Thoughts on the new beta

Overall, this build feels balanced, especially where trading is concerned. No more 10m resource planets, which is nice. I feel like I am expanding and gaining skills at the proper pace.

Some feedback...

* Lack of active beta participation means I am basically dominating the entire galaxy at this point with 200+ planets and the next highest player around 40 planets. That player I am currently at war with, so it's pretty clear the galaxy is mine at this point. There's not enough active players for me to be able to gauge the impact of borders, large-scale trade, and difficult player relations decisions.

* I was able to take out most of Spoony's empire with a couple of groups of four battleships hopping from mining colony to mining colony. In this process, I took no casualties, which seems wrong. You need to fix the balance of ships vs. mining colonies somehow. Yes, I know you're advocating trade, but most players are going to engage in war at some point and I don't like the fact that I take take out most of Spoony's empire in a weekend with very little firepower. My battleships should be getting picked off by ground forces during the attack. Perhaps you implement a rule that guarantees one casualty per mining colony attack or something like that? Whatever the solution is, this game mechanic is unbalanced right now and can be addressed in any number of ways - from guaranteed casualties to stronger mining colony defenses to who knows what.

* There's still a big difference between what a 5-10 minute per day player and a one hour per day player can do. I've been taking the one hour per day approach for this beta to see what is possible. I'd like to see this fixed, as I am an advocate of 5-10 minute per day games, but to do so,you'd have to implement a new game mechanic with turns or resource points or something along those lines. I think what this means for active games is that the players who spend tons of time playing are likely going to get huge empires while casual players are going to have to figure out a defensive strategy against those more active players.

* 10 Shipyards limits isn't going to work unless I can self-destruct them and rebuild elsewhere. I have almost all of my 10 max shipyards in two galactic sectors and my empire is now eight galactic sectors large. I can't actually build on the edge of the empire. I suspect the shipyard self-destruct issue is a bug (I logged it).

I'm having a lot of fun, but I wish there were more active players in this game.

Hey Raven,

Getting some more players into the game would definitely be a boon but we're really hitting the provisioning profile limit wall now with various players getting beta fatigue along with the the no shows that inevitably happen. We're very close to the point to where we think we can start doing a region limited release without leaving folks in that region feeling like they're playing an unfinished game. Obviously, we've got a couple major items (tutorials, iap/push notifications) to wrap up before that can happen but we're close.

We definitely feel that players should have to defend their mining colonies particularly given all the options that are now available for defending them but we have discussed making it so that attacking a mining colony simply leaves the planet unclaimed so that the attacking player would still need to send in a mining colony / colony ship of their own. This wouldn't stop someone from taking out a string of mining colonies but it does slow down the over all rate of expansion of someone attacking in that fashion since the attack doesn't automatically grant them a new revenue stream in addition to hurting the other player.

A turn based / resource point system would be a pretty big change to the game at this point. I do agree that it would be a good way to make the game completely fair but that's something we'll probably need to look into more after release based on user feedback / demand. At this point we're pretty happy with the overall balance and are looking more to fine tune than overall at least until we've gotten the game out to a wider audience.

The shipyard limit wasn't intended to be that low, Tsagoth has now switched it so there's a hard cap at 1000 objects instead of placing a hard cap on the number of shipyards. As for not being able to scrap shipyards you're right that is a bug.

Not turning a defeated mining colony into a friendly colony is a great idea. This will help with the issue.

I just registered with the forums since I couldn't find any sort of newsletter option on your website. How can I stay apprised of when you guys are looking for new beta testers?

Jssippi - We always post any updates to our website / forum first but you can also follow us on Twitter (@ZarkLee) or facebook (Zarksoft) to have updates sent to your feed directly.

The lack of players in my opinion is being caused by a long beta combined with little announcements. The beta has been going on for about 4 months now, and the news page has barely changed. It gives a huge feeling that the game is dead, so people leave. Beta is beta, but the beta has been dragging on a bit.

After playing the game for a while, i think the game is very close to release like leedot said.

Btw, i just thought of a potential problem. If a game can only support so many people and only so many people will play for the whole estimated game time of 2 months, what will be done about those games? I wouldnt want to play on a large server only to have half the people leave and half the galaxy empty

Lav - As far as people leaving games partway through completion that's something we'll have to look further once the game is in full swing really.