DrDreadAdmin

all messages by user

7/30/2015
Topic: Welcome to the Barons of the Galaxy Forum

Doctor Dread

Administrator

This is DrDread and I would just like to say welcome to the new forum!

8/1/2015
Topic: The Barons of the Galaxy website is up and running

Doctor Dread

Administrator

We finally got the website up and running! We are still shooting for a 2016 launch of the actual game but the front end website needs to be out there months in advance. We encourage fans to register on the website and then follow the forum link which automatically makes an account here in the forum.
Over the next few months we should be putting more details into the "Guide" section of the website as we nail down the details in the game.

8/8/2015
Topic: Where did you hear about Barons of the Galaxy?

Doctor Dread

Administrator

Before we made Barons of the Galaxy we had a site called Clanwars.com which allowed players to setup battles over a galactic map that were resolved by playing games of StarCraft. Then I also made a Neverwinter Nights persistent world called World of Torr. I emailed all the registrants from these website and invited them here. Perhaps you found us wandering the internet. I've also posted this game in some Sci Fi community forums. We would love to know where you found us as well as what interests you about this game!

9/7/2015
Topic: Game Tutorial is in the works

Doctor Dread

Administrator

We've been busy this last month at work and also at home but we also got a lot done in Barons of the Galaxy.
The tutorial is pretty much finished.. It has 10 steps to it and guides the players through some of the basic mechanics of setting up your corporation, producing from a resource, selling, transporting to another city. We'll try to put up some screenshots soon. We're going to move on to the tech upgrades for your corporation next because we realized we needed that in place before the tutorial!

9/7/2015
Topic: Social Media is part of development

Doctor Dread

Administrator

One of the things that we worked on this last month was to get into the "Twittersphere" and other mediums to connect with other indie gamers and developers. We went through a marketing company and did a bare minimum package to get started and see how it goes. Well after a few weeks of that we now have nearly 500 followers on our twitter account and we're following 900 others!

https://twitter.com/BotG_DrDread

I'm amazed at how much community there is out there for indie games and its been a lot of fun interacting with some of these people. There are about half a dozen indie games I'm now following that I want to try now. You also get a lot of advice from others in the industry.
We've also been posting on reddit.com and have even submitted Barons of the Galaxy to a few MMO websites to post on their lists. It's a lot of work but in the end it is rewarding. With most of that rolling now we can spend more time on development. Upgrading your corporation and implementing Trade Contracts are getting worked on this month. Hope to share more screenshots with you soon.
edited by DrDreadAdmin on 9/7/2015

3/17/2016
Topic: NPC Corporation factions added to the game

Doctor Dread

Administrator

Events probably won't be targeted at specific players. The idea is that almost all events are a community thing affecting a city planet or solar system. Certain events can probably be made to happen more often if the military is higher for example.

"Solo queststs" might end up coming from the Artifact system. Artifacts is a resource, very rare but usually one in every star system. We're still playing with ideas but Artifacts have to be taken back to your Corp HQ and processed through the research screen. You can apply artifacts to either Combat, Production or "Mystery/Exploration". . You may also pick the size of the item you're after (Small Medium Large). The CorpHQ will slowly burn artifacts and eventually produce an item in line with what you wanted. Combat artifacts will be applied to specific units and grant bonuses, same with production artifacts against structures.

Exploration artifacts however will be something weird, a "map" of sorts which you install on a ship of your choice that will send you running around the galaxy and activating different stages of essentially a solo quest. In the simplest form it will be "Go here activate beacon which will send you there" to places that have hostile units. On the optimistic end It will be something like a choose your own adventure with every stage asking you to choose on a couple of paths to go and strange things happening to the ship. Small combats, picking up strange characters etc.

Eventually the "quest" will lead you to some sort of treasure,. Either a strange artifact with a weird unique effect or most likely a strange Ship that becomes yours, or an "Elite" unit with a real name and incredible stats like a legendary fighter Ace unit. Large Mystery artifacts might end up blowing open a worm hole that goes to an other part of the galaxy or activating a real event against a planet in which youwill play a major role. Funs tuff like that is what we want to achieve

Exploration/Mystery artifacts is where all the "Fantasy RPG" type of stuff will be =)
edited by DrDreadAdmin on 3/17/2016

4/10/2016
Topic: The ALPHA TEST Reporting thread

Doctor Dread

Administrator

cyb0rg wrote:

The option to dissolve a ACP building says "half value" is 50k, but ACP costs 150k to make.

That's probably won't change. The ACP which costs 150k makes the typical 100k structure. I don't track where the structures came from.

