Astro Galaxy - a realistic space exploration game
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16  General Talk / General Discussion / Re: First Impressions, Suggestions ect ect on: November 26, 2012, 05:05:18 AM
Interestingly enough once youve had some time in game and upgraded your ship, its engines, and its cargo hold, then many of these concerns dissapear.

with improved engines youll be able to make the run from sol to procyon in an hour or so. Ofcourse there will be virtually no profit in running the passenger missions from sol with engines that fast, because of the fuel requirements. But thats okay because if your in it for the profit youll be specialising in the combat missions anyway, and the returns on those arnt fixed, they get bigger as you get more powerful.

This game has a very pronounced snowball effect. If it was too fast paced in the begining then it would get out of hand later on.

btw you should check out the SITREP i think it will show you what you want in terms of jump times.
17  Feedback Terminal / "Bugs" and Problems / Re: Planetary attack bug on: November 26, 2012, 04:45:04 AM
its pretty clear that this is just a side effect of how the attack records are created and removed.

When you initiate an attack an entry in an attacks table is created. The only time a check is made to see if a specific attack is still valid is displaying your current attack list. So If neither party looks at their attack lists then the attack record has never been deleted, so the next attack just completes the first one.

so a rapid attack only works if both sides dont look at their attacks tab.

Cant see any easy way around this other than a regularly scheduled script to check that all 'old' attacks are still valid.

18  Feedback Terminal / "Bugs" and Problems / Looting too Easy / too Profitable? on: November 23, 2012, 09:34:38 AM
The last upgrade bought with it the ability to loot MIF's and ATH's to get at the resources that they are collecting rather than destroying them for the resources they contain.

So now the pirates are no longer just restricted to brass, zinc, aluminium etc they can gather any resources currently being mined

Infact the only advantage to putting down your own MIF's over raiding someone elses is that you dont have to wait for the attack timer to collect the mined resources... although you do carry both the initial purcahse cost, and the risk that a greifer will destroy the module out of pure spite.

I think the planet surface looting is currently too powerful.

If you loot a module then you should not get access to all of its contents. Rather i would suggest something like randomly getting 25-50% of its contents. The rest is spilled back onto the planets surface due to the haste of the 'transfer' (ie only the actual looted amount is deducted from the deposits amount)

This raises the question then of wether a pirate will first loot the module then destroy it for further resources. To which my response is that now that we have looting of modules contents to obtain 'free' resources is it really necessary that destroying modules also provides resources. If a destroy / capture attack did just that, either completly destroyed a module, or captured it then i suspect that most pirates would not bother to 'capture' lower level modules since the space they take up could be better filled with more valuable 'looted' resources.

I also Feel that the chance to capture a module intact should be bassed on what weapons were used during the attack. if i pound a settlement from space with railguns and lasers it shouldnt surprise me that all that remains is a pile of smoldering ruins. (see resource note below), if i want to have a chance at capturing it i should have to send in the ground forces, ie marines. The chance to capture the modules could be bassed on how much damage was performed by each weapon type. If railgun damage gave 5%, Laser !0% Vipers 20% and Marines or Civs 50% that would make much more sense. It would also encourage players to be a lot mor tactical about how they set up their ships.

When it comes to a looting attack against a station, It seems silly that they get access to 100% of the contents of the Cargo hold. The attack has burnt through all the armour and killed a large portion of whatever military were onboard, but the cargo is perfectly ok? Once again the loot should be say perhapes 40-60% of the resources in the cargo hold. The rest could be 'lost to the ether' or perhapes better for the base owner some of it could be recoverable. (not all or the pirate will simply double up looting attacks).

Something Needs to happen to make looting less profitable than mining the moduels yourself.

