Nova Andromeda's Anacreon Beta Feedback

[Nova Andromeda]

First I'd like to say I really like this game and its stand alone predecessor.

All of the following comes with the caveat that my empire was entirely wiped out without warning by Finnian before I got bored of testing. I take this to mean Finnian enthusiastically volunteers to finish hunting down the bugs I was looking into and running the tests I had in mind .

General Thoughts/Suggestions:
- I like the efficiency metric and it does appear to be fairly well balanced.
- It was unclear to me if chains of trade hubs could effectively move resources from one end of an empire to another over several turns (assuming each hub was connected to the relevant resource inputs). This should be tested (especially for bugs).
- I'm unconvinced planets should starve/die off quite so quickly if they lack resources. There is basically no time for a person to respond if it happens when they are not around.
- I'd really prefer options to move a set amount of resources / watch in addition to a set percentage / watch.
- Buying NPC ships is too easy to exploit. There should be a limit.
- I would like to see resources required to build planetary items such as arcologies.
- Empires are far too brittle. Even a smaller empire can ruin the economy of a vastly older/bigger empire in about a few hours by taking only a small part of their network. A larger empire can entirely remove a smaller empire in minutes with little effort.
- There needs to be some mechanism that levels the playing field. There is no point in playing a game where a small number of old empires wipe out every new player. This is particularly discouraging to new players who invest significant effort into a new game. One could do several things about this: A. have a regular schedule for new games and/or a 'final' scoring date for each game. This way new players won't start completely behind. B. Add metrics that slow down player vs. player attacking (cool down timers after taking a planet, jump interdictors that can be built, a freeze button that halts hostile activities while a player is away, slower jump ship movement, older empires cannot initiate hostilities against younger empires, etc. C. every empire starts unconnected to every other empire and only through probes/connect mechanism is a route to another empire established.
- I'd really like to see more action and/or buildable structures in deep space.
- Empires should only be
- You should be able to import/export ships at regular intervals between planets (reduce the grind).

Crazy Ideas:
- 3D world! Instead of a 2D map make it a 3D map!! 2D graphics are totally fine .



Bugs:
- Planets fail to produce enough life support and related supplies (e.g. air filters) on hostile planets if they are food planets that export to a trade hub. This seems to happen randomly over time. A planet should never be exporting if it is running short on essential supplies.
- The trade hub fails to import sufficient quantities of supplies from planets with large stockpiles when there is a shortage.
- There appears to be a chromium integer overflow though I'm not sure if it was an import/export problem or a production problem.
- There appears to be integer overflow issues with trading of jump and starship components. This appears to be resolved if you set the export values to 0.
- Fleets didn't seem to take orders during combat and often issuing orders broke the web instance.
- Web updates every minute tended to result in only a 30-45s window per watch in which the game wasn't frozen.
- There is no combat / communications record.
- There is no master list of fleets/planets/etc.



That's all I have time to write tonight. More later as I remember / think of stuff. Please understand I can no longer take a look at my empire to check things and/or remind myself of ideas I had.

[Watch TV, Do Nothing]

as unclear to me if chains of trade hubs could effectively move resources from one end of an empire to another over several turns (assuming each hub was connected to the relevant resource inputs). This should be tested (especially for bugs).

Only between two hubs, for a total of three trade links. There is enough delay in the system that supply and demand can still get screwed up and lead to more resource shortages than would occur with direct links.

- I'm unconvinced planets should starve/die off quite so quickly if they lack resources. There is basically no time for a person to respond if it happens when they are not around.

Yup.

- I'd really prefer options to move a set amount of resources / watch in addition to a set percentage / watch.

I can't really think of a situation where this would be useful, can you give an example?

- Buying NPC ships is too easy to exploit. There should be a limit.

Mesophon is pretty screwed up right now.

- I would like to see resources required to build planetary items such as arcologies.

I agree, more specifically for defense structures in order to keep new players from building advanced defense structures and tech projects that their economies can't actually support.

- Empires are far too brittle. Even a smaller empire can ruin the economy of a vastly older/bigger empire in about a few hours by taking only a small part of their network. A larger empire can entirely remove a smaller empire in minutes with little effort.

This was the big lesson that we took out of the last galactic war a few months ago, along with "jumpship deathball is OP lolol" which has been the big lesson of EVERY galactic war.

A. have a regular schedule for new games and/or a 'final' scoring date for each game. This way new players won't start completely behind.

This is a much better model for Anacreon than totally persistent universe; the current Beta was only intended to run a few week/months and the game really isn't balanced for games this long. Having specific game objectives (like in some original Anacreon maps, e.g. the one where you have to destroy the rogue carrier), earnable persistent ranks/decorations/other nonsense and multiple trophies per game would make things much more interesting.

