What specialty did you choose?

[Arkenean]

In the new beta, you are now required to pick a specialty. With that said, what have you all decided on, and why?*

[zarkwizard]

I chose Researcher. I like the faster skill learning. Although it's a tough choice, they each have something really cool. The Warlord and the Researcher will pretty much rely on trade with the Trader for the rare ore. We just can't get it alone.

Trading is now a pretty important part of the game. As a Warlord you don't want to go destroying Traders, and hopefully we have given the Researcher enough defense abilities to counter a Warlord (Watch for Stealth Orbitals that will destroy you if you don't have cloaking tech).

Anyhow.. I went Researcher.. I like to play more passively. So Researcher or Trader were what I would pick, 50/50 if you ask me.

What did you choose?

[Trom]

I went for researcher as well this time. mostly because I won't have enough spare time to put in the effort that the warlord specialty would require. I'll probably try out warlord latter on down the road.

[Spartanius]

I went for the best one

[ravenzachary]

I went for the best one

Which means... Warlord? Funny. I went Warlord simply as a Spartanius precautionary move. :)

Although, my heart is in Researcher. I'll do that next game.

Mostly, I wanted to go Warlord so I could see firsthand if the game balance had shifted away to give the other roles more ability to defend.

[Spartanius]

No I went for Trader. Trading partners will be a hassle so I doubt many warlords and researchers will spend the time to setup enough trade routes and my ship building rate is higher than everyone so I will just spam capital ships. I am not concerned about fighting warlords as a trader, its a researcher that knows what he is doing that will be annoying to fight. At the same time I am less likely to be a target because people will want to trade with me which will finally allow me to fight one opponent at a time instead of six like the last 10 games...

Though honestly I doubt being a trader will cause you to be that much less of a target, at least not for the majority of players unless you have a small empire. Small trading empires probably won't get targeted, but big ones will and most trading empires will be big.


That all being said I started game adjacent to a system with 4-5 planets including a gas giant....*win* :)

[zarkwizard]

Trader / Combat - Was a hybrid we thought about. We really tried to place each of the specialties with a 2nd tree to see how the abilities would play out. We thought it would be an interesting combo. Although keep a couple of things in mind.

As each specialty the optimum goal is the one assigned to you. You can't win the Warlord game as a Trader, since you don't have access to Super Capitol ships. The best you can do is Capitols. Since you can't build a PK (Planet Killer) you are unable to achieve the Warlord victory.

It's in your best intrests to trade with others, because your main goal is to acquire Rare Ore. The more you have the better off you are. The main reason we allowed the trader to build faster was to give it the ability to fend off attacks, just as we gave the researcher the ability to learn skills faster for the same reason. Aside from that the 1 Shipyard / planet should hold things up for awhile. At least you can now see your object counts so you know how many ships you are able to build at any given time (On the build menu, and the ship menus both tell you the counts).

We spent a lot of time trying to go through a ton of scenarios to figure out how the classes would be used, and testing and calculating the abilities. We are looking forward to see if all our efforts have paid off. It has been a VERY LONG several months trying to sort it all out. As always looking for feedback in the suggestions forum if you come up with any thoughts.

[Spartanius]

Was warlord victory for destroying a certain number of planets with the PK or owning 40% of the planets in game? Because I could do the latter with trader pretty easily, especially if there are some warlords out there decreasing the number of planets that 40% covers ;)

[zarkwizard]

Warlord victory is destroying x% of the home worlds. It's 10% or 20 worlds whichever is greater. So in a 100 player game (which is the one we are in now) you need to destroy 20 home worlds, the only way to do that is with a PK. Before it was acquire, now it's destroy. Rule change. :) The change was made because the trader / warlord win crossed our minds, specifically because of you. Your name came up when ever we discussed grunt rushing.

[Spartanius]

Lol I am flattered, I think... ;)

So is there no longer a win condition for conquering 40% of the planets? Can a trader only win through resource acquisition?

Right now when you log in you just have the following win conditions shown on the welcome screen.

-Conquer 40% of the planets in the galaxy through military force.
-Accumulate an economic wealth of over 999999
-find and control 13 of 30 alien artifacts spread through out(SP - it should be "throughout" I believe) the galaxy.
-Ascend to the next dimension by collapsing 10 stars and building the ascension device.

[zarkwizard]

Oh ya, I guess we need to change that message.

[Spartanius]

So what are the victory conditions at the moment?

[zarkwizard]

Researcher - Collapse 10 Stars, then build the ascension device.

Trader - Collect 1 billion Rare ore (that's based off 1500 people value scales like the Warlord)

Warlord - Destroy 10% of the home worlds or 20 home world which ever is greater.

Explorer (Anyone can do) - Control 13 of the 25 Artifact Planets - That requires beating the aliens, which will not be an easy feat.

[Spartanius]

Heh, there will be a lot of warlords playing when the game goes live.

[zarkwizard]

Heh, there will be a lot of warlords playing when the game goes live.

Warlords will be pretty useless without Traders around. Since it will be VERY difficult to build PKs without them. At best a warlor/research can acquire rare ore at the rate of 27% of the planets production, where as a trader can acquire it at 100% (assuming all 9 ranks in AMC). So if a planet produces 100 RO / hour, at most a Warlord can get 27 RO / hr. Since you require 440000 units of Rare Ore you aren't going to acquire it without trade. Trade is where you get huge bonuses, and faster acquisition.

Not saying it can't be done, but if the universe is heavy with warlords I doubt the majority will be able to win. The best guys will be guys that form alliances with traders. If you are playing with a could of friends you are going to want to pick different classes.

Warlords will also be spanked by researchers defense abilities with stealthing orbitals. They'll just mow the fleet from space, without the Warlord even being able to touch anything. It will be interesting to see how things play out with the various trees.

[adam__moore]

Gone for trader - think its the fastest way to an explorer win and the least likely to be aggro'd early on - warlords / researchers need us - waiting to see how it plays out