Neither of you seem to have noticed I already knew that and even stated it in the post.

So this is what's going on, below.

Crematorium MK II + Crematorium MK II = Crematorium MK IV
* requires Reverse Engineering science is at least level 4
Advanced Cargo MK II + Advanced Cargo MK II = Advanced Cargo MK IV
* same as above, but also requires Advanced Cargo science is at least 4

I know htis is nitpicking, but why am I magically able to combine an exotic technology, even alien, to yield something of higher MK, merely by training Reverse Engineering, yet I can't do the same with technology I've created myself?

I understand it's doing this so it doesn't break the research system. I just wish it was more intuitive.

Ok I know there're modules we can't manufacture directly (in turn we don't research them). For example, the Crematorium you get from combat missions and the Solar Hydrogen Infuser you get from Pledging. Yet I know, despite not being able to create directly, we can use the Reverse Engineering science in Mark Upgrade to upgrade these modules.

My question is why can't I reverse engineer a Advanced Cargo Module MK III to MK VI using a Advanced Cargo Module MK III IF my Reverse Engineering is level 6? I should be able to right? If I can combine two Crematorium MK III to produce a MK VI then I should be able to do the same thing with an Advanced Cargo Module. But when I try to do this, it says I need to train my Advanced Cargo research to level 6! That's stupid, it's contrary to the whole idea of reverse engineering!

The REASON I bring this up is because during COM missions I collect a lot of taenite/cabriite/mercury and it consumes cargo after a while. So I manufacture MK III Advanced Cargo Module to replace it with something which only is 100 m3. I was thinking about training Advanced Cargo high enough to make this effective but then I thought I could use Reverse Engineer instead since it's irrespective of research other than Reverse Engineering. So I'm flabbergasted I can't do this. Apparently you can only reverse engineer--irrespective of other sciences--something which DOESN'T have other sciences to create it.

My guess is it's this way because otherwise we wouldn't have to train anything other than Reverse Engineering more than 1 point. For example, I could train Advanced Cargo to 1 and create two MK 1 advanced cargo modules. Then I could train Reverse Engineering to 2 and--using reverse engineering--combine the two advanced cargo modules to produce a MK 2. As long as I keep training Reverse Engineering, I would not need to put any points into Advanced Cargo research.

It still seems counterintuitive. It seems it's restricted so the system--as stated above--isn't broken. I think--generally--systems don't have to be artificially restricted if they're well thought. I think this system isn't well thought.

EDIT: Yes I chose to train standard cargo research instead of advanced cargo. Don't go there because it misses the point I'm  trying to make here about Reverse Engineering. If you want to reply state how my point is wrong.

Nice thread! Are we allowed to talk about other games here? I assume since they're MUDs...

I've kept an open tab to a MUD I I'm really interested in but I dont summon the motivation to create a character:
http://www.alteraeon.com/

From what I can tell, it's highly professional. And 50 to 100 active players in Who's Playing. I get good vibes.

BTW: I have a favorite for Avalon already. It's another one which I have a keen eye on. Many years ago I saw it and the one thing which stuck in my mind was hte ability to grow and lead armies? It seemed sandboxxy. It was attractive. But there're so many good games on the net. I can't play them all and inevitably I make decisions what to play. I have indeed played several MUDs so mudding is not foreign at all. Avalon did feel quiet, I will add. Imagine you're me and you stumble on this amazing game and yet there's no apparent signal it's being played. I remember wondering if anyone was playing it... It spooked me away?

And of course no disrespect to Astro Galaxy. I've been playing since last year and still playing now.

I did try Alter Aeon a bit, but I'm not such a fan of roguelikes

I liked Avalon mainly due to its huge history, warfare and politics system, thousands of abilities, and how it's so much different from other MUDs. As you may or may not have known, a lot of MUDs out there use similar codebases, eg. LPMUD, DikuMUD etc. Avalon, however, wasn't affected by other MUDs as it was one of the first few MUDs that ever existed, not to mention how it's promoted as the 'first' (Not sure how creditable this is, but meh)

And hey, Avalon is really active! We have around 30+ people online average, and 50+ online during high periods. So yeah. We ARE active. Lolz.