Megastructures were a big part of the original Anacreon and they would go a long way towards fixing jumpship combat between mature empires. The penalties for attacking a much weaker empire need to be less laughable, perhaps something like a "bad boy flag" that marks you as a troublemaker and allows other empires to attack you with no penalty for a certain period after you pick on much smaller empires. Empire strength should be calculated based on fleet size and industrial output rather than population.

- You should be able to import/export ships at regular intervals between planets (reduce the grind).

Probably infantry too, although the exact mechanics need some thought put into them.


Bugs should be reported on Ministry, not in the forums.

[Finnian]

har har

[catfighter]

- Empires are far too brittle. Even a smaller empire can ruin the economy of a vastly older/bigger empire in about a few hours by taking only a small part of their network. A larger empire can entirely remove a smaller empire in minutes with little effort.

This was the big lesson that we took out of the last galactic war a few months ago, along with "jumpship deathball is OP lolol" which has been the big lesson of EVERY galactic war.

The lesson I've taken out of the four galactic wars I've participated in is that whoever attacks first wins unless they are short on time or are vastly outclassed. (Also, you can wipe anyone out without penalty so long as you push the attack button over every single sector cap in the same watch. This often results in several full capitals' worth of defects and often as second full capital for yourself. The current record I'm aware of is three capitals in one empire and 3 empires having two capitals during the same generation.)

- I'd really like to see more action and/or buildable structures in deep space.

Yeah, a lot of us have admitted to pining for the warp links and stargates of old.

- Fleets didn't seem to take orders during combat and often issuing orders broke the web instance.

How much RAM does your play-device have? On 4gb I can issue orders, but with incredible lag (which is far more exploitable than it should be ).

This is a much better model for Anacreon than totally persistent universe; the current Beta was only intended to run a few week/months and the game really isn't balanced for games this long. Having specific game objectives (like in some original Anacreon maps, e.g. the one where you have to destroy the rogue carrier), earnable persistent ranks/decorations/other nonsense and multiple trophies per game would make things much more interesting.

Megastructures were a big part of the original Anacreon and they would go a long way towards fixing jumpship combat between mature empires. The penalties for attacking a much weaker empire need to be less laughable, perhaps something like a "bad boy flag" that marks you as a troublemaker and allows other empires to attack you with no penalty for a certain period after you pick on much smaller empires. Empire strength should be calculated based on fleet size and industrial output rather than population.

Agreed. Like heck. The idea of badges/tropies/etc sounds cool, maybe linked through the multiverse, to actually prove to everyone that, yes, you were indeed a Galactic God at one point and aren't just exaggerating your 200-planet empire.

A "bad boy flag", huh? Sounds evil! However, I think this needs to differentiate between killing a developed player and killing an annoying one-planet empire that has sat in the corner for a few weeks doing nothing but preventing you from taking that prime sector cap location.

---

And one little confession before I call it quits: Finnian and Felor sorta...cooperated.

[Nova Andromeda]

It is unclear to me if chains of trade hubs could effectively move resources from one end of an empire to another over several turns (assuming each hub was connected to the relevant resource inputs). This should be tested (especially for bugs).

Only between two hubs, for a total of three trade links. There is enough delay in the system that supply and demand can still get screwed up and lead to more resource shortages than would occur with direct links.

Okay, this sounds to me like you are saying yes this is possible in circumstances where one side of a network has a big demand and another side has a big surplus (and imports/exports are set appropriately high).

- I'd really prefer options to move a set amount of resources / watch in addition to a set percentage / watch.

I can't really think of a situation where this would be useful, can you give an example?

It really helps when you are trying to divide your resources between different sectors of your economy. For instance, I may want to ensure chromium is fully supplied with trillium, but I don't care as much about the transport factory.

A. have a regular schedule for new games and/or a 'final' scoring date for each game. This way new players won't start completely behind.

This is a much better model for Anacreon than totally persistent universe; the current Beta was only intended to run a few week/months and the game really isn't balanced for games this long. Having specific game objectives (like in some original Anacreon maps, e.g. the one where you have to destroy the rogue carrier), earnable persistent ranks/decorations/other nonsense and multiple trophies per game would make things much more interesting.

Yes, I really like this idea for game objectives and persistent ranks/decorations/etc.

The penalties for attacking a much weaker empire need to be less laughable, perhaps something like a "bad boy flag" that marks you as a troublemaker and allows other empires to attack you with no penalty for a certain period after you pick on much smaller empires.

