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[Rabek Jeris]

It would be nice to have a retiriment option and way to invest money with that in mind. Like buying yourself a frigging planet.

If I remember correctly from when I used to play this ages ago, sometimes planets -will- go up for sale, and you can buy it and start getting tax revenue.

[buckets]

Incidentally, if you're running Windows 7 I have had a report from one user who took the step of installing the game somewhere other than the C:/Program Files folder. He reports this has resolved all of the problems he'd had with the game crashing in non-administrator modes. If nothing else works, you might like to try that (let me know if it works!)

I was doing this to begin with, I originaly thought that might be causing the problems.

[mainiac]

I don't know what game you guys were playing, but the pirates were nowhere near super scary for me.  I could outrun them with only a little damage using the default stats so long as I didn't go wandering into a place they were at full strength.

One thing that did annoy me is that I accidentally pressed repeat flee thinking I was facing a pirate instead of a cop and there was no warning before fleeing the law.  I spent a month in prison without committing a crime.  The pilot definitely is black.

One oddity of the economics is that there are a lot of planets that seem to be high prices in everything and cheap in nothing.  Annoying from a gameplay perspective and probably bad economics.  Unless those planets are exporting something, currency would naturally leave there as traders do one sided trade routes and the prices on those planets would fall until they had something to sell.  It's possible they are trading something abstract, like collecting taxes or selling blueprints, but it's still likely that they would have something worth exporting.

[Deadmeat1471]

Hallo all. I am the author of the game in question and was sent a link to these really helpful comments by one of your number (thanks!)

I've never had such useful feedback as this. In response I am making a few changes to try and remove some of the arbitrary loss, which I hadn't realised were causing people such grief!

For example, I'll make sure that cosmic discontinuities never leave the ship stranded in space, which I agree is a bit unfair...and I'm happy to shrink the size or cost of some key bits of equipment if people feel that would give the game a bit more momentum early on. I agree there is a bit of a 'plateau' effect. If anyone would like to make suggestions on that then let me know...

On robbery by pirates and storms - you can insure yourself against this very cheaply in the Finance dialog box. This dramatically reduces the loss - but I accept it doesn't entirely remove it.

There's an email update list you can subscribe to if you want to learn about updates as soon as they're issued - drop a line to orangetreesubscribe@yahoo.co.uk to get added.

On the bugs being experienced, I think this is due to the Windows 7 Program Files protection protocols, which are causing lots of issues for developers. I'm on the case though.

Thanks everyone for the feedback. Let me know if there are any other annoying bits you want fixed!

Cheers

Thanks for a great game! 

*Tried to subscribe, but it failed to deliver the message. A typo in the address maybe?

Just started playing again - Srsly the best space trading game ever.

[orangetree]

OK, a whole lot of stuff to respond to on these recent posts:

Rabek Jeris, Majestic7 - there did used to be a facility to buy whole systems - which meant you could collect the tax income there. However this proved to be full of technical difficulties so I scrapped it. Sorry. I might try again though as I can see the argument that says it would extend the life of the game quite substantially.

Paul - thanks for your huge post. Lots for me to think about in there! To max the game out in less than 1000 days is very good and would give you a rating of Untouchable I'd guess - I do think you should try it on Moderate or Hard. Well spotted on the usefulness of the Basic Hyperspace device - as you say, it's a handy little thing to have to get you out of trouble...

Mainiac - I am not sure it is right to say that prices are either all high or all low at any given system, though it may sometimes feel like that! The way the pricing algorithm works is to treat all cargos independently of each other - they don't all move in sync (except for the general rise over time caused by galactic inflation). That said, margins do decrease if you trade backwards and forwards between two systems, so it may be that over the long term prices tend to line up. I'd need to investigate this more carefully to be sure. On your other point about accidentally fleeing the law, I'll insert an optional warning alert to help guard against this.

Zangi - I liked the smuggling compartments idea. Let me see what I can do with that.

Deadmeat1471 - thanks for the praise! The email address given for subscription is correct. If your email address starts with dronk, morlo or tedly then you have already subscribed. If not, drop me a line at my main email address which is orangetreesoftware@yahoo.co.uk.

More generally, it's interesting that some people are saying the pirates are too scary and others that they're no great shakes. Does this mean it's really about right?

For those who are still struggling with compatibility problems, an email containing a full screenshot and a copy of the error.log file in the installation folder may help me.

