Astro Galaxy - a realistic space exploration game

You can now enjoy a brand new experience and maybe a completely different game!

We've redesigned everything to include all the new advances in technology.
A brand new framework enables features that where unavailable before, like drawing directly on the maps and canvas, dialog windows and so much more.

* A new resource has been added called Action Points (AP). It is generated by the navigation computer every 60 minutes.
 Action Points are used whenever a task needs to be completed faster. Quantum points can be converted to Actions points at 1:1 ratio.

* You can now use Action Points to speed up interplanetary / interstellar travel without having to access SITREP or reload the page, greatly speeding up the exploration process.

* The front of the game loads dynamic and copyright free backgrounds from the Hubble space telescope, that change every day.
All the image galleries in the front have been updated, and we've added a dynamic random solar system generator for the curious minds.

* The dialogs are interactive and scale with the size of your device. Enjoy exploring space on your tablet or mobile with interactive events.
* All the buttons and links have been updated with the new framework, and are much prettier.

* Solar system / event area travelling has been vastly improved.
 Drawing is done directly on the map, engage button is visible over the target area when setting the course. Other events can also use the same principle, like entering the event horizon of a wormhole or searching an object for artifacts.

* You can access your navigation computer data from the system view screen for each object.
 Navigation data within the star maps opens in a dialog window witch is responsive and doesn't lose your map view point.

* The Space Exploration Academy has been updated and improved.

 And many other things that you would need to login to find out :)

Now that we have the new framework, we will be able to add new content on an accelerated pace:
+ Extremely deep missions, with decision making and different outcome (Treasure hunting, Scavenging for artifacts, etc.)
+ New interactive events (wormhole and black hole exploration or remains and artifacts in the event area)
+ Unique areas to be explored (Space monsters, Alien civilization)

The Universe awaits you!

It appears part of the "new update" has removed the ability to purchase QPs with Solars... while leaving VIP status and Officers available for purchase ONLY with QP. Is this true? Or have I simply been looking in the wrong place?

I'm missing to Buy QP using Solars... :oops:

looks fine.
Like u can control all you mining modules from station....  :thumbsup:

is the block hole working now?

Seriously... this popup browser window idea is p*ssing me off to the max. When you close one tab after setting a course in it, you can start over again.

Not being able to buy QP with solars is annoying now. Was this on purpose or was it an accident?

You will be able to sell found prototype modules, fully equipped ships etc. in the auction for Quantum Points or Solars in the near future, however the game will no longer sell QP at this time.

The Action Points replaces Quantum Points for speeding up tasks and traveling. You can buy AP now at 50k Solars instead.

SEA explains QP like this now:

"Quantum Points are bits of quantum technology dealing with exotic matter. Quantum technology is very valuable to the SOL Corporation as it is used for developing new module types and technology, software upgrades and all functions of space exploration. Quantum Points can be exchanged at any time to other resources, or used to upgrade your navigation software, hire specialist officers or acquire prototype technology."

I'm sorry for the inconvenience.

Is there any timeline for when this "auction" may be available?

a little bit of a heads up that you were removing the ability to get QP with solars would have been nice.

Though I suppose it would have meant that I hoarded up as many QP as I could have.  Perhaps that wouldnt have been a good idea.

I don't know, it just seems pretty drastic for people with just a few days left of VIP/officers to have no way of getting more.

Honestly if I had a year worth of QP's set aside i likely wouldnt be complaining as much but I'd still be here to tell you it appears to have been a bad move.  Its so drastic of a change that it will be a those before the change and those that came after it.

and is the auction house only from other players or will there be an "AI buyer" as well so we can generate QP in some way other than someone having to buy them (or the people that were able to store them up before).

