Ok, what if I suggested this:

Make the game free-to-play, put a stop to QP and instead players are only "encouraged" to donate. Instead of getting QP, all that Donors will get is a special color to their name. Yeah, I know, no more QP, means no more VIP status, no more Officers, but what if you got VIP and Officers for solars instead (at a much cheaper rate than buying QP with solars and then buying VIP/Officers)

These are the kind of games that have been the most popular (and most successful) from what I've seen so far. For example, Star Wars Combine has been in existence since the 1990s and there was nothing you could buy using real money. You only had this optional donation to the game. In some way, you do get a benefit in the sense that your donation will keep the game alive for another week, but it's a shared benefit. People who didn't pay still get to enjoy the game. Yet, people STILL donate to the game, because they like the game and most of the dedicated players there are already working men, what would thirty euros do to their wallet anyway?

Although SWC did not offer any special name-coloring benefit, I think it would be good in Astro Galaxy because if a player is really dedicated, he/she will want his/her name have a special color because it's a chance to show off, and also easier to make friends and stuff.

I know, SirEmi, you will be taking a giant risk, but if it works as planned, it will be a giant step forward for this game to boom.

Removal of Pay2Win microtransactions? I consider experience potions Pay2Win, btw. Another good example is buying access to content which in turn grants you access to better loot tables. If microtransactions are ONLY aesthetic it may not be Pay2Win, BUT if it's a highly social game then it might actually be Pay2Win. Look at Second Life. The best looking avatars usually spent a lot of money on models and clothes. It's a form of Pay2Win. They're showing off their assets.

The only places I've ever seen less Pay2Win are subscription-based MMO's or small amateur MMO's. Small amateur MMO's are not the same thing as the big commercial ones. It's like comparing a high school play to a 100 million dollar movie. Yet even subscription-based MMO's often benefit 24/7 lowlifes more than hard working people who play less. In this way, Pay2Win becomes Play(24/7)2Win. Not quite the same thing as what's popularly claimed.

Perhaps the best play2win MMO I've played was a browser game. It didn't require a subscription or any money. BUT you could only play about 30 minutes (at most) per day. It required 24 hours for the game to process what you did. The game felt very different from most other games because it wasn't benefiting big spenders or 24/7 mmo addicts.

Agreed. Saves me having to send a message to every Sol captain before I attack their ships. 

You mean their modules right?

Because that's how I see this being useful. If you want to clear a planet.

NOTE: I think some people have said this doesn't work well in Firefox 42. I don't know if this is true. I use firefox 41.

Anyone else use a lower resolution and have to scroll a lot? If you use Mozilla, install this:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/grab-and-drag/

You can change the settings if you don't like the default. This is what I'm doing:
1) Click on preferences and go to the "General" tab
2) Make sure it's the middle or right mouse button to click and drag
3) Make sure "Disable grabbing on links" isn't checked
4) Make sure "TextToggle Enabled" isn't checked
5) Click on the "More Options" tab
6) Increase the drag multipler to 2 (many raise this even higher)
7) Change Mouse cursor to default cursor instead of open hand
8) Click on the "Momentum" tab
9) Move all of the sliders to about 10% to 15%
10) Click on Ok and you're finished

This will enable you to click&hold on the web page and scroll. It's tremendously useful almost anywhere with or w/o a mouse. Lots of pages are big vertically and this makes navigating easier. Here, on the star map for example, you just click&hold to scroll. You don't need to use the scroll bars in the browser. You can still click on any links or buttons.

This also enables you to scroll images the same way. I use it for very large images. I'm surprised so many programs I use, while they might have clicking and dragging for scrolling, they usually don't have any momentum feature, making it nearly useless.

With the mouse wheel occasionally being used this makes scrolling a breeze.

[really]

Nice that AG development are looking in to mining.
There is some things that AG development also has to address, before mining get really good business.
I'll getting 60% of my income from mining to day..

3. Player who chose to be pirates, have it way to easy..
    Then AP was introduce it gave pirates the possibility, to use AP to speed up the attack and speed the jump to safe zone..
    You have no way of attack them in deep space or safe zone and you have no way to trace them..
    I think QP should be use to speed up attack, this should balance the price of speed up vs loot profit..
    (One of SPQNR station was attack 9 times in 7 mins using AP, before it blew up...)

agreed that with the current system AP actually makes it easier to be a pirate, but IMO QP too speed up PVP combat is too drastic a solution it changes speeding up a PVP battle from $50K solars per hour to $1M solars per hour. Here are two ideas to make it harder to be a pirate while still keeping PVP combat from becoming prohibitively expensive. If I can come up with two possibilities, I am sure that there are more.

