DrDread

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4/24/2017 Topic: Units construction Doctor Dread Administrator	Cant wait to get Orbital Structures in place. You guys will be broke in a week =)
4/24/2017 Topic: UI rework and account management Doctor Dread Administrator	Yes I can't run any internet images at all. I have a backup for Infantry and commandos but I still need the Base, Shipyard and all the defenses. I might get stock images temporarily. Iim leaning more towards announcing a launch next weekend and actually soft launching like May 5th or 6th. I really need the game totally ready to launch, then sit on it for a couple days. I don't want to announce a launch date and then get cornered on something. Once I know for sure everything is in place, I'll announce and launch a week alter.
4/24/2017 Topic: Previously: Science! Now it's about space stations Doctor Dread Administrator	Space elevators, I can't image what practical in game use we can make for those. Once you have anti gravity on spaceships, elevators aren't very viable anymore. I did have an idea of Military bases allowing ground units to make a "Moon Shot" and jump to a neighboring moon. Not sure if thats very useful either. So far the only Orbitals I can think of that would mean anything are the Orbital guns that can support any attack on the planet itself. A star base Where you can actually land units on, be considered ground?, Act as a Shipyard and also a space fort. Heals ships faster. And a warp gate that can link to another warp gate. Leveling it up probably means bigger ships can go through up to monoliths. Players who use it pay the owner,. That's one offense, defense and and commerce structure. Might make a way to take over the orbital instead of destroying it. I was really trying to think of some kind o mechanic that makes taking territory worth something. Like you can militarily go into a city and somehow hold it for cash. Give military guys some kind of war game to play that isn't simply kill everything. I might make the Pirate factions do something like that. They walk into towns and hold them and extort some kind of tax on everyone. Perhaps make ruler elections run mainly on military power at the location. Just ideas.
4/24/2017 Topic: Special unit levels Doctor Dread Administrator	Hutton wrote: I find it strangely unsatisfying that you can only fill up 4 1/2 boxes of upgrades on special units. Is there a specific reason for this, or did it just happen to work out that way because there there is no mechanism to pick an upgrade when they are created. Is it possible they could start on level 0 or be up gradable to level 11 so we can fill out the stack? Did I make mistake and not give the first level upgrade to the special ship units?
4/24/2017 Topic: Previously: Science! Now it's about space stations Doctor Dread Administrator	cyb0rg wrote: Ring worlds and Dyson Spheres. Every Sci Fi Fan wants Ring Worlds and Dyson Spheres! Not exactly in the scope of the game though. We recently discover space travel and move directly to Ring Worlds and Dyson Spheres =) It can possibly be something you find and interact with as part of an event but you won't be manufacturing "Galactic Alienworks" (new term, copyright!) no matter how much Illegal Cyberwear you are selling
4/25/2017 Topic: Buildings not functioning Doctor Dread Administrator	Vulpex wrote: Oh great idea !!! I think it might have come up before but that's no reason not to consider doing it. Nothing can wreck your economy faster than not realizing you ran out of water for your factories... I'm looking for an "easy " way to do this without grinding the assets page. Checking for appropriate components available is not a fast query and the assets page is getting overloaded as it is =)
4/25/2017 Topic: Previously: Science! Now it's about space stations Doctor Dread Administrator	Hutton wrote: As far as support from ground units supporting blockade running, I was actually thinking more about the Military Structures helping out. (And maybe just to contribute firepower, not absorb damage). But Doc has mentioned that some ground units can fight in space and some can't. Like, I think he said commandos can, but infantry can't. And the description of some of the special fighter units in the game say that they can fight in space, from which I infer that regular fighters can't. So this would be an opportunity for that advantage to be put to use, because it doesn't look like it serves a purpose right now. I don't see a good way to actually prevent units from moving through a blockade in the game. We might be able to do something like units move slower, even 0 under some sort of blockade on a planet but I don't like the prevent movement mechanic at all. I DO see some potential in having "blockades" where any ship entering the planet space will get continually fired upon or attacked by the blockading force. Say for example, you can have ships parked at a Starbase and anything at a Starbase can be set to "blockade" the entire planet with the same options of a regular attack. Actually you would be able to do this without a starbase, just be parked at one of the 4 or 8 special locations in space near the planet that we put in. From that location your fleet can essentially engage ANY ship anywhere on the entire planet screen, ground and space. If you send a fleet to one of these special spaces and set it to Attack Everyone, that fleet will automatically be in combat with any ship on the planet without moving. It is just like how Orbital guns were going to work except you are parking a fleet at an orbital location instead of building a gun. This is an interesting idea because now it solves the problem of space fights. These 4 or 8 locations around every planet would be something you would fight over if you want to pin down the planet. We could make the orbital guns and blockading fleets parked in these 4 corners only cover that quadrant of the planet they are on, so if you really wanted to blockade the ENTIRE planet you would have to take all 4, otherwise there would be sections of the planet that are open. You wouldn't be stopping anyone from going in, but they will be constantly attacked buy a blocking fleet. You wouldn't have to "chase down" anyone which is something that was going to be very difficult to implement. Having these 4 locations only cover that quadrant of the screen prevents opposing guns, bases, blocking fleets from attacking each other also, Except for that one line of middle spaces across 12 X and Y not sure how to handle that, Maybe they both can fire on ships at those locations. And that means all 4 quadrants could fire into 12:12 . interesting ....
