I have found that for me it made sense to make all my science ships (I have 10) multi-function ships. They are all factory optimized titans with good sized engines, so they double as manufacturing ships and as mining tenders, freighters, and SOS ships.

By the way, I would be surprised if anyone in the top 20 spots had less than 1 million RP's per hour. They would need 10,000 SLB's 1's, but with SLB-C (100) they only need 389 for 1M rp/h. It contines with even higher SLB's. You only need 70 SLB-D or 40 SLB-M for 1M rp/hr.

Roughly 1/3 my income goes to upgrading my SLB's. currently I have some SLB-D's, (500) some SLB-M's (1,000) and some that are in the process of upgrading from D to M. It took me more than a year to reach 1M rp/hr.

I've been at 400k for some time now. I jumped up from 40k and reached 400k quick, but I find now that I don't need the extra research, since the costs for building modules is so high--except cargo (I use standard).

I think what I"m saying is I feel like my solars income is a bigger limitation.

EDIT: I probably could train my Cargo a lot more. It's not costly. Maybe it's time to do that.

[What do corporations really DO?]

I've been in the game since July 2014. In this time, I've played exclusively solo. My power is still very low--by comparison to old players--at almost 10 million. I've sometimes thought about corporations, wondering what they're all about. I'm led to believe corporations are essentially guilds. Playing alone, I sometimes wish I was in a more cooperative effort. But how much "cooperative effort" goes on in corporations? In other MMO's, I typically joined guilds to:
a) Protection from PvP--if the MMO had PvP
b) To be part of a "name" or idea--a roleplay guild or a guild with a cool name
c) More easily organize and communicate with people I regularly group with
d) Do occasional raids or guild efforts
e) To ask for information or help instead of having to spam global chats

Just now I was thinking What do corporations really DO? This is why I posted. Tell me!

Dam forgot my other ship was in orbit when I attacked and lost some of its cargo and also lost the mission as a result. Stupid. I hate this mmo. It's not challenging, but dumb mistakes make it harder than it really is. It's like forgetting your keys in your car and lose the whole car as a result.

I don't know why having the other ship there made me lose. My main ship had more than enough power to win. The protected force was the station but it never got to it. Nothing else escaped.  The pirate ship which attacked my other ship was part of the third wave. That should have been the pirate station, I think.

So anyway can someone explain why I lost even though my main ship shouldn't have had any trouble?

It was a standard loot&raid in a nest pirate mission. I've done probably close to a hundred or more with this ship.

Also why does a ship which gets attacked lose its jump target in the Navigation screen? There were still crew in the WHG. I'm referring to the ship which I mistakenly left in orbit when I attacked. I was not planning on leaving it there.

or send your science ships into deep space where only you can find them...

Is that response to me?

I find just leaving them at Earth is easier. I can only manage a couple ships before my tolerance is broken. I've had this conversation before with someone else. Dependent on research, money, knowledge, tolerance and so on, we play differently. I told that poster maybe someday I'll play like them, but this is the way I play it now.

Is SOL the only place ships can be built? Are there other systems that have bases that can build ships? Are there modules and stations that can build ships? I am finding it very difficult to get too far from Sol, mostly because my bases and mining facilities keep getting destroyed. I'm trying to find away to set up a new HQ far away--but I really can't, since I have to come back to Sol to make ships and stations.

Make SOL your base. Put some science-dedicated ships in orbit--also for manufacturing.

There's no real need for a base, unless you're mining a prospector mission. Is that what you're doing?

Supernovas did make mining harder. I've adapted by using a ship to defend the station/planet. This way if I forget to evacuate, the supernova will only destroy what's on the planet and what's in cargo and the cargo modules. What's on hte ship is protected, including all of the combat modules. And another reason to do it is ships receive a large power bonus, I think. I've also put some Solar Infusers on it to (hopefully) slow the aging of the star (and get some fuel cells too).