Thanks

[Deadmeat1471]

While I was playing today I had the idea that maybe some people were mistaking police for pirates and fleeing? Police are quite dangerous, especially in addition to pirates.

A couple of observations:
-It always seemed to me that it might be good to raise their(Police) visibility somehow. Make the window background coloured blue or something. Just so people dont accidentally flee thinking they are pirates.
-Tooltips on the main menu commands might be useful, but far from a necessity.

*No my email isn't one of those! I'll try again, if it fails i'll use the alternate.

[Paul]

I was playing moderate, but I suppose I could try hard.

One thing that would be convenient would be an option to automatically allow inspections and ignore police encounters when you're not carrying anything illegal (same way you can auto ignore merchants), so you wouldn't be clicking through 50 police ships when doing a standard legal trading run.

[inteuniso]

It's not that pirates are plentiful. It's just that I get blessed with the horrible luck of having them get a hit every time I (unsuccessfully) try to flee. And I die. Before I even sell anything. Once or twice isn't too bad, but EVERY SINGLE DAMNED TIME I run into a pirate, this happens. It might just be me, but it seems to happen a lot.

[orangetree]

inteuniso, what pilot and technician skill levels do you have? The default is 5 but if you have lowered these in favour of other skills then this may explain why you are struggling to escape from pirates (higher pilot skill = easier to escape) and big damage to your ship (higher technician skill = quicker repairs between encounters).

Also, big apologies to deadmeat1471 for telling him the subscription email was correct when in fact it, er, wasn't. It now is.

[inteuniso]

No, I had default skills. I might bump up Pilot and Technician though now that you have told me that.

[mainiac]

Mainiac - I am not sure it is right to say that prices are either all high or all low at any given system, though it may sometimes feel like that! The way the pricing algorithm works is to treat all cargos independently of each other - they don't all move in sync (except for the general rise over time caused by galactic inflation). That said, margins do decrease if you trade backwards and forwards between two systems, so it may be that over the long term prices tend to line up. I'd need to investigate this more carefully to be sure. On your other point about accidentally fleeing the law, I'll insert an optional warning alert to help guard against this.

Well, I've found a few of planets where it wouldn't be profitable to buy any cargo for sale unless I was willing to travel several systems for a really small profit margin.  This wasn't due to my interference, they were generated that way.  I usually just left those systems with an empty hold.  Econ 101 tells us that if every trader is heading for those planets with cargo and leaving with an empty hold, prices will fall on those planets until there is something worth exporting, even if it's scrap metal from the ruins of their abandoned cities.

Maybe you could make the prices on a planet a little less independent?  For instance you could make it so the galaxy generate assigns every planet one good that it produces cheaply before determining the prices and set that price by a different formula.

But all the same, great game and I really liked it in the 'recommend my friend check it out' sense.

[a1s]

One oddity of the economics is that there are a lot of planets that seem to be high prices in everything and cheap in nothing.  Annoying from a gameplay perspective and probably bad economics.  Unless those planets are exporting something, currency would naturally leave there as traders do one sided trade routes and the prices on those planets would fall until they had something to sell.  It's possible they are trading something abstract, like collecting taxes or selling blueprints, but it's still likely that they would have something worth exporting.

Services! These might be planets filled with call centers, universities or movie studios, they do export fruits of their labor, but nothing you could throw into a cargo hold. (at least that's what I made of them)

[Deadmeat1471]

One oddity of the economics is that there are a lot of planets that seem to be high prices in everything and cheap in nothing.  Annoying from a gameplay perspective and probably bad economics.  Unless those planets are exporting something, currency would naturally leave there as traders do one sided trade routes and the prices on those planets would fall until they had something to sell.  It's possible they are trading something abstract, like collecting taxes or selling blueprints, but it's still likely that they would have something worth exporting.

Services! These might be planets filled with call centers, universities or movie studios, they do export fruits of their labor, but nothing you could throw into a cargo hold. (at least that's what I made of them)

This seems to imply that maybe the economy is a bit TOO random? not enough developed/agricultural economies to go around?

[Deadmeat1471]

Lol something just made me laugh.

I was minding my own business on a trading run and I get news that the planet Ballard has been wiped out by an asteroid. As my insurance policy was there it is suggested you should find a new insurer.

Was funny to me anyway 

[orangetree]

Yes, I am afraid that just sounds like rotten luck to me...even insurance companies get hit by disaster sometimes