STARGAZER BULLETIN

[Watch TV, Do Nothing]

I lost the space forces data from last update so I can't do the direct comparisons this time.

Lots of expansion by existing empires and several new empires going big-time in the past 5 days.

Concerning established powers:

• Terran is setting up another cluster in the dark nebula between Boycott and Reformed.
• Big expansion by Finnian in the Southwest
• RoR's new cluster in the NW building a ton of Gorgos, as usual.

Concerning new and rising powers:

• The embattled Klingons have pulled back from the brink of oblivion and rebuilt or captured a new Eldritch jumpfleet, but it seems like they might still be slugging it out with Henry VIII (things are kind of confusing in the shattered south right now). Their economy has broken up and they've fallen back to the L&O sector capital carpet defense while their capital seems to have shifted a couple of times.
• Trade routes in Henry VIII's southern cluster have broken up and he's using the sector capital blanket defense too- never seen it tried by an S&H empire. Honestly I'm not sure who's fighting who right now but things look pretty bad down there.
• Some old names coming back in new form, including HOA0004 and evil space pirates
• A big entrance by wesnoth in the Southeast, who has 74 worlds and is only 5 cycles old. Watch out for those space orcs!

Overall:

• With the nebulas becoming more populated, will we see ramjets return as a major force in galactic power? I haven't even been tracking them since only Reformed has building them in any numbers lately, but they played an important role in the Second Galactic War and a few other conflicts like nor-vs-ESP. I built a lot of Cyclopses and Cerberuses back when I was Hallucination, but I'm not convinced that their labor-cost-to-damage ratio is very good.

[Watch TV, Do Nothing]

Things have been getting pretty wild in the South. After a long period when much of the galaxy lay unclaimed as independent worlds, many regions are filling up again and some areas are seeing land rushes and wars of aggression. There are a lot of new players in the mix- it seems like there are 10 more little empires just in the past two or three days- and many seem to have realized that you can jumpstart your own empire by snatching bits of somebody else's.

I snuffed out one upstart who attacked me earlier today. There's plenty of prime planets still available, but there are a ton of new players entering and they aren't always starting in places where it's easy to expand nearby except by force. Meanwhile, long-established powers are asserting themselves more, with major expansion by Finnian, RoR, me and the Terrans. This makes for an exciting but perilous galaxy - especially for empires who simply haven't had time to build up the defenses or starfrigates needed to lock down territory. The galaxy is full of predators. Be careful out there!

[Wayward Device]

Maps for Cycles 4566-4571: http://imgur.com/a/d4GnB

[Watch TV, Do Nothing]

Here's another way of thinking about the galaxy. Borders are drawn around regions of space where most planets are owned by one empire. Empires with dashed borders are "broken"- their trade networks have largely collapsed and their economies are no longer able to support major ship output. That doesn't mean that they are doomed per se, but their backs are definitely to the wall. Square dashed lines connect discontinuous empires (other than Finnian, who is all over the place).

There is more open space than there seems to be on this map, and not all filled areas have equal ship/labor output. Still, another way of visualizing things.

In the past few days the capital bug seems to have happened to Rus when wesnoth took its last capital. IDK if they even still have any planets or ships left, but Wesnoth now has a second capital where the old Rus capital was.

Apologies to any empire not shown on the map; I'm sure your time will come .

[catfighter]

Love the new display, TV! December can't come soon enough, when all Felor lines shall once more become as solid and unyielding as the Pact once was... *gazes wistfully into the distance*

Someone had better tell Rus to abdicate (if he he has any planet left able to do so) before he gets stuck like Xephyr...

[Watch TV, Do Nothing]

Couple things:

• Felor is rearming. This big northeastern empire sat stagnant for quite some time but trade routes have been largely reestablished and its yards are cranking out new ships. Given the size of Felor's remaining empire, it seems likely that a new old power will be rising soon. For those of you new to the galaxy, Felor is the third-oldest power and was a member of the old Barricades pact, playing a major role in several galactic wars.
• Wesnoth is claiming territory fast, ballooning out to over 150 worlds. Pretty impressive for an empire that's only a little over a week old! Wesnoth attacked at least one southern minor, Rus, inflicting the double capital bug on them along the way. Rus, if you're still around, the only way to get around this uncommon but annoying bug if you can't retake your capital is to register a new Ministry account.
• The Klingon-Henry war seems to have ground to a standstill. Henry's jumpfleet was practically annihilated in the process (or in some other war), but he still has a functioning economy up in the northwest, while the Klingon economy is in very bad shape.
• I haven't been showing ramjet fleets so far since up until now they've all been fairly small, but I have been tracking them. Right now the Reformed Empire has the strongest nebular fleet... but remember that there are still two surviving nebular Mesophon worlds that sell ramjets.