• Separate planetary modules. A battle in orbit is only against ships and stations in orbit. That can continue to be sped up by AP. If you want to loot or capture planetary modules, that is a separate battle and can't be sped up by AP, but might be sped up by QP.
• Pick some value between the two for PVP combat. Examples: An AP speed up PVP combat by 15 minutes instead of an hour or a QP speeds up combat by 4-5 hours

Agree with this. I lost a station to someone likely using AP to get it done and quickly vanish. What can I do?

I don't feel terrible about it though. PvP is fine with me. And also the said player who attacked me takes on a risk if they do any COM, since those can't be sped up. If I by chance am able to track down one of their COM ships, I'll take it out. So there is that.... Maybe if it was easier to track them down? Not necessarily easy, but more possible.

Why can't wormhole detectors identify the owner of the ship, for example?

Maybe some kind of police and war system. Under the police system anybody who abstains from unlawfully attacking others receives a higher capacity to track down anyone who attacks them. If you're engaged in war, the current rules operate. Just an idea. There're probably milllions of ways to give us tools to track down enemies or criminals.

_____________________________

And btw how will these bonuses change how we mine? I mine a lot. That's why I have stations vulnerable to attack. This change would encourage me to really not like barren planets, as they already are tough to like because they have very few slots and they're very numerous, so long/tedious to find even in a fast ship.

I think the idea behind this is to reinforce the terraforming thing right? It should be easier to mine on a planet with an atmosphere? Thing is, that might not necessarily be true. First of all, entering a planet with an atmosphere and leaving requires more energy because the ship has to travel through a fluid medium. This implies just getting the machinery into place requires more effort. And if a atmosphere is cold enough and dense enough, machinery might actually freeze up faster than in a vacuum through conduction, requiring more heating. A vacuum does present heating and installation problems of its own, but other than that, there's less risk of foreign dust/particles getting embedded in the machinery because no wind. Low gravity might help too somehow. And also Ice can be really thick on planets. How is it easier to drill through miles of ice before hitting bedrock?

Think my suggestion is move Barren up to 150% and Ice to 100%.

EDIT: Additionally, machinery almost certainly corrodes more in an atmosphere.

On looter missions with a $2.1 M reward and upwards, it's crystaline armour only. And better still: no MAUs on the station either, for a zero power opponent in the destroy phase.

I was hoping to be able to control it so I get osmium resources instead, like going to the third ring or something. That would cut down on potential repairs or losses in rare circumstances. I only use armor as a distant backup, not a replacement for shields. Keep in mind at the moment I've trained only titanium armor to any extent beyond hte necessary. But once I saw resources for osmium armor were being yielded in COM's, I wondered if I could start making osmium armor for my main COM ship, since I almost never am going to need to repair it anyway and also the more expensive armor doesn't require as much research. Another added bonus is using the  resources to upgrade armor reduces the load on my cargo space--more convenient.

I also like to catch the marines from the missions to build up my MAU's without having to use the salvage ship or travelling to Earth. So are you saying I won't be able to capture as many marines in higher power missions? Also I upgrade my MAU's on my COM ship since MAU resources are yielded from the station when it blows up. I won't be able to do that either?

EDIT: What I mean to say is I guess I'll just wait until I get crystalline and then start making armor when I'm doing COM's. Because it wouldn't make sense to train Osmium and then later have to train Crystalline too. If Osmium sometimes dropped in higher power missions or I could tweak to get more, it'd be more feasible to train Osmium now.

Be better if I could untrain research then I wouldn't be afraid of the points I spend.

Anyone know if combat missions start to yield crystalline armor resources? Right now my combat missions are giving Osmium armor resources. If it does, at what power rating does it start to switch? And does it ever vary? Can you control it?

Hey Fenix what you describe there reminds me somewhat of Master of Orion 2. But that's an entirely different game. Its combat wasn't always tactical, as oftentimes you were faced with an opponent far superior or weaker. But sometimes it WAS tactical. The combat system we have is not like that. But it definitely needs to be more tactical than it's to be interesting. Most combat, as it's, is just a linear numbers game where you gauge the weapon power and shield/armor power of your enemy and counter it with your own by powering down or powering up. That's about all there is. It's mainly a spreadsheet sim. The combat in this game reflects the rest of the game, being that it's a spreadsheet farming sim.

