[NHC] New Horizons is a cooperative group of active miners, bounty hunters and explorers. Our Goal is to support each other and help all our members achieve their in-game goals. Initially formed around the 5 most active players after the AG relaunch NHC has grown to become one of the largest and most respected Corporations in AG space. We are now the oldest continually active corp, and have a broad spectrum of new and veteran players.

At NHC we value honor and morals, activity and participation. You don't have to be in the top 20 most powerful players to join NHC, but we will help you get there if that is your goal. All you have to do is be willing to be an active member of the corp and abide by the corp rules.

If your a Miner, We have players with lots of experience to guide you, The opportunity exists to mine co-operatively or to strike out on your own.

If your a COM or SOS signals specialist, NHC has significant experience in this area, We can offer training, advice and guidance on ship setup and module allocation.

However if you think its your right to engage in unprovoked attacks on other players for profit, or fun then you need not apply. That does not mean we don't have a place for you if you favor a more aggressive style of play. We rally to the defense of our comrades and consider any attack against any one of us to be an attack against all of us, reprisals are sanctioned, and conducted regularly. There are more than enough pirates out there to keep anyone busy.

If you feel your up for the challenge, send us your join request to start the induction process. If you have any questions please feel free to PM me in-game.

Yep,

Id prefer improved ingame economics or improved social aspects, but can we please have corp ships before we get aliens, or additional com missions, or even the proposed module and ship auctions etc.

Not a secret, same as the moniker here.

As far as programing html, I should have qualified that
with jscript, php, and mysql.   Not the greatest at it,
but learning more. 

Hmm... dont see you. chuck me a PM ingame then if you want.

php, erm.... hey if its good enough for AG, right ?!?

If you use the wrong tool for the job then its hardly the tools fault besides as Morgwen points out pascal is a great language for teaching programming basics.

Its a stretch to say HTML is programming, and really I gotta say ... its a warped mind that enjoys spreedsheets... still sounds like youll fit in just fine here.

Whats your ingame name? or is that a secret?

Its worth noting that although 2 x Mk10 cost the same to produce as 1 x Mk 20 they provide more speed than it. To be exact its 6.5 times the base speed of a single Mk1. the Mk20 gives 5.75 times the base speed.

If norills formula is correct then because they are faster they will use more fuel.

Personally i like to use multiple drives, so that allocating crew allows me greater flexibility in terms of fuel usage. In a large ship space is significantly less of an issue.

Currently we have a very basic. These 3 resources make this module.

There are only a few resources that are used in multiple modules, platinum being one.

Ideally id love to see a system where modules are built out of components. and the resources are primarily used to build components rather than the modules directly.To build a  FTL drive you need to be able to build/buy components... say 10 electronics, 20 converters, 3 Kamacite Relays, 5 titamium switches and the whole thing also requires some steel, some carbon fibre and some helium.... you get the idea. To build a mark 10 FTL Drive you need to have researched that far and you must use Mark 10 Components, which must first be researched, and built themselves The mark 10 components could work the same way modules do now in that mark 10 components require 10 times as much raw material as mark 1 versions... but to construct a FTL you only ever need 10 electronics, The mark level of the end module is the lowest level of its components. ie if you use9 mark 10 electronics and 1 mark 5 you get a mark 5 FTL in the end. Components could also require construction of component manufacturing modules, or they could be produced in manufacturing bays.

It bugs me that i can go buy 10000m3 of resources which fills my cargo bay and plug it into a single manufacturing bay and after 4 days out pops a 100m3 module. (that is some interesting matter densification going on there... that or there is massive amounts of waste, or is the stuff being converted into energy...if so ive got a bunch of fuel cells that might fit the bill)

However as i said ideally, I appreciate that would require a significant re-write.

a good start would be to simple make modules require a wider range of raw resources, and have each resource used in multiple modules. especially if anything is done about SOL being a source of infinite resources... it would then force us to decide what we are going to use our resources for.

The Game setting states that earth is running low on resources.

Yet the Sol corp seems to have an infinite supply of resources at their base in orbit above earth.

This effectively makes it wholely unnecessary for players to mine. We could all quite successfully play this game without a single player retaining a deployed MIF or ATH after they complete the SEA tutorial.