[Finnian]

It seems that Wesnoth is the winner of the south war, but maybe we will see a Henry VS Wesnoth final match

[catfighter]

It does feel good to stretch and yawn after a good long nap. I (Felor) am only doing a little "spring" cleaning at the moment (and not quite as efficiently/extensively as I would like, I might add); I will actually begin casting off outlier worlds/clusters and won't get to expand much outside of consolidation in my little corner until the prophesied Day of Glory.*

And if the Terran Empire takes notice of this post, I would like to claim the two sector caps you set up in the middle of my northeastern holdings.**



*also known as Winter Vacation!
**one is a useful world and the other has some old memories attached to it

[NIGHTHAWK620]

STILL STUCK IN THE NO CAPITOL BUG.....CAN'T ABDICATE OR CONTROL CAPITOL NOW NAMED LITTLE. LORD NEWBIE IS IN LIMBO....HELP. SYSTEM WIN 7/ WIN 10 DELL LPTP

[Watch TV, Do Nothing]

I believe that your empire will auto-abdicate if you don't log into Anacreon with that username for something like 30 days. If you want to keep playing in the meantime, the best thing to do is create a new Multiverse account at http://multiverse.kronosaur.com/ and log in to Anacreon using that account..

[Watch TV, Do Nothing]

Not much action (as far as I can tell) within the past 3 cycles, although Wesnoth and ESP both expanded considerably and Felor has been rebuilding.

I've stopped tracking Boycott and Finnian as Minor Powers, since their starship forces have gotten so much bigger than the other minors that it was hard to read the charts. RoR of course remains stronger than everybody else about 3 times over in terms of raw forces.

Despite not having a capital, Rus is alive and recovering. If they can retake their original capital they might be able to resume communicating with the rest of the galaxy.

[Nova Andromeda]

Beta Testing (DO NOT DESTROY) is making excellent progress in their nebular testing program. I appreciate the lack of aggression while the testing is ongoing. Soon RoR will be little more than ... I mean, we will have all the data required.

A few issues I noticed, that I want to write down before I forget.
- systems that require habitats, are set to consumer goods, and have export orders for more than they can provide will lower their life support related supplies below what is required even if they produce more than enough to feed themselves and are still exporting goods.
- the edges of nebular / real / rift space are not precisely represented or they are not clean somehow as some movement paths are allowed and others not for no discernible reason (no path can be found).
- nebular systems appear to have a poor distribution of food systems. Earth and ocean and underworld are too uncommon to support an economy and using hostile systems is problematic as they tend to go into civil war when demands shift.
- my first several attempts ended with an empire failing multiple times and all the systems saying rebels won despite no civil war, not certain what caused this. One guess is that if you lose over 1/2 of your systems to civil war your empire dies and restarting it results in death as well.

[Watch TV, Do Nothing]

Beta Testing (DO NOT DESTROY) is making excellent progress in their nebular testing program. I appreciate the lack of aggression while the testing is ongoing. Soon RoR will be little more than ... I mean, we will have all the data required.

A few issues I noticed, that I want to write down before I forget.
- systems that require habitats, are set to consumer goods, and have export orders for more than they can provide will lower their life support related supplies below what is required even if they produce more than enough to feed themselves and are still exporting goods.
- the edges of nebular / real / rift space are not precisely represented or they are not clean somehow as some movement paths are allowed and others not for no discernible reason (no path can be found).
- nebular systems appear to have a poor distribution of food systems. Earth and ocean and underworld are too uncommon to support an economy and using hostile systems is problematic as they tend to go into civil war when demands shift.
- my first several attempts ended with an empire failing multiple times and all the systems saying rebels won despite no civil war, not certain what caused this. One guess is that if you lose over 1/2 of your systems to civil war your empire dies and restarting it results in death as well.

The first two observations are definitely known bugs that are on Ministry. The nebular issue is definitely real and I think it's more pronounced in bright nebulas than dark nebulas. The total empire failure might be caused by a hostile empire attacking, although the civil war hypothesis definitely merits consideration too.



And here are the numbers.

A few things that might not be immediately obvious:

• No significant wars that I'm aware of in the past week. RoR lost a couple of planets but I think they might be scattered "gift worlds". RoR has >10 million Gorgos right now, so Nova has his work cut out for him.
• Felor's space forces bar got cut off; it's actually closer to 7 million and continuing to grow fast.
• I stopped tracking Klingons since they have no jumpfleet or economy worth mentioning any more. They might come back, but things look pretty grim.
• Henry VIII lost a sector capital in the south to a secession. He's bumping up against the 100-planet limit under a non- Law & Order doctrine, so that's not too surprising. The way the game plays right now you basically have to go L&O if you want >100 planets. evil space pirates just switched within the last few days.
• esp claim to have been attacked by a tiny empire called "1" who sadly are no longer with us (I wonder why...)
• Rus is still alive and active without a capital! Hang in there!
• this planet was apparently set as a hex refinery by some empire ages and ages ago and eventually went independent and when i captured it I discovered it has 1 billion hexacarbide, nbd
• I'm watching two smaller empires to my north and west; New Korhal and Elendel are both promising minor powers. New Korhal is in a good position to expand but Elendel is in an awkward spot between three big empires and might need to start jumpship colonizing in more distant regions.
  
• esp and felor have been building or buying ramjets. Reformed already had a bunch. There are still two nebular Mesophon worlds so these numbers are subject to change very, very fast.

[Finnian]

there is a new empire named in a funny way, it is born 1 cycle ago and now has 26 wolds!

[Nova Andromeda]

there is a new empire named in a funny way, it is born 1 cycle ago and now has 26 wolds!

NOT THE WOLDS! QUICK! KILL THEM BEFROE* THEY CAN EAT YOU!!!


* Use Hurried Spelling(TM) in your posts to denote and emphasize extra panic and urgency. Only 23 AES / use!