5/7/2017 Topic: Changes badmaw	I have like a half of a billion cash and the company is worth like 1 billion. I think I need to make enough to support the military. I don't know how much is this but now, as I understand more and more of this game, it probably doesn't matter. Because alone I will never have enough military power to protect myself. So I'll make some alliances and get used to idea that I'll never be completely safe. My problem was that I had the wrong premises. Of course things had no sense. Now that I understand the premises of the game, I start to understand why some things are this way. I won't necessary like the game more but at least now I don't want to "improve" it anymore. Which is a big win for you, I guess I was very annoying.
5/7/2017 Topic: Changes badmaw	Thank you for the offer, I appreciate it. I can send a message, but I guess these posts will help people understand the game and play better. Right now I'm making like 500k, but after I redo the routes it's over 1M which will drop to 500k and so on. I went into negatives when I didn't update the routes for 2-3 days. My goal is to pay my defense. This means the front sum that is not worrying me because when I have the money I buy and when I don't I don't. But there's the upkeep so I can't buy too much force. And maybe even a fast and strong mobile unit to chase the Raiders and others like them. So I don't know how much this needs, plus I don't know how often I have to rebuild as the attacks are not regular.
5/7/2017 Topic: Changes badmaw	Expenses: Prod: -363,350 Military: -499,950 Storage: -231,243 I will optimize the storage to spend less on it, this is not a problem. Production and military probably I could spend less as I optimize the production and choose more efficient units. These numbers are not problems. The problem is that I surely wont earn much more whatever I do but is sure as hell that I can spend much much more. That is a new thing for me in a game, to spend less instead of earning more. I don't know if it's a good thing to learn. In real life it surely is, but I come here to do what I cannot do in my real life, not to have a sadder life.
5/7/2017 Topic: Changes badmaw	"You have to limit the size of the players otherwise a single player can take over the entire game and the game is over in 3 months." I don't think this is the reason. You can put 100x more logistic points and I guarantee that nobody can take over the world. Even 2x logistic points will make the penalties go. I was in the yellow almost all the time and it didn't stopped me to carry on. Now I am in the red with 102% for military and still doesn't mean anything for numbers. It has just an anxiety effect, you see that and you think you do something wrong. So, for a player to not dominate the game: implement taxes. Your company is worth under $1M: zero taxes. Under $1B: 1k/tick. Under $1T: 1M/tick. Over $1T: half your worth every tick. Fund Terran Federation with taxes. That is an elegant solution to that problem. But I don't think the problem you want to solve is that.
5/7/2017 Topic: Changes badmaw	You are perfectly right. My situation is a mess now but because I thought I played another game, not because I can't manage. After release you'll see I'm good. Ok, so let's work with your numbers. Or better, let's say that the best player earns $10M/tick. That means 4 Monoliths and some ships. With 4 Shipyards you make the monoliths in two weeks. Then you have a fight of one hour and start over. Well, I get it that you like it that way, I really do. But what I don't understand is why do you call this game "a loosely cooperative strategy game of commerce, industry, politics and warfare" when actually is a wait game. You do like 100x much more wait than any other activity here. It's like a glass of wine: if you put two cubes of ice to cool it it's still wine, it's not water just because you'll find traces of water in it. And nobody will come to complain that there's too much waiting in a game of wait. Labels matter.
5/7/2017 Topic: Changes badmaw	Hey, we have apostrophes now! That is awesome!
5/8/2017 Topic: Mid-construction at upgrade? badmaw	I just realized I made the same mistake. "You are describing what could happen in a real time game and ask me how could a turn game would process that." In fact, the thing is not that it happens in real time games and this is not a real time game. The thing is the you can't process user's actions with lower than 1 tick time resolution. So in a turn game with 10 minutes round we won't have 12, 12 or 3 seconds actions because all the actions gets processed (from the user's perspective, this is important) at the 10 minutes mark. It's the same for a real time game, because in a real time game the users's actions isn't actually processed in real time but delayed until the next tick. Many ticks per second, it's true, to get the illusion of real time. So the take out from all of this is that these games process the actions at the tick mark **from the user's perspective**, we don't wait for the round to finish in order to process the round. When the frame gets rendered in real time games, the game already knows what to render. It doesn't start processing user's actions when the tick ticks, it would be too late. As you can see in this game when the "Round is being processed" message shows up.
