DrDread

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8/12/2018 Topic: What should we work on next? Doctor Dread Administrator	LunaMoth wrote: When you say "without contracts" does that mean I don't need to ask someone to accept my contract, load a transport with goods, and drop them off? If so, I like that idea. If they buy it, it simply changes ownership at location
8/14/2018 Topic: What should we work on next? Doctor Dread Administrator	Serenity wrote: I had a megastructure idea: Auction House It would have cargo hold and hangar space. You could transfer products or items or load units inside it then you would be able to set prices for products, items and units stored inside. Fixed price sales: Buyers wouldn’t need to buy the complete stack of products or items listed, they could buy parts of it. Auctions: You could also start auctions for products, items and units. In this case buyers must buy the complete stack of products or items offered. You would be able to set the end time for your auctions. If someone buys something then at the end of the turn it will be automatically unloaded and transferred to the buyer. edited by Serenity on 8/14/2018 edited by Serenity on 8/14/2018 This wouldn't need to be a structure in game. Simply setting up a stack of product or unit up for sale from maybe the More Info tab would work. Then there would be a screen for auctions to see them all somewhere.
8/14/2018 Topic: What should we work on next? Doctor Dread Administrator	CptCommanche wrote: Doctor Dread, I'm sure you've seen this suggestion floating around multiple places.... SHRINK THE GALAXY back to a suitable size for the player base I would think this could be a fairly easy thing for you to do (maybe I'm wrong?). Like down to 3-4 systems. We close 2 systems/week to allow players to adjust to the changes. We keep the the most populated systems active (Sol, Gul, Sirius, Centauri. Close the rest. I believe this would do more long-term good for the game than any of the above changes, at much less effort to you. I can implode dead systems, but that doesn't really fix the problem if they are already empty. It's hard to implode populated areas without really pissing off people who are there. I also cant realistically implode Sector 7. Imploding the areas seems forced. I would rather try to find a away that makes aggregating with the other players in a smaller space beneficial so it happens naturally. Some sort of tech bonus if your building in a place with many other players and industries. Max city population scales up with the amount of industry there? Like 1 mil for every 1k industry output?
8/14/2018 Topic: What should we work on next? Doctor Dread Administrator	Iyurrr wrote: ... Aaand what we've forgotten - better reports for everything. Or just a possibility to access at list a flat table of some data - fore resources, demands, units etc, like accounting page with different sections. This would be really, really necessary. Now there are a lot of similar stuff is made on external side. https://image.prntscr.com/image/hVVO9O1IQcapM1iMUQfUiw.png I'm not sure exactly what kind of reporting is useful. I should probably put up a thread on exactly what you would want to see. I've always wanted to make an API that allows player to take the data directly and do whatever you like with it but that would probably be restricted to paid accounts and have to be limited to not kill the database. That's why I would rather have more controlled reports that can take parameters
8/20/2018 Topic: What should we work on next? Doctor Dread Administrator	Wreith42 wrote: I can't believe people want he guild bank more than the order logic. If y'all just agree and do it, you can do the shared funds thing yourselves. To answer Dread's last comment, the only report I can think of that I would like to have would be a much longer accounting report. After three turns or so things aren't visible any more, so if something unexpected happened since I was on last, I may not have a way to figure out what it was. That is a legitimate complaint. It goes by row count, not turns so as to not break the page but you Megacorps out there make 500 rows of logs in a single turn. The database is keeping track of accounting for 3-5 days back. I think I can at least add a paging row no problem and maybe a specific turn field? That accounting page is unwieldy with big corps I'm not sure how to make it easier to read.
8/20/2018 Topic: What should we work on next? Doctor Dread Administrator	Vulpex wrote: edited post for relevance From my perspective the thing that I would find the most important is to work on those aspects of the game which would make it more likely to retain new players. Note that I say retain, not draw - drawing in new players is something which is done separately from this by and large but it is something which can certainly be done in other ways. In this sense I was drawn to many of the aspects which are relevant in the field of getting players to work together because it is when you have a community and friends which you are working with that you can actually enjoy the game in the long term. This would be great. That is why I was rather interested in those aspects of the game which fostered cooperation - specifically the guild bank and the use of trades without contracts (which would make trade between corps much much easier). I also very much liked the idea of the Unit Order Management because it would be a great UI improvement but not sure if every player would actually use it and benefit from it so I was a bit on the fence with that one. But I also wonder if that is the right approach to retain players, it might be but I am not sure. Another way of looking at player retention is to give them great long term goals. In that respect the follow-up to the guild banks is also very valuable - specifically when you look for the longer term huge megastructures projects - but also the new anomalies/quests and the strategic locations. I do think there is a bit of confusion as to exactly how a guild bank would work - JBD has touched on a few of the key aspects but it boils down to the simple question of whether a unit being paid out of the guild bank still contributed to the logistics penalty of the player who owned the unit. (I have had discussions with a bunch of players, some believe it would not, some believe it would, and it might be part of the reason why that option is so popular, only Seren would be able to clarify). edited by Vulpex on 8/17/2018 The guild bank is something I'm working on now and it is moving along pretty quickly. You might see it in a week or two. I'm making a separate thread here to discuss exactly how it should work because it can get complicated quick.
