DrDread

all messages by user

10/31/2019 Topic: Counter strike defensive item missing (trenches) Doctor Dread Administrator	Surgicus wrote: To our dear developer Hi Dr. Dread/Serendipity, one item I suggest is missing is the fortification item. It would allow to go to the site of a raiders base for example to be deployed and magnify the defenses of ground units, consecutively allowing attack launches onto their base. The fortification items could be considered like trenches and render the counter strikes against raiders more strategic and sensible. Cheers! The current defensive structures don't come into play unless you are being attacked. So you wouldn't be able to attack the raiders with a fort even if you could deploy one there. They used to be deploy-able years ago, but it enabled "Turret Rushing" tactics which we want to avoid. I thnk you are talking about making a new item, and a new unit, that is deploy-able and acts as a tench. I don't think thats going to happen. I realize the raiders are a little ruff right now. I would like to try to make more groups but less units per group plus not allow for so many elite units. Overall the level of the raider base can be scaled down so we don't get level 7-8 bases when earth population isn't even 50 mil edited by DrDread on 10/31/2019
10/31/2019 Topic: Halving of all Military Cost Doctor Dread Administrator	The game has gone through a lot of changes over the years and one of them was the doubling of all the military units costs. It was done for ground units first years ago, then ships followed. That was back when the economy mechanics were a little (™) broken and there wa s tons of money flying around. After this reset and the changes we made, the money should be in line with the games original vision. However the cost of Military and just about everything is still at the double mark. I'm not sure if it's too early to really say if the military is too expensive or not yet but it does see really difficult to get even a scout when you'r starting new. I have also been inspired to do some calculations against the military types to show what they their "value" is vs their cost. Like HPs per credit or attack vs type per credit in cost or even Cargo x Speed vs cost per credit etc. While most units aren't far off from what was envisioned A little tweaking is probably in order. I am also considering scaling the lower units down, like scout , corvette, Mechanized, transports etc. but leaving the higher units where they are. This would mean a lowering to their combat effectiveness though. I have also done some clown math calculations and determined that a corp that went all in to a single raw mat and can produce 22k-ish quantity it at 40 demand price and sell all of it at 100 demand.. would need something like 300 mil worth of population to cover the 10% volume and in the end would pull down 1.3m - ish credits a turn, which would allow him to have no more then two base level monoliths and literally nothing else. I'm considering tweaking some of the units and then halving everything across the board. Perhaps even dropping the cost of orbitals also.. I would like to hear the thoughts on this.
11/3/2019 Topic: Halving of all Military Cost Doctor Dread Administrator	OriontheHunterr wrote: Can I change my vote to - nerf raiders. If only on Earth. Of coarse that is if you can even make that distinction. There's a new idea where we don't drop the price of the units but we drastically drop their up-keep. right now the upkeep is the cost of the unit every 1000 turns which is a real life week. We can drop the upkeep by half or more, but make them 3-5x more costly to actualy attack with.
11/4/2019 Topic: Contract drop-off not working Doctor Dread Administrator	SolemnRanger wrote: Same issue. I had just done several contracts without problem. Tried to do one more before bed and my transport would not drop off. This was about 12 hours ago when it started. A change went in yesterday and obviously something is wrong, the contracts are in fact active. Probably a typo, will be looked at tonight or reversed if needed.