Just to be clear:  I see no problem with games and game developers making money on a game.  I have donated to the game myself to let you know I liked the game, but I dont like it in its current version.

the pop-up like screens take long to load, they disrupt my way of playing, they dont return the player to where they were, there is little if anything i like about them at the moment.  I hope you can streamline the load times as well as test them and get them to return us back to where we were.

if we cannot trade solars to QP will we be able to buy VIP status and officers with AP ?

yes, when will it be ready?
As of now, it'll take 9.00 USD (out of pocket) to retain both VIP and Officers for 25 days; so if it's going to take 6 months to develop 'auction', then I will need at least 37 USD to keep them. that's a lot of money for some people (myself included as I am retired and living with a limited income). And who is going to be bidding in this auction. Without spending real money, the stockpile of QP in the game remains limited to that on hand now (I only have *** left myself).


It appears not, while 1 QP can be swapped for one AP, I cannot see a way for it to flow the other way.

Really Sir Emi? A paywall?

So now I have to wait for ANOTHER update to let me keep playing at the rate that I currently am just so that I can go out and bust my hump looking for new missions to get me enough QPs to retain my play style

Hey guys,

There had to be a change. QP was getting too common. It was either this or removing the Pledge system,VIP and Officers altogether.

Please use the AP witch is 5 times cheaper then QP, it will replace any officer bonuses and will allow you to explore space freely. You will still be able to find unique modules and ships witch can be sold for QP in the upcoming auction system, witch is the next project after super-nova explosions. You will be able to sell these special modules you find in treasure hunts to the SOL Corporation, witch will then put them for display.

QP is special and is for developer purposes and calculating project details.

AG is free to play, you are able and will always be able to access all areas of the game for free.

But in order to develop the game further, we need to have some bonuses that are only for supporters.

so how can ap replace officer bonuses? especially when it comes to science?

SirEmi i agree with you, but without VIP and officers this game will not be playable..
jumps will last 6 time more and with no auto engage
manufacturing with officer is long and without will last forever ..
mining will lose any sense without auto upload (even now have no sense for strong players..)

Vira: is the general reaction in SSS as negative as it is in SPQNR? Right now, out of our two dozen players, more than half will pack it in when their officers expire.

I saved a long time to bypass the worst bottleneck in the game (travel time), and got myself the wormhole shifter around the turn of the year. Researched WHG-D tech, and with VIP and nav officer, I can do 16 ly jumps in 38 seconds now. That'll be back to over 2 mins without VIP and officer. No quicker than with a common scout op'ed ship before, and that is just too slow. I didn't invest all that time (and money, I did pay $35 in my earlier days, just months ago, to obtain QP, so IMO that's a good return for a basic browser game, albeit one with potential) in the game to be forced that many steps back.

I ask again... is there any kind of timeline for the auction?

And combat?

Why is QP even an issue? Why does it need to be a big deal? All people used it for was officers, VIP, speeding up tasks, and buying things from the pledge system. It doesn't need to be unique, you could have just renamed QPs or made a new system for your special supporter items.

The pledge stuff still would clean me out if I wanted to buy some things for a unique ship I had designed. But now it looks like I might never get wormhole shifter which would have been my next project after I finished these science upgrades.

It also looks like my science network will be crippled once my officer runs out. There is now way I can catch up to the big guys who already have hundreds of QPs stocked up and will be getting 30% more RPs than me once mine runs out.

The officers and VIP were a GREAT incentive to save up money and work hard in the game! They were also a key selling point to get anyone to join a corp without much other tools built in the game for recruitment.

The biggest killer is now the manufacturing times... I'm going to have to either wait twice as long for my modules to build or else spend ALL of my APs cumulated over hundreds of hours to speed up the production of ONE module; sacrificing the chance I would have to speed up jumps and other things. Now I will have less of a reason to be on every day because my friends will start quitting, my modules will take 1500 hours to complete, I won't be able to speed up my COM missions by deactivating as many modules, and the travel times without VIP and the officer will be horrendous, or I will need to make bigger engines to eat MORE fuel just to fly to a freaking bullsh!t 20% COM strength mission in an hour. Oh, and it's like we'll be wearing blinders because our nav screens will be itty bitty now.