8/20/2018 Topic: How Guild Bank should work Doctor Dread Administrator	This is being made sticky while I work on it. This is in relation to the "What should we work on Next" post from August 2018. Guild Bank is #1 in the poll and is a smaller feature that can show up quickly so its now given priority. This is how I'm making a guild bank work to start, we can talk about adding more features and expanding it as we move long. First thing is that Guilds will now how a "Bank" of credits. How exactly the guild collects money into the bank can go several different ways. The first one is simply straight deposit into the guild bank which is something i might allow on the guild page itself. The second way is by taxing the members. There will be a tax rate guild leaders can set which, for now, affects all members equally, although a more elaborate interface that allows you to tax members differently by overriding the default is a great idea. What does the rate go against is a good question though. Should the tax go against a corps NET WORTH or TOTAL REVENUE or perhaps just the PROFITS your members make? Going by profits is at top of my list but would mean a guild member losing money every round would be contributing nothing. Perhaps I can make that a dropdown option also, how the tax rate works.. Some sort of Guild Accounting page is also going to show up which will show how much money each member is contributing (by whatever means) over the last few days and perhaps even a running total. That accounting is probably going to be public knowledge. SO, collecting credits into a guild bank is the first part, the second is how the guild bank credits get spent. Are we going to allow guild leaders to directly transfer guild bank into their accounts if needed? Could be abusive but hey it's a guild and the terms of the tax is displayed before you join. However that brings up a good question, can guild leaders go from 2% to 100% and rape everyone? Is there a time limit to raise taxes, like it can only go up 1% a day? I'm currently capping the tax at 20% but guilds might want to legitimately tax 80-90% of your PROFITS for limited amounts of time and because its against profits it cant really wreck a member so it sounds pretty safe. So far what I am working on right now is allowing corps/guild leaders to declare assets they already have as "Guild Assets" by a flag. This changes absolutely nothing about the asset itself, who owns it, who controls it, its still that corps asset in all ways BUT the Upkeep cost of that unit/fleet/structure now comes out of the guild bank. This allows the "guild" to essentially maintain huge assets but the authority over the assets is still on a single player, usually the guild leaders. The guild leaders can go to any of its members assets and flag them as Guild assets not the other way around. It will only be for military and structures. When a turn flips all assets declared as Guild Assets get charged upkeep first against the respective Guild bank before players do. If the guild bank cannot cover ALL upkeep on a turn then it will do NO upkeep for that turn and whatever players are holding those assets will be hit with the upkeep instead. I also want to make it possible to construct new units and structures via the guild bank. I haven't looked into that yet but it should be easy enough. On the construction queue page, you will simply have a flag to build whatever it is through the guild bank, if you are a guild leader. Again, if the guild bank cant cover every new asset in this way, then it will hit the corp instead. The guild bank cannot go into debt, if it can't cover the cost of something it simply won't cover it. Deleting a guild will dump the bank onto the last player. If we allow direct withdrawal by guild leaders to their corps then that won't be a problem however having a guild leader simply steal all the money and run is going to be a possibility. The guild does NOT have its own set of logistics and you will not be able to offload your logistical burden onto the "Guild" in any way through the guild bank. HOWEVER.... the idea of giving all guild members a bonus to logistics based on the membership in the guild is a legitimate idea. Might be paid account membership only to mitigate abuse though. That's the current whiteboard plan I'm working on right now. Let me know what you think edited by DrDread on 8/20/2018
8/20/2018 Topic: How Guild Bank should work Doctor Dread Administrator	I plan to make it so you can put Military or Production structures as guild assets. It makes more sense for military, and it might come out first but theirs no reason to not allow it for factories as well. Logistics bonus for guilds is precarious and it might take some thought as to how to implement that. Simple membership count would invite 100 fake accounts unless it only counted paid guild members. But then the non paying players would be second class citizens in the guild space. Maybe that's a good thing. Maybe only paid account can be in guilds but being in a guild offers bonus to the entire guild. As long as the guild bonuses, logistics or otherwise are minor and don't exceed the philosophy of "Its not pay to win because paying only gives you 5-10% advantage" I wouldn't lower overcrowding because that's a tricky and expensive real time thing. I can adjust logistics bonus to every one in the guild based on something pretty static like your existing levels or existing logistics. One day when we make it so you can put levels into logistics those players would be worth more in a guild. The bonus that everyone in the guild gets is based on the sum of all logistics in the guild maybe. But it cant be much. A guild of 10 level 10 players might get a 10% bonus of logistics? and even that sounds huge. It might be better to base guild logistics bonus against guild placement. The top guilds get bonus logistics for being the biggest guilds, by whatever measure I'm not sure. Even if I did the top 10 guilds by existing levels of its members or something. The top #1 guild would get a 10% boost, second would get 9% etc. That would prevent it from being abusive.
