6/20/2017 Topic: Assets Page, City expansion, unit balance Hutton	I don't see all of your math, but I'm assuming you mean they are more effective if time is not a factor. And time is an important factor. Commandos aren't going to make a meaningful contribution to a battle that takes ten turns if it takes them 100 turns to take down a ship. The capital ships and bombers on either side are going to finish that battle before the commandos have made a meaningful contribution. In a situation where it is just a capital ship agaist some solitary engineers, it does kind of make sense that they would be sneaking up in shuttles and planting explosives over a long period of time and not taking much damage back because the capital ship isn't designed with that kind of attack in mind. Bombers, on the other hand, will take those capital ships down much faster but take more casualties because the capital ships were designed with bombers attacks in mind.
6/20/2017 Topic: Assets Page, City expansion, unit balance Hutton	In response to your edit above about commandos and structures. My thinking was more that I thought the ratio of damage to Ion Cannons and Shields should be greater than that to Forts and Rail Guns. A reason for a raid to precede the orbital bombardment that precedes the invasion. I understand what you did. What I meant was I don't see how long each hypothetical face off takes, but I was assuming that Commandos only inflict more damage on capital ships than Bombers if that battle goes on for a really, really long time. And time is important to the defender in a siege. The more turns it takes for a siege to grind down the defenses, the more turns a defender has to call for help and negotiate with allies to relive them. The more turns he has for reinforcement to arrive and break the siege. Commandoes may well have a hidden value that I wasn't aware of in resisting a siege. Time should be on the side of the fleet laying siege if they have it. If the defender with just ground forces doesn't have any resources or relationships that can intervene, game set and match. But the fleet should feel a certain urgency to break through if reinforcements are enroute. The excitement comes from the decision, when do you pull the trigger on the ground invasion. Too soon and they can't beat the defenses. Too late and reinforcemnts arrive. But that's just how I would like it to work. Battles between ships and ground forces don't last long enough for reinforcemnts to arrive from other planets. That's just how I want it to work.
6/24/2017 Topic: Message about a non-existant contract Hutton	"Contract 0 was accepted Your contract titled Sell Military UnitGroup for $2,000,000 was accepted by Aywanez Incorporated" I had a level 7 infantry up for sale for $2,000,000, but it's still there. Nothing else seems to be missing.
6/24/2017 Topic: Message about a non-existant contract Hutton	A turn later I got another regular message that Aywanez bought the afore mentioned infantry. So the first message was probably somehow caused when they accepted the contract. But it wasn't showing as accepted until it was completed.
6/25/2017 Topic: Europa? Hutton	I just noticed that Europa is missing from Sol. Is that an oversite, or was it left out for a reason?
6/25/2017 Topic: Europa? Hutton	67 according to the NASA website. But Europa is one of the 4 Galilean moons, so it's absence is conspicuous. Europa and Io are about the same size, about 3/4 of the size of Ganymede. The next largest is, like, a 1/25th the size of Ganymede.
6/25/2017 Topic: Raiding Hutton	Mechanized are kind of raiding specialized units already. I have previously suggested that raiding units should not damage civilian structures if there are no military defending them. If I'm going pirate, I don't actually want to blow up someone's industry because I want them to make more products to raid later. Civilian structures are naturally going to take collateral damage while militia army units are defending the area, but once the defenders are routed the raiders should just roll up the the loading dock and take what they want without anymore shooting. I also wanted to suggest that storage fees be taken away for products floating in space. (Usually on asteroid mining sites). Players will be able to potentially exploit this by parking their surplus in orbit, but that will also give pirate corps more hit and run opportunities because you cant use Military Structures or most ground units to defend them. (It might also create another service for military focused corps. Guarding a place in orbit with a fleet and charging their corps a fee to store their products there).
6/25/2017 Topic: Escort Orders, Contracts and Military fix Hutton	Sounds good. I like that commandos are effective against capital ships because I think of capital ships as space fortresses. If you were going to tweak it further I would suggest that commandos should be dialed up more against larger capital ships compared to smaller capital ships.
6/25/2017 Topic: Escort Orders, Contracts and Military fix Hutton	Fair enough. My own definition of Captial Ship is Cruiser and above. Everything else is a picket ship.