Autopilot and LR courses? Useless
Mining? Useless
Looter Missions? Useless (you have effectively KILLED the value of diamonds)

I've played as a newbie and this game sucks until you get VIP and Officers. I've been a huge supporter of yours Sir Emi and I've been patient with updates while everyone else griped and complained with your irregular activity. But I feel like I just waited months for a slap in the face and for you to tell me to start all over. I will probably have to rebalance ALL of my ships with cargo space, engine size, and even weapons and shields because while they increased with the officer the ship power did not. Tell me right now why I should keep playing this game when you are about to destroy the community of SPQNR that we've developed and you're going to bring my progress and ships back to a snail's pace because you want more financial support after you release an update that, right out of the gate, has more people unhappy than U.S. foreign policy.

Why don't you look at what The Old Republic has. A preferred player status that gives you certain advantages after you support the game financially any one time. You could donate $2 once and be set for life on those advantages.

And how much QP/day could be expected to be earned by players investing in this new system?

Will I be able to afford keeping my VIP and officers if I have one ship working on auction modules or will I need to send my entire fleet for weeks to renew for the month?

well maybe the auction thing needs to be done first for the simple reason if there's no way of getting qp apart from spending rl money then that's really going to get on people's nerves. if people are going to start leaving because of this when their officers go then the game is dead.

Mythiclord shares my sentiment...

Quote from him (he does not have an account in these forums)
Please Sir Emi. Please change the game back to how it was!
My Corp is falling apart. One person just quit today forever. More than 10 out of 20+ of our members have already decided to quit the minute their VIP and officers expire. Please give us an option to buy QP with solars. These guys are like family to me and they're already starting to quit :(
These are all quotes from members Sir Emi:
I'm out of the game, this is my last evening. :) ... It would be nice if we would meet in another game. :) ...
Mostly my nick I sun... Pre colours... Like green sun, bluesun, silversun. :)) if we do see one another... It would be great... I like mmo browser games.. :)
Over..out... CaptainB .. Love you all ;)
____________________________________________________
I just sent a PM to sir emi that I will not pay more than $80 US a year for VIP and officers. Unless there is an in game way to get VIP and officers, I will no longer be playing. My last day will be april 24th.
____________________________________________________
I'm staying until my officers start deserting me. 68 days, minimum.
____________________________________________________
Well,
I'm going to stick it out until officers desert and qp runs out. Figure I have enough time left to see how this works out. Spent a year + building the fleet with minimal (although greatly appreciated) help...... just before I leave, I'm thinking of a suicide mission ......
____________________________________________________
Seriously guys: I guess we have a couple to a few weeks, but let's stick together and find a different game. It's your company that makes the game worthwhile.

I see that you cannot us QP any longer to speed anything up (it must first be converted in the 'pledge' menu). I'm not complaining, it has to be this way for AP to work the way you seem to want it to work. You may need to put in an option that while 1 QP can be traded for 1 AP, it would take (for example) 10 AP to purchase 1 QP.



It just speeds stuff up. So instead of getting the officer benefits, you speed things up. Indeed what about science, the combat bonuses,or anything else that cannot be sped up?

And I agree with everyone else that this will cause a mass-desertion.

it really is a shame that this isnt a day of celebration.

In reality, a lot was done.  if the entire backbone was reworked then I can see how the game was greatly improved.

There are some issues with the way you are handling reloading and the images etc because they are taking too long and forcing us to reload each time.  there isnt a way to set these up as cached?  

I had to play this game via mobile for a while and I was shocked how much data it ate up via reloading all the screens.  anyway something to think about.

Finding a balance between how much it costs to create and maintain a game, personal profit and incentive to players to spend money on your game is a difficult one.  but you either have Donation and Donator status or you have a pay to win game if there is no way to replicate the same thing in game.

I'm fine with having things in game that people can buy instantly if they want to, but I dislike not having access to it via saving/smart play/reasonable amount of time to get it if i want it.

