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[Il Palazzo]

What is the problem? Is it fixable in the near future? Because I'm not sure if it makes much sense to play one turn a fortnight.

[Margrave]

I'm still eager to play. I have an Empire to rule you know.

Bugs and poor optimization be damned.

[Kebooo]

If I can get the map editor to work, I'm thinking about working on a mod, which I'd love to have veteran players try out - for those of us eager nobles, we could always have a second game going. After all, this one gets to the point it's easy to forget it's a thing I'm still active in. I'm still in search of the perfectly paced, balanced and designed EFS experience. One EFS to rule them all. A search that will never end.

[Margrave]

Happy to help playtest and do another game, as long as one of the relics in the mod is Zebulon's One Ring.
Zebulon was an orc you see, a fact that that didn't quite make it into the Urth Church bible.

[Kebooo]

Aha, finally got the map editor working. I had actually wanted this way back when to simulate battles in this mod and see their effects. If only I had known how effective bombers are!

Most every EFS game has been "X unit is more effective, because it costs more and took longer to research". Then you build stacks of these more effective units and hope for the best. That's all fine and dandy, but since I've been playing EFS for a million years, I'm looking for something different, a more rock, paper, scissors approach. Not entirely, of course. What my goal has been to do, and it's a challenging one, is to re-balance EFS 1.4's separate arms phases. That is, the separation of combat phases based upon unit types. Direct hits mechanized, close hits foot, that sort of thing. Most people know what this led to - avoiding mixed stacks altogether.

My aim has been to counter this tendency by creating ultimate "counter" units that can completely wipe the floor with non-mixed stacks, and are themselves vulnerable to mixed stacks. For example, tank killers mopping the floor with mega tanks, and anti-infantry tanks dominating assault legions, but a half/half stack of mega tanks and assault legions beating either. All the while a single stack of mega tanks or assault legions would beat that mixed stack. The goal is to add some more strategy into how you're grouping your units and why. If a player is rolling around with his death stack of anti-tank units, and you come at it with all infantry, he's going to regret forming that stack. But if you had been focused on heavy mechanized units, he'll be thrilled. So this would significantly increase the value of intel on other players - what units they're building in particular, how they're organizing their stacks, etc. This is all somewhat hard to achieve, although I was making good progress before my old hard drive died and wiped everything out. I think I'll resume this and try, once again, to bring back rock, paper, scissors, along with the same thing in space - frigates/destroyers crush fighters/bombers, fighters/bombers crush capital ships, capital ships crush frigates/destroyers. How I always imagined it.

[Gollor]

What is the problem? Is it fixable in the near future? Because I'm not sure if it makes much sense to play one turn a fortnight.

It is pretty fixable. I use my computer as a platform for high-performance computing and currently I calculate a few tasks for my startup/lab research project. I also spend a lot of personal time on this project, so I have a really little capability to finish this turn soon.
But I am going to move to resort in a week, and maybe I will even do the turn before as soon as I finish my current affairs.
When I return back from resort there should be ready HPC platform (which is currently in construction), so there shouldn't be very big problems finishing the turn excepting finding the free time.

[Gollor]

Turn sent.

I like what you proposed about the Duna and space battles. I think, though, that if you are going to greatly reduce the amount of engineers then we also have to add more manufacturing cities at the start of the game. Most houses have only 2-3 high level resource manufacturing fiefs, so it will be especially hard to build a nice production chain. I also disagree that all battle ships should be eliminated. At first I am not sure how only capital transports could have jump capability since this will mean that they will have to land in a wastes to load out their units. Without dropships and bombardments any planet assault will become especially hard, so you could count only on shock strikes.

I have finished the turn. No news from Al Malik this day.

[Il Palazzo]

I think we might have lost joulpunniki.

[Margrave]

You might be right. I'll shoot him a PM.

This leads to the question of the status of the game. If joulpunniki is truly gone then do we wish to search for a replacement or try a new game with some changes that might help address some of the problems with this one?

[Il Palazzo]

As someone who's been mopping the floor with like the half of the galaxy ( ) I'm all for a change. I'm itching to try some more radical mods, but more as a side dish to a more traditional game (with essential changes^TM), where we could test whether these radical ideas work at all.

[joulupunikki]

I'm still around. I've had trouble sleeping for the last couple of weeks and fatigue has slowly creeped in. I think I can finish the turn in a day.

[Kebooo]

Just a heads up, I'll be unable to play the turn from 8/20 until at least 9/7 due to being sent to New Zealand for work. If we do start a new game before and/or after that phase, I'd definitely be up for it.

[joulupunikki]

Turn sent

[Il Palazzo]

Turn sent

Yet another despicable Decados bites the dust as the Hazat announces liberation of Cadavus. People cheer on the streets and welcome Hazat assassins Xyll beasts brave troopers marching through.

In other news, we're still going slowly bankrupt. Somebody start busting our ships, else we'll have to start scrapping them, ingloriously.

[Kebooo]

Turn sent.

Keep in mind, I won't be able to play my next turn until 9/7.