11/8/2019 Topic: Market enhancements Doctor Dread Administrator	nynobernie wrote: I really really like the market feature we have. I use it almost exclusivly when buying raw materials right now. So great job with this!!! But there are some additions I d like to see. The most import for me would be the possibility to set a price per unit for guild members additionally to the public sell price. Another one whould be an option to keep the sell configuration even if all products are gone. Normally i set Qty to hold to 1 which works well if only other players buy, but there are times where i also sell via transports and when all gets picked up i need to reconfigure the sell offer. Other nice to have features: allow to set multiple prices for the same stack depending on the amout you have. For example. I want to sell Water. If I have 5k price should be 100, if I have 20k price shall be 90, if I have 100k price shall be 80. possibility for buy orders in a similar way. (I want to buy water for 80 at location 'moscow' up to a maximum of 20k at this location). I m not sure how you would fullfill this in an easy way though If any of those suggestions should be considered implementation worthy... please keep the UI simple. Thats the main benefit over contracts right now. I could almost have the trade/contract screen set those up so you can have multiple options on a single market... ...or perhaps I make your distribution centers handle it so they can become "Markets" for whatever goods are there. You can declare a sell as "Market" as opposed to selling to the city and then set a few options. It would mean you have to actually move your product to a specific location to really control how its sold. With a distribution center handling the setup, you can probably make market Buy orders also, so anyone can stop buy and sell to your distribution center. Might be complicated but Its something Ill have to look into one day
11/11/2019 Topic: New Megastructure ideas Doctor Dread Administrator	This stuff is already being worked on Ringworld Planetary structure, built at 12:12 , will actually have a ring graphic around the planet on viewscreen. Population boost for planet. Defense Grid - another kind of ring that is the reverse of orbital guns. It is essentially an ion cannon that will join any fight you have units at. System scale is the Dyson Swarm - It will build up Dark Energy (kind of like research facility) which can be spent on 3 different effects. A singularity Cannon (Supernova cannon was taken) which targets any location in the system and is pretty much a nuke in combat.. An Arcturus Reaction which is a system wide pop booster and Perhaps a Graviton Wave which boosts production. It will also have a a Zero Point Disruptor (Really just pulling these names out of a Sci Fi Hat) that will create a temporary Wormhole which is instant transportation to another location, 2 directional. Upgrading the dyson swarm allows for more energy generation/storge and allows expending more energy at once to make bigger reactions or worm holes at farther distances
11/11/2019 Topic: Military Cost Rebalancing Doctor Dread Administrator	To address problems new players have getting anywhere on Earth the Scout has been made accessible at the Crop HQ from the beginning of the game. This should allow players to get off world almost immediately and at least be able to mine or trade on the other planets where the demand is very high for small volume cities, an ideal situation for new players. The cost of most units have been lowered and combat values adjusted based on actual calculations of damage/hits cost vs each other. Almost everything from Freighter down to Infantry had their cost cut in half. Aircraft did not. The cost per turn of all units has been set to 1/2000th their total cost. This means you are paying the price of the unit again every 2 weeks (it used to be 1 week). The special units have all had their costs calculated against their AttackMultiplier x Hitpoints increase x Cargo and speed so that a unit that is 4x more powerful then its base unit costs 4x as much, BUT their cost per TURN of these special units is only 1/4000th their total cost so Special units are essentially half as much to maintain for the power they provide. As part of re balancing ships have been made less effective vs ground targets. The most effective thing to bring in to fight ground forces, for the money, is other ground forces. You cannot expect to bring in capital ships to pound large ground forces, you will lose after dozens of rounds unless you are overwhelming a small force. Ground units need to be fought with ground units, but ships cant tank/support a ground force very effectively. A ship carrying a handful of fighters or ground units does far better then the ship fighting by itself. On the flip side, ground units don't fight in space, outside of aircraft.And the aircraft generally doesn't do well at killing ships, for the money , as other ships do. Again if you have overwhelming numbers you'll win regardless. The scout and corvette got hit the most on this, less hi points and damage to ground but all units were tweaked. Capital ships, Cruiser and higher, start to become more effective at bombarding ground targets, especially defenses but still are not on par with employing ground units. Ground units can no longer fight in space. This made ship fighting problematic. Aircraft are the only things that will fight in space fights. With one exception, The Gunsuits special unit can fight in space.
11/13/2019 Topic: Military Cost Rebalancing Doctor Dread Administrator	Wreith42 wrote: Just to clarify, Fighters, Bombers, and Variteks no longer participate in space battles? Do they still contribute to Mining orders? Aircraft are the only ground units that will fight in space when carried on a ship, except for the gunsuit special unit. In the Guide >> Combat the grid of all the units shows a "FSpace" column for units that can fight in space.
