DrDread

all messages by user

1/31/2020
Topic:
randomly logged out

Doctor Dread
Doctor Dread
Administrator
If you check the save Login it saved the login and PW locally and it will always try to log you in automatically if you've timed out on the website which sounds like what is happening. The timeout is probably 20 minutes. GIve or take the occasional reboot
2/5/2020
Topic:
Suggestions...

Doctor Dread
Doctor Dread
Administrator
"Stealth" isn't going to happen in a direct way like that. Its a lot of work and hasssle for what amount to very little and can probably easily be figured out.

But indirectly I have some ideas. I want to make the pirates, or Dark Star Bases Hirable. All corps can send money to Dark Star Bases to attack a particular corp. And the amount of money against each corp is shown but no one knows where it came from, every so often the Base will act on the bounty amount and send an appropriate sized force for the money, which then zeroes out that corp. Somethign similar to Sins of the Solar Empire
2/26/2020
Topic:
Guild Income / Separate Logistics

Doctor Dread
Doctor Dread
Administrator
HenriDavidon wrote:
Can piles of product be made 'guild assets'? Just to pay for storage costs? Or would that be messy or weird?


Messy and weird because stacks disappear and its hard to keep information attached to them. Market selling your stack is shaky because you can have your own ships take the entire remaining stack and once that happens you kind of lose that market sell setting.

There are a few features people want to control their stacks better, like setting a minimum that even there own ships can't transfer below that amount and such that I can't easily do because product, in the database, isn't very static.

However a Distribution center IS pretty static. So the idea is to control all these things through the distribution center. Once you're editing a product in the DC I can probably ad a few more fields for things like "Wharehouse amount" that you an set to say 1000 and so no ship of yours will pick up that product if it brings it under 1000 on the ground, also no factory will use that product as a component if it brings it under 1000. You are essentially locking 1000 qty on the ground. I can even move the Market selling options to the distribution center so you can ALWAYS have Water for sale at 90 per unit at that location even if all your water was picked up or used and new water showed up from one of your freighters. I can probably keep the current market sell feature for a product stack in place so you can still sell a stack floating in space somewhere if you need to.

So if i expand the Distribution Center to handle this I can then probably make something that allows the Distribution center AND/OR any of the products it has declared in it, as a Guild asset. You could then make a "Guild Wharehouse". (Distribution Center set to Guild Asset) where anyone can drop off or store their goods and the ones declared in the DC can have storage cost paid by the guild.

One day when "Expand the Distibution Center Features" becomes a priority =)
2/26/2020
Topic:
Suggestions...

Doctor Dread
Doctor Dread
Administrator
Aircraft, right now, are probably the most practical way to drop capital ships and just about anything else. The cost might be INCREASED. It comes down to having a mass of them and grossly out numbering a handful of ships while being a unit that is mostly offensive with little hit points. A handful of fighters,in almost any sci fi environment, can take down ships, especially non military ones. RIght now here in BotG. The ships aren't "better" than ground units unless you're fighting in space , but there are little if nothing to fight "in space".

I was planning to re-balance ships vs ground sometime soon. Making ships more prominent but I still don't want the meta to be "Just get ships" to be the meta. The fighting should be between ground forces with ships playing more as a support. Ships don't' do much to ground units but ground units don't do much to ships and ships are expensive sp they are impractical to use by themselves against ground targets. You need to bring in some ground force and play the ground game. In a space fight, I need the ground units to be impractical, right now aircraft are still the way to go though, i wan tot try to change that to make them NOT as effective at taking on other ships than using actual ships, so in space you need to play the spaceship game with aircraft as support but aircraft can't win in space with much financial practicality.
edited by DrDread on 2/26/2020
2/26/2020
Topic:
Sorting Bug

Doctor Dread
Doctor Dread
Administrator
Thats a bug for sure. I did add sorting to a lot of the grids. I didn't try every single one =)
8/11/2020
Topic:
Economical, political & community game drivers

Doctor Dread
Doctor Dread
Administrator
I don't like the idea of making a set number of players required to do something. Like 9 required to start a planet. People make free accounts all the time. As for politics, there "rulers" have no real power right now. They have the passive bonus of income and higher logistics and maybe they will get a bonus in voting but no real politics.

I am still looking for a good way to make small players, who happen to rule a small city, have a lot of power of mega corps in that city or planet. For example the simplest might be that the ruler can ban trade for certain corps, or ban the use of their warp gate, or spaceport. A more robust system would be to be able to adjust the rate or "tax" the gates, ports, city trade by Corp or guild.

This can get abusive pretty quick though, without warning someone can up the price of the warp gate 10x or tax your goods 10x or suddenly make your freighters attack on sight . I would have to implement a slow roll out of charter changes so if you are suddenly being charged more at a city, it takes a day or two to implement plus a comms message. Now there also needs to be a screen somewhere where I can see all the laws against all the corps.