Wow, this update just killed the game.  :gun_bandana:

perhaps a warning, perhaps a special offer to the existing gaming community buying QPs at a big discount just to give the developers a cash injection,

dont know what will happen but removing the option of buying QPs completely without any warning, it is going to have dire consequences to AG. :notworking:

one thing is for sure, once my officers expire, I and many players at SSS will also stop playing at least this "auction thingy" is up and running pretty soon.

Your call Sir Emi. 

my 2 cents!!  :frusty:

You can buy Quantum Points using Actions Points now.

Keep in mind that your navigation computer generates 720 AP / month

It costs 20 AP to buy 1 QP, that means 36 QP / month.

This option might be removed if abused.

thank you for that. it should help re-balance the game.

i'm going to post what i put up on our board.
post from lord sidious:
lets just step back a bit and see what happens with this auction thingy. i suggested
on the forums that he needs to get that sorted first seeming as this is the way he's
going. lets just see exactly what happens with this treasure hunting thing. i admit
this whole thing is a surprise for sure but lets just stop and see exactly where
this auction thing goes where qp is concerned. everybody is kneejurking because of
the lack of ability to buy qp. understandable on it's own. however we do not yet know what he has planned for the future aquazition of qp. we know something
is coming, we don't know what. so until we do know lets just get on with this game
until we hear something concrete?

end of quoat.

what does abused mean?

you may just wish to set a max/limit on number of QP's bought with AP per month

Just a random example:

Lets say you set the QP purchased with AP to 350 per month
then each day you complete all 6 votes allows you to buy 5 more QP with AP per month.

This would give a total of 500 per month a player is able to buy with AP
(PS get rid of the allowing votes from multiple isp, limited it per account it just looks like a way to falsely prop up numbers on the voting sites)

So set a maximum limit for QP and allow/give incentive to increase that amount by a pleasurable amount for doing things that help you, your game, your development, your advertising etc.

Many games gives bonuses for finding and reporting bugs or making suggestions that improve the game if implemented, some even give/award bonuses for just having good topics or guides on the forums etc.

You have control over if it's abused, either that or state what the abuse level is.

PS I myself approve of the 1M solars per QP.  it's attainable but for the uber rich that may still be inexpensive and we may buy more than you intended.  Some guidelines would serve well

SirEmi thx for understanding this will give possibility for good game experience  \o/

I meant multi-accounts. It's fixed now, added some more checks, don't worry about it.

SirEmi, if you did not added a way to Get QPs in game other than hard cash, that would have been the point of no return for me. I do not stay in games where developers only thing to have a cash cow.

Thanks for a solution to the missing QP.. :thumbsup:

thank you  :12:

Well thanks to this new change it really makes me just want to quit.  One thing I liked about the game was how things like officers and VIP could be gotten if we worked hard enough in the game.  It wasn't completely reliant on shelling out real life money.  Now with that gone, it is just going the way of so many other games. Money driven and the ones getting the shaft are the free players.

Well it is nice we can convert the solars to AP and then AP to QP now but it is still a big pain.

+1

Yew, thanks for that SirEmi, that helps to restore a bit of balance.

come on folks, stop the i'm quitting thing and lets get back to playing?

Fixed the dialog window and other issues in Chrome.

Hold Shift and click on Refresh for best results.

hi at some point could you fix the screen reader issues i sent you a support message about with regards to the starmap? thanks :)

Dialog windows sucks on mobile, too much scrolling in all directions  :4:

Guys buying QP with solars hasnt been removed exactly. It's just 4x more expensive now. You can buy QP with 20 AP, 1 AP = 50k solars. So its 1 million solars for 1 QP now basically. So not removed, just a 2 step + 4 times more expensive process lol

edit: nvm disregard this post lol seems you guys figured this out lol

At the time those posts were being made, buying QPs was ONLY allowed with real cash!

New Rome seems to have put away their bug-out bags for now.

