 (Uni18, Uni20, Unity, Virgo) but on a low intensity and with whole years off on end between unis, and in vmode for months within unis if I have other things on my mind. But I've always come back after some time, until now.
I am not a fleeter, although I do read CRs and HoFs on the board very frequently. I admire the skills and dedication put into the fleeting playing style, but it's not for me. I have a daytime job that has me 50-60 hours working per week, as well as a family with young kids so definitely not looking for another 'job' on the side in keeping a fleet alive and flying. My 'thrill' in ogame is to be too unprofitable to farm without dumping too much res in defence. It's working well enough for me, never been HoF'ed or crashed, but similarly never HoF'ed or crashed another active player. So basically I farm inactives and siphon off my res from all planets to a flying warehouse that rotates between my planets, starting off research or mine upgrades when it hits ground whenever possible. All my planets are spread throughout the galaxies evenly, and even within galaxies I maintain the same distance/flying times as across galaxies (around 182 ss), making my daily fleetsave routine hassle-free and always having multiple equidistant options from any moon or planet.
1x speed universes are in the sweetspot for my playing style, using colony ships and recyclers at reduced speeds allow me to both support a 10-14 hour flying time as well as a 20-24h transit, so I take a look at my work schedule next day and decide whether I can spend ogame time in the morning or not, and I adjust the speed of my fleets to accommodate. I even refrain from upgrading my drive techs because I don't want to fly faster: I am on admittedly neanderthal levels 12, 9 and 8 for combustion, impulse and hyperspace drive techs, whilst currently researching Astro lvl18 for comparison - that's how much I am attached to my playing style.
I have not forgotten the last merger from Unity to Virgo, where all my carefully and evenly placed planets were just randomly thrown around the galaxies, and was on the point of quitting then or at least to stay in vmode forever. I just have come out of a multimonth hibernation again, and by chance (in the Virgo CR board) noticed a reference to changed speeds and ended up here after some searching. I am appalled to see that the next merger will impact my ability to continue to play, as I will not accept a multi-speed fleet universe that will screw up my entire fleet-saving set-up, as well as introducing the danger that I cannot even spend half an hour during working hours without checking my account. There already are more than enough uni's that pander to the fleeter- and/or 'always online'-demographic. I am definitely outside that group, and have made my choices in the past to reflect this, both in universe selection and strategy afterwards. If Gameforge now decides to fcuk me over on this, it's clear that they are not interested in attracting or retaining players that have work or family obligations, and they have already received the last euro ever from me for DM.
I don't care too much about eco or research speed, but fleet speed (and DiDF) are crucial to me - change them, and risk my departure. Change them on short notice without taking the community's outrage (v happy about that btw) into account, and it seems almost beyond repair. However I noticed that for one group of unis there has been introduced a 1x speed target after teh community's anger so there is still a glimmer of hope...
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Good Bye my friend we will play again one day, enjoy real life 
That's my boy, 
kill them rips 