11/30/2019 Topic: Millitary Filter Doctor Dread Administrator	AresCorp wrote: It appears when you go to the Military page and uncheck all, it still shows all the units that are part of groups on the map. This makes the filter useless, as you can't tell where the units you've checked are. The bottom pane seems to work in filtering, but the map in combination with a filter isn't helpful at all. Thats a good catch, I'll try to correct that for next weeks update
11/30/2019 Topic: A shlew of bug and QOL fixes Doctor Dread Administrator	The structures “Products At This Location” list now displays any product that the structure can produce on the list even if no product is currently there. This allows you to see the volume and price of products you could potentially make at that structure. This also applies to the Buy/Sell tab for structures in a city. Letting you know what your other products can sell for. It also includes Civilian Services, which is probably the real feature, as before you can never tell what your service was selling for or what the volume is from these screens where it is needed the most. The Corp HQ will display an extra row for whatever product it is currently producing and not everything it can make, because it can make everything. The mini tabs showing the anomalies/megastructures were showing ones that were out of scope of the location you were zoomed into. No need to see Arcologies on the moon when you’re looking at New York. The grids should show more appropriate ones depending on your zoom level. Starbases have a different bonus structure. They now give a 10% bonus per level and not 1-100% based on the level up multiplier they did before. A level 3 Starbase will be 30% attack bonus to all combat on that side for example. The attack cost when battling was set to 20% of your unit’s upkeep which was pretty low, then we dropped the upkeep cost of everything about 4x a while ago. So now the attack cost has been raised from 20% to 500% (5x) your units upkeep cost when attacking. It still doesn’t impact the bottom line that much. When you complete the tutorial, you will now also get a free Scout class ship. New players not being able to get off world, or even trade off world immediately was a crippling situation. We already made Scouts purchasable at the Corp HQ but new players wouldn’t have the money to get one early. Now they have one immediately to help them weather a “Demand Storm” on Earth. The Assets page notes field now displays a note if you are a convoy flagship, a fleet that is allowing escorts. Also units that are escorting a fleet or group displays the name of the group they are escorting in the notes. When a convoy is set to attack a specific Corp or guild and the convoy has escorts from that Corp or guild escorting it. Those escorts will be taken off the attacking side and placed on the defending side. Those units escort orders will also be set to complete and go to their next order with a message in their logs saying they were attacked by the convoy they were escorting. This was exploitive as enemies could prevent themselves from being attacked by clinging to the convoy. A few other tweaks were made to try to make sure the escorts can’t be manipulated. Be warned that a convoy attacking “everything” can potentially accidentally attack a unit from a corp which is escorting them and thus dropping all those escorts to the defending side. Convoys should use Single Corp attacks to be safe. You can no longer attack your own Corp. The Attack will cancel altogether. Bug – Using a warp gate as a flagship with other ships escorting you would crash the game as the escorting ships were getting bad warp data assigned. This was a bug since warp gates were implemented, but only became game breaking when the warp gate costs were changed. Bug – The population damage when battles happen in cities is 10% of the attacking sides power score, however that was being applied to all 9 population types and was effectively 90% of the power score. That has been corrected. Bug – Loading orders from a list which had deploy Megastructure order would come in without a specific megastructure to build selected which would crash the game. Bug - When a new city is formed on top of an existing anomaly, that anomaly will despawn and delete anyone active mission it had attached to it. Also, if you accept a mission that was set to go to an anomaly that no longer exists, the mission will still work but the drop off location will read as “Ruins” when viewing the event itself. The link from the event will take you to the exact location. The mission text will still show the old anomaly name but the delivery location should be the same. edited by DrDread on 11/30/2019
12/8/2019 Topic: Megastructure Update and Buy/Sell limit Doctor Dread Administrator	Most the of the megastructures have been put on a 1-10 level scaling. Where upgrading is equivalent to adding another megastructure of same cost. leveling to 10 is like buying 10 level 1 structures. This affected the Spaceport, Warp Gate, Arcology, Hypernet Tower. Corps who paid the previous leveling cost (like x80) where given refunds for the equivalent amount. The levels of your structures were not changed. Arcology boosts population at 10xLevel , so level 8 = 80 bonus. These population boosts only affect the current growth rate based on demand. Geo boosters increased bonus to 100 also. (Keanu Reeves walks out on stage) Surprise feature is the ability to set demand limit on buying and selling so your structure or unit won't buy or sell if its past that threshold. It will skip its current order and insert message in its log. Buy/Sell screens on structures slightly changed.
