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[hemmingjay]

I'm going to flip another build to some of you later today. The game can now be played all the way through. There are no win states in the game yet, but you can lose. The early game is not yet balanced, it's a bit slow.

Auctions for private vehicles are in. You must be in the nation that hosts the auction in order to bid. You usually have @24hrs. It's a silent auction where you bid, blind to other bids with a minimum bid.

Abilities are now known as Perks and can be accessed by the "P" key. You will see what has been unlocked and the effects.

You can track your performance now by pressing "W" to view the top 10 most wanted list. Soon you will also be able to track the actions of the 4 agencies here. It will show you a record of what they know about you and possibly what their plans are. In the future I may make it so that you have to pay a monthly bribe to have this service, depending on the balance/experience. It seems a little OP to me right now. Maybe I'll make it a perk you gain.

Finally, based on your feedback, I am going to push for my idea of moral decisions. I really do think it keeps with the overall vibe of the game and I think it's important to plant that little seed of personal doubt in a person's head. I am making something that I believe to be art and to me art affects the person who experiences it long after they walk away. I don't expect the player to be truly concerned when playing, however, the next time the hear about a terror attack on the news or some violent uprising, perhaps they will stop to consider where those weapons came from. I'm a dreamer, what can I say?

[MaximumZero]

If you go the route of moral decisions, you should definitely see them impact the game. I mean, if you were to sell weapons to a group like ISIS, they could take over Iraq or Syria, and possibly even merge the two countries. If you sell to Kurdish rebels, though, you could help prop up an independent Kurdistan, which could then show up on the map. Same thing goes for Ireland. What if the IRA takes over Northern Ireland? What if Israel wipes Palestine off the map? What if the Congo splinters into a bunch of factions, or Sudan finishes the Darfur genocide? Hell, what if the US were to splinter? Texas still wants to be its own country, and there's still a pretty big east/west and north/south schism.

Your reach may not be quite that widespread, but you should at the very least see a changing world, full of new laws or laws repealed, shifting borders and tangible effects.

[hemmingjay]

Do any of the play testers want to take the quick guide I gave them last night, combine it with their own experiences and write a tutorial / intro guide for the media? You will receive full credit, a cookie, possibly a gig with the studio as we progress.

[Brons]

So I've played the game for about 60 minutes right now and I'm intrigued and will definitely play more later. At this point I won't be able to write a tutorial because I don't know enough yet. Hemmingjay sent me a quick guide and I definitely needed it because at first it's not very intuitive to start out, you will definitely get lost if you play it blind (it took me a while to find the 'main menu' where the buy/sell button is). But I do think I get the general flow of the game after about an hour.

A quick summary of my experience until now:

The world is basically split into countries that buy weapons and countries that sell weapons, as far as I know this doesn't change. Your first order of business will be quick traveling to a selling nation (for some reason Russia felt like a logical choice for me). When you're buying weapons you don't know what other countries will pay for those weapons so you're kind of blind. You can solve this by buying intelligence which will show you the highest bidder (out of the 'countries you have intelligence of) when purchasing weapons. But knowing the highest bidder is not enough because you have no way to get your weapons there in the beginning, you have to rely on public transport which is basically a list of 2 or 3 transports that will spawn within a given time frame in that country with a set destination. You can't change the destination and you can't force a transport to spawn. So if you need to get your American assault rifles to Denmark (like I did) but there no public transport available you're basically out of luck until you have your own transports which you can buy for a lot of money.

I haven't reached the point of making real money because I kept trading weapons with a small margin because the great opportunities weren't doable for me (mostly no transports available) so I can't comment on the late game. The goal definitely seems to be to get your own transport vehicles asap and start flying around the world selling the guns for the highest bidder.  I bought an airplane once for $6 million but that left me not enough money to fill it with cargo .

I will comment more later.

[Fikes]

I've had much the same experience as Brons.

It looks like, at this point, only Russia and the US supply weapons. What I have been doing is bouncing back and forth between those nations, buying supplies of each weapon type, and then checking each public transport out of the country to see who is paying the most for what.

In previous games I tried to pick up my own transports as quick as possible so I could cash in on wars and stuff, but I am not sure that is a good idea. As Brons said, you can pick up expensive transports but it is hard to put them to good use with your limited funds.

I'll see about putting together an intro.

[hemmingjay]

As a reward, I have sent a cheat code to each of you by PM to make things easier. And yes, right now, we are only using US and Russia for weapons. there will be 11 total dealers at launch, maybe more as we expand the game post launch.

[bluwolfie]

If I agree to write a guide can I get a review copy?

Obviously I would post my thoughts as well.

[hemmingjay]

If I agree to write a guide can I get a review copy?

Obviously I would post my thoughts as well.

Have you written any other guides before Wolfie? I was not planning on opening up testing to any others at the moment. Testing is long, hard work and most are not up to it.