I agree this game's PvP is meh. I basically play it single player and take a hit from PvP once in a blue moon. The problem is players can be so immensely powerful. This creates a problem when they defeat opponents who present NO threat. How do you protect the inferior player from the far superior player? This is by far the most important thing in PvP MMO open world. Usually there're safe zones (with no PvP) and mechanics which discourage griefing in the PvP zones. Other things too I'm sure. Bottom line, few people enjoy to be zerged by a superior force or killed when they're weak or focused on something else.

More and more I find myself not liking the immense differences between high level players and low level players in different MMO's I've played. But neither do I like FPS skirmish matches. There's just no immersion in FPS games. While htey can be tactical and stimulating, they have no permanence. You pop in and out and there's no sense of world or place or character. It's just action. Like sex without the buildup. A heroic warrior without a soul. An environment without substance.

I play in Wurm Online for example, on Chaos. it's open world PvP without any restrictions on who can attack who. This means a high skill player can kill a new player out the door. It's not that which bothers me so much. What bothers me is how much more capable high skill players (or players who spend lots of $$$$) are than inferior players. Sometimes I think the big gap between the low end and the high end just causes problems. It'd be better to shrink its absolute difference while maintaining everything else. For example, skills would increase just as slowly. The main difference is spending lots of $$$ or playing 24/7 will only gain you a small advantage in hard stats. This would encourage new players to work with the veterans. It'd put priority on knowledge, not stats. Stats would still be there for progression, but they'd be less tangibly important. Taken to hte extreme, they'd be little more htan "/played". They'd ONLY exist to show you how long you've played and what skills you've focused on. Other players could view these stats and so get a feel for what you know and what you don't. They'd act like a class designation.

But ultimately even doing that won't remove the fact players who play the longest and hardest will have a bigger bunker and potentially be that much more difficult to defeat. In the end, the game has to somehow figure out how to limit that. One way is to have periodic server resets, while preserving some bank space or something. Or restricting how much a player can build and how many players can build together. This would be a hard (or soft) cap on the size of their bunker.

But too many server resets or too many restrictions and it's full circle and back to being an FPS game. The world needs some permanence. Players need some freedom to buildup their bunker. You want something inbetween.

What of players who just know more about the game, so play better and obliterate inexperienced players? This is similar to the problem posed by the big bunker or the big stats. You can't erase what a person knows. They know all the tactics and this allows htem to defeat an inexperienced opponent rapidly. YOu should strive to keep the standards of excellence high enough so experienced players are still rewarded. This might mean keeping an active watch on things. Whenever a new tactic surfaces, you have to account for it. You want yoru game to be challenging, but not so much the 1% rule. Maybe you could tier the server so more experienced players end up mostly playing with other experienced players.

Of course if your game is single player or has lots of safe zones, these concerns have less import. Also many MMO's use instanced PvP which is largely stat driven and with heavy restrictions on who can attack who.

As long as it's not a dumbed down system. This one is already dumb, since there's no real supply/demand going on.

Did no one mention you can sell modules using the Salvage Ship function? This means you can sell resources anywhere by manufacturing modules. Of course, you take a huge hit to the selling price. In the 3rd ring, it's 1/5 of selling resources at earth. But of course you can't buy any minerals or gases from the salvage ship. It's really just a emergency tool. One time I accidentally lost my FTL. I think I ejected or something. So I used hte salvage ship.

If other "SOL Alliance" exchange stations and/or others were created I think it'd be better if they all had different sell/buy prices to mimic supply/demand. That way when you make a decision where to go it's not just whichever is the closest. Generally, the further from SOL a place is the more exposed to the wilderness it'll be. But there could be some fortified military/industrial outposts which combat this. I just would hope some thought was put into it so discernment is rewarded.

I wonder how well player-run stations would work? I'm worried about the power of the biggest players though. There's potentially a lot of mudflation. The power of the biggest players is so immense versus new players. This game is riding a very thin line, especially with open PvP. Many MMO's have been killed by rampant griefing in open PvP.

I agree we should know the player who visited. Why not? If there isn't a good reason...

If you're going to have a cloaking device then give us a cloaking detector or breaker. It's all in the way the system works whether it makes sense or not. I don't support a system wherein EVERY player is using it or only players who're rich. I'm much more in favor of something tactical in nature which is constrained. A player won't just cloak or try to detect everywhere.

Thumbs up. We need to be able to know about activity status. This makes sense within the game. Just imagine modules are decaying because the player isn't administrating. The operational crew are going insane without leadership.  

Because stars are going supernova now, this idea might not be as useful? However, if a inactive player parks a ship with infusers then it's conceivable the star will remain for some time. Just not as useful as before supernovas occurred.