4/10/2016
Topic: The ALPHA TEST Reporting thread

Doctor Dread

Administrator

Valhalla wrote:

Doctor Dread wrote:
I don't think there are ACP for the services like Churches. This is an oversight.

Well than how am I supposed to start my insane religious doom cult corporation that forcibly spreads it's religious indoctrination across the stars, if I can only build "one" church? :P

PS: Also found that if you cancel a construction project while it's in-progress you lose both the building and the entire cost spent on it. Not sure this is a bug, but you should get "something" back. Or at least a warning that you'll lose everything.
edited by Valhalla on 4/10/2016

The workaround is too relocate your Corp HQ and build from there until I put them in =)

No warning on cancel construction something I need to look into.

4/10/2016
Topic: The ALPHA TEST Reporting thread

Doctor Dread

Administrator

cyb0rg wrote:

It might be helpful if resources needed by factories are used after resources are produced but BEFORE sell orders are filled so you don't have to go through and reserve every little resource you need and you can just sell the leftovers by using sell all.

This might change as you suggest. The buy and sell moved to the last thing that happens. There is a flip side to the problem though. If you move Sell to the last thing that happens you will find yourself not being able to run your factories if your low on cash until the next turn. Maybe that's ok, and less confusing. It would also cause your products to not be always in the game, as in, you wouldn't always be showing like 16 precious Minerals every round because sell is coming after production. That causes another nuance where you can't always RAID a player like you could before. Right now there will always be product at a factory that produced that turn. There is no way to get rid of it fast enough so someone can always raid you for product at the factory.. Still on the fence on this =)

4/10/2016
Topic: The ALPHA TEST Reporting thread

Doctor Dread

Administrator

cyb0rg wrote:

Maybe instead of a whole separate list acp could be a checkbox.

I can one up that idea. how about ACP is only a single Item and you can choose what structure to build when you deploy it, They all cost the same anyway. If I needed something different I can make a different variation of it

4/11/2016
Topic: The ALPHA TEST Reporting thread

Doctor Dread

Administrator

Tressemy wrote:

In the "Corporate" window, "Accounting" tab, the balance sheet does not correctly show expenditures for the "Bought" column. When I built my Transport, it cost 10k credits, and they were deducted from the balance, but the deduction is not itemized in the balance sheet.
edited by Tressemy on 4/11/2016

The "Buy" is for when you buy products. You can do that ya know! Buy what you need to make those fancy end products and then PROFIT. Buying cost double what the sell value is so it's not worth it in such a small game where no one is selling so hard that its bringing the prices low. I'm realizing that the "Construction" totals aren't there at all in Accounting I may have removed them inadvertly. Have to take another look.

4/14/2016
Topic: Having some fun with the Alpha so far

Doctor Dread

Administrator

cyb0rg wrote:

What happens if we kill all the Terran ships on a planet? Do we take it over? What if we kill them all?

Right now the system is keeping 2 defenses and 2 units in every city in Sol. If there aren't 2 and 2 in the city it will make another one randomly. You can never kill them off they always come back, but you can attack another player for a couple rounds, maybe raid his stuff and get away without too much damage, depends on the kind of units that happen to be in there. Since the higher value resources are out away from the city and most of you are building on those you can attack out there without having to worry about the big terran fed units

I plan to add more to it. The system will eventually take a look at the battle logs and determine that it should send some new terran fed ships to certain locations and guard them for a while. Might do some kind of bounty/reputation system where if you're nuking players all over Sol the Terran fed spawn bigger and bigger fleets and send them to your structures.

The idea is not to stop you from attacking players, its part of the game, but it needs to have an ever increasing resistance to players nuking weaker ones.

4/14/2016
Topic: Structure Logs and Keeping Factories Fed

Doctor Dread

Administrator

cyb0rg wrote:

It's also quite a pain upgrading a lot of things at once (like fighters). Could really use an easier way to upgrade everything.

Speaking of which (and I know this would not be easy to do and probably hard to hear as well) refreshing the page every time we do something is very bandwidth intensive and probably not the best thing to do on a mobile phone where bandwidth comes at a premium. Have you thought of using something like AJAX to update single fields instead of the whole page?

Its hard for YOU to upgrade everything because you have 50 structures and 25 units =)

The problem is that I've made everything build in like 2 turns for the Alpha so its probably easier to pump out units then it is to upgrade them. You also are getting a torrent of cash because everything builds so fast and the prices are all high because there are no other players or events to deal with. If you upgrade a set of fighters to 10 its like having 100 of them and the upkeep is 100 of them also but you're making so much money you should go for capital ships.