4/25/2017 Topic: New bug: Spontanious unit unloading. Doctor Dread Administrator	Valhalla wrote: UPDATE: It's even worse now, now I have units being unloaded while a load unit order is being issued to the fleet. Something is horribly terribly broken with the game currently. I'm trying to find this bug right now, its elusive. There's only a couple places where unloads even happen. I suspect that it coming from the code that updates your group, anytime something changes in the group it Updates all its stats that's where it checks if you're overloaded and something is probably screwy with the calculation. I have a feeling since your fighters are damaged now, its updating the group every turn and whatever screwiness is being triggered repeatedly. I'm trying to duplicate your fleet and make it happen, as soon as I see it happen I can probably find it and fix it. i'm sure it will be a very stupid bug =)
4/25/2017 Topic: New bug: Spontanious unit unloading. Doctor Dread Administrator	Valhalla wrote: UPDATE: It's even worse now, now I have units being unloaded while a load unit order is being issued to the fleet. Something is horribly terribly broken with the game currently. I think I found the bug, after 2-3 hours, and I just updated it. Try to add or remove units from your group and see if it triggers the bug again. It shouldn't. HILARIOUS Bug, HILARIOUS I tell you! So, when you make any changes to a group, Add remove units,units destroyed, Upgrades etc. The system flags that group to be Updated. Which calculates its current Hangar, Cargo etc. As it checks for Hangar capacity, it goes through all the hangar units in the group one at a time and does a running Total of how much hangar the units are taking up and compares it to the max hangar the group has. Ya know if you have a dozen units that take up 10 hangar each the running total goes 10,20,30,40 etc. Any unit on the list where this running total is beyond the Max Capacity in the group is flagged to get ejected. That's how we only eject units that will go beyond the max capacity. So the problem bug was that when checking ALL the Groups that are flagged to be updated in a turn, ya know 3 or 4 groups are getting updated this turn for example. It goes through each groups hangar separately, however the BUG was that the list of units with the running total was NOT being cleared between groups. So in a situation where 2 or 3 groups with hangar units are being checked within the game, the second group it was checking hangar for already had all of the first groups units and running total still in place, yet was now comparing all of that against the seconds units capacity. The Third group being checked would have all the units running total from the last two groups being checked also. So by the time we get to Obsidian Church hangar check,. Hes STARTING at like 300 Running total on the hangar capacity because two other groups, WITH HANGAR UNITS, happen to be in the Update queue THAT TURN. because an upgrade went through or a load order was executed or something on some other group in the game. I could never duplicate the problem on my machine because it involves not only having a couple other groups WITH HANGAR UNITS in the game, those other groups need to also be in the update queue for whatever reason before you can see this Running Total Adding to itself between groups. I got kind of lucky and chased a hunch I had on this situation before I saw it, then duplicated the bug with a complicated setup like I described. In the end. Added one short line to clear this one running total list between groups.