One day..... =)
8/11/2020
Topic:
Player controlled antagonists?

Doctor Dread
Doctor Dread
Administrator
Weylin wrote:
I've wondered about having a separate faction of players that start on an established homeworld in a distant star system, maybe something in Sector 4?
Something different from humanity, alien or machine, with overall different motives, and an incentive to harass the Sol system at some point.

This may not align with the vision for the game, but it would bring shortcomings of the military system to the forefront, and the balance between entropy and order.
Would Sol fall in less than a week? Would it ever stand a chance to recover? What do you do when all your assets are annihilated, when an overwhelming force destroys your largest superstructures?
How can players keep up with constant conflict? What can players do if one side snowballs and always wins with minimal losses in fights of 100 to 1?

I enjoy this game for what it is, and glad to see that it is mostly orderly and peaceful with player cooperation and trade. I was quite put off by games like Astro Empires and OGame, where the strongest only got stronger, and the lessers were decisively beaten with no chance to ever make a dent.


One day....

The players can SECRETLY invest money into Dark Star Empire in certain systems to attack certain players and once in a while they will attack and their target and how much force they send is based on the list of bounty money people have put into. Players can see the bounties and how much on which corps... but they wont know who put that money in.

Thats a little tricky though if I allow players to see your accounting at the same time....
8/11/2020
Topic:
What should we work on next? 10/2019

Doctor Dread
Doctor Dread
Administrator
The website UI is going to be remade from the ground up. I'm already looking into it. The layout will be familiar but the screen themselves are going to be remade to be a lot more user friendly. I want to fix a few things first namely whats on the poll,make sure its stable and then start re-working the website on the side
8/11/2020
Topic:
HTTPS Support

Doctor Dread
Doctor Dread
Administrator
This is a hot item I know. It'll come with other fixes when they happen
8/11/2020
Topic:
Tooltips?

Doctor Dread
Doctor Dread
Administrator
You're getting 3% logistics bonus from your political score. I think you can click on it . But yeah tooltips not a thing. Website getting a UI rework "eventually" / "soon"
8/14/2020
Topic:
Allow Contracts for Structures / Factories

Doctor Dread
Doctor Dread
Administrator
unaltered wrote:
Allow players to sell already built structures and factories to other players. This would allow one company to buy out another companies position on a planet or city assuming both parties consent.



Not a terrible idea. Seeing how now you can by product and military from another corp.
8/24/2020
Topic:
Allow Contracts for Structures / Factories

Doctor Dread
Doctor Dread
Administrator
The subscription model might change a little where free to play players can't trade with any other corp at all. No product market sales (like putting your tack up for sale), no contracts, no guild membership. You are essentially playing "solo" vs the game (which the other players are affecting). The problem is that one mega corp will make 10 more "free" accounts and boost them to provide them with another set of logistics and tech levels to feed their main corp while they all trade. I can't stop this from happening but I can make it cost $50 a month to do it. If that was in place then level 1 trading block wouldn't matter.
8/24/2020
Topic:
Economical, political & community game drivers

Doctor Dread
Doctor Dread
Administrator
I'm against the Sector Lord idea. For one, I have to stop somewhere =) One days the rulers will have actual power over the area they rule and a system lord is strong enough. We can have System on System "wars" and that would be the upper limit of scale. You can still control an entire Sector if you and your guild mates own all the systems, it would effectively become a sector lordship by council..

I would love to see a situation where the system or planet lords disagree with the city rulers and how that plays out. I'm still considering how to make this work. For example the simplest "power" I can give rulers is to ban / tax certain players on buy / sell in the city they control. The price of the goods is the central mechanic and control of who and how much is moved is a very fundamental power.. But does the planet lord settings override entirely the city rules? Can a planet lord say , Mutha Chicken can't sell on this planet, but a city lord in that planet can specifically white list him and allow it? That would make the hierarchy going up simply setting the default rules, but any city ruler can override it specifically. Should that have some sort of in game meta cost to go against the upper rule? Some sort of political score penalty you pay for opposing the planet or Star lord? They can always attack you too. No HQ no Vote =)

That would get really interesting if I had an automated attack on sight mechanic the planet lord can "red-list " a corp and the forces auto attack him, UNTIL he gets into a city on the planet where he is protected. Be fun stuff.

I like the idea that the lowest rulers, the city rules, in the end have the most power over the city, but they can only rule one city, The bigger rulers who already rule another city and the planet can't really take over a rouge city, they would have to replace the ruler with someone else. Or Ban THAT ruler from trading on the entire planet. SO he can only trade in his own city. Sounds very real world =)

edited by DrDread on 8/24/2020
edited by DrDread on 8/24/2020
8/24/2020
Topic:
New Structure: Packing Facility

Doctor Dread
Doctor Dread
Administrator
I had ALMOST pushed a update that would allow the take all order to pick up everything in one shot in one turn. I pulled it last minute because I was having a small problem with it that might have made a game breaking bug. I was very close. I need to get back to it one day, it would solve this whole problem.

