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[Tilla]

Well, if all you really have is a proof-of-concept demo then you could always put it on something like IndieDB.

On the other, hand, if this represents your final vision for the project? Publish it on Steam for maybe a dollar or two, give the full game for the price rather than use microtransactions. Or publish it for free and keep the microtransactions.

There are already idle games on Steam, so a minimalist simulator probably wouldn't raise too many eyebrows. Best be prepared to either sink or swim.

I think I'd like to polish the PC version into something that is at least passable production quality (by some vague indie standards) before publishing it.

The issue with Steam is that greenlighting is no easy thing. The cost of even applying is your local equivalent of 90€ (http://store.steampowered.com/app/219820/), and then I suspect I'll need quite a bit larger fanbase than I can conjure up to actually make it. But yeah, that would have been ideal, probably to leave it up there for a very low price, and then see if I manage to break even.

But there are some other options that are free, like itch.io for instance, those may fit me better.

There's always other options of course. Itch.io for example lets you put games up whenever you want and charge what you want and they don't even take a royalty from it unless you choose to give them a cut

[Snoddasmannen]

Pretty neat.  What's the Blood Purge state?

You can read about the states by tapping on them as they show up in the top 5 list. But Blood Purge is basically an empire that is dead-set on eliminating their own bloodline, including ultimately themselves. They get combat bonuses and are mostly immune to collapse into degeneration. So if you have one of these guys descended from the honorable Unwanians, then their bloodline may be in trouble ... But then sometimes you get totally incompetent blood purgers who for various reasons never do much to threaten the bloodline at all (and there can be only one blood purger at once).

My current universe the Alleged Unwan Army was one of the first empires and spawned right in the center of the galaxy.  By 20k or so they controlled the entire core.  At their peak they had more than 500 systems, in an 800 system galaxy.  They also controlled several missile stations and just constantly hammered everyone nearby.  At 40k or so a big rim empire, like the third biggest or so, went all will be ashes and tore the galaxy a new one, and the Unwan Army went into terminal decline.  They lost probably half their stars and then balkanized into a dozen or more new empires which eventually consumed what was left.

53,000 years, and they controlled so much of the galaxy I doubt their bloodline will ever run out.  Probably 90% of the empires in the newly reorganized galaxy are descended from them.

Fantastic story, thanks The reason I made this game is because I wanted to see these kind of stories unfold myself, and I'm always glad to hear others having fun in the same way!

[Xeron]

I'm guessing you wouldn't be willing to put up the proof of concept PC version up ?

[Snoddasmannen]

I'm guessing you wouldn't be willing to put up the proof of concept PC version up ?

It's tempting But I will wait and polish it a bit.
Nice to know people are interested

[Skynet]

So I had fun watching empires rise and fall, and even assumed control of a few empires (using Emperor mode). I was about to quit until I discovered something...

You can play as the Neutrals.

I should have suspected they were playable, since all empires were descended from the Neutrals...and because there was a big button that appears if you click on a Neutral planet.

Neutrals don't have flagships, or indeed any kind of ship whatsoever. They can't conquer any planets and have to rely on empires "transcending" to expand and gain points. However, the Neutrals cannot die. So that's a point in their favor. Even if a faction conquers the whole galaxy, the Neutrals still lurks in the shadows, ready to take over planets when the galaxy-spanning faction decides to transcend.

The Neutrals still have access to spies, and I use them to try and manipulate the other factions. Negotiating for Peace with the other Empires don't seem to do anything (it's possible the other empires aren't even able to recognize peace with the Neutrals). Causing Riots can be pretty effective, but it just create new empires...it doesn't cause planets to revert back to Neutral control. So the only action I can sensibly take is "Stealing Tech". My hope is that if I steal enough tech, it should become very difficult to conquer Neutral planets.

Right now, the Neutrals have a Tech Level of 3 (they started off as 1). For comparison's sake, it takes a Tech Level of 9 to transcend.  Since new empires get the same (or lower) tech level from their ancestors, I'm trying to see if I can get up to Tech Level 9, so that I can induce Neutral-descended empires to transcend immediately upon existence, thereby causing their planets to revert back to Neutral-owned.