12/9/2019 Topic: Orders for Factories Doctor Dread Administrator	We can get all kinds of cool and make it so you can produce anything at once or concentrate it onto one product. Your structures will get a certain amount of "Production" to split up between any thing they can normally make. Or Have a list of all the 3 or 8 things they can make and you simply spllt up a percentage totaling 100 among then all. Sounds cool but would be impractical. We have components with 1 qty that can't be split without fractions or loss. It also sounds like a logistical nightmare keeping track of whos producing what and how much from where on the UI.
12/12/2019 Topic: Error on website with product on unit in hangar Doctor Dread Administrator	AresCorp wrote: I have a single infantry carrying 1 adult toy. That infantry is on a scout. That scout is flying around Sol. The link to the 1 adult toy leads to an error. Not the location of the product, the link to the product itself. Assets>Product>Bottom Pane> Select Adult Toys (on unit in question) or Select infantry in question>Cargo Tab>Adult Toys = Error I see it. Cargo carried on a unit that is carried on another unit isn't linking to the screen correctly. Something to look at thanks
12/20/2019 Topic: Accounting Audit on Players Doctor Dread Administrator	So since there was a lot of shake up recently with a certain corp abusing an exploit and then a lot of accusations over alt accounts just being used to bank money or units, I went ahead and ran some accounting against the database for the last 1000 turns or so looking for "Anomalies" and I'm posting it for everyone to see. This is the log of all product trades where the "PricePerUnit" traded was something out of the ordinary. Like 0-1 or 9mil+ and who was traded between. Its in tab delimited text format so you can just drop it into Excel. There is another log for moving money through Military unit trades also but that one is harder to read but just know that I see those also. The rule on alt accounts is officially one account per player In the Terms of Service I've thrown out "max 3" corps that ARE PLAYING NORMALLY with normal trades etc as something I will tolerate. If you have alt corps that are just sitting on units or holding cash and moving it around you are against the rules. I'm going to start sweeping corps that are shell corporations.
12/26/2019 Topic: HTTPS Support Doctor Dread Administrator	Razorix22 wrote: Please excuse-me to dig up this topic, but any plan of implementing it ? There not only is a plan to implement it, the server itself already is running SSL on another website I control now. I plan on adding one here also soon I just haven't gotten to it yet.
12/26/2019 Topic: Megastructure Political Bonus changes Doctor Dread Administrator	Because placing a megastructure will typically increase your logistics more than it takes to place it. It becomes an infinitely increasing bonus only limited by how many you can place, and you can place quite a bit Three per city = 30 per city . It's not the intention of having infinite political bonuses unless it has infinitely diminishing returns or expense. There needs to be a change to the mechanic to prevent this positive feedback of bonus. The placement of Megastructures has become the all win no loss way to simply increase the scale of your game by huge amounts. One idea is to limit the bonus by Corp, as in, only your highest level Megastructure, of each type, counts towards your political score. This effectively maxes you out by the number of megastructures available (Spaceport, StarBase, Guns, HyperTower, Arcology, Mobile Fortress) = 5 = max 50 bonus from megastructures (until we add a few more, and we will) Another better idea is to make each megastructure past the first highest level one grants a decreasing amount of bonus. like only grant half of its bonus or maybe just 10% less as the previous. So Your top megastructure by scope and level grants full bonus then next one grants 90% its normal bonus then next one 80%. This effectively maxes out bonuses from megastructures at your top 10. This works well because we can also make orbitals worth more than City Megastructures and we also have planetary megastructures in the works plus a Dyson Sphere star level one eventually coming. So while you are limited to your "top 10" megastructures for a political bonus your max end goal would be to have 10 Dyson spheres under your name which Won't be easy to say the least.