4/25/2017 Topic: Previously: Science! Now it's about space stations Doctor Dread Administrator	Hutton wrote: You mentioned making orbital structures capturable. I'm assuming that Capture would be a new order type or a modifier to the Attack order. I suggest making ground units a requirement for capturing Orbital structures. And that only foot soldiers, like Infantry and Commandos should be good at it. (By the way, if your not already locked into by the art you have commissioned, may I recommend Combat Engineers and Cyber-Commandos instead of Commandos and Cyber-Assasins, given that that unit type specializes in attacking structures). This might justify a new Marine unit. (For the benefit of anyone that doesn't already know this, prior to the twentieth century Marines were ship's soldiers whose primary mission was to fight and repel boarding actions. The emphasis changed to establishing beachheads during WWII, but the term marine would be acurately applied to soldiers specializing in EVA and corridor to corridor fighting). The way I see it, you should be able to blow up or soften up a station with your fleet, but you'll need boots on the hull to capture it. I'm thinking of some kind of "Capture Progress Bar" Almost like another Hit Point bar that if you deplete then you capture the installation. But that gets tricky with multiple players trying to capture. Perhaps you can attack "To Capture" just like you can attack "To Raid" and it puts your Corp damage against this Capture threshold. 5 corps can try to capture at once. Once the capture threshold is reached the Corp with the most "Capture Damage" takes the place. Attacking to Capture causes half damage.... That's getting convoluted, Scrap that idea... To capture an installation you have to attack with "Capture Flag" which doesn't reduce any damage except maybe against the installation, and after you clear all enemies out then your attack on the installation becomes a capture that takes some time based on how much firepower you have against it and the size of the place.... Not sure about that either..... Hmm so how about this Whatever units are set "To Capture" do not add anything to the combat itself, although they take damage, they are effective damage zero, there damage is instead applied to a capture threshold, which can be literally be another gauge of the units max hit points.. Once captured it changes sides immediately(?) I would go with that IF we made it so the amount of Capture damage you are doing is reduced by how healthy the installation is. If its 100% then you are 10% effective. if its at 20% hit points you are probably 90% effective with your capture damage. That makes it 10x harder to "Capture" a healthy station but viable to capture one that is almost destroyed, but you have to essentially attack all its hit points again. You can switch your orders on other units to "Capture" as it gets lower If you're going for a capture. You can also send in a huge fleet of commandos doing zero actual damage and try to Take a healthy installation but it would have to be quite large, take a while AND you're gonna get pounded by any other forces there the entire time. Once you actually take a installation like this, its probably badly damaged and any other corps in the fight can probably take it back from you pretty easy also. Perhaps the units you are using to capture get "destroyed" to man the place. how many units you lose in this way determines how much Capture Damage is immediately replaced. If you capture with a single level 1 commando in the end. You will lose that commando but have only 100 Capture Damage left on the installation, someone else can take it from you easily until it "heals" . If you use a level 10 commando and take it. The Capture Damage will be restored by their hit points which is probably thousands. Ships can be used to capture but not actually take the place. If there are no commandos or infantry to "absorb" to man the station then you cant actually take it even though the Capture Damage is at zero,. To avoid the "Take and Salvage immediately for 2 billion" problem, capturing an installation is not a permanent thing(?) . Its still owned by the original corporation and salvaging it will give them the money. Also, perhaps you cannot salvage the installation outright you literally have to salvage back all the levels to 0. That will take some time? With some refinement I think this might work. Sounds fun fighting over a station which then goes to a capture war. =)
4/25/2017 Topic: Description: Ion Gun Doctor Dread Administrator	Hutton wrote: But I think that's why it says that. I'm guessing that the plan was to have a mobile anti-ship unit like the Ion Cannon, and the description got written before the unit was implemented. And then it just fit the bill as a the special counterpart to Artillery. Probably should up the damage of artillery vs ships. they do about as much as fighters though, at half the cost. if we get space fighting to be a thing, then units that are hangar-able will have more value. If everything is a ground fight. You might as well bring ground units unless you have an appropriate counter that fighters fill. Artillery won't fight in space.
4/25/2017 Topic: Previously: Science! Now it's about space stations Doctor Dread Administrator	Hutton wrote: Yes to taking multiple turn to dismantle the station. Maybe even multiple turns for each level. I think that's a better solution than the old Corp retaining ownership, for the repair cost reason Vulpex mentions. I'm leaning towards, if you capture it, its yours. Just make not so easy/cheap to capture them, and its not like you can't take it back.. Like if you don't have an appropriate capture force then capturing the station isn't viable. I don't want to make a different upgrade for Infantry defense. I mean seriously. You can just have Infantry ON the station. its like the same thing. Perhaps we'll work some kind of mechanic that makes it harder to capture with "Capture Flagged" units on the defense. OR Any Infantry in some sort of guard mode ... OH WAIT *Brain Lightning* , any infantry that is is ordered to "CAPTURE" just like the opposing attackers do the SAME THING as the attacking capture units are but in reverse. You do no damage, or maybe half, and your attack damage is instead put towards the capture bar. The defenders in Capture mode HEAL the capture bar. The attackers lower it. That sounds fantastic =) So when you have a lot of infantry fighting at a station, you an set them to Capture on the defense and it "heals" the capture bar, or perhaps they do that by default. If you force them to attack then they attack normally but on defense if there is any capturing going on, they auto defend the capture. The health of the station still acts as a reduction to the attackers so its very difficult to take a healthy station unless you're coming in with literally 10x the infantry. But you can beat up the station and then as it gets low, send in the super commando carriers to attempt a takeover. this also means we don't have to do any "Absorbing units" to man the station and recover the capture bar. Anytime there are infantry at a station with capture damage they heal it with there firepower. Makes me want to stall the launch by a month =)