8/28/2018 Topic: How Guild Bank should work Doctor Dread Administrator	Harkon wrote: I dont want to be taxed by my own guild for some amonout of taxes that i have not aggreed to, because it can ruin my economy if the taxation is to high, so i would like to see a feature in guild where guild leader would tax specific guild members but the guild members will have an option in guild to confirm the taxation or even cancel it at specific times if your balance is in minus. These way every time you would be taxed in guild or the guild taxation changes by certain % you would get notified and would need to confirm the guild leader taxation. So there would not be a need for guild taxation cap i would set it to go even up to 80%. edited by Harkon on 8/24/2018 Are you one of those "Voluntary Association" people? =) I can envision setting the tax rate differently for different members, like the guild leaders might set themselves at a higher tax rate then the smaller members (because that has totally happened in real world history). But adding an approval process on top of that is getting a little crazy. Not allowing the tax rate to change quickly and notifying when it does is probably as crazy as it will get
8/28/2018 Topic: Payment methods not available Doctor Dread Administrator	Going through PayPal is much more practical for a small time merchant like me. They will take normal credit cards also and take a cut. For me to setup merchant accounts for Normal credit cards with their own payment system is a lot of work to setup and maintain to save one click on the user. Although I wonder how many people I lose to the PayPal hurdle
8/28/2018 Topic: Rough Idea About Competition And Challanges Doctor Dread Administrator	How about a second test server where we test different setups and do dramatic mechanic changes to see how they work? The game time would be accelerated. Your current corp can be copied into the test server
8/30/2018 Topic: How Guild Bank should work Doctor Dread Administrator	Im not sure if a guild megastructure is a good idea, you're putting the guild features behind a paywall of sorts. If you want to attack a guild bank we can make it be the Corp HQs of the leaders. There was an old idea of being able to attack Corp HQs for a percentage of their money, we can extend that to the guild bank. However it seems really easy to dump your bank an the last round of combat I can "freeze" banks when they are in combat but that get a little tricky also. (this is why it never got implemented) you would need to declare "In combat" as being there are still units in attack mode at the end of the turn after combat so people cant suicide single level 1 infantry units to force "In Combat" I DO want to make a capture mechanic, as in I take all your standing product and ITEMS from a location, if attack you at a location and wipe you out, all the product and items at that location immediately switch ownership to the highest military power corp. That would be a full blown version of the "Raid" mechanic in place now and it would allow item grabs.
8/30/2018 Topic: About Guilds Doctor Dread Administrator	Besides the guild page there is no other information about the guild themselves. However guilds are getting new features, like a guild bank and taxes, I might being in a way for guild to declare war or allies with each-other . Doing so might cause some automatic attack/defense responses. That gets tricky though.