6/28/2017 Topic: Policy on deleting unpaid inactive accounts Hutton	If I happen to get wiped out I would probably take several months off. Maybe even a year. But then come back after watching Alien or Outlander or something like that. I tend to go through phases like that but keep coming back to the games that really satisfy a certain itch.
6/28/2017 Topic: Contract Title doesn't work Hutton	There is still a possible exploit with stacks of resources, though. The stack for sale doesn't seem to get set aside. The seller can add or remove from it. I've seen stacks for sale that had nothing in them. In that case I think the seller had tried to sell some resources which didn't sell, put up another contract for a stack at the same location, which I bought, which removed all the resources from the previous contract. But you can still accept the old contract and pay for the empty stack.
6/29/2017 Topic: Contract Title doesn't work Hutton	But because the amount of product changes while but the title and price of the product stays the same, there is A chance to screw someone. Probably inadvertently more often than intentionally. A buyer may or may not notice that the amount of product is not the same as the title. A seller may not realize that if they put a stack of 1000 tons of Basic Metal up for $100,000, and then produce another 1000 tons at the same spot then someone can grab all 2000 tons of that Basic Metal for $100,000.
7/1/2017 Topic: Piracy research/mode Hutton	I'm going to risk stirring up a sh*t storm here and suggest that the controversial practice of creating an second account is a stealth mechanic, and a working mechanic at that. This is why I like the policy of letting the community self regulate the multiple account issue and have pushed back against the calls for black and white rules with strict enforcement. Setting wise, it makes perfect sense to me that a game about Corporations with private armies would have those corporations setting up dummy corporations to do their dirty work. You just have to catch them doing it. My take on this might be colored by my own professional experience. I'm a Fraud Investigator for a local goverment agency. And that is exactly what corporations do. They set up LLC's that own other LLC's. You have to subpoena the bank records to figure out who ultimately owns what. And maybe it's just me, but studying the contracts to figure out the relationships between different in game corporations is my favorite part of Barons of The Galaxy.
7/1/2017 Topic: Implementing character dynasties Hutton	I hadn't seen this thread before Vulpex bumped it, but I had actually been thinking of suggesting a board of directors for purely role playing purposes. The idea there was just that you would be able to add some additional portraits with names and titles to your corporate profile, and then have the option of displaying one of them instead of your corporate logo in Comms. I haven't bothered to push that because it seemed unimportant compared to gameplay mechanics, but I hope that could be worked into the Dynasty mechanic if you ever get around to working it in. The mechanic described in the first post reminds me of Emperor of the Fading Suns, one of my favorite games in theory if it wasn't completely broken. (When I came across Barons of the Galaxy, Emperor of the Fading Suns is what it most reminded me of and that's why I jumped on the Kickstarter. There is was a ministry mechanic that I've been meaning to suggest as a feature to enhance the power of rulerships, but I'll post that elsewhere). Emperor of the Fading Suns gave each Great House five Noble units. They were powerfull in combat, but you only had five and couldn't win the game by claiming the throne if they all died out. Perma-death of your nobles wouldn't work as well in a game like Barons of the Galaxy because it's not supposed to end after a finite number of turns. I'd sugggest a mechanic where your HQ creates one every 1000 turn up to a cap, then if you lose any you have to wait for them to come back. (Remind me how much in game time is supposed to have elapsed in 1000 turns. Was it a year?) You could perhaps level them up like ships with either military or civilian skills. Or maybe they are born with those skills. (Check out the game Massive Chalice for a really deep example of a game based on breeding noble families). You specify above that you would only give a combat bonus to DEFENSE, which I assume is out caution for unit balance, but there are other potential military bonuses, like speed or upkeep. Maybe even cargo capacity. A noble could act as a unit and lend a bonus to other units that are grouped with it. Perhaps allow multiple nobles in the same group, but not allow their bonuses to be cumulative if they have the same ones. You just get the larger bonus and lose the smaller one. Or, better yet, you just get the smaller bonus to represent that two nobles with the same skills are going to be rivals and not work well together. One point that might undermine the usefulness of civilian skills is that there isn't much incentive right now to occupy multiple cities unless you are focusing on Tier 1 products or have a remote research base-unless you are going to allow multiple nobles to occupy and buff the same city. Or give them something useful to do in cities you don't occupy, like whip up votes based on the population.
