Currently, there is no clue as to how long an online game will last. An online game could last an hour, or it could last for days. This increases the rate at which players quit in the middle of games.
If there were a ladder system, I think people would probably play small - medium maps. The average length of a game on those maps for me has been between 1-3 hours. In any game I played where all players were very good, it lasted about 1 hour. In a competitive match, the game almost always boils down to who wins a couple decisive battles. Once the outcome becomes apparent, there's little point dragging the game on.
In summary, a game TIMER would make weekday nightly games more practical. On the weekends, it doesn't matter but many of us only have X amount of hours to play on weekday nights.
Also, having a timer will end up causing the fundamental mechanics of the game to heavily deviate and skew into a bad direction. The problem is that points need to be allocated to your military might, econ, etc. The problem with this is that in any given moment, one aspect is better than the other. Points, being statically assigned to represent your empire's strength, would not reflect this properly.
For example, if the enemy is very far from you and you have several planets with large neutral fleets between you, it would be silly to build up a rush fleet. Going econ in this case makes much more sense and vice versa. Then there's also the subject of counters. If you have a slightly larger fleet than me but my units completely counter yours, I would win the battle. Point systems would fail to recognize that and would simply allocate points to each ship, even though my army is the dominant one. Similary for Advent combos. When advent gets their combos going, it because very difficult to brute force through them. Thus, they can kill you with a smaller army. Again, points wouldn't take into account things like combos, micro, and counters.
Having a timer/point system isn't a bad idea as a game unto itself though.