I like this idea and it would fit in with the ranks/decorations idea as well.

Empire strength should be calculated based on fleet size and industrial output rather than population.

It is true that an empire's combat strength is basically given only by its fleet power. However, I'm not entirely convinced what the correct metric is for comparing empires. Perhaps there different comparisons can be used in different settings/circumstances (metrics could include, total time logged in, population, total combat power, wars initiated, etc.). I do think wars of extermination should be allowed, but I'm not sure how to make them 'fair' if one side spends a lot more time playing, starts a great deal earlier, etc.

[Nova Andromeda]

- Fleets didn't seem to take orders during combat and often issuing orders broke the web instance.

How much RAM does your play-device have? On 4gb I can issue orders, but with incredible lag (which is far more exploitable than it should be ).

4 gb as well for the case I'm talking about. Higher end machines would need to be tested. I'll add it to Finnian's list .

This is a much better model for Anacreon than totally persistent universe; the current Beta was only intended to run a few week/months and the game really isn't balanced for games this long. Having specific game objectives (like in some original Anacreon maps, e.g. the one where you have to destroy the rogue carrier), earnable persistent ranks/decorations/other nonsense and multiple trophies per game would make things much more interesting.
Megastructures were a big part of the original Anacreon and they would go a long way towards fixing jumpship combat between mature empires. The penalties for attacking a much weaker empire need to be less laughable, perhaps something like a "bad boy flag" that marks you as a troublemaker and allows other empires to attack you with no penalty for a certain period after you pick on much smaller empires. Empire strength should be calculated based on fleet size and industrial output rather than population.

Agreed. Like heck. The idea of badges/tropies/etc sounds cool, maybe linked through the multiverse, to actually prove to everyone that, yes, you were indeed a Galactic God at one point and aren't just exaggerating your 200-planet empire.

Galactic God / Empire annihilating scourge, to each his own !

A "bad boy flag", huh? Sounds evil! However, I think this needs to differentiate between killing a developed player and killing an annoying one-planet empire that has sat in the corner for a few weeks doing nothing but preventing you from taking that prime sector cap location.

In other turn based games I've seen, empires would simply go independent after a certain time period of inactivity. I think this is a perfectly acceptable way to handle things. If one is less enthusiastic about this then an empire could 'ping' an empire and if they do not answer after fixed time period then they become AI/independent.

---

And one little confession before I call it quits: Finnian and Felor sorta...cooperated.

In killing my testing empire? Without any sort of notice! WHY?!?

[Nova Andromeda]

I assume Finnian is a good citizen and wants to help with the Anacreon Beta as opposed to being a leech actively interfering with development. Therefore, I've created Finnian's Task List(TM):

- Test the manual attack options and see if you can pin down exactly what causes the webpage to error out. Also, see if you can figure out why setting an order sometimes works and sometimes doesn't.
- Test trade hubs to see exactly how they divide up scarce resources. They seem to have an order in which they prioritize, but that order does not appear to be very good (i.e., planets with no trillium get no trillium exports while those that do will get some).
- Test the trade hubs to see how chaining between trade hubs works and pin down any bugs there.
- Test hostile planets with consumer goods designations that want to export more than they produce. See if you can figure out what causes them to fail to produce enough life support supplies.
- See if the integer overflow bug is present for every resource. It seems like it is and generally only shows up when the export/import values are very close to zero (happens a lot for parts, not so much for things like trillium).
- Check the webpage update times with machines with different amounts of ram available: 2GB, 4GB, 8GB, 16GB, and 32GB

[Finnian]

I assume Finnian is a good citizen and wants to help with the Anacreon Beta as opposed to being a leech actively interfering with development. Therefore, I've created Finnian's Task List(TM):

Interfering with the development? Me?
Who played in Beta know well that my empire was a positive resource for this game. I have founded the first guild of the game and the Galactic Arena and I have partecipated to the creation of many interesting situations. Few empires have tested the game's possibilities as mine my good lord, and I have actively participated to an important process of creating a real communication between players both in-game and in the forum. the Finnians are citizens of the galaxy mylord. There is no doubt about it

[catfighter]

During the height of my power I went out of my way to try every weird and random thing I could think of to break the game , so I already have a few answers.

---

- Test the manual attack options and see if you can pin down exactly what causes the webpage to error out. Also, see if you can figure out why setting an order sometimes works and sometimes doesn't.