Could you expand on what you mean by "roguelikes"? Do you mean lots of dungeon crawling? No lore? I haven't played Alter Aeon yet. I have however been reading some. The one thing I kind of dislike is how you're supposed to multi-class everything. It apparently is only possible to specialize early on. Later everybody ends up training everything. Since I don't like evil characters, why should I have to eventually train Necromancer, for example? (it summons demons and undead)

Regarding Avalon:
What do you do most of the time in Avalon? Quest? Kill stuff? Build things?
Do the thousands of abilities ever become confusing, as in: "Oops, I shouldn't have trained that."
And is the war part of it plagued by the same trolling and griefing found in many MMO's with PvP?

Nice thread! Are we allowed to talk about other games here? I assume since they're MUDs...

I've kept an open tab to a MUD I I'm really interested in but I dont summon the motivation to create a character:
http://www.alteraeon.com/

From what I can tell, it's highly professional. And 50 to 100 active players in Who's Playing. I get good vibes.

BTW: I have a favorite for Avalon already. It's another one which I have a keen eye on. Many years ago I saw it and the one thing which stuck in my mind was hte ability to grow and lead armies? It seemed sandboxxy. It was attractive. But there're so many good games on the net. I can't play them all and inevitably I make decisions what to play. I have indeed played several MUDs so mudding is not foreign at all. Avalon did feel quiet, I will add. Imagine you're me and you stumble on this amazing game and yet there's no apparent signal it's being played. I remember wondering if anyone was playing it... It spooked me away?

And of course no disrespect to Astro Galaxy. I've been playing since last year and still playing now.

without purchasing more, AP only grows with a 200 limit (100 without VIP).
Once you reach the limit, the game will not generate anymore until the total is lower than 200(100).

Yes I noticed that. It keeps people logging in. It's free $$$, since each AP is 1/20 QP.

So it could be that APs are just a means to give away some $$$ in the hopes players will play long enoguh to get hooked. Once they're hooked, the thinking goes, they'll start spending $$$. Or, at worst, they'll populate the game. A more populated world means players of all backgrounds and creeds might be more likely to keep playing (and spend $$$).

So did the game merely lower the cost of admittance? It's giving away QPs, basically.

I still think it's more than that. Look at how many APs players get per day: 24. Compared to the old QP system, each one is equivalent to a QP in terms of its ability to speed up travel or other actions. When one wants to purchase VIP or other services, it's 1/20 of the QP. QP's MUST be converted to APs to use them in actions. This was not the case prior to APs. From this, it's somewhat clear to me there's an intent to encourage players to use these for speeding up things.

APs are about speeding up actions as much as they're a giveaway and a means to keep players loggin in. Basically with the introduction of APs players were able to do 20x more speed ups with each QP than in the past.

SirEmi,

You may have noticed that many of the new players are not so active anymore and the game is slowly dying. However, they do still login once in a few days, and you still have a chance to revive this amazing game. I suggest you take out AP. Because AP makes activity not very useful anymore, and now people are just logging in to use their APs, then logging out. Besides, if you want to make QP rarer, you could always increase the solars-QP exchange ratio. 500k solars for 1 QP may be good enough. I know that you spent a lot of time on these updates and don't want to make them go to waste, but it WILL go to waste if you don't remove it. I'm generally okay with the front page, but the AP update is just rubbish.

Please, SirEmi, I love this game and the amount of potential it has, but it's your decision whether or not you want to give this game a chance of survival. If you decide to remove APs, at least say it here first so that the AG players will be able to have something to look forward to.

Thanks!

I've been thinking about AP's lately, so here're my thought...

AP is a way to quickly do something if you need to do it quickly--RL calls. For one reason or another you want to finish a particular timer. For example, maybe you set a course for a planet and you want to arrive there before sleeping but you want to go to bed NOW. You spend an AP. 8 minutes left but you need to drive to town NOW! Spend AP, set new course.

Before, there was no way to do it without spending QP, but QP costs money. It's behind a barrier. Sir Emi decided that being able to occasionally do things quick was a feature too important to put a price on.

