Astro Galaxy - a realistic space exploration game

Stars life in unexplored space:

When the star total resources gets below a certain point, the star has a chance to enter a special phase where it could go into supernova warning. At that point, a general warning in the system is issued, 7 days or more in advance, informing any ship that enters that the star is unstable and it will go supernova in X days.

When the star goes boom, it vanishes, and leaves space for another star to be born. And so the cycle is renewed and more stars will have to be explored.

For explored quadrants from -1,-1 to 1,1 it will either be resources depletion or some new deposit gets discovered from time to time, on depleted planets.


Projects on star mapping:

For unexplored space, I am working on improving the Star map. Basically, the nav computer will remember where you've been and what your ships have seen, then make a map that you can use to get a perspective on where you are and what you have explored. This map will continuously be updated, as you check out new areas and some stars die, and some new stars emerge.

So if you haven't been to a quadrant in a long time, when you get to it again, there might all be new stars in there and in different places, but your nav computer map will still show what you know about it from last exploration, until you get in there and re-explore it.

Also, the corp members will be able to share waypoints via corp menu so they can coordinate better.

just a thought.  would it be a bad idea to have a corp nav database?  to where you could upload and download nav maps?  so you could share them with your corp?  i just started playing and havent joined a corp so i dont know what all goes with that. just curious to what you think about that idea.

Eloron. you can certainly build your own nav database and explorer's map. We are currently gathering information to map all sectors of this galaxy. images can be saved in jpg form and swapped via email to central mapper as well as a central database for explored systems. Handy if you are in a corp that is doing this of course. Hard work as a solo mapper.

Mapping and/or exploring is very fun. The game needs to find a way to keep things from being known too long! The UNKNOWN is what makes it fun! Once things are known and stay that way for X time, it loses so much glamour. Imagine if playing this game was as boring as joining a corp and suddenly having a map of hte entire universe? A corp would network everything. They'd know not just how to get from A to B but what's at A and B. So you'd be encouraged to play alone just to have a feeling of being an explorer? I know that's probably how it'll end up for convenience sake, but I think it's sad and like most games it just feels dry and overcooked to me.

Too bad the game can't create random dynamic new places, perhaps connected by wormholes. I mean like how when you play a rogue-like it's random each time, so it's a genuine exploration. Does the game have no means to do that? This would allow for nearly infinite (on our terms) growth in new areas.

I guess the problem would be the "map" would get too big!!! Tens of players discovering several stars every day would mean the map would be gargantuan after a few months. Even just 15 players discovering 3 new stars every day would amount to 2700 stars after 2 months. And of course figuring out a plotting course which has several wormholes in it would be confusing because it's not a linear plot. You would need a map which has all the star fields and their wormhole spots and all the lines going out from each wormhole to all the other wormholes (located in star fields) in order to get a actual idea of how to plot a course effectively. Things can get tricky, and it depends on whether wormholes go to ONE star field or to separate ones. And allowing wormholes to go to multiple other wormholes would also add some jazz to course plotting. Players would end up demanding an automatic course generator. Although personally I LIKE being a human calculator and/or course plotter. Just weird that way. Not everybody is math averse or alergic to technical problems - I can like them sometimes. Of course if this game were real people wouldn't be expected to create plots, they'd use computers. Back before computers people did plot courses on their own, though. In some respect they used precursor to computers, like sextants. There were a multitude of these "precursors" to computers which aided navigation and other disciplines.

(of course, an enormous map would also strain server? what if I had a million mining facilities? maybe not possible, but if I had a couple years to build them... maybe? not sure how that works even in curent game.)

Maybe hte game could reset or something, to keeps things fresh? This way you don't have to worry about managing a gargantuan navigation map. And each time it'd be a random new universe. This would also help alleviate mudflation concerns, as everything in the game would have value again. Everybody would start at bottom and have a chance against others. Although veteran players would still play more effectively because they know how to do it, so not all "mudflation" is eliminated. Lastly, this is all unlikely because players don't want to lose what they create. However, there're probably ways of retaining some of their wealth, even if only in biographical stats.

you might want to invest in the 'super-novae' pledge.  That will regenerate a lot of the stellar locations.

I agree with Sargas.  Once Novas are coming in things will become a lot more interesting.  This is one update that has been long overdue.  BTW there is still plenty out there past the 4th ring that hasn't been explored yet.

I usually skip over it when I'd just watched the series, or have just shown the whole series to someone.

Well hi Dadds!  :)) I wasn't playing this game when you were, but I guess now's the time to make up for lost time.

So how has your long break for AG been? Fun, I suppose?