The whole "everything on a station or planet is destroyed in the event of supernova or attack by other players" needs to be looked at and considered in context to ships. Ships cannot be destroyed. I don't feel encouraged to build up defenses on stations/planets. For that, either the bonus needs to be much higher, or the modules need to be partially protected.

EDIT: So what you're doing is putting some random miners on planets outside the inner rings and putting stations in orbit and supernovas are destroying them? My advise is to do prospector missions and focus on just one base at a time. For that you need to make a ship suited for SOS missions. Otherwise, if you're putting science labs on planets, don't. Put them on ships and put those ships in Earth orbit. They'll remain protected indefinitely. With the amount of module space on a titan and by researching science labs, you'll find you'll never have enough money to maximize research.

Here's another idea... Make a COM ship and when you're doing it, deploy miners. When the COM is over, collect the miners.

Active scans are very useful in war time (to beat an enemy you need to know the strength of the enemy). In peace time, it gives you an idea if you are falling behind in tech levels or not.

It is fun to know that I can encourage captains

I assume ship power is not a good enough gauge then?

Yep, a poorly designed 100m ship can be defeated by a 10k ship.

Like if they have no armor or shields but lots of marines and crew? As attacker, you load up all your lasers/railgun/etc, since they attack before marines do. If HP of marines/crew acts like armor then you'll have to overcome that though.

Can you give another example?

I like things like that, where tactics can defeat, even if they have lots of power. The trouble is I'm having a hard time understanding how/why anyone would have a ship with no armor or shields. Most of the time power DOES matter. There might be some obscure tactics I haven't used yet, mostly tied to the optimizations, dodging and hangars.

As far as I know, no-one is really 'studying' nukes.
My own research shows this:

Remember that two MK I modules produce more than one MK II .
Therefore, maybe 4 or 5 MK?? (adding up to the same level protection) modules may be better than one single module.

Modular placement on ships is important regarding what you want your ship to do. No ship can 'DO IT ALL'.

It becomes a matter of 'what do I have to give up in order for me to get this'. It's called ship design.

But how is hte effect cumulative and is it capped?

For example, if I have two 40% defense modules and they always cut damage by 40% and they're computed separately then 100 damage is cut to 40 and to 16, consecutively. A single 80% module would cut damage to 20, meaning it's less effective. But if the two 40% modules are instead computed as (0.4 + 0.4) then they're equal to an 80% module. Computing all defebse modules, this results in a factor, maybe 2x or 5x or 15x. This would mean 100% defense is not actually 100%, as we see it on our screens. A "100%" defense module is actually 1x and this could be 1% cut to the actual damage, or anything.

Then of them people are people like myself that only log in like once a day and barely do anything.  I used to be really active.  But things in the game became so stale.  Many have begun to get bored and quit.  It is a common problem with this game.  We have had new updates recently but it isn't enough to keep some of us active.  Then add in the reduced pay of COMs with added difficulty even those aren't as worth keeping active to do.   The only thing that keeps my logging in at all is my corp.  

Hmm I find the thing which keeps me logging in is maintaining manufacturing lists and my stations and so on. In many ways this is true in other MMO's. I also play Wurm Online and maintaining property can be a big reason why someone logs in.

I'm still in SOL corp.

I used to play Everquest several years ago and the main reason I logged in were my guild mates. I'd stay away for several months and would always then go to eqplayers.com and look if they were playing. Then I'd come back to meet them again. When I was playing actively the treadmill got me, of course. Like many, I get addicted to climbing the ladder. Yet when I think of Everquest it's not the levels I got or hte gear I got which stands out, it's the people I met! Sure it felt great to complete epics. I loved getting that bow off Meldrath the Malignant. My 1.5 felt good. But even those things were centered around lots of other players and my memories are filled with interactions I had with them. The guilds are hard to forget.

Here's that bow:
http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=73506

That was on very solid guild of players. Most of them military veterans. I got burnt out on their schedule. But let me say, they left quite the impression on me. Of course, nothing can beat the guild which came with me to that server. Love them. They couldn't beat a raid wit help, but were masters at grouping and being longtime friends and would take a punch for you.