Thanks Sir Emi, looks like I won't have to find new friends just yet.  :6:  :sweat

:)

The story of how ONE simple button managed to keep over a dozen active captains on board just in New Rome. Thanks again for turning it around SirEmi, it was the right course of action  :)

Yeah, thanks for that SirEmi :)

And seems like dialog windows are now better optimized for mobile users :)

Restecpa :)

Just to cue in on my two cents here SirEmi. I understand what you were wanting to do with the QP's and everything, I had felt for awhile now that you were never going to make any money with this game considering how easy it was to get QP. I could see how that fact could contribute to you not really feeling like doing anything for this game.

With this AP system in place it will definitely help the noobs, the speeding up effect of the QP's being put on AP now that regenerate every hour helps them speed stuff up a ton plus since they only cost 50k insteand of 250k like QP used to they can buy them more easily to speed up many tasks.

I am some what concerned that the AP regenerating will undo some of your efforts to make QP less common and to give more incentive for people to buy them with real money. My concern is that you get 24 AP a day which is basically one free QP every day. Granted that still isn't that much but it basically gives everyone a free and unlimited source of VIP at the very least. Perhaps you should push up the cost of QP from 20 AP to something like 30 or 40 AP. As much as it will pain my wallet I would prefer to actually have to work to keep my benefits that some people pay for.

Also since the option to buy AP and then convert the AP into QP exists I feel like it would be a better option to just bring back the ability to to buy QP straight with Solars and just increase the price to what it would be with the method we have now which as of right now 50k per AP and 20 AP per QP is 1 million solars. It just seems a bit cumbersome to have to buy one form of currency just to convert it to another, though I do understand you only added it due to massive outcries from the players.

Someone (I can't be bothered to go back in the pages to look up who it was) brought up an interesting idea. Perhaps you could create a donator status for people that do donate and to give incentive for others to do so. Something that was relatively simple and not game breaking (basically as long as it didn't become a pay2win sort of thing). One thing I can think of is the ability to hold even more AP than we can with VIP status, perhaps an increase from the 200 with VIP to 400 with Donator status? Another cool incentive would be some kind of Donator Black Market where you can sell things for their full value rather than the normal sell price, which would definitely help miners make money.

Maybe a cool little golden ship icon next to their name ingame would be nice as well to identify who is a donator.

There are always good ways to give people an incentive to give you money and not upset the people that either can't or don't want to and not completely change the balance of the game if you look hard enough xD I'm sure many of us could give you other good ideas if you wanted.

if you make the acquasition of qp much more expensive then it's going to slow the newbs down more so than before. 1m per qp is enough. it gives people something to work towards. whilst i'm not making a buckit load of money per day, i do think that 1m solars per qp is enough.

as for ap, well i don't mind that either. again it's something that can help the newbs and you can choose how you use that ap. 1 qp per day with just generating ap really isn't all that much in the grand scheme of things. especially if you want to have officers and vip status. on it's own you'd never be able to save up enough ap to acomplish all that.

Wow the AP is really making me feel like I'm cheating ...  :sweat

I can do over 10 SOS missions in 10 minutes.   :12:

how exactly if you can only get 1 per hour?

It generates when you're offline...so you get 24 per day.

Well the thing is, AP working the way they do actually is making it faster for noobs than ever before. I mean if they are picking up even the cheap refugee missions in the 1st or second ring they can easily spend a few of their free AP to cut the time to go around collecting them and then come back to Sol down pretty drastically without having to spend a bunch of money upgrading their engines and paying for a ton of fuel. On the other hand if they are in a corp as many new players do join a corp before long they can already get decent engines and maybe some fuel or even a corp ship to use to make a bunch of money. Those people can save up those AP and use it solely to convert into QP. As SirEmi said the full amount of free QP you could get just from AP alone is 36 over the course of one month (30 days). That is enough to not only buy VIP for 25 days but also an Officier for 15 days. Now if you consider the amount of QP you can get from voting every day (and I mean from the individual votes not the grand prize that most of us will never win) it isn't too hard to see people being able to afford VIP whenever they want it as well as one or even two officiers at least half of the time if not most of the time.

