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[Sensei]

Ooh, I hope that's not it. I use an ATI card, but I played the game a lot before and never had huge issues. At the very least, I can't imagine that would explain the floating-above-planet sort of limbo deal.

[Sirus]

I know the Intel graphics card on my laptop cannot handle OpenGL, which results in invisible terrain but not people, ships, or rocks on the ground. Don't know anything about ATI though.

Progress was made today! The dwarven kingdom of Mountainhome now has colonies in three star systems. I also did a lot of work with stabilizing existing colonies. The capitol city houses two TL7 laser towers and the home system is patrolled by a small but well-armored (for the tech level) scouting vessel. Hopefully it'll help keep pirate activity down.

[garfield751]

I would like to join kobold duchy, I have played hazeron on and off sense about when it was posted about here, I have been apart of tymas for just about most of the current universe but tymas has kinda gotten empty and Kobold duchy seems pretty active, it seems that it needs a password to join though so thats why i'm asking here.

[Idranel]

A lot of the previous SoH empires didn't burn out due to boredom, but left because of (a) Haxus's actions, (b) the direction the game had been going, (c) war is not fun, in fact it is pretty damn agonizingly painfully boring, most of the time.

Of course, Hazeron is not an ordinary game. Haxus completely ignores most bugs and exploits, so in any total war, anyone who understands the game is at a significant advantage over anyone who does not. Hazeron, as a game system, has rules, but as Morpheus said in The Matrix, some of them can be bent. Others can be broken.

This. After the game going into... odd directions and personal attacks going back and forth between developer and some players, well we all quit on that day.

Lots of the patches introduced some rather questionable game play decisions. Some of those decisions.. like the new "economy" being more based on some hilariously funny political ideals rather than fun.
Holding a big chunk of cities is something that can get you burned out pretty quickly.
The big empires pretty much figured that there is no point in attacking each other. With access to exploits ranging from causing enough lag to grind systems to a complete halt to simply increasing firepower threefold or moving large quantities of ships and troops across the galaxy within a few hours to days.

So that nice diplomatic arangement there resulted in a whole lot of manpower, infrastructure and experience being available to troll silly people.
Of course that kind of fun doesnt really last for ever. Add a whole lot of bone headed game design choices ontop of that, unhashed passwords being leaked and you end up with a lot of frustration.

There is basically no good way of managing multiplayer empires at any scale. Collaboration between players is something thats desired (both to increase fun and to keep player expansion more condensed) but the game pretty much actively throws obstacles into your way when you try.

The game has an awful lot of potential. But most of the time its just not fun.
Technologically its a pretty neat achievement (stuffing everything from walking in space ships to flying around at interplanetary scales into the same loading screen-free environment is pretty tough), but it also has its own issues there.  The recent(-ish) addition of additional servers (both in quality and quantity) did a nice display of of Amdahl's law ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl%27s_law )

This year a lot of the gameplay design decisions went into actively limiting player expansions by adding time sinks and grind.
Once it was reasonably realistic to build your own TL32 infrastructure, now you have to be a bit more creative.
Your best bet might be to stick with TL30 and figure out all the rule quirks and exploits/bugs.

So how about ending this rant with some advice... lets see:

Write yourself a parser for scanning reports.
It should parse:
 - Solar System
 - Planets and the best Quality for each Resource
 - Wormhole links

Stuff it all into a neat relational database.
Get survey ships (lots of scan range, preferably high warp speeds)

Scan the heck out of some half dozen empty sectors

Figure out a few sets of resources:
 - Those required for basic ships
 - Above but including shields/weapons
 - Above but including fancy crap that could also be imported with ease
Go over all solar systems in your database:
 - Add everything connected to it within 1-3 wormholes
 - Take the maximum quality for each resource out of that group
 - Compute what TL you could produce with above resource qualities
 - Pick a convenient location but avoid Ore & Oil deposits on Moons (not enough output)

The odds are pretty good to find a small constellation of 3-4 systems being capable of TL30 production with small scale imports from one or two more systems.

If you render it in 3D it might look a bit like that:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

But before you spend that kind of effort...
Please take a good look at the game and its community.
If you want to get empires conquering each other and fighting over turf:
Didn't happen for me, but maybe things changed. Give me a call if it did.



-Idranel

[Matz05]

Uh, unhashed, unencrypted passwords were never leaked. The database contents were stolen once, but basic security policies were followed. They just sent the message that they were worried about what was taken possibly being decryptable if they knew the keys. I haven't really been keeping up, but I don't think any evidence has arisen of the thief successfully using the data.

Yeah, the game is laggy and buggy to the point of not being much fun. No, I haven't seen the management be that bad. Slow, grouchy, uncaring at times maybe, but not as terrible as everyone says. You have to admit the community isn't particularly likable either though.

[QuakeIV]

They have TL30 ships so you are likely better off running for it.  Thats probably what I should have done before they got some weak ass excuse to attack me, conquer me, and make the generous offer of 'letting me join their empire'.

e: I was playing recently due to some changes Haxus made which somewhat invalidated my complaints earlier in this thread.

Were you in the Imperial Court?  I saw that thread about the Syndicate wiping them out...

KG

The very one.

e: Yeah Haxus isn't as competent as he thinks he is. 

Also, "Ships < People". I slaughtered a smaller empire that had 2-3 times the number of players on-line because I had better ships.  So uh yeah.

[Shadowlord]

Uh, unhashed, unencrypted passwords were never leaked. The database contents were stolen once, but basic security policies were followed.