[300]

That 750 number is the biggest lie in the game. I don't know how AG figure out who is *active* and who isn't, but I guarantee you there aren't even 300 people flying around at any given time.

My suggestion to you; go to the friends list tab and search SOL in the box. You'll see all of the average joes of the game and you can notice how quickly the power ratings drop to rookie ranks. There are tons of players who have been on for YEARS but who sit with one ship and 30-10k power just mining the same little moon or running colonists to planets in Sol. So you are an exceptional player IMO. You are taking the initiative and getting to know the game better than 80+% of the players out there.

I'd say there are no more than 75 unregistered forum users who ACTUALLY read the forums from time to time.

Research shows the vast majority of new players in any MMO do not remain after a few months and most leave in the first few minutes. So the fact the vast majority are leaving is nothing new. What the game has going against it is the fact it needs people to know about it and second it probably needs a vast upgrade to its look and gameplay to garner the kind of numbers you're wanting. Honestly, I probably wouldn't even be playing this game if it was popular. I'm not like that.

I've been a new player since 2014. I can say I've seen probably <25 people come in and stay for a while and then leave SOL. The rest just seem to lose interest. There're probably several times more who do that instead of sticking around.

I've also seen a lot of new players asking questions about the tutorial. It could use some work probably.

I think the biggest shot in the arm is just keeping development going. This game can always use content to help fill in the dull moments. Needs context. Much of what goes on in the game doesn't feel like hte rest of the universe is involved. No races. No cultures. The universe feels disconnected. Yet even little changes can make a big impression if they're on the mark The right button in the right place in the UI can mean the difference between frustration and smooth sailing.

I agree that there needs to be a difference between power ratings, however putting a cap on power would make the game completely different and then veteran players would have noting to play for.

What could happen is once a certain point is reached, or the higher you get, it becomes harder to increase power.

Or if you wanted to you could put in some sort of tax system.

What do you do? You have two players who want to kill s*** for loot and experience:
1) Pete is level 1 with 10 hp and his dps is 1/s and his budget is $10/month
2) Jill is level 200 with 200000 hp and her dps is 413/s and her budget is $40/month

The traditional way to handle this is to tier (and instance) content, for all level ranges and for soloers and groupers and raiders, so that Pete is playing in level 1 content and Jill is playing in level 200 content. This allows for htem to play in relative peace and not affect each other in unpleasant ways. Unpleasant example: Jill complaining Pete doesn't know how to play and makes things less fun. Another: Pete complaining Jill kills everything and doesn't leave anything for him to kill.

There're other things too. Pete might complain Jill drives up prices because she spends half her time making alts. She has so much money the sellers have increased their prices to soak up her money. There're varying ways of dealing with that. And there're tons of other things which come up too with differing ways to resolve it. Much of it is LIKE tiering.

But as MMO's get older, there're more and more levels and more and more pieces of land and more and more systems. It's power creep. It's friends wanting to play with friends, but being different levels. It's changing popularity of the MMO. Etc.

The community starts to fracture. Not because of tiering, but because of the absolute power difference between the strongest and the weakest. The MMO is trying to keep this at a constant amount via mudflation and other tricks, but the patchwork fixes eventually fail and it falls apart under its own weight. Making a new MMO becomes more cost effective.

Wiping and/or resetting and/or (usually soft?) caps on power might be an alternative, maybe. Some sandbox/pvp MMO's are experimting with limited wiping. Crowfall, a new MMO with distant relations to Shadowbane, will use a kind of wipin. Every X months the map players build on and pvp in will be wiped. BUT players keep their characters and bank. They also have land they can build on which WON'T wipe and only has consented pvp. All of this is still an experiment, but...