He knew that players could already emulate this somewhat, although not as smoothly. For example, they could create higher MK modules, like WHG/FTL, and keep them in the cargo, only using them to occasionally speed up travel. If they wnated to speed up combat they could disable modules, but that also meant less combat power in the fight. They could purchase optimizations to speed up manufacturing, but that had a limit. There were other cases, but they all come up short. And all of these things have one thing in common: None of them can finish something instantly.

So Sir Emi asked "How can I create a system like that?" Almost immediately the answer came. There was already a system like this in-place: The QP system! Sir Emi didn't need to be told. It was obvious. But he wanted to keep using QP to encourage players to spend $$$, since speeding up actions or instantly finishing them is something they'll always want. So whatever he added to speed things up would still leave room for the QP system and the revenues from it. He decided to add something which would use or mimic the code and thoughts already in the QP system. He named it the AP system.

The AP system would be free, thus allowing all players to finish things instantly or at least quickly. This was easier than going through the game with a fine tooth comb. Sir Emi could have done that. For example, maybe he could have allowed an "afterburner" feature for travel which used twice the fuel for each level and operated like QP. He could have also added a feature to quickly finish manufacturing tasks, maybe calling it "Boost Manufacture". But many of these things were redundant, since QP already existed. It just made sense then to combine the QP and AP system together instead of having them exist apart.

The probelm--as I see it--is AP can be converted to QP which can be used for things like VIP and officers. So players end up spedning a lot of their AP on things unrelated to the initial reason for adding AP's. If players don't have any AP, they cannot ocassionally speed up actions!!! This is all a consequence of how QP's work and the fact AP's are tied to them. So perhaps Sir Emi will need to find a way to isolate some of the AP's so they cannot be spent on VIP or officers, thus always giving players some points to spend on speeding up or immediately finishing actions.

Which makes me ask if being able to speed up actions was only a part of the original reasoning.

VIP might become hte new minimum, if new players are patient enough to save up 167 days of AP. Would it really be unanticipated if APs just end up giving everybody VIP? I doubt it. Sir Emi must have known when s/he added APs that many players would opt to spend the APs on VIP. In light of this, maybe APs are just a handout to keep players interested? Not only does it give everybody an extra lift, but it requires you to login every several days, otherwise the APs will cap and stop generating.

[$124.1 for all officers / year]

I agree. In economics there is formula's for maximizing profit.
A. You sell 1 item and get $10 profit.
B. You sell 1000 items, get 1 cent profit each for a total of $10 profit.

C. Somewhere in the middle, you maximize profit, example sell 50 items, get $1 profit each, you make $50 profit.

If the cost of purchasing QP via paypal was lower I would buy QP to pay for navagation and engine officers. I won't spend $3 a month for each officer, I can buy a full PC game for less than the $36 a year EACH officer would cost.

You stated it's $36 for each officer. There're 5 officers. So it should be $180/year, but you're incorrect.

officer / year - lowest efficiency using the "15 QP (+25 days)" option
note: pay 1.5 for each officer
$1.7 (1.5 + 0.20 tax) = 15 QP
365 / 25 = 14.6 = $24.82 / year
$124.1 for all officers / year

officer / year - 3rd highest efficiency using the "160 QP (+365 days)" option
note: pay 14.5 for each officer
$14.7 (14.5 + 0.20 tax) = 160 QP
$14.7 / year
$73.5 for all officers / year

all officers / year - 2nd highest efficiency using the "160 QP (+365 days)" option
note: pay 66.7 for all officers
$66.9 (66.7 + 0.20 tax) = 160x5 = 800 QP
$66.9 for all officers / year

all officers / year - highest efficiency--same as above--except prepaying 2 years
note: pay 128 for all officers
$128.2 (128 + 0.20 tax) = 160x5x2 = 1600 QP
$64.1 for all officers / year
$128.2 for all ofifcers / 2 years

Please note I'm assuming you're using paypal. I'm also assuming there's a $0.20 flat tax on each payment.

Note: I'm against this just throwing more carrots at players. It may be a good thing, but I don't like it. It appeals to player's base instincts, not our higher cognitive abilities. All it's doing is unloading some shinies on them, betting they'll give you more revenue. And because already existing content is being eaten up faster, the pressure is higher to produce more. It's a never ending cycle of throwing carrots at players and pressure to produce more. The problem is it's not a silver bullet. It's a proven reliable methods of keeping a game alive some extra years, but it's not the be all end all of game development.