Resource Note: It would be potentially very interesting if say 80% of the non gas resources from destroyed modules turned up as a set of surface level resource deposits on the planet. That way the pirate could decide to stick around and try and salvage the resources at the risk of reprisals, or more likely the miner can return and recoup a bit of their loss...
19  Feedback Terminal / "Bugs" and Problems / QP Farming on: November 23, 2012, 08:43:09 AM
Currently the way the Voting is set up it is possible to farm QP's

You can do this in several ways. If you have a connection that is assigned a new IP each time you reconnect it (mobile phone, Dial up, os even some DSL connections) then you can just disconnect and reconnect and vote again and again and again. Collecting as many QP as you can be bothered too.

If you have a fixed IP then never fear, the Web proxy is there to provide you with a similarly rolling IP, although you may need to pay a monthly subscription to get a proxy service that works with the AG website.

Both approaches give access to significantly more QP than a 'vote once' player can ever hope to become through voting alone.

The downsides in game is that such a player can use the 'free' QP's to speed up their ship and avoid being Gazumped on mission signals. They can be traded in for solars or RP to reasearch high level tech faster, or to pay for building lots of high level modules. It creates a masive imbalance between the QP haves and the QP have nots.

Outside of the game, and this is where i think it would interest Emi most is that players that can do this have no incentive to donate / purchase QP anymore. Which is after all how this game primarily generates income.

I understand the decision behind encouraging people to multivote, the rankings on the voting sites drive more traffic here.

My suggestion would be

Make it so that any player that votes on 4 or more sites in a 24 hr period recieves 1 QP.  (i say 4 because for me the Oz games site still doesnt work, i can vote there but i never get any reward in AG)

The first 5 votes could provide you with 2,000 solars ieach, The next 10 votes with 1000 solars each and then each additional with 500 solars.

The incentive in terms of Cash is still there, the incentive for all players to do their voting is still there in the form of a QP. Those that can have mutiple IP's still have some incentive to multi-vote but the QP rewad is no longer the driving force.

And anyone for whom 1 QP per day is insufficient now has a much bigger incentive to donate to the game.

.. Oh and while were on the topic of QP Rewards ... How about modifying the Draw so that there is a 1st, second, and 3rd place. 300, 200, 100 QP respectively, then perhapes there is the chance that an active player might actually win some QP 1

Personally i think a better balanced game will hold more players longer and that will eventually result in more 'real' votes being made on the voting sites and thus generating the desired trafic to the games website.

(heck id be prepared to vote on a lot more sites than just the 5 listed if it would help increase player numbers.
20  Feedback Terminal / Suggestions / Re: Resource Restocking/Respawning on: November 23, 2012, 08:16:20 AM
I am working on the resource re-spawn  / super nova explosions, so you can still suggest on this. It's in the works, not implemented yet until properly tested.

To summarise my ideas about resources re-spawning

Each planet should have a 'Regular' set of Resources that it is 'known' for... these should be virtually unlimited on the planet. Typically they would be the lower value resources but there should be a decent chance that a planet has a mid valued resource that is regularly available there. These resources respawn fairly regularly (new deposits are found by survey teams once the current deposit has been depleted) with a new deposit, at a different height/depth being generated reasonable soon after the existing one has been depleated. The planet should allways have at least one deposit of each of its 'regular' resources available after the respawn script has been run.

Each planet should also occasionally turn up a deposit of a random mid valued resource, and very occasionally a high valued one. In this case only if the planet has at least one module deployed on it. (otherwise who is it that is discovering these deposits). The quantity discovered should be enough to allow the construction of atleast 1 module that requires that resource. Eg at least 262 m3 Chengdeite so that a player can potentially build / upgrade 1 railgun.

The number of resources available at a planet should also depend on its size. smaller planets would only have a smal list of regular resources, larger ones should have a much larger list.

