Planetarion Essay, Research Paper

I see that there is a lot of activity shouting at us for a couple of things at the moment, some more deserved than others though.

First of all, I am going to take critics on the delays on our side, with getting a more NewBie-Protecting combat and asteroid capping in. The days before x-mas simply were not enough to get it tested properly, and we all wanted to chill out over x-mas. Say what you want about the gam right now, but we all needed some good quality family time at home.

Pherhaps we took a little bit TOO high quality family time, but dont forget the two server updates on the 27th and the 28th. So we were not asleep all the time (-:

Complaint number 1:

“Alliances ruin the game!”

As most people know, this is not true in itself. What is true however, is that some of the larger ones have allied, and is now almost too big and can’t be dealt with. Almost (:

Now, alliances are here to stay, and they are indeed very good for the game. The main idea for this game was to make people cooperate, depend on eachother, and be willing to make sacrifices to help others if needed.

So what can we do to sort the allmighty alliances?

Again we find ourselves lacking resources and time, not ideas or solutions. Vish and Fudge, the two who do the programming around here, have had their hands full just trying to keep up with the number of users we are getting. We are indeed honored, and very pleased that more and more poeple find their way here, and we are aware of the importance of taking care of the loyal old ones as well, who have been with us for several rounds now. Please belive me in this.

After all, some time back, we had a problem at 20.000 accounts, having ticktimes around 2-3 hours…

Today, we tick 105.000 planets in 1 hour…No small feat by Vish and Fudge, and I will gladly take my hat off for that acchievement any day.

Now, that thing was to explain why we have not been able to do all that we wanted to, as we have been forced to optimise, optimise and optimise.

Also, with that many users, the communication as in emails has exploded here at HQ. Not to mention the hunt for multies, abusers, bugfixes, and so on.

So, what can we do then? And since we are so busy, when?

Ok, we have several things we can do here. First of all, one could implement a system where travel times are based on actual distance. We have talked about it earlier, and it received no warm welcome then, but I think more and more people see the need to sort of separate the young clusters from the old ones, as 1 way of making newbie bashing less rewarding, and a lot more tiresome.

I.E. If you are in cluster 1 and want to go to cluster 31, we add pherhaps 6 hours travel time (or whatever number, this was a crude example)

Now, this is a change we can implement pretty quickly if decided to go this road, I shoudl say within a few days.

We are just about done with another solution which will make newbie hitting less fun, and it is shortly descibed such as this: When comparing the “value” of the attacking fleet, the value will no longer be just the “value of the ships in the fleet” but it will be “X % of the value of the ships in the fleet PLUS X % of the attacking planet score”

Which means, if you are a big guy, hitting little guy with only like 10 apods, you wont get any as you do today, due to your score.

And yes, I said this was the simple one. Because:

We have protection against the “friend sending 1 interceptor to attack me, to make it hard to steal roids”.

You see, the X above comes from how big part THAT attacker is compared to the TOTAL of ATTACKERS…SO it gets slightly complicated…But I might certainly tip the scales in the right direction.

So when can this be in?

Prolly will be by the end of the week, if it tests out all right, which we should have started during x-mas, but it was delayed until now.

Now, we also have some very intresting ideas about “a few surprises” coming up, but they would be slightly ruined if I spoke of them before they happen (-: So I wont.

And we will reveal some of our plans for the near and distant future of Planetarion, as we have some pretty intresting roads to explore ahead of us.

And, as soon as we can afford, we will hire more people!

As I said earlier, we have so much to do with this game, and limited resources. Which means we have to spend time not only on the game, but on ad-sales, investors, and a bunch of paper-work boring stuff, but it keeps the game out there, for free (-: So I guess it is worth it.

This is why we will take on more people over the coming monhts, if finances allows it. Sure hope they will, and it looks good so far!

A little reminder:

Please note, ladies and gentlemen, that the problem with big alliances is not that new. It was just not as visible last round, as there were other problems as well, such as high tick-times, crashing servers, and ship-imbalance.

We have eliminated most of those, and this is why the alliance thing is so visible. So look at it this way:

It gets better! And if gameplay, cambat and capping forces the big ones to hit the big ones, well, this alliance would surely crumble due to its own size…sort of (-:

So we are very aware of what is happening, and allthough many people seem to shout in the boards that they are quitting, not many people seem to do so. But we understand the shouting is a sign, and we have been preparing to act on it for some time now.

Hang in there with us, we are improving, but Rome was not built in 1 day.