[and gives real life players a reason to log on and maintain ships and modules regularly, or they just die and disappear, affecting their power ratings till they're a big fat ZERO.]

And it's fairly simple:

People need food
Ships need electronics

Why not make those commodities, already available in the game, vital to ships and crew survival? Ships who run out of electronics (to be consumed at a rate to be determined) slowly deteriorate, until they disintegrate, killing all crew and losing the hull (but not the license). Crew simply dies without food, also to be consumed at a rate to be determined. It adds a dimension to SOS missions and gives real life players a reason to log on and maintain ships and modules regularly, or they just die and disappear, affecting their power ratings till they're a big fat ZERO.

It does require captains to plant a cargo bay (or perhaps even a brand new module called a farm or something, which, depending on tech level, can hold and produce a certain amount of food though that unit itself should depend on electronics not to deteriorate) on planets they put modules, or keep a ship or station with the right supplies in orbit. Bottom line is that without playing an active role, units should die out (and disappear) automatically.

The bolded part reads suspciously like micromanagement, as if there's not already a lot of that in the game. Tt was reduced a lot when I gained VIP and started using the autopilot to handle jumping. Problem with this game is it really puts no upper limit on how many things we can own. Everytime we create a new asset it's something additional to manage. I'm not sure how much Sir Emi has considered this issue. Does s/he want things to scale well so that players aren't encumbered when they have masses of ships/modules/miners/stations/etc? Lots of games suffer from this--they get more sluggish in late-game.

But if I were making my own game I'd probably do similar, since micromanagement comes naturally to my mind. I like technical problems. The problem is there's a limit, even for me. Micromanagement is ok--I think--if it has multiple dimensions, but otherwise it's just grindy.  What do I mean by that? I mean if you're repeating the same simple action for multiple things, something that could easily be replaced by code, then ti's going to be dull and grindy. However, if the action you're doing for multiple things isn't easily replicated by code (needs good AI, for example) then it has hte potential of being ok. I think this happens as dimensions are added to the problem. It gets harder and harder to code it. Meanwhile our mind remains capable.

I think it all boils down to content. Content doesn't have to be story/drama/plot/character. It can be a tactical game or a puzzle game or just Tetris. The content is fun to the player, mostly because it's not too repetitive. When something is repetitive it lacks diversity, so there's nothing really happening that challenges your mind or otherwise engages you. Only certain aspects of Tetris--for example--are repetitive, like the way you move a piece or the color of things, but the game itself isn't. How you're going to win is different from each game to the next. The player doesn't know exactly what to do.

It has to challenge our thinking, not our patience. It has to have multiple dimensions. Tactical/strategical decisions.

[Without VIP]

Can use navigation computer at Unlimited range (vs. 50 LY)

is this what you meant?

If so, for example, IOTA CENTAURI in sector -1,-1 is 76.48 LY from Sol.

With VIP, you can program a jump to there from wherever you are.  

Without VIP, you can jump to wherever is closest to 50LY away from where you are and then jump again (etc,etc,etc)to the target location.

All it really does is save a lot of time(and needless clicks).

If you wish (for example) to travel from sector 4,4 to sector -4,-4 :
with VIP just order it (with no limit as to how far apart they are), without VIP just order it one jump at a time at a distance of 50LY to the SW for each jump.

I'll let you do the math...

I highly recommend that you maintain VIP status even above the officers.



(edit because I forgot to tell you about the time that Susie and I...   ...oops, never mind...)

I'm not understanding what you wrote. Without VIP, I could set a long range course to any position, regardless of its distance, using the waypoints subsystem, as well as creating one in the Star Map. I routinely was setting long range courses much greater than 50 light-years. In the Navigation section, I'd click on "Resume LR Course" after jumping. I'd have to do that every jump because I couldn't enable the Autopilot (like I can now). With the autopilot I can set a LR course and ignore it completely until it arrives at its destination--I only need to ensure it has enough fuel.

I used the N/NE/E/SE/S/SW/W/NW thing only a couple times. And I could never set a jump larger than 12 light years without VIP. With VIP I can set a 16 light year jump using it.

