07-10-2014, 03:45 PM
Long time since my last post. Sorry!
This game -- my favorite of all -- is going down the crapper.
First, I seem to have major calamities occur pretty much every turn because of some interdependency I forgot to check. This turn, I told my construction workers to scrap all my old laboratories, because I had a large pile of higher tech labs ready to assemble. While I was at it, I thought I would scrap some of the other ancient hardware I have lying around -- factories and mines at tech level 1, which are now more valuable as recycling. Lo and behold, I ran out of construction worker capacity midway through all these jobs. Now a big chunk of my labs are disassembled, but none of my new ones went up, resulting in a loss of well over half the research I was expecting this turn.
Last turn I started building a new ship, and apparently miscalculated the space requirements. In the available space went my hyper engines and space drives and life support -- but no crew. So the ship was instantly declared "alien" (in that I no longer controlled it.) To get it back, I had to launch an invasion. I figured "okay -- I want to put troops on there anyway", but somehow my assault craft weren't included in the invasion order. My soldiers had no transportation units to bring them into battle. All of which strikes me as odd, considering that this is an utterly empty ship, that is (presumably) DOCKED to my homeworld.
This is all compounded by shortages of food and consumer goods. I had set up some new farms on the home world, but apparently ran out of space THERE, so there wasn't room to assemble them. Not enough food. Towards the beginning of the game I was so proud for doubling my consumer good production lines, and had it in my mind that I was good for a while. But the large-scale shift of population into high-paying professional jobs meant that my need for consumer goods went WAY up.
Apparently there are a number of ships flitting about my home system now -- some of the friendly, some unknown. There are 3 other players I am now entering into some form of alliance with. This is mainly for tech-trading. But through them I have learned the state of development of some of the other players, and I am just WAY behind. Economically, navigationally, and in terms of military tech and readiness. This would all be fine if I were merely turtling, testing out the game, and just having fun tweaking things. But some of the other player groups are now switching emphasis from early-game economics to mid-game military expansion.
After all my earlier talk of military tactics, the importance of information, and ship design options, I am dead vulnerable to massed assault by big fat ships with Energy-Weapon-10s.
I may catch up in the tech race by joining these other 3, and will likely strive to be a viceroy in one of their growing empires. Which will still be fun. But I am disappointed. It probably didn't help that I missed 2 turns in a row. (I had figured that my factories were still producing, my labs were still researching, and I wouldn't fall TOO far behind. Not sure if that was true.)
I will continue as best I can, but if stuff were up to me I would want two things:
1. A new game. A reset. Call this one a learning experience for us all. This is highly unlikely. Every player has already sunk many hours into their positions, and the well-organized players most of all. It might be remotely possible to ask Vern to start up a second game while keeping this one going, but who's going to play it? The most-vested players have their hands full in this one. There may not be enough interest to get 20-30 people assembled for another round. Also, I don't know how much work it takes to run this on Vern's end. Vern?
2. Major improvements on the user-interface, to warn players of gaps and impending errors. This has been discussed before, and I am not talking about perfection. But it would have been nice to see a counter tick up the number of construction workers my orders needed and have it turn red when I exceeded my supply. I am of half a mind to hand my position over to a teammate and focus my efforts on helping Vern with user-interface coding...
This game -- my favorite of all -- is going down the crapper.
First, I seem to have major calamities occur pretty much every turn because of some interdependency I forgot to check. This turn, I told my construction workers to scrap all my old laboratories, because I had a large pile of higher tech labs ready to assemble. While I was at it, I thought I would scrap some of the other ancient hardware I have lying around -- factories and mines at tech level 1, which are now more valuable as recycling. Lo and behold, I ran out of construction worker capacity midway through all these jobs. Now a big chunk of my labs are disassembled, but none of my new ones went up, resulting in a loss of well over half the research I was expecting this turn.
Last turn I started building a new ship, and apparently miscalculated the space requirements. In the available space went my hyper engines and space drives and life support -- but no crew. So the ship was instantly declared "alien" (in that I no longer controlled it.) To get it back, I had to launch an invasion. I figured "okay -- I want to put troops on there anyway", but somehow my assault craft weren't included in the invasion order. My soldiers had no transportation units to bring them into battle. All of which strikes me as odd, considering that this is an utterly empty ship, that is (presumably) DOCKED to my homeworld.
This is all compounded by shortages of food and consumer goods. I had set up some new farms on the home world, but apparently ran out of space THERE, so there wasn't room to assemble them. Not enough food. Towards the beginning of the game I was so proud for doubling my consumer good production lines, and had it in my mind that I was good for a while. But the large-scale shift of population into high-paying professional jobs meant that my need for consumer goods went WAY up.
Apparently there are a number of ships flitting about my home system now -- some of the friendly, some unknown. There are 3 other players I am now entering into some form of alliance with. This is mainly for tech-trading. But through them I have learned the state of development of some of the other players, and I am just WAY behind. Economically, navigationally, and in terms of military tech and readiness. This would all be fine if I were merely turtling, testing out the game, and just having fun tweaking things. But some of the other player groups are now switching emphasis from early-game economics to mid-game military expansion.
After all my earlier talk of military tactics, the importance of information, and ship design options, I am dead vulnerable to massed assault by big fat ships with Energy-Weapon-10s.
I may catch up in the tech race by joining these other 3, and will likely strive to be a viceroy in one of their growing empires. Which will still be fun. But I am disappointed. It probably didn't help that I missed 2 turns in a row. (I had figured that my factories were still producing, my labs were still researching, and I wouldn't fall TOO far behind. Not sure if that was true.)
I will continue as best I can, but if stuff were up to me I would want two things:
1. A new game. A reset. Call this one a learning experience for us all. This is highly unlikely. Every player has already sunk many hours into their positions, and the well-organized players most of all. It might be remotely possible to ask Vern to start up a second game while keeping this one going, but who's going to play it? The most-vested players have their hands full in this one. There may not be enough interest to get 20-30 people assembled for another round. Also, I don't know how much work it takes to run this on Vern's end. Vern?
2. Major improvements on the user-interface, to warn players of gaps and impending errors. This has been discussed before, and I am not talking about perfection. But it would have been nice to see a counter tick up the number of construction workers my orders needed and have it turn red when I exceeded my supply. I am of half a mind to hand my position over to a teammate and focus my efforts on helping Vern with user-interface coding...