I think if you did this then people would have a good incentive to actually try and set up a permanent base in a system, or at a planet. Given that at the moment it is almost impossible to permanently defend more than a few planets, and you can really only patrol a couple of systems this would give miners a fighting chance against the pirates. (more on that in a seperate thread)

I do think it would be nice if the large Asteroid Belts and Gas giants occasionally Spawned a larger deposit of a rarer mineral as a sort of in game mini event with notification in the AG News. Actually give us some incentive to develope high level mining modules or harvesters.

In Unknown Space the resources could operate under the same principle, Or you could fix the quantities and use the super nova approach... or a combination of both. If you do go for supper Novas then the new star should be in the vicinity of the old one... Otherwise a group or single player opperating in one area will eventually create a 'null' space where there are no stars. Particularly if they invest heavily in setting up a larger base deep in unknown space.
21  Info Terminal / Updates / Re: 13 November: Big update, new attack options, NPC improvements, etc. on: November 22, 2012, 05:22:33 AM
Working on some more NPC AI / ship equipment of NPC pirate / combat missions.

I am monitoring the NPC battles now and working on their tactics.

You'll face different ships equipped in different ways, and there will also be missions to strike against stations / bases on planets, etc. with great rewards including upgraded modules, etc. Raiding / plundering NPC facilities, and an alien hostile civilization soon 1

This would be good, particularly the bit about making the NPC's a bit more variable

I took a look at a COM mission the other day, the hijacker turned out to be a weakly defended one hit wonder. Almost all of its power was devoted to a single weapons module.

Ok so now people cannot artificially inflate their power and thus the mission returns with nukes and massive tactical advantages. but with an appropriately fitted ship this opponent posses absolutely no threat at all, even if they do get the first shot off.

I still think a good alternative to trying to use a variety of hard coded NPC ships is to use player created ships as a template.



22  Feedback Terminal / Suggestions / Re: Resource Restocking/Respawning on: November 21, 2012, 11:41:46 AM
FWIW

stummbled over a planet in known space with the following resources

Iron    5828 m3    1.3 km    $58,280
Iron    4736 m3    23.09 km    $47,360
Nickel    8245 m3    28.36 km    $115,430
Nickel    1464 m3    44.28 km    $20,496

I simply cannot see anyone putting down mines on this planet. What is the point? It will take you a month of sundays just to recover the cost of a few MIF's on this planet... although your facilities might well be safe from pirates. I cant see pirates wanting to clog up their cargo holds with Iron or nickel, unless they convert it straight into a few fuel cells.

Potentially the only reason to deploy MIF's here is to clear the planet to trigger a restock, and hope you get something interesting, but thats a major longshot. Especially when there are hundreds of planets with better resources to mine.

Id almost be in favour of planets regularly spawning mineral deposits even if they havent been depleted. It would mean that even this planet has a hope that someday a player will however briefly, occupy it.

23  Feedback Terminal / Suggestions / Re: Messaging on: November 20, 2012, 04:42:02 AM
It would be nice if there was a sent messages tab... so that you can see who youve sent messages too but received no response from.

... a nice quick fix if the messages module can be configured for that, but id rather see serious dev time invested else where.
24  Corporation General Talk / Corporation Recrutment / Re: [PRKL] For Money Makers! on: November 19, 2012, 07:49:55 AM
LOL

Paying TAX and getting shot up for being in a corp lead by a known pirate doesnt sound like the ideal way to make money if you ask me.
25  Feedback Terminal / Suggestions / Re: Resource Restocking/Respawning on: November 19, 2012, 07:43:53 AM
In the explored space and Sol, there will be some sort of discovery of new deposits

Use of future tense. so...

Is this currently implemented and active? Does it/will it work on the planetary level or at the System level. because Ive cleaned out a few planets with no respawning of resources as yet. Are the resources fixed as per my suggestion or are they random?

If its not yet implemented, weve had a fair amount of focus on combat in the last several updates, how about something for those of us economically focused players?
26  Feedback Terminal / Suggestions / Re: Resource Restocking/Respawning on: November 16, 2012, 08:10:04 AM
Well, when i say desert i dont mean that there are no resources left in the systems. Heck there are even plenty of resources left at sol.