4/25/2017 Topic: Previously: Science! Now it's about space stations Doctor Dread Administrator	cyb0rg wrote: I think megastructures should require components and raw materials to build them. edited by cyb0rg on 4/25/2017 Most likely, its going to take a giant and expensive ACP (Orbital) Item, like 5000 cargo 100 million dollar thing. Better use a Fleet to escort that!. Deploy that onto the orbital locations and it builds but starts 5% hit points and has to "repair" till full before coming online 100 turns later. You can choose between whatever orbitals we have to deploy it . Starbase, Orbital guns, Warp Gate. Might only allow one of each per orbital location. Like maybe you can have a base, gun and gate all in the same spot as 3 separate things(?) I kind of like the one per spot limitation though. It upgrades like a ground unit and leveling it up to 10 and maintaining the upkeep is going to be ... daunting ... and prohibitively expensive unless you have a planet with 100 million population on it.The games units are made to be relatively easy to get, but more and more expensive to maintain. Everything needs to be "profitable" day to day. Like there no point upgrading your warp gate to transport monoliths unless we're really sending monolith fleets across the systems. I'm sure there is a level 10 Gate somewhere in Sol, we don't need 12 in the system. I'm considering making a Guild feature to tax the guild members so the guild leaders can finance these things, or gigantic fleets. They would be terribly expensive for a single player to have and at high level. These would be the end game mega structures. We don't expect to see level 10 version of them just like we don't need to see 5 level 10 Chem factories on a planet with no cities. The goal is NOT to Upgrade everything to the max although I realize that is half the fun =) Leveling up everything is viable when there is legitimate need or demand. Like everything else. you can get them in the air pretty easily, at level 1 they are not out of reach. You can have them,but might have a hard time maintaining them if they are just sitting there.
4/26/2017 Topic: Mouse over Doctor Dread Administrator	Wow, way to go QA department! "Rare Plants" was what it was originally called 2.5 millennia ago Never changed on that screen =)
4/26/2017 Topic: Missing (A1) Geotechnical... Doctor Dread Administrator	Perhaps a direct message to the deplorer linked to the event to give more feedback that it has fired
4/26/2017 Topic: Missing (A1) Geotechnical... Doctor Dread Administrator	Valhalla wrote: I am unable to deploy A1 Geotechnicals "AT ALL" tried 12 different ways on Rio, they fail every time, are not consumed, are not deployed, do not give a bonus. 100% broken for me. Take a look at that transports Display Logs for the last... 20 turns or so =) Theres already a GeoBooster effect happening in Rio. Might have been your first one. They don't stack. I really should make a comms message on Deployment to tell you that it did or didn't go off and why
4/26/2017 Topic: Vote inviting Doctor Dread Administrator	Valhalla wrote: I think they need to send you a message once per day that your a dirty little leech. :P Honestly though, there is almost no reason to get a subscription currently unless you really want to vote on stuff. Well I have to put you in as a voter and notify you like everyone else because if you decided to buy a paid account right there, you would be able to go in and vote. I even put a Paid no Piad icon on the voter list so now everyone ELSE can see you as free account leech =)
4/26/2017 Topic: Previously: Science! Now it's about space stations Doctor Dread Administrator	Valhalla wrote: I'll just leave this here... "DOOM CANNONS" -Doctor Dread
4/26/2017 Topic: Previously: Science! Now it's about space stations Doctor Dread Administrator	Hutton wrote: No, it's a fair point. Maybe the Terran Federation should occupy those slots around earth. I'd rather see the community self regulate, though. Doc was talking about Guilds cooperating to finance stations. I think it would make the most sense if most starbases were finaced with taxes so planet leaders would usually run them. Going back to what got this conversation started, the main long term benefit of having a stationm, when you weren't actively at war with forces on the planet below, is it would ensure control of at least one quadrant, thus preventing a blockade of your planet. Maintaining control of the skies might become an important campaign promise. Terran feds Having units at the Strategic Orbits (working name) just like the cities and/or mega structures of their own on Earth is probably a good idea. You wouldn't be able to take them over, or if you did, you would be facing constant takeover attempt by Terran Feds. Their fleets are limited by the available RAM onthe server so They will win eventually =)
4/26/2017 Topic: Missing (A1) Geotechnical... Doctor Dread Administrator	Valhalla wrote: Uh oh... It's worse than a missing announcement, the event log says "I" deployed a geotechnical previously. I did not, I've only ever had this single one produced and used in my transport. Seems you've got bigger issues, my geo is being used to boost but not consuming it. To help you track this bug down, I first tried to deploy the A1 geotechnical out of my warp freighter above the city, when I saw it wasn't consumed I tried unloading it then deploying it, then finally loading it into the transport to try and deploy it. It's possible the bug was from deploying it via warp freighter? edited by Valhalla on 4/26/2017 I'm not able to make the deployment NOT consume the artifact. Can you make it happen reliably?

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