5/8/2017 Topic: Mid-construction at upgrade? badmaw	I was referring to real time games as in games that don't take 10 minutes to change the state. For our eyes, real time means 60 frames per second for example, but even games with a tick of a second can be considered as real time because you don't wait too long of a time until the refresh. "The ships don't "move" during the time in between events (launch -> disappear - > appear at the location in set time) unlike here where they actually move across the grid each tick and can be intercepted anywhere in between the origin and destination." This warping gimmick is not particular to a game type or another, you can warp a ship in this game too when it makes sense. And warping to Mars should be making a lot of sense because if it takes 2 rounds for a ship to go from Paris to Sidney then it takes 10k rounds to go from Earth to Mars. But I was told that making sense is not a goal for Barons of the Galaxy, so we are good. However, what we were talking here is not how the player perceive the pass of time, but how the developer implements the game. "If you are referring to "real time games" as in for example ogame or similar, there are no ticks of 1 second. It's all about events happening at a set time." This is how you as a player perceive the pass of time in that game. For the developer, that game is a game like any other game including this one and process the player's actions with a resolution of probably 1 second. "The biggest downside in event based games is that there is nothing you can do in between the events. Let's say I have a fleet located at A which you want to destroy, you are bringing in your fleet from B and I notice it. I immediately send away my fleet to XYZ which is going to take 5 billion years. Even if your fleet is faster and theoretically could catch up there​ is nothing you can do apart from waiting at the arrival destination." That is not because the game is tick based, round based or event based. That is because the ship is in the warp space and you can't intercept it there (this is the story, in that world they discovered warp space). Even if the developer would have been chosen to move the ship in the normal space, it would still not make much sense for you to be able to intercept the ship because a ship in space is like a speck of dust in Nevada, how could you find it? It's not like you search for your friend in the mall, it's more like you search for your friend somewhere in the space between Earth and the Sun. It's true that this game is far away from a game like EVE Online, but I learned a few days ago that not all humans like the same things. The dev has a long history of playing board games and he wants this game to be like a board game. Think of it as being a game like Jumanji, where you throw a dice and move a peon but in your imagination a monkey steals your food. These games still exist and many people plays them, in spite of the fact that games like Left 4 dead exists too.
5/8/2017 Topic: Sorting badmaw	In the assets page > overview, we have the list of structures, then military grouped by type, then the products. This is perfect. Well, inside these groups can we have an order, more precisely the alphabetical order? Thank you for your time.
5/8/2017 Topic: Stuck turns and election terms? badmaw	The game doesn't know about "real" world.
5/8/2017 Topic: Sorting badmaw	Well, unlike you I am creating games on my own and I assure you a developer needs and wants feedback from his players and he surely can decide for himself what to do and when. Also, I don't need a sorted list, than can be done by a monkey as we find out on this thread. What I need very often is to find a certain item in that big list and click on it. Thank you for the input, Dave.
5/8/2017 Topic: Mid-construction at upgrade? badmaw	FuriousGeorge, I was just talking with another developer about things I enjoy and preoccupy me. Nobody forces him to talk to me about it or to do something, we just talk as long as both of us are interested to. You don't need to protect him, I won't hurt him, cross my hearth. Doctor Dread, I'm not expecting you to do a game like that, where this idea comes from? You did some odd things in the game (I don't talk about the balance or limits) and I wanted to help. If you are not interested or you have any problem with this please say so. I see that mammy wants to protect you but I'm not aware of any wrong doing. What I am talking about is how you can fix the "Game is doing the round" awkwardness. You don't need a budget for this, you have to refactor a few things. Of course, you need to first acknowledge the problem, then to accept help from strangers, who knows what else. I don't wanna make you uncomfortable, I just wanna help you just as many others helped me. I'm also pretty oblivious to social conventions, so if I do something wrong just tell me.