But it is the value of the resources left... Its not much fun waiting 5 days for a basic MIF to mine 100m of Iron for the PHAT profit it brings at SOL...

27  Feedback Terminal / Suggestions / Re: Resource Restocking/Respawning on: November 16, 2012, 07:46:27 AM
Yes, I agree that in reality resources are not infinate... 

However ingame SOL corp at Earth seems to have an unlimited supply of resources for sale.

Whereas this earth sized planets entire resources can be stored in my ships cargo hold.

Cadmium    56 m3    25.45 km    $22,176
Kamacite    1077 m3    31.52 km    $45,234
Leadamalgam    1649 m3    43.76 km    $100,589
Cabriite    540 m3    52.78 km    $144,180
Taenite    1288 m3    59.99 km    $100,464
Methane    177 m3    33 km    $10,620
Neon    2278 m3    62 km    $170,850

I dont actually see any real gameplay difference between saying that these resources are unlimited, or that there is millions of m3 of each available. Adding a re-fill job, also allows too add an extra facet of occasionally other resources turning up.

Preferably id like to see several hundred active players in the game... if that was the case how far out would this desert zone extend? 100Ly's? I cannot imagine any newbie being prepared to travel 100Ly's to try their hand at mining... heck a large majority seem to stumble at getting out of SOL
28  General Talk / Hi. My name is... / Re: Hi I'm JamJulLison on: November 15, 2012, 08:13:58 AM
Finish the tutorial

Dont under any circumstances sell your 'big reward' at the end of the tutorial.

Dont Waste QP during the tutorial, only spend what you have too, save them untill finished.

29  Feedback Terminal / "Bugs" and Problems / Re: Pirate Hunting Pay on: November 15, 2012, 07:44:33 AM
One Interesting alternative or perhapes in addition to using 'generated' pirate ships.

You could actually use some of the player ship configurations as templates

For instance, half the time you get a 'generated ship' as they currently are.  and the rest of the time instead of generating a standard ship the script selects a random player ship within the appropriate power level and duplicates it for the pirate hijacker ship.

This would certainly provide at least a little more interest / surprise at the higher power levels... It also means that players cannot simply create a 'standard' pirate hunting build that they know works against the generated ships.

(You could also advertise this as player generated content ;) )
30  Feedback Terminal / Suggestions / Gold Rushes on: November 15, 2012, 07:30:51 AM
I have an aditionl Suggesting that is related to both my Additional Missions Suggestions and the Resource spawning suggestion.

I think it would be really fun/interesting if occasionally SOL Corp announced that a survey team has reported finding a good amount of one of the rare/valuable resources in a specific Asteroid belt. Or that a bubble of rare gas has risen to the surface of a gas giant.

This should be restricted to the large (100+ slot) Asteroid belts, and Gas Giants. It would create a sort of a gold rush effect. with all the good old fasioned intrigues that go with that. Some players/corps may try to hog it all others may go for a highspeed removal effort. Pirates would be in the mix trying to steal peoples stuff... restricting it to the largest asteroid belts & gas giants would allow more people to participate, im sure some may try and 'pre-reserve' or 'block' whole belts in advance.

To stop single players from completely blocking a whole large gas giant or asteroid belt, I propose that space stations deployed at those locations only be able to defend say 20% of the surface area. and that maximal 20% of the deployed modules be able to defend together against a single attacker. an attack against a player with more than 20% surface coverage and only one station in orbit would automatically go against the undefended modules. or it could be simplified to simply 20 modules and applied to all planets/moons/belts. If you have more than 20 modules deployed anywhere then the first attack will be against the un-defended modules. 20 is a nice number that allows large eaths to be blocked/defended but not the larger gas giants and belts, without using additional bases, a ship in system should allways be able to defend against an attack on any deployed modules since its mobile.
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