If the website is lagging, it makes a few half-hearted attempts to sort itself out. Meanwhile, every new command and update stacks and the website then attempts to process them all simultaneously before crashing spectacularly in a brilliant ball of fire. Occasionally it manages to save itself, in which case commands go through. This can cause some interesting phenonena such as the Epicest Eldritch Error(TM). But the point is that if it sticks, let it be. Many commands (like fleet movement or trade routes) often take a watch to register anyway.

- Test trade hubs to see exactly how they divide up scarce resources. They seem to have an order in which they prioritize, but that order does not appear to be very good (i.e., planets with no trillium get no trillium exports while those that do will get some).

Trade hubs divide up resources completely fairly while there are enough (much to our annoyance at times ), but scarcity does indeed cause prioritization. The order of prioritization is the order in which you set the trade routes! The first world to be hooked up will get all of its resources before the second world gets any, the second before the third, and so on.*

- Test the trade hubs to see how chaining between trade hubs works and pin down any bugs there.

As is claimed, resources can theoretically be moved all the way across the galaxy, but it's a long and torturous route. Firstly, it will take three watches per hub in your chain for the resources to even begin to be moved, then one further watch per hub for the resources to actually arrive (and one extra watch to pull them off the supplying planet). Secondly, the hubs all have to be at or above the tech level of the good being moved. Thirdly, the hubs themselves have to have a demand for said resources (building high-tech defenses which require chronimium takes care of everything short of components). Fourthly, there can't be any place along the chain at which the resource could be drained at, since the destination will have the lowest possible priority. And fifthly, the import percentage of each hub has to be above one hundred percent; this should be 100 times the number of hubs between the current hub and the destination plus another 100 percent, and each hub will take its share of the resource before passing on the surplus. I have not tested this with more than three hubs in a chain and don't ever plan to. I don't remember if I posted it, but I had a rather large rant** against trade hubs which was climbing into the thousands of characters at one point. ***

- Test hostile planets with consumer goods designations that want to export more than they produce. See if you can figure out what causes them to fail to produce enough life support supplies.

They try to export whatever is demanded of them, so just try to demand a little bit less than what each world can make and have planets import from more than one consumer goods world. If they fail to produce enough life support, this usually means there is a fatal shortage of trillum and it is already too late to save the planet from rebellion.

- See if the integer overflow bug is present for every resource. It seems like it is and generally only shows up when the export/import values are very close to zero (happens a lot for parts, not so much for things like trillium).

I know only a little bit about this. The classic example is a TL 9 jumpyard importing from a TL 10 components autofac and causing the autofac to produce a negative number of parts****, which is flipped by the game engine into a mind-bogglingly large number. (I did manage to exploit this once with some fast clicking and got 500,000 undines in a watch ) This has also happened with a trillum world that randomly decided it needed to export 40 million trillum (which it luckily had) to nowhere, and that one chronimium world which suddenly exported 16 million chronimium into thin space. Current theories include immensely successful pirate attacks or the Great Galactic Ghoul.

- Check the webpage update times with machines with different amounts of ram available: 2GB, 4GB, 8GB, 16GB, and 32GB

[unknown], 15 seconds, 2 seconds, [unknown], [unknown]*****

---

And one little confession before I call it quits: Finnian and Felor sorta...cooperated.

In killing my testing empire? Without any sort of notice! WHY?!?

You should've told us! (if you rejoin and tell me who you are I won't destroy you as long as you don't get in my way )

---

* A very costly one to test which lost me several worlds
** Trust me, you don't want to read it (and I kinda don't know where I put it)
*** As you may have guessed, I don't like trade hubs. I mastered their use and immediately stopped using them. You may be able to see why I once expressed the desire to draw and quarter every last trade official myself.
**** Explanation borrowed from somewhere else, I forgot from whom.
***** 4gb was my computer, 8gb was my friend's (who currently plays Caeruleus in Alpha)

[Finnian]

And next time you want to do the part of "Lord British" remember to enable the invulnerability mode!
http://lorehound.com/news/top-5-most-me ... g-history/

[catfighter]

Oh yeah, I forgot about Anacreon's "invulnerability mode"! Speaking of which, has the controller of Ashes of Aelion given up on his empire? He still has that one trillum world up in the mid-northwest sector. And is Xephyr still stuck?

[Aureo-Oreo]

***** 4gb was my computer, 8gb was my friend's (who currently plays Caeruleus in Alpha)

It's 6gb, and lag is between 0-4 seconds which depending on an unknown factor (probably internet speed), just corrections.

[catfighter]

Still alive, huh?

Well in that case, I'll provide the data soon; I'm getting an upgrade to 8gb.

[Aureo-Oreo]

I feel the camaraderie, Felor.

[Watch TV, Do Nothing]

Lotta good findings coming out of this thread!