7/1/2017 Topic: Can't load/unload a single category of goods Hutton	I think that is working as intended. Everything means Everything, and Everything is included on the submenues just for convenience to save a click on the category menu. That said, I would appreciate being able to give transfer orders by category too if it would be easy to implement.
7/17/2017 Topic: Ruler initiated justice against abusive players Hutton	Using a vote to force players to hand over units makes me uneasy. Giving a ruler some ability to control what goes on in their jurisdiction makes sense though. Maybe forcing the scrapping of units and structures, but first giving the affected corp sufficient warning so they can evacuate. Their should be some checks and balances between the tiers of ruler. A Starlord shouldn't be able to override the dictates of an Emperor and an Emperor shouldn't override the dictates of a Mayor. Emperors should have control over the parts of planet outside the city or in cities without rulers and Starlords should have authority over planets with no Emperors. By the way, I still think we should rename Emperors to Governors and call the system leader the Emperor.
7/19/2017 Topic: Ruler initiated justice against abusive players Hutton	Aywanez suggestion is similar to one I've been meaning to raise. In Emperor of the Fading Suns their was a mechanic that put players in charge of Ministries. The ministries were seperate entities with their own units and resources that that player could control. The ministries supposedly had responsibilities, but you could just use them for your own purpose or wreck them so no one else could use them later. If some one else was appointed to that ministry later they gained control of all the ministry units including ones that the first player had built with ministry resources. What if systems, planets and cities had a seperate military logistics pool? Rulers could build units that would count against that pool instead of their own. The size of the pool is tied to population. The catch is that when you lose an election you lose those units to the next ruler. What pool they go into has to be decided at construction. Scrapping for these units is disabled during the 200 turns that votes are being cast. An alternative would be to just give rulers some control over Terran forces. City rulers can only control what kind of guard order Terran's have because they can't leave the city. Planet Rulers have a few ground units that can't be loaded and taken off planet. And system rulers get a fleet. To clarify my feelings on nomenclature, I want: Mayor = City Ruler Governor = Planet Ruler Emperor = System Ruler Starlord = Chris Pratt
7/19/2017 Topic: Wait Until order Hutton	There is a Wait order, but yes it would be easier to use if the parameters were to wait until turn X instead of wait x number of turns.
7/20/2017 Topic: Moon Charter - Research Centers Hutton	Small Giants and Grandor may be leasing the rights from another city, but that city should be listed in the name of their center. For future reference, building or maintaining a halted research center is permitted at the discretion of the City Manager. Best to contact them directly through the Comms to avoid misunderstandings.
7/20/2017 Topic: Multi-Accounts (Alts) Hutton	I concur that running multiple accounts is not an effective power play. At least not once your HQ starts to hit the upper levels. I have dabbled in multiple accounts for political and role playing purposes and I have suffered economically for it. Just compare the net worth of the City of New York to other founders who started at level 10. Or even some that started at level 1. You spend all of your time trying to find quick fixes to prevent the corporation you have neglected from liquidating. And by the time you have that fixed you realize your other account is on the brink of collapse. Alternate accounts might give you a significant head start from level 1, but I'm not as concerned with the impact of low level players on the environment. Running a single level 10 corporation requires about as much time investment as a normal player with a job can spare. I like the current appproach of community regulation within the game mechanics. 2nd accounts should be frowned upon in-game, but I like the idea of creating shadow corporation to do our dirty work. I also like the idea of investigating contracts to discover connections and hold Corporations responsible for their skulduggery. And I'm making a deliberate distinctions between "Corporations" and "Players". I think we should just embrace alternate accounts as part of the meta-game and create in-game mechanics for penalizing corporations when they get caught. The big con of alternate accounts, the one that all the other cons are just sub-categories of, is that they create the perception in other players that they are competing on an unfair playing field. If you manage your alternate account discretely, you are not going to interfere with anyone's fun. If you use your alternate account to attack a competitor because you don't want to draw them into a fight with your main corporation, that seems very much in the spirit of a game about corporations with private armies competing over resources in space. If they catch you because you were laundering money into your alternate account to fund it's military, they should be able to hold you responsible. Either by a trial mechanism that extends reparations awards to your other account or by riling up other players to join them in crushing both of your accounts. I think of the game of untangling a web of umbrella corporations or catching the money laundering as a potentially rewarding feature of Barons of the Galaxy that outweighs the downsides of multiple accounts.

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