1/14/2020 Topic: Help! My Special Units are bugged! Doctor Dread Administrator	I need to know how or what unit was the one that did the search command for this. I can't seem to reproduce the problem although I know where its coming from.
1/24/2020 Topic: What the hell does "coroporation" mean? Doctor Dread Administrator	You're like the QA guy I have at work =) I hope i remember to touch these before next update
1/26/2020 Topic: Guild Income / Separate Logistics Doctor Dread Administrator	I can't make phantom Corps that represent the guild, which is controlled by the guild members. i mean I think I CAN but it will really start to confuse the game and it will look a lot like a big ALT that 10 corps are controlling. I really need to keep the corps as separate entities but provide some tools so guild mates can cooperate more cohesively
1/26/2020 Topic: Mostly Bug Fixes with some changes Doctor Dread Administrator	Update went in today. It wasn't everything I m working on but its been almost 2 months and I need to push what I have. Contract bug involving negative quantities should be corrected. That’s to Titan Industrial for setting up a repeating situation. Escorting fleets should now pay the attack cost like everyone else. Clicking on a product that is cargo on a unit that is carried on another unit should no longer crash. The mysterious “units ejected due to hangar capacity” message that would hit people who have random ground groups should be gone now. I’m fairly confident the bug where you get a special quest ship and it would have no location should eb fixed now. Orbitals were not repairing automatically like they should. This was actually hotfixed weeks ago,. Research Centers that were on Halt Production should no longer still apply their Overcrowding penalty to everyone else. All The hostile events had some bugs fixed. There have always been problems with the events not being created and/or the units not all despawning when an event was over. Their Bounty payout is now set to 20% of their net worth and nothing if they aren’t destroyed by the time event is up. Eventually I will make the non-destruction payout have some payout that scales also. I am also working on some ideas to make them more challenging for the big corps. Monoliths are now size 300, Motheships 500. The “Size” layout for combat should handle sizes up to 1000 now. MAK Drones now attack as Variteks. There is a new MAK Gunwing which is a 10x stack of MAK Gunships. It’s not an obtainable unit. Although one day you may be able to combine 10 ships into a wing permanently. Commando’s damage has been reduced across the board and damage against commandos has been increased. They are still by FAR the best unit to use to invade structures but were a TAD overpowered for the money. There is now a limit to Megastructures providing political score bonuses. You will only get political score bonus for the top 10 highest scoring Megastructures. The political score bonus for Rulership of Cities/Planet/ Systems has been increased from 20/35/50 to 25/50/100. The Logistics cost of all your units is now displayed in two places. The Accoutning Tab >> Military Report and on the Assets page >> Military Side Tab. It may be a little off what your assets page says at the top due to fractions. Something I will try to correct. For reference Logistics is the level of the ground unit OR the size of the Ship/Unit divided by 10 for everything else. There are few exceptions. Orbital guns level like a ground unit, Mobile fortress also. Attackers attack cost is now 10x normal upkeep. Defenders now have a different “Defend Cost” also which is 2x their upkeep. However, a defenders defend cost scales down with the attacking forces Military power. So if you are attacked with a force that is 0.002% of your defending power, you will only pay 0.002% of your normal cost. This should prevent “Suicide Bombing” attacks to drain someone of cash. There is still a bug with Convoys that attack the same location at the same time getting duplicate “empty” battles which still cost money. I will try to get that fixed by next week. Don’t attack big events with multiple convoys in the meantime. I really want to get a direct Guild bank Deposit into the game also as a holdover until some more robust guild features are in place. It’s the top of my to do list.

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