In actual fact this is by far and away currently the best strategy. Instead of wasting money on mining modules running the risk of them being looted or captured by a pirate, you should sink all funds into equipment that will initially allow you to run passenger missions from SOL, and then ultimately COM and SOS missions. In the process you may deploy a station or two for SLB's

All our mineral requirements can be meet by the magic of the SOL corp station... need 1000m3 of uranium to build some nukes no worries they have it in stock.... want to build 10 Crystaline Armour modules no worries all the resources are in stock... for a planet that has apparently got no more resources the station in orbit above it seems to have a whole universe full.

In comparison a player mining resources and working several complete systems may be able to mine enough platinum to build 2 rail guns... or thorium to build 1 maybe 2 nukes.

What i propose is the the SOL corp station only have a certain amount of stock of each resource and that the resource price be tied to current stock levels. When the station has plenty of a resource it will only pay a little... when it has none of that resource it will pay a premium price

Resources are then resold at the current markup... but players can only buy stuff if it is in stock and only as much as is in stock.

The maximum price SOL Corp pays for stuff could exceed the minimum price it buys that resource for, which would allow market manipulation for profit, and additional trade opportunities, or the maximum purchase price could allways be lower than the minimum sale price.

Players could perhapes be allowed to set the price for goods at their stations anywhere in the sol corps price range.

This would achieve multiple ends. Firstly and Foremost it would actually make the game reflect its setting, as a by product even those running missions would likely have to start mining to get the resources for their module upgrades.  Secondly it would increase the number of people engaged in mining. And make miners much more imortant to their corps. A corp of only com signal runners would not be able to support their module upgrades.

It would highlight the need to undertake exploration to locate the rare minerals... and it would actually make rare minereals rare. Players that find a platinum deposit would have to decide wether to use it for railguns or for Advanced MIF's  (Not sure why platinum which seems to be pretty rare as a deposit is used in multiple modules, but i bet the chance a planet contains a specific resource or the quatities they contain dont reflect how much of each resource is required in module manufacturing)

It would also encourage trade. especially if players were allowed to set their own buy and sell prices.

While where on the topic of trade, As i understand it the reason we dont have inter player trade is to stop alt farming? but players can already trade both modules and resources using station cargo bay looting. there may now be some loss, but if your really going to do alt farming that hardly matters.... With trade some people may well try alt farming, but then again... its only going to appeal to non VIP players since VIP's can have as many ships/stations as they want. there is no economic advantage to using an alt char's modules to mine when you could use your own.

Without some focus on developing the econominc and social (ie group play) aspects of the game the game is going to descend solely into a competiton of who can do the most COM missions the fastest... which in of itself isnt an issue if thats what the game is designed to be, but then why even bother with the whole mining and resource stuff then?

The fact that there are literally 10 times as many votes on the sites that dont have a captcha compared to those that do tells me that people are potentially automating their voting. or at the least focusing votes on those two sites.

Incidentally last time i tried to vote 2 of the 3 sites wouldnt work for me... for a 3/15 daily chance to get some QP... meh

I cannot help but wonder how many people cannot be bothered to put the d**n captchas in correct at all, one of the sites captchas tells me im wrong half the time even when as far as i can see im right.

I think a button that automatically unloads all currently mined resources into your ships cargo hull would be good.

After all 99 times out of 100 all i want to do is pickup everything that's been mined before i move on. Small planets are no problem but if you have a number of modules then that's a whole bunch more requests made to the server, a whole lot more the user/player has gotta click and scroll through to achieve the same thing...

Have been thinking about this some more. And One Specialisation in Particular in the list above looks to be way over powered

The Assault Bomber Assuming it just doubles the effectiveness of a nuke, not adds an additional 200% then this means that each nuke on board will do 100k in damage.

That is fantastic if you want to go out and annialate a station or two. Just put one of these little babies together, add a nuke or two, and then kablam, No more station.

And it doesnt matter how much weaponry the station has, or how much shields, The time/price to produce these and their nukes is significantly cheaper than what it takes to put the station together. The station needs too have a shield ration of 40:1 just to cover the potential damage. ie it takes 40 AdvSHG-1 to protect against a single NUKE-1 from this ship. The only option is to install your own nukes and hope the coin toss to determin who attacks first, goes your way.

