5/8/2017 Topic: To those I overcrowd Hutton	Ahh, you are offering cheap product in exchange for not crowding your turf. Got it.
5/8/2017 Topic: Stuck turns and election terms? Hutton	That response is all kinds of confusing. The guide says elections are weekly, which I think they were in the begining of this beta round. 100 turns would mean an election every 16 hours an 40 minutes, I think. And if corps moving and getting destroyed have some bearing on the timing of elections, please elaborate because I don't believe that has been explained anywhere else.
5/8/2017 Topic: The official Orbital Megastructures thread Hutton	Cool. Glad that's on the drawing board. Might be desirable, in that case, to have an attack everyone except (Corp, Corps, Guild) option. Or a seperate Blockade order where you check off who is allowed through or certain cargos that trigger the blockade. You could also have a mechanic where there was a chance, based on speed divided by size vs size of the blockading fleet, to shoot through a gap in the blockade without getting hit. So an upgraded Zenith Hypercraft would usually have a good chance of running the blokade. But if it got caught it would be toast, whereas a big fleet would certainly get caught but not wiped out. Running a small ship through wouldn't usually be useful because its not going to bring a lot of products or troops through the blockade, but might be useful if you are trying to get an artifact through.
5/8/2017 Topic: The official Orbital Megastructures thread Hutton	Okay. Effort vs. benefit. Enough said. I'm going to weigh in with RadCavalier that I don't want to see space superiority weigh too heavily in the ground game. A worthwhile boost, yes. An invader should want to establish orbital control to safely land their army, but the land war should still be the endgame of the invasion.
5/9/2017 Topic: Planet Names Hutton	I think that once planets reach 25 cities, you should solicit names with one paragraph stories/descriptions about where the names came from. Then we vote on those, or appoint judges that are committed to keeping a serious sci-if tone in the game. edited by Hutton on 5/9/2017
5/9/2017 Topic: Planet Names Hutton	Hey, let's not beat up on badmaw. He's very passionate about this game and he will be a valuable and stabilizing addition to the player base. I understand how his forcefulness and sense of certainty can rub you the wrong way. I think some of that honestly comes from not being a native english speaker. But lets not alienate him. Having someone as compulsive as badmaw building a big trade empire and making contracts availible to whoever wants to play ball with him will be an energizing contribution to the early part of the game. So, badmaw, I think you go a little off the wall sometimes when you get excited about an idea, but i'm glad to have you as a player in the game.
5/9/2017 Topic: Earth Alliance Hutton	I had an idea of starting a "Mayor's Conference" Guild. Each city ruler would have an obligation to have a level 10 unit of Mechanized or Air units for sale to the rest of the Guild at all times for $1. If anyone gets attacked they can buy those contracts and bring the units to their defense. (You have to put back up for sale the same turn you buy them so you don't forget after your fight is over). In fact, if you log on and see another city getting attacked while the mayor is offline you can step in and move all the common units to their city and then put the units back up for sale so someone else can deal with it when you log off.
5/9/2017 Topic: Stuck turns and election terms? Hutton	Okay, got it. Sort of... Elections are every 1000 turns, and every 100 turns the game checks to see if it has been 1000 turns or more since an election for ever city, planet and star. My understanding from previous comments was that if a corp leaves office the office will stay vacant until the next scheduled election. Now you're saying ellections happen once every 1000 turns except that corps can move or get destroyed. But I'm not clear what the exception is. How is the 1000 turn rule affected by corps moving or getting destroyed? I suspect there isn't an exception and you were just reiterating that an office can become vacant, but I want to make sure I understand this part.
5/9/2017 Topic: Earth Alliance Hutton	Well, it helps cities pool their resources to protect industry inside the cities. You could use the same model to share defenses within any guild I guess, including one with Raw Material plants outside the city. I'm inclined to think that you'll be a lot safer if you stick to cities and hold leaders to a promise to defend the whole area instead of just their own stuff. Attacking a city may draw the wrath of everyone who depended on that city as a market. When you go outside your venturing into the wild west and will definitely need to either have some defense or not invest more than you can afford to lose.