I might make special rules for this to make it simpler. Like instead of all your ships fighting over who gets what when you have 5 different ships picking up the same thing, perhaps it just goes to the biggest ship, the others load nothing and skip a turn . That would cause its own problems though .I'll get it to load all at once one day.
6/30/2021
Topic:
Transfer Cargo issue

Doctor Dread
Doctor Dread
Administrator
damien wrote:
I am unable to pick up "all products" within a specific product category. The order automatically changes to pick up "all products" from all categories. For example, when I enter a "Transfer Cargo" order to "Pick Up" "Everything" in the "Clothing" category, the order gets changed to pick up everything from all categories upon clicking "Add this order".



I don't think it was ever coded to be able to pick up all products from a category All Products was everything. The category dropdown was there to be able to narrow down a specific product. Not intuitive I know, Its something that might be changed one day when the interface is updated.
6/30/2021
Topic:
Welcome to the Barons of the Galaxy Forum

Doctor Dread
Doctor Dread
Administrator
The game was much more active years ago. It needs a rework, which is something I still want to do but probably wont happen anytime this year
6/30/2021
Topic:
Where did you hear about Barons of the Galaxy?

Doctor Dread
Doctor Dread
Administrator
tencursatefut wrote:
John wrote:
Heard of it from a friend, who in turn heard of it from the old Astro Empires, which we both used to play years ago, apparently he still hangs around the forums.



AE is more of a pay2win game, you will see that the players who didnt pay for subscription arent allowed to build up to more than lvl5 economic centers. This is a great inequality.

And to be on topic, it just happened to find this game. Which I see it's very convoluted.

One question, does this server really hold like 244.140.624 records (244 mil) for the map table in SQL? On AE they had like 10k records for each div I think for every galaxy. They have a similar map to this one used here..
244 mil records in the database seem much to me.



That's not how the game is laid out in the database. The only things in the database , are things IN the game. The only planets and stars in the game right now are the ones you can see. When a new system opens up its randomly generated on the spot. There are rows in the database for the other Stars (which is 25 in the terran sector) and there's only 1-2 sectors opened up. Only a few of those stars are actually populated with planets (like 10 more rows per star for planets) and each planet might have 50 rows for the resources etc. There's a row for every product stack until it goes to zero and disappears, a row for every military unit etc. The database for the game is 500meg - 1 gig in size, and has "thousands" of rows not "Millions".

If there were 10,000 players and several zones opened up and generated you would get to the "millions"

When you are zooming out on the galaxy map in mostly empty places, its bringing back a dozen rows of data at most. It can theoretically get as big as it needs to. The size of the galaxy was made at that scale more for "realism" and to give a way to perhaps do events or expedition quests that takes weeks even on a warp gate. . I would never expect the game to ever get out of the Alpha quadrant. I figured going between two Zones would be a huge thing.

The game kind of requires a dense amount of players in one place in order to make the economy "work" so the game expands when the "economic real estate" starts to get tight and crowded. This makes it useless to fly off deep into the galaxy though, there's nothing out there. I was working on making exploration quests and actually put things "out there" but the game dev is kind of on hold for a while .
3/29/2022
Topic:
Can not upload guild symbol after guild creation.

Doctor Dread
Doctor Dread
Administrator
Darckeyes wrote:
Just created my guild a few days ago and did not have a symbol yet. I now have a symbol, but when I select the file to update after making sure it is within the logo parameters. I see no confirmation button and if I click update guild, my logo is not updated.



Theres a chance it was updated but your browser is caching the older "nothing" image. If you can try to delete your cache just for this site and just for images or files it might suddenly show up. A known bug, this site is like 15 years old =)
3/29/2022
Topic:
Starbase bug

Doctor Dread
Doctor Dread
Administrator
Magewood wrote:
I noticed that when upgrading a starbase while constructing a ship in it, it will negate the x2 building speed for the ship in progress when it upgrades.

ex. a battleship normally takes 250 turns in a normal shipyard to make. 125 turns in a starbase. when the starbase upgrades from level 1 to level 2, the battleship being built now needs 250 turns instead of the 125 it was on before.
edited by Magewood on 9/10/2021


That is strange, I will try to look into that.
3/29/2022
Topic:
City grow question.

Doctor Dread
Doctor Dread
Administrator
vadymvv wrote:
Arrows Up in a Viewscreen but population are decreasing slowly. Why is that?



I don't recall all the specific examples of how this situation can happen buy the arrows show what the growth should be based on the normal factors of demand , however you can lose population through things like combat happening on cities or certain weapons. So even thoughthe city is "growing" combat happened somewhere or is still happening over several turns and the population s actually going down




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