Nuke defence systems are also not cheap to reasearch/produce, so its unlikely a station will be able to block the nukes, unless your lucky.

There has to be a balance between players ability to attack and there ability to defend. Adding ways to power us up and make us stronger on attack without an equal and opposite defence will not create a good long term playing experience.

Have you considered running some simulations using these proposed changes to see how they balance out?

Sydney I don't think you have to worry about Jaq doing this. I was chatting with his Corp boss and apparently Jaq feels the same way about this attack timer idea as we do. So I think like us, even if he could afford to do this, he probably won't. Still if a larger player were to do this, they could decimate pretty much everyone with nukes. Well provided the person doesn't have 100% nuke defense. lol

I am not worried Jaqvaar would do this to me, I was worried that someone else might do it to him, or to any other player thats invested a considerable amount of time building up 1 or more star bases.

Q: They can now use QP to do even more missions. not only to speed jumps to COM signals but also to shorten the attack timers, the profits can then be used to purchase more QP, and ship upgrades.

A: Like I stated before, since the QP value went up while mission pay remains the same for COM at at around 2x the power of the mission, then you need to twink twice before spending QP for it. For example, you get 1 mil Solars for destroying a 500k power combat mission ship. To win the mission, you'll need a ship of around 750k power. This all equals to about a 6 hours attack time, meaning you'll need some 6 QP to attack. Now if you spend 6 QP, you gain 1 mil solars, provided you win the fight. If you don't win it, then you just lost the QP, it's a risk. Also sometimes you lose personnel / armor etc. For the reward of 1 mil solars, you can exchange it into 5 QP. So there's not much incentive to use QP to speed up combat missions, unless you've got a really really good ship with low power rating that can blast the combat ship in a lower attack time. Now of course, some players that do donate, they may want to speed up the attack timers a bit, to get more solars / QP, no issue with that if they take the risk of combat. The combat mission pirate ships will only get smarter in time also.

I also intend to keep the same balance between time vs. reward for future COMbat missions, keeping the balance in check.

Ok I acceot the argument about Using QP on Combat missions to adjust the timer. If the rates stay as described then its not a good long term strategy, the QP would be better spent on shortening the jump times to pick up more missions. and only shortening the Attack timers by a small amount rather than reducing them to zero.

I still think the ability to use them in a blitzkreig is nasty. Previously If someone attacks and is vastly superior in power (eg has nukes on board) then i allways had the option to jump into orbit and defend. or perhapes scoop everything and make a hasty retreat, which meant that a battle was never fought entirely under the conditions of the attacker. Using QP to manipulate the attack timer guarantees the attacker that does so that the battle will be fought on their terms. If they have the advantage then they have nothing to fear from the attack.

I very much doubt that QP will be used in pirate raids against undefended planets or even smaller stations, but they might against larger installations where the possibility of a good profit might make the idea interesting, The will however allmost certainly be used on capture/destroy attacks. And in that situation id suggest that the actual QP cost is irrelevant compared to the satisfaction of destroying the target instalation...

If it was made so that QP couldnt shorten the attack bellow say 25% of the initial attack delay then i think that would be reasonable. You could use QP to cut the attack timer to 1/4 of its initial value, but the defender would still have the opportunity to defend. .. another alternative is you cannot shorten it shorter than an hour... or whatever aslong as the defender really does have the option to actively defend.

I do like the idea of applying it to all stars bassed on their age. And providing players with an ability to stabilise a star.
although im a bit wary about how realistic this is... Stars live for a REALLY REALLY long time, even if we assume that time is significantly faster in game than in RL then realistically youd still only expect one or two naturally occuring SuperNovas per year of game time. Perhapes you could do it in reverse, instead of SuperNovas happening naturally and players stopping it. Perhapes players could instigate a supernova, by destabilising a star that they dont like anymore. Having said that its also not too realistic that stars just sort of materialise out of thin air with a full system in tow. However who hasnt dreamed of blowing up a star and heck this is a game, in the end game balance and hence fun for all is more important than sticking rigidly to reality. However perhapes some stars could go SuperNova all by themselves occasionally.

It could be achieved with either one module that can nudge a stars stability in either direction, or two moduels, one for stabilisng the other for destabilising. If a stars stability goes below a certain level then it goes critical and you have a limited time to evacuate before it goes super nova. I suggest being able to both stabilise and destabilise since otherwise it could be a pretty effective weapon.