Antilak: Naturally, you play the game as you see fit. I was just sharing my experience with you. Since you share the information, of my 42 ships, 41 are COM ships and one a very very fast scout-carrier ( a few seconds between stars, hangar capacity: most of my ships). 2 of my COM ships are doing guard duty, one at my mining operation (extraction power: 2500 m3/hr of each type) and the other protecting my stations. Since my COM missions last between 2-4 week, it is not a problem to manage.

As my science/modules advance and I learn the game, I might eventually adopt some of what you do.

Want to add it seems increasing MK of FTL decreases the interplanetary gap introduced by hull class. For example, if both ships are FTL 5 but are widely different hull class the difference might be big. However, if the FTL is 50 then it's small.

This means, in my case, it offers no benefit unless I use the scout optimization. There's virtually no reason, insofar as interplanetary or interstellar travel is concerned, to select a small hull class without the scout optimization over a larger hull class without the scout optimization, unless you're using it for combat. You want a big ship.

So these're teh classes of ships I can think of:
1) Scout (shuttle and frigates)
2) Combat (anything between heavy frigate and battleships)
3) Motherships -- leviathan hull class -- the main transporter
4) Science/Manufacturing -- max hull class, manufacturing optimization, modules dedicated to science, orbiting Earth

What I was trying to do was create a hybrid scout/transporter. That's when I noticed this.

[maybe you should convert your science ships to COM ships by spreading your science labs to all of your ships. This way you would make more COM missions at the same time, then more solars. Think about it.]

Antilak: maybe you should convert your science ships to COM ships by spreading your science labs to all of your ships. This way you would make more COM missions at the same time, then more solars. Think about it.

As for cargo I do not use ADV cargo, I have MK MM cargo. It is longer to build, cost more tech for the same capacity but cost less than half to build always for the same capacity.

Absolutely not, at least at this time. First of all, my COM ship needs lots of module space. If I converted all of them to COM ships, that means much less science produced. Second, it requires more time for me to manage my COM ship. While you might be right that having a dozen COM ships would ultimately make more money and even potentially more science as a consequence of more solars, it's just too demanding. I have 1 COM, 7 science, 1 transport and 2 scouts and it's already too demanding on my time. And lastly, having my science ships at Earth, as they're right now, makes it easy if I need to produce a module at random, since they can immediately purchase from the exchange station. And of course they can't be attacked at Earth.

Keep in mind I like to mine. It does take up time. I know it's inferior to COM or SOS missions, but it's just something I like to do. So given this is hte case, I just don't got the time for more COM ships.

However, I might decide to start using a few of my science ships to collect from my COM ship and possibly collect from stations. Right now, for example, I'm using my scouts to collect, but starting to think it'd be better just to convert them to science ships because it's not optimal right now. Also if one of my stations is in a system with a star too close to critical, I could use the science ship with the infusers to delay it. Since they're so large and have so much cargo, they don't need to travel back/forth from SOL like my scouts. I'm not exactly sure how I'll handle this, but I need to change what I'm doing.

I agree with you that RE should be the only tech needed, unfortunately ......

BTW you get more income from loot if you don't manufacture modules.
11 Cabriite     19 Mercury   36 Tanenite sells at earth for $7,037
Take those mats and manufacture an ACB-1 and it sells for $5,250

I have multiple COM ships. (11) I do all my COM's in one sector (-2,4) I have one freighter/science/manufacuring ship dedicated to working COM's. When one a ship finishes a looter COM it drops by the freigher and offloads loot. Whenever the freighter fills with loot, it makes a trip to earth, unloads the loot, buys mats to make more shields and MAU's then heads back to sector -2,4. Most of my COM ships haven't seen sol in months.

Just a couple of COM hints.
1) always loot the station first. You get more loot and the two combat timers are faster than one destroy timer.
2) If the "reward" for a looter COM is $2 million or more, the station has no marines. You can attack it with just one attack point and still win a second destroy attack, the combat timer is less than a minute.

finally, the fastest way to grow is to join another corporation. Any of the major corporations will give you a number of experienced players that can give you advice. In addition, most corporations give help to newer players. SPQNR is the only corp that is oranized as a democracy and is IMO superier to the others, but feel free to check them all out.

Hmm thanks. I didn't realize or I forgot the sell price of a module is less than the sell price of its resources. It's still possible it's better to make modules, given I MIGHT save time or hassle by producing modules. But your point is a solid one. I could use one of my science ships to follow my COM ship, since they all got cargo room.

If I had chosen to research Advanced Cargo instead of the standard, I could have used these resources for reducing the cost of upgrading my cargo modules. Not sure of its usefulness, but it would have been another option for me.

I didn't about loot + capture being faster than capture. Again thanks.