...playing as the Neutrals would make for a very odd Let's Play.

EDIT: The Neutrals went up to Tech 8, before the largest Faction ( also at Tech 8 ) recently woke up from a Blood Feud into an "All Will Be Ashes" stage. It then immediately self-destructed, with some weird message to the effect of "{FACTION} has cleansed the galaxy of all blood." I, obviously, inherited all those planets. The second-largest faction at that time was at Tech Level 7, so you can expect the galaxy expansion to slow to a crawl. (Some empires did spawn from the Neutrals with a Tech Level of 8...but then again, they have to face off against other Tech 8 Planets).

You still have to worry about government type though. The Neutral Empire has entered into a period of degeneration, and as a result, destroyed an artifact and went down to Tech Level 7.

EDIT 2: Recovered myself back to Tech Level 8 and started seeing some planets turn Neutral after a "red" explosion. Is there another way for Neutrals to gain territory other than through transcending then? (Well, I know that other random events [like supernovas and marauders] can flip planets Neutral. I also remembered seeing a message about the Eater of Life coming over to the galaxy...could that be related to planets flipping Neutral?)

EDIT 3: Game crashed on me, so I am unable to continue further. Stealing Tech doesn't seem to raise my level any further past Level 8. Either it takes too long or you have to do some "research" of your own before you can get to Level 9. However, I did see many empires (big and small) transcend. One empire transcended after 3 millennia and conquering less than 10 planets! A huge chunk of the galaxy (say, perhaps 1/4) is Neutral-owned, and expansion for the other factions can be very slow. This is probably the best I can achieve with the Neutrals. I declare victory and promptly uninstalled the game.

I also concluded that it was the Eater of Life that was causing planets to flip over to my side, after a specific coordinated series of explosions that was followed by the Eater of Life's taunts. It does seem that, in any LP that deals with the Neutrals, that you have to treat them as a force of Entropy (just as much as the "All Will Be Ashes" and the "Blood Feud" factions). Their goal is to destroy everything in its path, to leave nothingness and emptiness in its wake. However, the Neutrals are always doomed to failure because their sheer existence serves to incubate future factions. Under this interpretation, 'transcending' is a euphemism for 'mass suicide'.

[Starver]

I haven't tried interactive play yet*, except for some Totem placing (without much aim), but I've followed various interesting ships around, whilst trying to keep an eye on the civilisations information rapidly changing.

It could be an interesting Live Wallpaper, with a few tweaks, I'm thinking. Or a processing-power sink, for whatever device it is running on... 


I'll follow the weblink to the documentation, sometime soon.  It may tell me why I've not yet had a valid active  quest, yet, or so the button relating to them keeps telling me. But I'm currently happy just staring at the graphics.  Occasionally prodding the screen, more in hope than because I actually know what I'm actually prodding! 


* Reminds me of when I first started with DF, all I did was leave it to generate new worlds, overnight or longer.  And then just marvel at the geography created, without actually starting a Fortress or Adventurer... 

[sambojin]

Installed it, worked fine on my phone. Played around a bit. Will mess around some more soon. Gave it a 5-star rating, just to help with the enthusiasm behind the project. Even a few more things to do on the interactive side of things will make this great.

Keep up the good work! Even if you don't go much further with this, it's worth the tiny download. But you could do heaps with it as well. It's asking for more fleet and invasion options, a few diplomatic/trade options, as well as a "Completely Generic, Not WH40k at all!" re-skin in the future.

Because you know we all want a Purge button somewhere to press. I know that's essentially what your flagship is doing, but it's not doing it grimdarkly enough

[Snoddasmannen]

So I had fun watching empires rise and fall, and even assumed control of a few empires (using Emperor mode). I was about to quit until I discovered something...
...
I also concluded that it was the Eater of Life that was causing planets to flip over to my side, after a specific coordinated series of explosions that was followed by the Eater of Life's taunts. It does seem that, in any LP that deals with the Neutrals, that you have to treat them as a force of Entropy (just as much as the "All Will Be Ashes" and the "Blood Feud" factions). Their goal is to destroy everything in its path, to leave nothingness and emptiness in its wake. However, the Neutrals are always doomed to failure because their sheer existence serves to incubate future factions. Under this interpretation, 'transcending' is a euphemism for 'mass suicide'.