[bluwolfie]

If I agree to write a guide can I get a review copy?

Obviously I would post my thoughts as well.

Have you written any other guides before Wolfie? I was not planning on opening up testing to any others at the moment. Testing is long, hard work and most are not up to it.

Not guides specifically. But I've written short stories and stuff. So no. :p

[Glloyd]

I finally got a chance to get around to playing the new version and it's looking good so far. I'll do a little write up once I've tooled around with it and broken it a bit. Hemmingjay, what are you looking for in this guide? I may be interested in writing it, but I'd like a little clarification on it. Is it intended to be a bit of a walkthrough, or do you want a writeup on the mechanics, or do you want a step by step introduction guide?

EDIT: Played around with it for a couple hours, seems like Brons' experience is more or less what I'm having. Went to Russia right away, and once I figured out how to ship arms, things got rolling. Might want to make that "add" button a little more noticable

Anyways, started shipping things off to countries I could. Eventually I started buying some intelligence, but it didn't seem to help much with me only using public transport. I could never get to the countries offering all the monies. Seems like making money is reaaallly slow at this point, I've just been pouring all my money into one shipment to the place I can find with the highest return. And then it's just waiting until it gets shipped and I can get money to do things again. I'm actually waiting on a pretty lucrative shipment to Moldova as I write this. Ah, there we go. Made a couple million off of that. I guess as you get more money, making money gets easier. It seems that I'm getting exponentially more each time, but it's still pretty slow going. Haven't messed with the Black Umbrella options yet, we'll see how that goes. I also just became a level 16 arms dealer, not sure what that means but I like the sound of it. I'm waiting on a couple more shipments at the moment, so after those finish I'm probably heading to bed. I'll write more in the morning after I get some sleep.

EDIT2: Okay, I kept playing a bit longer. The pacing gets a lot better once you have enough money to buy enough to fill up multiple public transports. At that point, you send one out and when it finishes, you can just keep buying AKSU's and lining them up for the next couple shipments out. By the time your next shipment goes out, your second shipment will be in and you can keep buying and shipping. That's getting me close to that 30 million mark. Gonna buy me a jet 

Anyways, I'm going to bed for real this time. I'm really liking the game Hemmingjay, can't wait to see the next build.

EDIT3: Right before I shut it off, Interpol showed up! I tried to escape, but none of the travel options work. Perhaps I need a private transport? Either way, I was captured, and was roughly escorted to the game over screen. Now that I know what I'm doing, I can probably get more done in a shorter amount of time next game. Here's hoping a private transport will be enough to get me away from the coppers!

[hemmingjay]

The game has once again grown exponentially without adding new features. Through refinement and troubleshooting we have made the game smoother and overall better. I have an assignment for you folks. Let's start a list for ship names, no jokes please. These are commercial vehicles, so no puns. If you are participating, don't add comments other than copy the list with your additions in a spoiler. The next person will do the same and keep adding. We need around 40.

Feel free to continue adding other topics of conversation though. For example, we are refining the new player experience. Players will start with a bit more money, a small slow boat to start with. We are also changing supplier's inventory so that you can't just sit and pump out shipment after shipment of the same items to the same locations. For some reason my algorithms weren't working or weren't activated. They were supposed to decrease demand as the number of particular weapons rose in circulation as well as drop the price a country is willing to pay if they have recently bought a particular weapon. Countries will be looking for a variety of classes, so in order to maximize profit while raising reputation, you will want to rotate what classes of weapons you provide nations. The game won't always tell you what to do, but you will be rewarded for thinking practically about things like stocking a nation's military in a balanced manner, etc. Right now you can play a game 90% of the way through and soon it will be 100%.

Feeling great about the game, the depth and wide open options and re-playability for such a low price of $14.99 with games like the rehashed Supreme Ruler deluxe charging $30 even though it's really a compilation and is limited to a certain stretch of years. If anyone hangs on Reddit, I'd really appreciate name dropping us if the situation fits. We dont want to advertise there or join a new acct just to push the game.

[bluwolfie]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Ol' Faithful
Titanic (lol)
The Victoria
Saint Peter
The dip

[MaximumZero]

What kind of ship names do you want? Ladies' names (Victoria, Alice)? Call signs (A110, SC237)? Mythological names (Argonaut, Minotaur)? Place names (Alberta, Carolina)? Fictional ship names (Enterprise, Nautilus)? Famous real ships (Constitution, Santa Maria)? I can get you a list quick, I just need to know what to look for.

[hemmingjay]

Let's avoid real ship names for obvious reasons, but similar to real ships names is good.

Examples of names can be found here. I don't need the prefix identifier a.k.a HMV or USS :    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cargo_ships

Please start a fresh list, but thanks for the effort Bluwolfie!

[Fikes]

I'll give it a shot.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Omaha
Barista
Analog
Sine Wave
Even Keel
Oakland
Tracker
Scout
Squire
Aileron
Porter