That is the zenith of the bigger dark game I am playing. Galaxy was 20 stars each, I am peaking about 31. I continue to expand in the north against an inactive player (who was active for a while, but probably felt like they were losing so they stopped bothering). I am being picked apart by aqua green in the south - they are more active than I am, making good decisions faster than I can.
An inactive player also turned the tide in an early newbie game I played with Belouski and a few others. He played well, got the jump on a player who was less active, and deserves the win.
The “be active to win” issue is what I want to test in the turn-based game. I really like the slow, incremental “real time” mode, but if you tune out for 12-24 hours its hard to recover. I am hoping turn based with a 24 hour auto-advance reduces this issue.
I enjoyed my last game well enough but I was really only able to log in once every 24 hours which I didn’t feel was optimal. You don’t need to be constantly checking but it can be helpful if you can see that you’re about to be attacked and can reinforce the system in time. If you play a game that is completely dark, will you not see them coming if you’re scanning isn’t high enough? Or will you always have that info?
In a dark game you will see the same ships and neighbor details as a normal game. Both are based on scan radius. In a normal game will not see a ship approach unless it’s in your scan range. The difference is you will see total planets and planet status (no details) in a normal game.
I will start the game in aprox 12 hours. These settings would change from default, everything else is default.
Players = 16 Players
Player Type = All Players
Galaxy Type = Irregular
Stars per Player = 20 Stars (Medium) [is default, wanted to emphasize this]
Carrier Upkeep Cost = Cheap
Random Gates = Rare Gates
Dark Galaxy = Extra
Level 3 Scanning [advice from dev]
Level 2 Hyperspace [advice from dev]
That is somewhat similar to this old game, which looks amazing:
I want to fill as many seats as possible with registered QT3 people. PM me and say you are interested, once we confirm settings and I start the game, then I will PM you back the password. If that fills, we start! If that stalls, I will let other communities know, and we will fill the last seats.
The friendly dev is watching this game and will handsome reward the winner. :-)
Based on my first day’s play, I’d say the tick time is what drives the need, or gives advantages to, players who are able to log in many times a day. Although it’s true that the default production cycle is 20 ticks/10 hours - which sounds relaxingly slow - response times to enemy attacks have to be much faster as travel time between bordering stars is around 4 hours even at the lowest tech level.
So I’d think that if you need a game that you can log into only once or twice a day, you probably need to increase the tick time by quite a lot.
LoL… I just stole a win from someone. I replaced an AFK player in a game where the large nation had a commanding lead- I wanted to see if I could at least mount a credible comeback. Then both the remaining players went AFK, so the game gave me victory. :) But it doesn’t reflect on my stats because it was a new player game (didn’t realize that when I joined).
Looks like 8 QT3 people in so far for the game. Will keep it open longer, so I can set max players correctly. I will err on the side of making this first one smaller, with mostly QT3, so maybe this will be a 10 or 12 player game.
@Mark_Weston I mostly agree with your points. Right now I lose because sometimes the other person reacts faster. In a real time game you can react every 30 mins.
I don’t agree with making the tick time longer, in general, because then everything else slows down. And you still have the “person who logs in more often reacts faster” issue.
In turn based everyone reacts at the same time. I like that. Seems like equal footing.
I could make a turn-based and real-time game with the same settings at the same time, as an experiment to see how they differ in play, but I am concerned that may be too confusing. Thoughts from others?
Guys I’m really sorry but I will have to withdraw from the inaugural QT3 game. My wife just broke her arm and is going into surgery so it looks like I have a busy week ahead of me. Probably won’t be able to devote enough time to the game. I will get in on the next one hopefully!
Tagging @milspec so he sees this: please withdraw Fade from the game.
That leaves 4 open slots. I will keep them open for Qt3 for another aprox 24 hours. Then I will offer them I think to the eXplorminate discord, since that is where I first heard of Solaris.
If you are a Qt3 member, PM me and I will send you the password. I ask the other players in the game to please be patient another day or two while we fill those last slots. :-)
The end of an empire. I am still holding onto 31 systems, but my time is limited. I am yellow. The non-yellow lines in the south are opponents staging pretty big attacks. New mystery red and orange players must have big empires elsewhere and they have committed thousands of ships to attack me (in addition to my neighbor nemesis aqua green, who I could have handled 1:1). The yellow lines are my retreats, I empty the targeted systems of ships and am sending them all back to a few central locations. This will not make me win, but will keep me in the game a bit longer. My only hope is they bored or get in a fight with someone else who is attacking me.
All of us have checked in. Nice work! That leaves 4 open seats as expected. I will keep them open for Qt3 for another 12 hours. Note that everyone that replied to this thread is in the game, so its not likely we will get a lot more.
Next step is I offer those 4 seats to eXplorminate. I expect them to get filled quickly after that.
Having played a bit more, I think there’s enough flexibility in the game configuration for a middle ground between turn-based and real-time without slowing down the game.
For example, you could make the tick time 2 hours, reduce the production cycle to 5 ticks, and quadruple the travel speed of carriers. The result could be a game that ran at the same pace, but with less scope for micro-management.
Edit: I also quite like the idea of playing an actual real-time game with 1 minute ticks.
New approach. I deleted the 12-player game. I re-created a 9-player game, same settings, same password. I will PM each person to let them know. The new 9-person game is here:
