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Author Topic: Astro Galaxy: New space exploration 4X browser game  (Read 20773 times)

Hanzoku

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Re: Astro Galaxy: New space exploration 4X browser game
« Reply #15 on: October 07, 2012, 01:57:16 am »

So is it possible for a corporation to control all resources on a given planet and strangle trade? It looked from the screenshots like players 'claimed' sectors on each planet.
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siremi

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Re: Astro Galaxy: New space exploration 4X browser game
« Reply #16 on: October 07, 2012, 08:40:00 am »


The playing field is leveled in the way that if a very powerful player decides to attack a very weak player, the time to position the fleets / attack will be increased, giving the weaker player amble time to evacuate / escape.

There is also an option there to convert Solars in QP, although at 50k Solars / QP. The thing with QP is that it's designed as a faucet system, to pull out extra Solars from the economy, reducing inflation. Being a persistent world, the economy inflation will grow in time so Solars will be more abundant. That's when converting Solars into QP will become regular, and QP will mostly be used for speeding up travel, so the playing field will even even more leveled as the game evolves.

But again, I'm not worried about an un-balance at this point because a higher player stands a very low chance to attack a weaker but active player, due to the attack / position time.



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siremi

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Re: Astro Galaxy: New space exploration 4X browser game
« Reply #17 on: October 07, 2012, 08:43:48 am »

So is it possible for a corporation to control all resources on a given planet and strangle trade? It looked from the screenshots like players 'claimed' sectors on each planet.

It's possible to control the whole STAR  :) with all the planets / moons / belts. Then, when you are attacked, your corp will have to assign corp ship to different members so they can assist in defense.

Trade is made by selling mined resources, buying goods and selling on NPC stations on different stars and manufacturing modules and complete ships and auctioning it, so there wouldn't be any restricting trade, unless you count that the corp members control all planets / moons / belts at a star and resources on them and someone would have to settle there by force if they wanted a piece... makes for some very interesting wars :) they would have to come with lots of ships and conquer the star in different fronts since battles take place at planets with orbital ships, stations and planetary forces. You'll fight in orbit and on the ground in the same time.



« Last Edit: October 07, 2012, 09:00:52 am by siremi »
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Orb

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Re: Astro Galaxy: New space exploration 4X browser game
« Reply #18 on: October 07, 2012, 12:18:16 pm »

Thank you for answering our questions, Siremi.


Anyway, I finished the tutorial and am now making my way to stake out some territory for B12 Corp. Once I found somewhere good and get established, I'll create the corp if there's interest.

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siremi

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Re: Astro Galaxy: New space exploration 4X browser game
« Reply #19 on: October 07, 2012, 12:30:24 pm »

Thank you for answering our questions, Siremi.

My pleasure, also if you claim a star or planet, a good strategy is to deploy a station in orbit and fill the station with marines and weapons. Then just deploy mining / harvester modules on the surface. That should offer a well rounded defense and mining for income even if you're offline. Then, you just need a few transport ships to get the resources to the market, and make fuel and modules from the rest. It's really quite profitable and not much hassle.
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Hanzoku

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Re: Astro Galaxy: New space exploration 4X browser game
« Reply #20 on: October 07, 2012, 01:22:06 pm »

So it would then be possible for an early starter or someone with money to secure all of the Sol system and freeze out everyone else?
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McTraveller

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Re: Astro Galaxy: New space exploration 4X browser game
« Reply #21 on: October 07, 2012, 02:07:07 pm »

Orb - I'd potentially be interested in a B12 corp.

Out of curiosity, how long did it take you to finish the tutorial?  I just a few minutes ago got frustrated on step 20, because the signal to which I jumped vanished between the time I hit jump and when I landed.
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Orb

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Re: Astro Galaxy: New space exploration 4X browser game
« Reply #22 on: October 07, 2012, 03:01:11 pm »

So it would then be possible for an early starter or someone with money to secure all of the Sol system and freeze out everyone else?

No. After 30 minutes any installations are automatically destroyed and refunded as if they were sold on Earth. I believe the same is true for stations, at least I haven't seen any player made stations in the Sol System.

However, the Sol System isn't a safe zone. Someone can theoretically attack someone who is not on Earth, and we actually have a local pirate doing that. There's a discussion right now about forming some sort of player ran peace keeping corporation.

Orb - I'd potentially be interested in a B12 corp.

Out of curiosity, how long did it take you to finish the tutorial?  I just a few minutes ago got frustrated on step 20, because the signal to which I jumped vanished between the time I hit jump and when I landed.