I disagree with "basic security policies were followed:"

An intruder recently exploited a hole in the security of one of the
Shores of Hazeron servers. That security hole has been plugged.

...

Among the files that could have been accessed was a backup of the player
login database from October 28, 2011.

It is possible for a hacker to dissect that file to discover the login
account names, passwords and e-mail addresses of all Shores of Hazeron
player accounts that existed as of October 28, 2011. All players will
receive notification of this incident by e-mail at the address in our
database.

Security Update
SHA-1 hash keys implemented to protect login account information.

Reset Password
The Login Accounts section of this web site now enables the password for an account to be reset, with the result sent via e-mail to the address on file. The option to have the current password sent to your e-mail address has been removed.

So prior to April, passwords were unhashed and unsalted, or using something worse than SHA-1 (SHA-0? MD-5? Probably just unhashed). Eventually, he implemented SHA-1, which NIST (part of the federal government) recommends against using because it has mathematical weaknesses which can be exploited. Nonetheless, the file that was mentioned in the email was an old copy, not the current database, and no mention was ever made of whether those were secured or not (and Haxus would not even explicitly say whether the passwords were hashed or salted in the potentially-stolen database backup).

In 2005, security flaws were identified in SHA-1, namely that a mathematical weakness might exist, indicating that a stronger hash function would be desirable.
...
SHA-1 is being retired for most government uses; the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology says, "Federal agencies should stop using SHA-1 for...applications that require collision resistance as soon as practical, and must use the SHA-2 family of hash functions for these applications after 2010" (emphasis in original).[7]

[Matz05]

Well, at least they were encrypted in some form. If it was that lousy, proper procedure WOULD BE to not say what lousy encryption. 'Works' for Microsoft/Apple/Adobe/insert company currently hated on for security through obscurity! If they can't recognize it, even if it's lousy, they will have more frustration than they might think it's worth trying to decrypt it.

Still, they were using something WORSE than SHA-1?? Isn't that supposed to be the baseline minimum for password storage?

Also, they don't seem to know whether or not the database backup was accessed. Just that the system containing it was comprimised. Probably just automatically turned into a spam relay then; in that case, the intruder may not even have known/cared what was in it.

[Paul]

The new economy based on "hard" currency is pretty hilarious. A currency like that might actually work if it was really a hard currency instead of being a blatant lie, though.

Let's say the entire economy and resource system was reworked - instead of limitless deposits of varying quality resources, we have limited materials that no matter their starting quality can be refined into the top tier TL32 stuff. Planets only have a set amount of rare materials, recycling is added as an option (melting down items, ships, scrap from destroyed stuff, etc). Rare materials that are required for high tech stuff are only present in small deposits, requiring you to scout out planets with it, fight over it, and trade it. Small deposits could occasionally respawn on settled worlds to prevent an area becoming devoid of resources, but the big material deposits would always be on new worlds to keep people exploring.

If all that was in place, coinage could be very meaningful. Allow players to mint money from these various rare resources, and allow the individual empires to set their own exchange rates between coinage made from different materials (short on vulcium? set the exchange rate high so people will use vulcium currency in your empire, and melt down that currency for metal when you need it).

If resources were actually limited on worlds and required player time investment to go and find new deposits and keep things flowing, currency made out of it could actually be a hard currency and be valuable to real people. If this stuff could be gathered by low tech empires it would give them something to offer the high tech empires in trade. And if the individual empires could set their own values on goods and coinage trade could happen between empires dynamically.

But I doubt any of that will ever happen in Hazeron. Limitless resources and a "hard" currency that you can whip up trillions of out of thin air are likely here to stay.

[Idranel]

The new economy based on "hard" currency is pretty hilarious. A currency like that might actually work if it was really a hard currency instead of being a blatant lie, though.

The idea of hard currencies in itself is somewhat hilarious in the first place. I personally have very little use for gold bars besides selling them or speculating on the price.

Its gets even more crazy if you wrap your head around the idea that its the cities which are doing all the business...
You don't have Orbital Space Mining Inc. setting up factories all over places in the twelve colonies but you have the city accounts instead...

And of course you have zero influence on the prices (which always felt a bit buggy in the first place).

So the sum of all those building tiles better generate some profit, or else that city is going to run out of money.
Now do that with every city along your production chains and have fun...

Thats one real nice road block feature designed to annoy the crap out of players right there.
And the justification for adding the "real economy" was because "players asked for it".

[Spaghetti7]

Hey there all, I was just giving this another chance and was wondering about the state of any Bay 12 empires in game.
I'd prefer to join a relatively new one to avoid confusion as to what all of the gubbins is, but it doesn't matter too much. Just a warning; don't get too technical mumbo-jumbo on me. I have no experience in this game at all.
Thanks.

[majikero]

My character in the Kobold Duchy is now up and running. I got the not-box ship thing but I can't use the navigator screen, kobolds are too short to use it. How can I set way-points to worm-holes?

[Paul]

majikero - you can adjust the location of the view screen for the consoles. Check the controls, there are three separate controls - one for moving in/out, another for up/down, and a third for tilt forward/backward. I believe they are ctrl [ ], ctrl ; ', and shift : " if I remember correctly.

[Sirus]

Actually, you use the Alt keys. My dwarven race is also quite short, so I've had to adjust viewscreens as well

[Sensei]

Well, the bugs have sorted themselves out for whatever reason and I've arrived in Koboldia. What are our directives?