I'm probably going to limit the number of structures players can have, I need to do this for technical/abuse reasons anyway. , Something keyed to your Corp HQ like 5-10 structures per Corp HQ level . Maybe something similar for military units. Or maybe make it a cash penalty when exceeding your logistical capacity. Even though its cheaper and more profitable to upgrade a small number of structures you can go ape wild and pump out 300 ACPs and place one in every city in the solar system.

When events are in place you might find that strategy not as profitable as having a lot of transports handy. The price of certain goods might skyrocket suddenly in an area and you can make a killing by moving stuff there quickly. That and you'll have a hard time defending 200 positions

4/14/2016
Topic: The ALPHA TEST Reporting thread

Doctor Dread

Administrator

cyb0rg wrote:

My Carrier is not showing up as a carrier in the viewscreen->military tab. It still says "Carr: 0"

Good catch. It'll be corrected next time I push up some changes. Maybe today

4/14/2016
Topic: ALPHA v0.1 Testing Bug List

Doctor Dread

Administrator

Made a big update tot he game just now. In addition to various little things I got these in place
Tutorial gives out money for the build items.

The "Sell" part of the turn is happening at the end of the turn now instead at the beginning. It was a fix for services like Churches which were "selling" the turn after they "produced". Also now you won't see any product in your assets if you are able to sell it all at the location. It produces then sells before the turns over.

Added the ACP items for the services. Churches, Police stations etc.

the upgrade costs for units was fixed. Ground units cost what they should to upgrae tohigh levels and Ships cost LESS then they did before to upgrade.

4/14/2016
Topic: The ALPHA TEST Reporting thread

Doctor Dread

Administrator

cyb0rg wrote:

My carrier only shows 3 fighters loaded into it (and apparently I can't load more) but says "40/33"

Can't load fighters into my battleship either.
edited by cyb0rg on 4/14/2016

The hangar capacity is not for number of units, its for the SIZE of all the units. At level 1 fighters are 1 size. The blue icon with the white grid on it is their size. You probably have leveled up Fighters which are bigger and you're trying to load a fighter that is leveled up and has a size more than 7.
Having 100 different level 1 fighters or having one fighter at level 10 (which makes it 100x) is exactly the same. Combat, attack everything. It just is cheaper to upgrade a single unit.
Also you can upgrade your carrier and increase the hangar size

4/15/2016
Topic: The ALPHA TEST Reporting thread

Doctor Dread

Administrator

Kemott wrote:

I tried to upload my battlesuits onto a freighter but they apparently stayed at their home location and the freighter is on its way to the target. If I did something wrong or a freighter is not intended for transporting units then I should get a warning/message and it should not have taken off at all. The order line is as follows:

Edit 1 Load / Unload Units Load Units: Battlesuit
Edit 2 Move To Location Alpha | Orion | Sector 1 | Sol | Earth | Warsaw
Edit 3 Load / Unload Units Un-Load Units: Battlesuit
Edit 4 Move To Location Alpha | Orion | Sector 1 | Sol | Pluto | Pluto_3

Freighter cannot carry other units only product in the Cargo. Hangar is for "carrying" units like fighters attached to a carrier,. What's in your hangar fights with the ship its on. The only ships that have hangar capacity is carriers, and cruisers on up.. Theres no way to transports certain units like transports, to another planet, you would have to make an ACP war factory and build from there.. Or use a ship to move stuff around

4/15/2016
Topic: Having some fun with the Alpha so far

Doctor Dread

Administrator

cyb0rg wrote:

The game should really start with low demand and grow as players increase so we don't have a few ultra-powerful early players. Maybe all cities should start at size 1 and require players to grow them?

The Sol system needs to be very "Fixed" because it has to always be there and always be at "normal" prices so new players can come in and get going.. What I might do however is make the number of fixed Terran Fed defended cities be very small but allow new cities to be created and maintained, OR like you mentioned, maybe they start off really small and have to be built up by he players. That doesn't stop a player doing what you're doing, where you plant a factory in every city. The thing that's suppose to prevent you from doing that is that you can't make everything profitable but that doesn't work when you're basically alone in the game. If I had 2000 players in Sol system right now the problem might become reversed. Finding a way to make the Sol System grow as more players play in it is something I need to look into

4/15/2016
Topic: The ALPHA TEST Reporting thread

Doctor Dread

Administrator

Naills wrote:

I can't work out how to select units to add into a group

when performing a raid the raid appears under recent battles even if no opponent is present

I see the battles you're' talking about. The terran fed units aren't defending me either. Its weird. I'll have to take a look and see what's going on there.

4/15/2016
Topic: combat reports

Doctor Dread

Administrator

Messaging, at least on the comms channel is something I need to add.
The damage done by each unit was complicated since every unit essentially is attacking every other unit at different values. I might be able to pull of a little graph that shows which unit TYPES did what percentage of damage or something.