About three days. Most of that was due to travel time. You're almost done, by the way.
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Flying Dice

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Re: Astro Galaxy: New space exploration 4X browser game
« Reply #23 on: October 07, 2012, 05:09:33 pm »

This looks very, very interesting. I think I'll be giving it a try.
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bQt31

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Re: Astro Galaxy: New space exploration 4X browser game
« Reply #24 on: October 07, 2012, 07:31:28 pm »

This looks very, very pay2win. I think I'll pass.
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siremi

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Re: Astro Galaxy: New space exploration 4X browser game
« Reply #25 on: October 07, 2012, 07:43:02 pm »

This looks very, very pay2win. I think I'll pass.

It really isn't like that and it's mostly about exploration and colonizing new stars. If a very powerful ship tries to attack you, then you can have hours to escape, and by that time he will get bored and jump away.

Also it's completely free, you can win quantum points and everything just by voting and can unlock everything in the game that way, just by helping the game get more players. Quantum points will mostly be used for speeding up space travel.

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Flying Dice

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Re: Astro Galaxy: New space exploration 4X browser game
« Reply #26 on: October 07, 2012, 11:17:51 pm »

This looks very, very pay2win. I think I'll pass.
P2W that isn't absolute can be ignored to a certain degree; the OP at least has a few ideas for preventing it from being gamebreaking (though the best way to do that is to not rely on noncosmetic microtransactions at all). Personally, I'd prefer that games either operate entirely from ad revenue, cosmetic microtransactions, or a one-time purchase, but pay-to-skip-grind can be a semi-viable market model. Blacklight: Retribution, for example, is fairly balanced for a game where pretty much anything can be bought with cash.

In short, maybe it is P2W, maybe it isn't. If you're not interested, don't have a point to make, haven't tried the game, and don't have any intention of doing so, it would perhaps be wise to refrain from posting? At least, when I encounter a thread about a game that generates null interest or mild distaste, I tend to leave the thread rather than snarking about it.

 :)
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Oscuro1987

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Re: Astro Galaxy: New space exploration 4X browser game
« Reply #27 on: October 08, 2012, 07:10:32 am »

Siremi we meet again...
If this game is as balanced as The Hacker Project (also made by him) then thanks, but no thanks.
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Sirian

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Re: Astro Galaxy: New space exploration 4X browser game
« Reply #28 on: October 08, 2012, 08:26:33 am »

So far, here are my thoughts :

The base idea is interesting. I've always wanted to find a game with much more depth than Ogame and it's clones.
However, i've also decided to stop playing browser games if they have artificial time limits. While i get why those time limits exist, i think they are bad design unless everything else about the game is so super duper good that i can stick to the game for many months. I'll probably complete the tutorial and play for a few more days after that, to get a better idea about the game mechanics, but i don't expect to play it next week.

I also dislike the fact that so many things can be made much easier if you spend real money on them. It makes it look like a non-paying player is made to endure frustrating timers and snail-paced gameplay, so that he has as strong an incentive as possible to buy QP. I get the idea that the game creator wants remuneration for his work and that he needs to pay for server costs, but it shouldn't have such a strong impact on the game itself.

What else... the interface is clunky. The npc pictures seem to have been pulled from another game. I'm dubious about how viable the game can be in the long run, since resource deposits are limited in size and there is also a limited number of systems. Unless resources respawn, of course.

Buying QP with solars is probably not going to happen, since it takes 50 000 solar to buy one QP, and 20QP for 25 days of VIP.
For comparison, the planet i'm at right now has 15367m3 of resources for a total of 316589 solars = 6QP. If i could deploy mining/harvesting modules mk1 on the 15 slots of surface, i would need over 42 days to extract it all. And that's at 100% efficiency. So it's more like 2 months in reality. Sure i can use better modules once i research/manufacture them, but it's still an awful lot of time and energy (i would also need to transport it all back to earth) for 6 QP, when you need 20 of them for less than a month of VIP status. And VIP is required if you want to play seriously, the benefits are just too good to pass.

Now, I might seem a bit too negative, but i just like to analyze negative points in detail. There are good points as well, but i'll need more time to get to those, since i'm still in the tutorial because of those damn travel timers.

Oh and i almost forgot, but i also dislike that we can only setup a handful of modules even on large planets. A module takes 100m3 of cargo space, so they're not THAT big, and any planet IS freaking huge (count around 149 billion mē of land for earth, and 510 billion mē if you include oceans/seas), so what's up with that ?
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siremi

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Re: Astro Galaxy: New space exploration 4X browser game
« Reply #29 on: October 13, 2012, 08:16:33 am »

Astro Galaxy getting up in the ranks, great feedback so far.
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