Dave's Galaxy

[Tom]

Does anyone use Slingshots? The upkeep seems rather expensive. I could see using them on my few core high production military planets but other then that I don't know that they are worth the cost.

Absolutely. I build slingshots almost everywhere. I have massive amounts of traders flying around, and it speeds up trading.

[Sacha]

I build them on big planets or planets with lots of steel. Giving your warships/arcs a kick in the arse can make quite a difference.

[Galle]

Over on the DG Forum I came up with a proposal to do just that.

I also came up with a way of graphically differentiating fleet strengths, which I saw that a couple of you asked for.

I'm not sure I've convinced Dave that any of you guys are interested in this yet, so your contributions and feedback are welcome!

I like your idea of borders, as long as it is only between allies and there are no hard-coded consequences of breaching them. But as a graphical tool to use in diplomacy it would be very helpful. I guess one could also use it to draw information on the map for allied perusal, as one can now do with routes for oneself. Likewise the different symbols for different fleet sizes seems sensible. When it comes to your diplomacy ideas, I think they will be of limited use. My personal opinion is that a better messaging system where one could for example message groups (for instance all allies) would be more useful.

[Vellos]

The borders idea looks AWESOME. I would LOVE to be able to use that.

Oh and, Qyasogj.... I'm not only Vellos. I'm also Haman, the obsessive long-distance colonizer to your southeast.

[Kai]

This game needs automation so bad.

[Gustav Kuriga]

And I am.... let me check the front page real fast... GundamMerc. I'm that small red nation effectively surrounded to my south and west by sirgumby and uranus. Note the light blue empire next to me... that's Agiri, huntsmaster on this forum. He's inactive, but his PD is a pain in the ass. Hey Dave, if at all possible, could it be made so that if someone goes inactive for a certain amount of time, their upgrades become inactive?  sirgumby is inactive, I believe, so I'm getting a lot of planets ready made to be good producers of fleets from him.

[Nathan]

Hey Dave, if at all possible, could it be made so that if someone goes inactive for a certain amount of time, their upgrades become inactive?

Nooooooo. If someone goes inactive for a while and they know they won't be back (e.g. if I go on holiday for a month and won't have internet access), I don't want to come back to all my planets gone, despite having PD on all of them, with many overlapping. Or if I get bored and want a bit of a break, it'd be nice to come back to something rather than everything offline.

As for boarders, perhaps just use influence maps? So it's not predefined, but rather works off how close you have a planet to someone else's planet, possibly tweaked for the society level of the planet.

[Gustav Kuriga]

Perhaps a vacation mode for those who are actually going on vacation and not just going inactive from leaving the game? And while you're in vacation mode, none of your planets can be attacked, but you won't be able to do anything with it on either. Your fleets would still be open to attack, and you won't produce any resources, population or society level. Basically your entire empire is in stasis.

[Gustav Kuriga]

Oh, I made a new account for us to add to the front page, I'm also Komurov, with my home planet at... 1790.2,2067.5

[Chenier]

Perhaps a vacation mode for those who are actually going on vacation and not just going inactive from leaving the game? And while you're in vacation mode, none of your planets can be attacked, but you won't be able to do anything with it on either. Your fleets would still be open to attack, and you won't produce any resources, population or society level. Basically your entire empire is in stasis.

Too much trolling potential if the planets can'T be attacked, imo.

[Gustav Kuriga]

which is why you have a waiting period before being able to use it again. Like... say.... 2 weeks.

[Nathan]

Too much trolling potential if the planets can'T be attacked, imo.

Agreed. Personally, I think a vacation mode in a game like this is definitely a no-go. The current system of "society stops growing" is the best, tbh.

[Gustav Kuriga]

That's an advantage, though, not a disadvantage.

[fodder]

bah.. there's something seriously strange with regional gov.

all but 3 planets within my home planet's regional gov circle  is losing money, including one that didn't trade for the turn and expected to have ~400k income but actually ended up losing 500 for the turn (it was building sensor 1).

the only 3 that didn't lose money were building planetary defense. (odd....) the others had pd/bases scrapped the turn before..

they all have 20% tax

the home planet takes in around 3 mil from regional tax, which seems rather too excessively high for 13 planets that had an average of low to mid ranged 6 figure incomes each.

will continue to monitor numbers... but it's strange.
---
Fleet #27990, 20 merchantmen (27990) Arrived at Psi Caeeus 3 (3141832)
  Trading at Psi Caeeus 3 (3141832)  selling 1261 steel for 124839 quatloos.
  Trading at Psi Caeeus 3 (3141832)  bought 625 food with 5000 quatloos

before turn 2915972
after turn 2641453
Total Credits 559200
Total Debits -265550  (Matter Synth 1, Slingshot, Military Base, Mind Control -- before turn, scrapped ms 2, maybe also trade incentive)
Budget Surplus 293650
wasn't building anything

---
maybe it'll be saner next turn.

[Qyasogk]

The borders idea looks AWESOME. I would LOVE to be able to use that.

Oh and, Qyasogj.... I'm not only Vellos. I'm also Haman, the obsessive long-distance colonizer to your southeast.

Ah. So you're playing multiple empires! I wonder how many people are doing this? That explains your confidence in expanding so far so quickly, as you've got another much larger empire that's your main force. I'm necessarily playing a little more conservatively, because my empire is the only one.

Though to be honest, there's so many super powers here, that most matchups end up being David vs. Goliath. I'm right next to players that have over 200 TIMES the systems, fleets, money and population I do. If you sat down at a game of Risk and you started with one territory and the other guy has every territory on the map.... well there's not much you can do against that is there?

I like the idea of Borders as well, but so far Dave hasn't really responded to any of my suggestions, so I don't know what to think. The ability to draw a line on the map is already there. as I noticed people were using Named Routes to do borders for themselves. A border would just be something visible to other players.