I still have no idea what this 50 light year thing is. I noticed that there's a "Plot a course towards the waypoint" in the Nav Comp section for a waypoint and I've never used that before. When I clicked on it, all it did was set a 16 light year course towards it, but I have no idea what it does after that. Is that what you're referring to?

Is this tied to blind jumps? Because I think I recall you could set a longer jump for those and it was quicker.

Here's a review of the things which're tied to navigation in the VIP thing:
* Increased ship navigation computer range (16 LY, +33% increase)
* -33% jump calculation speed for interplanetary / interstellar jumps
* Can use navigation computer at Unlimited range (vs. 50 LY)
* Nav computer can set a long range course up to 200 jumps (vs. 75 jumps)
* All ships nav computer incorporates the autopilot extension.

What's the difference between "Plot a course towards the waypoint" and "Plot a long range course on the star map"? Is the former limited to 12 ly (16 w/ VIP) and must be reclicked? IF that's the case, WTH is this 50 light-year thing?

EDIt: I just remembered something. I think when I first started this game I was using "Plot a course towards the waypoint" and there WAS a 50 light year limit. That's why I stored some stars in the nav comp which were 50% between my destination and SOL. Later I learned about setting long range courses and no longer used it. It has been so long I forgot about it. Now that I think about it, these orders seem redundant to me. Both of them are attempting to set you on a long range course, but one of them is severely restricted, having a 50 ly limit without vip and requiring you to go to Nav Comp to set a jump for each jump, while the other requires a autopilot extension to be automatic between jumps, otherwise setting the course is directly on the Navigation section, saving clicks/time.

And btw I'll be having VIP for a year. And given AP can be converted to QP, I'll always have if I don't spend AP on much else. Obviously this AP thing is a form of mudflation and many more players will be having VIP now. (This is not a knock against the game. Mudflation gives MMO's extra years of life--assuming it's a conventional MMO.)

In the VIP section it says someting about no more 50 light-year limit in navigation.

What does this mean?

Yeah, I think we should just make an easier way to trade...after all, we already found a loophole and the difference between adding a trading feature and not adding a trading feature is that not adding a trading feature makes trading take a lot more time and coordination. So, something for the Astro Galaxy SDK to work on!

As for your worries about mudflation, I think it is not a problem because social interaction is meant to be an integral part of this game, and so if you somehow manage to get some OP modules through trade, it's probably because you made some friends or joined a powerful corporation.

BTW I was just reminded about something...let us set our own station's selling prices. ;)

Your argument that mudflation doesn't matter because trading is a social interaction and is integral to the game can be used for any instance of mudflation which stems from trading in any MMO--therefore, seems hollow to me.

I'll start by posting this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mudflation

Note this part of it:

Final Fantasy XI reversed its inflationary trend by cracking down on gold farmers that were involved in real economy interaction. After many months of stability, trading prices began rising quickly, with the cost of most items doubling or tripling around the end of 2005. With many players complaining about their decreased buying power due to the inflation, the game operators decided to eliminate hundreds of such players. Without a reliable source of in-game currency, internet sellers of currency had to raise their prices. Also, a great deal of currency was removed from circulation in this process. Within one or two months, most trading prices fell back to their previous equilibrium.

The reason the prices were inflating was because farmers were selling currency, greatly increasing the amount of it in circulation and also giving extra buying power to currency buyers, leading to higher prices for things, since the value of currency was decreasing. For a new player who did not buy currency, this meant excessively high prices for things.

That's just one small example which shows how mudflation can lead to a negative experience if unchecked.

Players in this game continually become more powerful. They acquire more currency and more combat power and research. Modules do not have level limits or no drop attributes, so module power can move around from one player to another. The only limiting factor is trading is more cumbersome in this game and research can't be traded. If trade is much easier then it follows that the increasing module power and solar buildup will crossover to other players more easily. Players who do not trade will increasingly become weaker. Players who cannot adapt to the increased power quickly enough will also be weaker. And if anyone starts to sell their modules for RL money then the cat is fully out of the bag and you're screwed if you don't spend RL money.

Any content added to the game which is made specifically for certain power ratings or certian solar amounts will become increasingly obsolete. So generally it's wiser to make content which scales to all power ratings and solar amounts. If this game were single player then this effect would only occur due to the player progressing forward and obsoleting previous content. In an MMO setting, the content becomes obsolete before the player has even progressed past it, sometimes dramatically.