5/8/2017 Topic: Changes badmaw	I'm assuming you are not a shill or a troll si I post this, it's like a summary for Doctor Dread. It was never about the money, I said it in a lot of places. You see Vulpex asking me about the money because he too thinks that I'm worried about the money. And you see me responding him because he asked me that, not because I've got a problem with money. My problems are: 1. Logistic points. They say that logistic points are there so a player can't take over the world. I don't buy it, nobody can take over the world with 10x more logistic points and there are other, more elegant solutions for this anyway. 2. OverCrowding. This is seed for fight and source of frustration. 3. Absurdly long times for upgrading. Long times can be achieved more naturally. I don't care anymore, I won't talk about this on my own initiative, so you can hold your horses.
5/8/2017 Topic: Planet Names badmaw	This is an excellent thing to sell. It won't affect the game play and people buy all the time things for vanity. Name you planet - 20 bucks.
5/8/2017 Topic: To those I overcrowd badmaw	I'm so sorry for being the tool Doctor Dread hits you with. I know that some of my mines rise your production prices through the overcrowding shame. Feel free to message me and I'll make you a contract to buy it cheap ($32) from me. You can then to salvage your structure and use the logistic points somewhere else. Or I can compensate you with money to relocate if you prefer. Or any other way you see fit. I'm so sorry, It's not in my nature to discomfort people.
5/8/2017 Topic: To those I overcrowd badmaw	No, I'm trying to compensate for the overcrowd expenses Doctor Dread is causing. So if you have a mine where I mine too, most probably you have overcrowd penalties. If this is the case, I propose you to take the stuff cheaply from me and salvage that mine / quarry and use the logistic points from it to build something else you need.
5/8/2017 Topic: To those I overcrowd badmaw	No, you are welcome to overcrowd with me if you want. The more the merrier.
5/8/2017 Topic: Planet Names badmaw	Dude, if you want your game to get you some money this is the cleanest way to do it because the game play is not affected. " Who would pay $20 to name a planet they have no control over? " Literally the post before yours says exactly that. And you don't have to know who, you just make it possible. "I don't want to allow custom naming of planets because you know what will happen names like "Ayemwellhung" will be in there day one." You know you can reject the names you don't like, right?
5/8/2017 Topic: Planet Names badmaw	I assure you many people wants their name in a game, but also this can be just a pretext to support your work.
5/9/2017 Topic: Planet Names badmaw	Not related to original post but on topic. What I would do if I were you: 1. You need to clean up the code and user interface before adding new features. This is important. 2. Make all the things like limits, balance etc configurable. Why? You and your friends like them in a certain way and it's ok but as you can see there are other people with other preferences. You can have your cake and eat it too. 3. Make this game for you and your friends. You deserve to play it like you like it, you work for it, there's no reason not to. 4. You want to make some money. You need as many players as possible because a percentage of them will throw money at you. Deploy the same game (so you don't work twice) but with different settings (see 2.). This game is not for you. Listen to your players, make it their dream game. Treat your free players well, they are promoting your game for free. You and them need each other. They want to play a great game and you want to get paid. 5. Sell private worlds for money. For you is another game deployed, with proper tools you can have a new game in a minute. For them is a game where they can play with their friends not being bothered by free players. You can make a few tiers, like 5 players game for $5/month ($30/year) and 25 players game for $10/month ($60/year). You can make money AND everybody happy at the same time. But, and I can't stress this enough, your game should be impeccable. This is not a game ready for launch. You have a few minions which tell you that you are great and the game is wonderful, and maybe they mean well and want to protect you and your feelings, but they hurt you. The sooner you acknowledge the shortcomings of your game the sooner you can start fixing them. I wish you great success!

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