8/30/2018 Topic: How a Capture mechanic should work Doctor Dread Administrator	There is currently no way to capture other assets in the game except product through the Raid option in combat. I have some ideas on how it can be implemented in different ways. The first idea is quite simple to implement. If you attack someone at a location and wipe them out, or a better way to say it is, if a corp is wiped out militarily at a location then any product, items and MAYBE even factories switch ownership to the highest military power of the attacking players at that location. Taking factories seems a little much, but taking the product or items at locations sounds fine. Also, the highest military Power could be filtered down to ONLY INFANTRY or boots on the ground type of units (Infantry, Commando, Mechanized, but not Battle suits, tanks, artillery, aircraft). There is also different idea when it comes to "Capturing" as opposed to "Destroying" big military assets. like star bases, Orbitals or megastructures and even normal factories. It would involve all units having a separate Capture hit point bar. "Capture" would be another option of attacking alongside Raid. When capturing, the Infantry type units would cause "Capture Damage" and only a fraction of normal damage. If the Capture HPs goes to zero then the asset is captured by the highest military power (Infantry Units) of the attacking corps. The Bar recovers similar to Hit points but if something was just captured, it will be very easy to capture again by someone else right after combat. You would bring a mostly ground force in if you intend to capture something as all other units would do full real damage. "Capturing" a Corp HQ would allow for perhaps a percentage of credits or some other reward. Units under attack cannot be salvaged. In fact everything at a location can be prevented from salvaging anything if there is combat going on. I'm still not sure if I would allow capturing of Factories, that seems devastating, it's worse then losing it. for the salvage money edited by DrDread on 8/30/2018
9/5/2018 Topic: How a Capture mechanic should work Doctor Dread Administrator	So far it sounds like there isn't much interest in capture mechanic for any corp assets. Shifting ownership of a starbase via capture is probably 2x as griefy as destroying it. I'llhold off on that kind of capture mechanic. BUT, I do plan to put in "Strategic Locations" in the game similar to Stelaris. Permanent non destroy-able structures that offer a corp wide bonus of some sort. Those I will make using a capture mechanic similar to what we're discusing here. What about the capture of products AND ITEMS if you wipe out the owning corporation? I havn't heard comment on that It would mean you could attack a big player at his corp where hes sitting on 83 artifact items and if you can overpower his military there then all ownership of those items and product change to the highest military power attacker. I would have to make cargo transfers not allowed if under attack and neither is salvage.
9/5/2018 Topic: How a Capture mechanic should work Doctor Dread Administrator	Wreith42 wrote: I would want fixed defenses improved if you put Items at risk. They're currently useless at any affordable level against any half-way-decent fleet I think all the units scaled up some, esp the ships and pushed the defenses down. I might do some kind of doubling of defenses and cut everyone's defense unit levels in half to compensate
9/6/2018 Topic: Leaving Earth..? Doctor Dread Administrator	Generally speaking, Earth is safer and more stable with plenty of permanent cities but the resource values are significantly higher everywhere else. You don't have to leave earth with your Corp HQ, you can build factories on other planets even on a free account and ship stuff back. Once you get a foothold on Earth, make a ship and a ACP and go plant something on a nearby planet. Put some small troops on it with a frigate if you have one or send a military base in with your factory and build it slowly.
9/7/2018 Topic: What should we work on next? Doctor Dread Administrator	Wreith42 wrote: Would having the report simply return each turn's totals with a button to expand a specific turn be a viable solution? If the totals aren't stored in the database and needed to be calculated for each page load I imagine it would wreck the database, but pulling a single row from the database (if the calculated totals were stored) for each turn when loading the report, then just pulling the data on demand for a specific turn shouldn't be any worse than the current situation right? That would essentially be the overview version of the list which does exactly that. The overview tab shows a graph that generalizes all your ins and out, the accounting tab is almost the same thing but draw out with exact numbers, the DETAIL version is actual line items. On the detail version I think we just need a turn filter that you flip through and allow it to go 50 turns back like the overview graph does
9/10/2018 Topic: How a Capture mechanic should work Doctor Dread Administrator	LunaMoth wrote: I don't remember ground units being scaled up. It seems that any defense you make can be easily countered with an equivalent ground force. I think the only benefit of defensive structures is that they are dirt cheap. The idea of defenses is that they are far cheaper then their equivalent ground force. At a ratio of like 5 to 1, or that's what it should be. But there is another cost associated with units which is the Logistics cost. Defenses cost too much in Logistics to be practical. If I scale them up, simply double all their stats then what that does is effectively HALF their logistics cost.
9/10/2018 Topic: Disappearing Messages? Doctor Dread Administrator	jimbobdaz wrote: Only just seen this post, i had the same thing happen a while ago when pms from Evil dissapeared, turns out when one person deletes the pm it is deleted at both ends This is true, either person can delete the thread and it vanishes entirely

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