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[Isdar]

Since no one else seems to have been interested in making a thread(or they didn't know about it, which is more likely) about this game, I have decided to make one!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/stariumxcv/starium-xcv/description

Since I am rather inept with words, I think it's better for the devs to explain what this game is. 

"Starium XCV is a persistent massively multiplayer online strategy game that focuses on exploration, combined with technological, diplomatic, military, religious, economic and covert dominance. Starium XCV is played via a browser with no download required. Our design premise is: Always free to play, never pay to win. The game is an immersive and expansive experience that respects your time, constantly providing something new to discover."

"Players begin with a small colony and set out to explore the galaxy, which is rich with story and mystery. Each fledgling nation has a high degree of customization, so every empire is unique. Starium XCV is abundant in features that will promote both collaboration and conflict on a variety of levels. Combined with different game speeds and procedural map generation, every galaxy will evolve differently. Players build and customize military units and ships, creating game enforced alliances and trade. Leaders and agents are used to perform missions that advance their causes. Eventually, players can band together into a guild system called “Federations”. These federations are an intrinsic part of the game structure and provide numerous benefits through shared information, trade, collaboration and, ultimately, power."

And here's what needs to be done before the game can be released.

"There is still more to be done. Most pressing is the implementation of the economic and production systems, which will really bring the planets to life. We need to develop the missions for political and religious agents, together with  diplomatic protocols. Our space and ground battle prototypes need to be refined. We also need to fine tune the game on mobile devices. Finally, we have to assemble the Lexicon and integrate it into all our systems.
As you can see the foundations of Starium XCV are in place and, with your help, we can complete the game!"

Their homepage: https://stariumxcv.com/index.html
Their Kickstarter trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDWfH7rmNMw
And here's a video about how the process of choosing a colony looks like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VG2M33UGTVE
Starium wiki: http://reference.stariumxcv.com/index.php?title=Main_Page
Starium Dev Blog: https://blog.stariumxcv.com/

[Karlito]

Lol, who's funding a 13-person development team with 30 grand?

[Iduno]

Lol, who's funding a 13-person development team with 30 grand?

That's over $2k/person over whatever development timeframe they have. I'll assume based on those numbers, they expect delivery within a month. Or they're already 95% funded. Or they're really bad at numbers.

[Isdar]

Lol, who's funding a 13-person development team with 30 grand?

That's over $2k/person over whatever development timeframe they have. I'll assume based on those numbers, they expect delivery within a month. Or they're already 95% funded. Or they're really bad at numbers.

The answer to this can be found within their blog. Will add a link to the blog in the OP.
"This game is being developed in a unique manner. Members of the development team work part time to create this offering and, ultimately, it is they who own it. There is no client or backer. A core team of about a dozen folks are working on StariumXCV with an extended team of over 60 contributors, most living in West Michigan. We work on a revenue-sharing model based upon the work each team member puts into this project. At this point, what little funds we need are provided by the two main leaders. The StariumXCV team is a collaboration of skilled individuals who, apart from the two main leaders, have gone through various Michigan Higher Education Game Development programs."

[Hanzoku]

So, it's the typical indie development, which means that most likely 90% of the team is going to disappear, contribute next to nothing, or get bored and go on and do something else.

I've checked the website, where they claim you can try a battle simulator, but there's nothing there except a blurb about what the simulator is supposed to offer.

So yeah, not holding my breath that anything playable is going to show.

[RedVI]

Isdar,

Thank you for creating this thread. We really do appreciate you helping to spread the word about what we’re doing.


Hanzoku,

Thank you for the catch!
   
We removed the battle sim from our website for some rework recently and leaving the advertisements up for it was an oversight. Sorry if we got your hopes up for that.

I’ve gone through and requested that we remove the advertisements for it and replace it with our Discord server invite for the time being until we are ready to show it off properly. This change should be done relatively soon.

However, the battle sim works fine, just graphically it is several iterations behind where our current artwork and our user interface has evolved into.  One of our future tasks is to update it to current standards.  We feel we can vastly improve the experience.

We hope you were still able to enjoy the Leadership Test or the Heraldry Designer that is up on our website.

With the leadership test, our goal was to identify how players play games while also finding the proper skills for one’s leader according to the player’s play style.

And the heraldry designer will allow you to not only customize heraldry for your empire and federation, but you may also download the image to use wherever else you’d like!

As for the question about our numbers.. you can find the breakdown for the $30,000 goal on our Kickstarter page. We plan to use it for things such as security, marketing, operation costs, our kickstarter fulfillment, and to begin compensating dev team members, which could help some dedicate more time. The more funding we get, the better this process becomes for us, so admittedly we hope for more, but we targeted this as a good goal to reach for right now. Development will continue regardless of how our campaign turns out though.

Thank you for your interest in our project!

Much love. 

-Chet DeLano, Community Manager for StariumXCV

[forsaken1111]

"This game is being developed in a unique manner. Members of the development team work part time to create this offering and, ultimately, it is they who own it.

What is unique about this?

[RedVI]

Hi, Forsaken!

Another good question.

Perhaps the idea isn't all that unique. That may be some unnecessary wording. But I think the way we're going about it might be. We each work to earn "tokens". Each one is equivalent to a certain amount of work provided. Each person's tokens then get divided by our total token count in order to decipher our percentage of royalties.

I'm unfamiliar with other teams working under this system, but it very well may be happening outside of us.

Do you feel we should remove the unique bit?

Chet DeLano, Community Manager for StariumXCV

[forsaken1111]

Perhaps the idea isn't all that unique. That may be some unnecessary wording. But I think the way we're going about it might be. We each work to earn "tokens". Each one is equivalent to a certain amount of work provided. Each person's tokens then get divided by our total token count in order to decipher our percentage of royalties.

I'm unfamiliar with other teams working under this system, but it very well may be happening outside of us.

Do you feel we should remove the unique bit?

No, I was just wondering what was meant by that. I know some teams which work under that sort of model. There is even a site, https://crowdsourcer.io/ which does a similar thing. The project posts tickets with point assignments and each developer who completes a ticket or job or whatever they call them gets those points once the job is verified. At the end those points control the way royalties are dispersed. 

[RedVI]

Ah, okay! 

I've never heard of that site! I'm going to give it a look over.

 Thanks for asking!

Chet DeLano, Community Manager for StariumXCV

[Hanzoku]

As a suggestion, if the combat loop of gameplay is ready for testing, you’re better off leaving the battle arena module available with a note that the graphics are outdated then to pull it offline for something as minor as outdated graphics.

That gives more time to receive feedback and analyze combat and fix issues such as spamming a cheap but agile ship type beating all other setups for example.

[RedVI]

Hanzoku,

Good point.

Perhaps we may have been too afraid of it just being plain unappealing due to the appearance of it at the moment.

I do think you're right. It would be better to just have it up and let people know that it's not the finished version so they can at least play with it.

I will speak with the others and see if they're comfortable handling this the way that you are suggesting. My hope is yes, but it's ultimately not up to me so we shall see.

Thank you for the suggestion!

Chet DeLano, Community Manager for StariumXCV

[Isdar]

More videos on how the gameplay looks like in it's current state of development:

Creating your initial colony and it's leader: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VG2M33UGTVE
Moving armies and exploring with them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBOXm8ZVG6o
Moving fleets and exploring with them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63z9sX2KiDI

[Isdar]

An AMA was held on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/dbgcfa/this_is_jim_landes_aka_saxondragon_a_founder_of/