The module could be researched/built to different levels to provide different speeds, but i think it should probably be capped in some way like the tactical advantage is.

I also think setting a minimum & maximum number of stars in a quadrant is a good idea as well. Random chance can bite you in the arse sometimes, without them it would be possible for a quad to have virtually no stars and another to have a whole bunch.

EDIT an interesting combination of resource left and player controlled SuperNova is to have the systems base health determined by the amount of resource in it. So as a system is mined out it becomes easier to destabilize. a system where only the top 10% of resource is used is difficult to destabilise one with 90% depleted is a lot easier. What you want to avoid is a player setting out to mine just the valuable resources and then quickly forcing a supernova so that a new system generates and repeating the process.

sounds really interesting.

The reinforced Hull option would be available for all hull sizes? then people will use that rather than the combat options and use the titan class hull and pack in more weapons and less shields and armour. Such a ship will out class any smaller ship with the combat optimization

How about providing 3 different combat specializations to those mid sized ships, one with weapons bonus, one with shields, and one with armour. And making the Reinforced Hull option just provide the Increase to Hit points, perhapes with an even bigger bonus to counter the loss of the shielding bonus.

Id also point out that some of the hull upgrades, eg the freighter upgrade on a tiatn class ship will be massively expensive, Not only in the direct cash cost, but you also have to factor in the opportunity cost of not using those funds for other upgrades while saving up for the upgrade. Its almost certain that i would go for investing my funds in upgrading my Cargo Modules to increase my transport capabilities rather than the Freighter specialisation. As i can do that in much smaller investment intervals.

I wonder if it would be possible to make these hull specialisations be applied in levels... ie divide it up into 10 levels. each level being 1/10th the cost, and apply 1/10th the benifit. If your wanted to you could make each level slightly more than 1/10th the cost but i wouldnt get too expensive or the cost will rule out that specialisation.

I applaud the resource update. I especially like the aspect that smaller planets are more likely to have higher value resources, its a nice idea.

I do have a few questions regarding it that affect how i should plan for the future.

1) Will this be a regular thing, or is it a galactic wide once off ?

Ie do i need to get into the habit of re-surveying systems on a regular basis to spot new resource deposits, or is a once off survey enough?

You have mentioned that systems in unknown space will go Super Nova and new systems will replace them.

2) What are you planning as the requirement to go Super Nova?

all resources depleted? a percentage of resources depleted? a specific total value of resources remaining? ... basically to help with planning id really appreciate a little advanced warning about how this will work. I'm a little skeptical about its use if it is planned that all resources (Iron, Hydrogen, Nickle etc) must be depleted from a system. Primarily because the large volume low value of these resources means that its very time intensive to remove all of them, and thus incurs a large opportunity cost. People are much more likely to just skim the valuable stuff and leave the low value resources.

I do have to say im a little less enthusiastic about the changes to the attack timer system. I understand the need to drive QP sales, but I think this really plays into the hands of those that are only running combat missions. They can now use QP to do even more missions. not only to speed jumps to COM signals but also to shorten the attack timers, the profits can then be used to purchase more QP, and ship upgrades. It also means that anyone with a small store of QP can effectively entertain a blitzkreig against any player, Using QP to speed jumps to targets, and QP to speed attack timers. Id hate to see someone like myself, Morbius, jaqvaar or any other player that has invested considerable time and effort in setting up some bases be 'taken out' in 2 mins by someone with a few QP. All you'd need to do is convert QP to purchase a small arsenal of nukes, and then use QP to power the Blitzkreig.

I suspect the changes to the QP award for voting is in response to people multi voting to farm QP. However it makes voting daily to eventually be able to afford to go VIP now impossible (at least for those of us with fixed IP's)

The changes to the QP exchange rate, effectively wipes out a lot of the time that current players have invested, as a new player can now 'donate' and be instantly as powerful or more powerful than players that have be playing for a long time. The other side effect of this is that it makes everyone a lot more vulnerable to players that join up buy some QP then get board and decide to go out with a bang.

It is one thing to have your mines looted of resources, and loose a couple of days of mining profit, its another thing alltogether to have months of invested time wipped out in minutes, with nothing you can do to stop it.