I mean hell when I joined TGE I got a corp ship that can get me enough solars from a single COM to buy VIP status at the current prices after just a week. Granted not all corps have the kind of assets that TGE does (not to mention I've know Jam for awhile so he knew I wouldn't do stupid things with it) but corps are getting stronger and bigger every single day so in the future I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case with all the majorly active corps.

If you want to have perma VIP status you can get that with just the AP you get every day if you save them up, you can even have an Officier half of the time. If you want perma VIP and all of the Officiers then yes you are going to have to pay a premium but honestly you don't really need most of them. I mean starting out the Science Officier is kinda pointless since it's a percentage boost that gets better the more base RP/Hour you have. The Manufacturing Officier is similar though not completely pointless since you are really just trying to make money in order to make something better and you aren't dealing with 100 hour + manufacturing timers. Again the Combat Officier gives you a percentage boost much like the Science Officier so at low powers it's really not all that worth it.

So if you are smart and realize that early on all you really want is VIP and the Nav and Engine Officiers this free AP goes a long way to having those at all times. As things stand noobs will still be progressing much faster than any of us did in the old days with AP essentially giving them more free QP's than we ever got.

Going from 1 mil to 1.5 or 2 mil isn't that drastic of a price increase as well. Once people get into the 3rd and 4th rings they can make that just by picking up 5-10 refugee missions and bringing them back to Earth, with two or three ships doing laps out there you can rake in enough money for any number of QP you want depending on how much support you get from a corp and how much time you have to play. Don't get me wrong it is significantly more over the course of buying those things for several months but I think that SirEmi is entitled to do what he wants with the game. This is just a compromise between what the players in general want and what SirEmi wanted to originally do.

Personally speaking I don't want it to be more expensive, I gotta pay for extra Officiers since I'm actually at a point where the Manufacturing Officier is pretty much vital and the Combat Officier is pretty darn helpful. However it's really not that much effort as it is considering I will basically be getting VIP and an Officier for free from those AP I get every day. It seems like it right now since we haven't had time to build up a stock of AP but I imagine that once we've had the AP mechanic in the game for a month or two quite a few people will feel the same way.

Anyways it was just a thought for SirEmi to think about, I'm sure we will see if it is or isn't a good idea in time.

Then there are those who bought the Wormhole Shifter and do 20 in 10 minutes without speeding up :P

Yeah. But I think those consume much more fuel.

the Wormhole shifterl allows a -80% for nav comp and -80% fuel consumption, so actually has a better cost/profit ratio.

ok, maybe we are wrong with this update, maybe we don't need VIP and officers when we have AP  :21:

The pirates are arming up  :wow:  :gun_bandana:

ok what's this wormhole shifter and how do i get one?

How they arming up :)

Wormhole shifter is unique cruiser with -80% navigation time and -80% fuel cost optimization. That ship can be purcheased through Pledge and it costs 1500QP so 1.5 bilion solars now  :19:

so new players can take them down ??

Read the SPQNR news bulletin, have we? ;)

I have studied piracy and found it to be non-productive (at this time)...

Before last update all screens were fit to device screen size when loaded. Now these are zoomed and that's kinda not friendly for mobile users because of all this scrolling again. IMO, and i don't know if there are other active mobile players in here, it was much easier before update  :P

I don't really play on mobile anymore because of it.
Just check AG forums, SPQNR forums, UC forums and ingame chat and PMs from my mobile. Real playing only from my PC now.

That's how I've been for a while now  :))

I don't have the patience to zoom in every screen just to click tiny buttons with my sausage fingers in order to make real progress via mobile anymore

Well, I don't have much problem with hitting small buttons when view fits fullscreen even as my mobile isn't too big  :P But now I have to zoom out every screen to localize the target for my finger and that's quite annoying   0o I wouldn't complain but I play mostly from mobile  :19:

Edit:
But I really like Hubble pictures on the main page  :14:

Checked it out and removed the auto-zooming on mobiles, it should work fine now.

Ye$$$ is working great  :D thank You very much  :)