While I think better trading would be nice, I do not characterize mudflation as being irrelevant to the health of Astro Galaxy. From what I've seen of this game, it's very furtile ground for mudlfation if given the proper allowances.

EDIT: Sorry I'm not saying you're fully wrong. Your "social interaction" comment is relevant. Trading is a social interaction. And many of hte missions in this game scale with the player's power, so it won't obsolete as easily. But I've had so many negative expeirences in the past with mudlfation it's hard for me to be non-prejudiced about this.

For me it's about preserving the sense of progression and not breaking the links a player has created with the game too often. As long as mudflation can integrate well enough with those things then it should be fine. Mudlfation is probably impossible to completely eliminate anyway. Virtually every MMO I know of has mudlfated and nobody has been able to stop it. And old content/things tend to lose value no matter what because they become outdated. And yet I think the goal shouldn't be to throw your hands down and let mudflation spread like fire, but to moderate it with respect to the two things I stated above.

Thanks! Is that in the FAQ or is it tagged somewhere in the forum? I'd think the absence of a genuine trading mechanism would be worth putting in FAQ or tagging. But anyway, at least trading is possible even if we have to jump through hoops.

I'd think mudflation in this game would be insane with widespread trading, since there're no restrictions on modules and unless they're on a station/planet won't be destroyed. You know a lot of games have level requirements on items, so a low level cannot use a high level item. And some use a no drop mechanic, whereby an item initially is tradeable but once equipped is no drop.

Maybe hte lack of a trading mechanism is because of mudlfation worries or something tied to it. And also gold/etc farming. But the presence of methods to trade means the worries are not extreme, since if they were no trading would be possible.

It's stragne. All MMO's I've played have economy/trading between players. This game doesn't have that. I mean, as shown above, trading is possible, but it's not something which is obvious or intuitive. It's like a single player simplistic economy. Earth is the only seller/buyer which matters. Prices don't change. What Earth wants is scattered in the cosmos--I must hunt it down. Much of my fun comes from juggling combat/sos missions and mining operations while trying to progress cost effectively. But the real heart of what's fun is doing lots of different things--not just a couple--even if it's less profitable. For example, some players say it's more profitable to just do sos/com, but I find doing mining as well keeps things more entertaining.

When I click on the vote section of the website and vote on the Apex Web Gaming site, it directs me to their site and shows whether the vote was registers. Then it sometimes redirects me back to astro-galaxy.com or it redirects me to a random website. I'm trying to stop it from redirecting me to a random website, since I don't trust that behavir. Anyone have ideas?

Also if Apex Web Gaming doesn't redirect to astro-galaxy.com then the vote won't register. Sometimes I have to click on the voting action multiple times in order for it to redirect. And as stated, sometimes it redirects to a random website.

I'm using adblock plus and NoScript Lite, but don't know if they can be of any use.

Is it possible to trade with other players? For example, what if I wnat to selll a module to another player, how would I go about this? Or maybe i want to give a module to another player for free; if a more generous mood strikes.

It took me a week of jumping here and there in order to find it, and I was (and still am) quite a noob so I thought I would get a reward in cold hard money. Not in terms of the value of the mineral. And I didn't have any mining equipment with me. So yeah. Wasted my time.

Certainly one idea I have is only check sites with enough slots. I won't even look at 1-slot moons. Maybe not even 4-slot. If I don't find it then I'll just keep the mission in cargo until I'm at Earth to avoid the cost of cancelling it.

Ofc, a 1-slotter with a diamond deposit would be a loss to me, but I think that's too rare for me to worry about. Atm, # of slots is more important to me than anything else, since it makes collecting the resource more convenient time-wise.

Problem with having bad prospector missions in cargo is sometimes I forget which is which. The inventory system in this game needs a lot more tools to make managing it easier. A lot of players ignore this and I think sir emi does too. If a different system is planned to be used then get on it. Otherwise add some inventory management tools. Just do something. (For example, having an ignore feature for inventory might work. Or maybe a way to flag certain things as no drop. Or just a highlight toggle.)