5/9/2017 Topic: Planet Names Hutton	Perhaps keep planets searchable by their generic name by giving them a hidden searchable value that is identical to their original name but unchanging. Like, Earth would have a hidden name of Sol III that gets a hit when searched, but only appears as Earth in the search.
5/9/2017 Topic: We are going live on Saturday May 13th! Hutton	I suggest you take into account how crazy everything is at that moment, before you flip. If the world is a smoldering ruin, flip it. If the fires are still crackling, let it burn a little longer.
5/11/2017 Topic: Production Spreadsheet Hutton	That sounds great. I'll have to check it out when I access to a device that can open it.
5/11/2017 Topic: Do the planets move? Hutton	Are they in orbit? I was just looking at them and thinking that Earth is not where it was a month ago, but I'm pretty sure I'm imagining it. The coordinate system seems like a static system.
5/11/2017 Topic: Where did you hear about Barons of the Galaxy? Hutton	I actually went on kickstarter specifically looking for a slow persistent online space empire game to back, and this was what I found.
5/12/2017 Topic: Do the planets move? Hutton	I thought that was probably the case.
5/12/2017 Topic: Cancel Upgrade Hutton	I've realized that upgrading units can become a boondoggle if a sudden turn of events require you to mobilize them in hangers. I'd really like to be able to cancel the upgrade. In the moment, I'd want to be able to load the upgrading unit and be responsible myself for making sure there is enough hanger space to accommodate the upgrade, but that doesn't really make sense from the perspective of immersion. A unit wouldn't be able to recruit from the hold of a ship in deep space. They would have to abandon their recruitment drive if they were mobilized off planet.
5/12/2017 Topic: Fragile Populations Hutton	Recent events demonstrate how easy it is for one bad actor to wipe out out a city. Even if Corps are able to repulse the attack and successfully defend their own structures, the population can get wiped out from underneath the corps by the heavy fighting for just a few turns. On the one hand, I think it's kind of cool that cities are so fragile. An unexpected massacre is a compelling narative and my be the impetus behind sudden alliances. But I do feel like their should be some counter that can be put in place when you are expecting it. One obliterated city isn't going to bring a system wide economy to its knees, but an unchecked series of hit and runs by a massive fleet or army could. I would suggest something like the population doesn't take damage from ships while the city still has shields and doesn't take damage from land units while the city still has forts. And also maybe an x% resistance to for each turn of continuous fighting to represent evacuation of the city, which then wears off at the same rate to represent people returning to their homes. (Maybe an equivalent reduction the amount of buying/selling of volume, but not a straight modification of volume as it impacts demand and attacks could then be used as an exploit to crash or blow up demand). So if you say that 50% of the population evacuated per turn, and shields and forts hold out for three turns, only 12.5% of the population could potentially be killed off in the fighting on the 4th turn.
5/12/2017 Topic: Cancel Upgrade Hutton	I think it would address the issue, and more realistic, to keep the mechanic that prevents upgrading units from loading but allow us to cancel the upgrade. Let us decide if it's important enough to lose the funds we have already invested in the upgrade.
5/12/2017 Topic: Fragile Populations Hutton	I guess that's a strong and simple step to avert a system breaking catastrophe. I must confess to being a little disappointed that the response is to just roll back the danger instead of giving us tools to counter it. The threat of citywide disasters add excitement. The pattern I would like to see is a period of fierce competition and over expansion, following by contraction and cooperation precipitated by disaster of our own making. And then you see a community evolve to handle problems in the future. I really liked that the population were so fragile when no one is actively protecting them, but thought we needed stronger tools to actively protect them. On a similar vein, how exactly does checking the Raid box effective damage output. I've noticed that sending a bunch of mechanized out to raid an unprotected location can easily destroy structures. If someone is raiding for profit, as opposed to waging total war, unprotected non-military structures shouldn't be damaged by a raid. The raider doesn't want to burn the factory down. He wants it to make more products for raiding. If their are defenders, it is entirely appropriate that collateral damage gets spread equally to the foactories because the defenders will be using them as defensive positions. But once all the ground units are wiped out the manufacturing structures should stop taking damage from raiders.
5/12/2017 Topic: Cancel Upgrade Hutton	Yes, I'm assuming that would not be nearly as tricky, and I think in this particular case the simpler solution and the better gameplay solution are the same thing.

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