Oh man, what have you done?!

It's known that you can play as the Neutrals, it was kind of a bug at first, but I left it in since it wasn't hurting anyone (it's known as the Suber36g easter egg after it's discoverer). But you took it one step further by using spies to steal technology and thereby increase the tech level of Neutral. That is going to be extremely disruptive since it will effectively make it impossible for new empires to expand, though they will still be able to form.

You were unable to reach level 9 to hit TRANSCENDING. But it should be theoretically possible. The problem is you have only a short window between when an empire has tech level 9 and then simply vanish away, and you'll have to get lucky to actually steal the tech in this window. And what would happen then ?? I'm not sure, but I suspect that you would see an endless stream of gray blobs transcending. Because when an star transcends, what happens? It is conquered by Neutral again - and the cycle starts over. TRANSCENDING empires also never revolt, so ultimately as the other empires transcend, the galaxy would be filled with gray neutral stars in transcending hyperbliss spasms. In fact I don't see anything that could break that cycle, so you may have discovered here the only known "steady-state" in the game.

Anyway, I'm upset the game crashed, because now we may never know what would have happened. I deeply admire your sense of experimentation, I can only stand by on the sidelines and applaud as my creation is taken for a ride it has never seen before. Best AAR ever.

[Snoddasmannen]

I'll follow the weblink to the documentation, sometime soon.  It may tell me why I've not yet had a valid active  quest, yet, or so the button relating to them keeps telling me. But I'm currently happy just staring at the graphics.  Occasionally prodding the screen, more in hope than because I actually know what I'm actually prodding! 

Quests should just happen as soon has you have high enough level ships, but you may have to wait for a while!

* Reminds me of when I first started with DF, all I did was leave it to generate new worlds, overnight or longer.  And then just marvel at the geography created, without actually starting a Fortress or Adventurer... 

Yeah I think that's the key attitude that make some people like this game quite much, and some are completely baffled by how anyone might be interested

[Snoddasmannen]

Installed it, worked fine on my phone. Played around a bit. Will mess around some more soon. Gave it a 5-star rating, just to help with the enthusiasm behind the project. Even a few more things to do on the interactive side of things will make this great.

Keep up the good work! Even if you don't go much further with this, it's worth the tiny download. But you could do heaps with it as well. It's asking for more fleet and invasion options, a few diplomatic/trade options, as well as a "Completely Generic, Not WH40k at all!" re-skin in the future.

Because you know we all want a Purge button somewhere to press. I know that's essentially what your flagship is doing, but it's not doing it grimdarkly enough

Thanks for the review! And also the input here, I know there's tons more I can do with it.

With the PC version it will be possible to (admittedly unofficially) skin it, I can only hope that somebody does a better job of it than me

The sandbox version will allow you to "paint" the galaxy with empires, including Neutral, so I suppose that's more of a Purge swipe rather than a button, not sure if this will quench your thirst

[I am Leo]

You were unable to reach level 9 to hit TRANSCENDING. But it should be theoretically possible. The problem is you have only a short window between when an empire has tech level 9 and then simply vanish away

Not quite.

I just this moment discovered that if you control an empire and hit "reform government" while it is transcending, it stops transcending and stays in the galaxy with tech level 9.

[I am Leo]

And from tech level 9, things keep going.

[I am Leo]

Eventually they degenerated back to tech level 9 and started transcending again, leaving a load of smaller tech 11 civilizations in their wake.

[puke]

Wow, what a great concept.  Grabbing it now.

[I am Leo]

The galactic tech level got to 16 or so before someone decided that all will be ashes. Entertainingly, with the ring galaxy they seem to be a wave of death going around and around as the galaxy repopulates behind them.
Meanwhile, with so many neutral stars available I've decided to have a stab at getting their tech level up the way Skynet did.
There are still plenty at level 16 to spy on. I'm at level 5 already. I'll post screenshots of what happens when I hit 9.