Fundamentally this is an age old problem of the circle jerking wealthy class, fully bunkered in, living in luxurious gold marble palaces, giving the boot to the poor and young--ruling the high places and dictating with an iron fist. New players feel beaten down and only the most persevering--usually a minority--will climb up the ladder and someday become veterans themselves. In most MMO's this is also known as mudflation, wherein mudflation is the cure to this gap between the powerful and the weak. It's a bridge between the lowly and the superiors. It stops this gap from growing. In RL, one of the forms "mudflation" takes is death. The ruling elite die, thus making room for those climbing the ladder. It's a ruthless mechanic, not often used in MMO's.

One of the things I favor is just decreasing the absolute difference between veterans and new players. The way you do this is to make the game simpler, so it's quicker to learn and be a master. You also only allow players to have X maximum power, thus putting a cap on them. Another way is to ensure players are accurately put into competitive leagues which represent their capacity as a player, thus ensuring fairness will be the rule, not the exception. In FPS games, for example, players typically start on a new player server and join Clans and those clans compete with other clans within their league. The highest leagues are the best players, but players and clans have to work their way up and prove they can play at that level.

So in the case of Astro Galaxy, what we have is the oldest players can decide who has a station and who doesn't and who can freely plant modules on planets and who can't. This is because the oldest players are so immensely powerful compared to new players. New players are ants, sometimes crushed beneath their boots. New players might be able to negotiate deals on a diplomatic level, but they do not have the raw power (the teeth) to prevent abuse.

Without the developers intervening and trying to enforce fairness, the players would have to. In RL, government and a justice system and a culture exist to enforce fairness (and human rights), although it's arguable how effective it's. In Astro Galaxy, there really isn't anything of the sort. We're gamers, anyway, not politicians or policeman or human rights activists. Fairness is a difficult word, often involving lots of methodical labor and patience. We're just unlikely to enforce fairness. (And in many ways we can't. Wormhole Detectors, for example, don't identify a player directly, just teh class of the ship.)

There's a maximum decay the star can have / day, (-50). From the calculations, about 16 mark I hydrogen infusers should keep a star running indefinitely...

Is there also a "minimum" decay? I've had 5 infusers on a binary since day 3 and increased it to 10 on day 4 and the decay has been a CONSTANT -0.6...

Has this been answered?

[but if the star went critical before the mission be located or activated the problem is on the player's part of not going for the mission the earliest possible time.]

i would be glad if COM or SOS mining pick-ups would only point towards stars/planets that are stable.
It will eliminate the worries and trouble on searching for the deposits that might appear on stars at unstable/critical status.

but if the star went critical before the mission be located or activated the problem is on the player's part of not going for the mission the earliest possible time.

also if the star went boom! there should be an auto deletion of the COM/SOS mission stored in our cargo if so also a log data or message that our mission has been lost. these saves the trouble of trashing the COM/SOS data from our cargo bays.

If this changes is not possible then why not picked-up mining expeditions be picked up on the same quadrant where they point at to be located.
,does this sound too easy for the players? no?

I agree. I bolded the part which is more subtle but still important. I keep large stockpiles of prospector missions. Why? Because even smaller ones might be worth it if they're all concentrated in one area. And I often can only do X sites.

Can we please have a change that new missions give the miner a realistic time from pick up to blow up...

Basically new missions should lead to newborn systems, or systems with at least some minimum level of stability.. (-100? or better!)

Is not a bad suggestion. Supernovas still keep a limit on how long we can keep prospector missions without doing them. I've been keeping large stockpiles of them because I just can't go to them them all. I try to do ones which're close together.

Prospector mission with ID 744957. Mission is in Q -1,-2. I have checked the systems in this quadrant twice, but can't find the deposit! There are only 5 stars there, so I can't miss the planet. The ship with the mission is in the Q -4,-2 now, but when I click "Talk" I get this responce:

We are in Quadrant -1,-2 now... We should investigate the stars here and look for a planet or moon with the Ice environment.

Please let me know when we are in orbit of a planet or moon, and we will check out the surface.

I have this same problem. I checked a system twice, spending AP. I think it's invalid.

What's going on?