I'm BORED

[Qyasogk]

After spending the last half hour turning on Sensors and Matter Synths for 100 colonies, my fingers and wrists hurt and I realize that the game has just become boring and monotonous in the extreme. The game has tools to manage fleets but not ARMADAS. The game has tools to manage planets but not EMPIRES. The old saying of can God make a boulder that is too big for him to move is what is going on here. In the galactic arms race we're all trying to make the biggest empire to survive our aggressive neighbors, and thus we all build empires that are far too large for anyone other than bedridden players who have nothing better to do than click-click-click forever.

I have more fun washing the dishes. And as development has obviously come to a screeching halt over the last year, it's clear that Dave has more fun doing other things too.

Good night, have fun storming a galaxy of dots and lines.

[David Klug]

Sounds like your bored because you chose to be.

Sent from my iPhone

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[Dave Case]

It's a fair point, but he obviously didn't read the last few posts.

Also not the first time Q's passively/aggressively trolled me, and one of the reasons I'm burned out on working on the game.

--
David Case
Dav...@gmail.com
www.davesgalaxy.com

[Bill Desmarais]

This struck you as passive?

[Dave Case]

I've mellowed with age.

However, to say I sympathize with Phil Fish would be a fair statement.

[Slivver]

Pop all that code in GitHub with some build instructions! Get others to "paint your fence" for you.

[Dave Case]

Apparently no one reads the backlog.

[Ben Kelley]

If that's what you want, go play Eve Online. Dave's game was never meant to fill that niche, as far as I can tell. It does very nicely at its core mission: "Conquer the Galaxy in less than 10 Minutes a Day"

[NikkoJT]

I was trying to find the backlog just now (as a result of reading this, actually) and I couldn't. Where might I find it?

Also, the Bug Tracker link from the in-game Menu tab currently points at a completely unrelated website.

[Travis Cannon]

Backlog here: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/daves-galaxy

--
Travis Cannon
tra...@traviscannon.com
www.traviscannon.com

[Bill Desmarais]

And a link to the github-related post: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/daves-galaxy/github/daves-galaxy/8LSY7Vj98zQ/S07qo1ZX_O0J

[Dave Case]

I was mostly irked by people complaining about stuff were they clearly had not read the last 5 messages on the list.  Tire

David Case
Dav...@gmail.com
www.davesgalaxy.com

[Dave Case]

 Ooop, looked back at the history on Google -- I was talking about opening up the source last week, but gmail apparently made those private messages to the people I was responding to, and not the public list.  Mumble Mumble.

Sorry for the thing with the stuff -- you can see why I was exasperated.

And yeah, I've been thinking of opening the source.

[Bill Desmarais]

Oh, I hope you do! I'd really like to see it. Python backend? Do I remember that right?

[Dave Case]

Yes, the backend is Python (and Django), the front end is Javascript/SVG

[Gary Romero]

I think I'd be interested in working with the code.

[Slivver]

So did we miss anything like a repo name? Or are you still mulling it over?

[Nr_3]

Most of the tedium in this game would be solved by having more advanced micro management tools. Automatic build queues, etc... Some of the changes this round have really helped, like the possibility of sorting planets by civ level, but more aid would be very welcome. Last time I played GalCiv I seemed to remember it had things that this game would benefit from.

Dave has been going in the right direction, but I understand that he feels he has better things to do atm. I'd cut Q some slack this time, Dave. He was voicing an opinion that most of the guys without scripts tend to feel late in the round. But I do understand that you get tired of constant criticism. At least we don't have the whine fest we had with the "power gamers" last round.

I solved the problem of micromanagement by starting a bit later in the round so I end up on the outskirts of the action, and then slowing down expansion after the early rush. If you save up resources and builds defensive fleets instead of using all on arches and attack fleets, you should be able to deter any sane opponent. And you can play for 10 mins per day.

[Clan Jade Wolf]

My ass. Conquer the Galaxy in less than 10 minutes a day is impossible once you get above 50 planets, unless you decide to play with scripts.

[Slivver]

I mentioned this several galaxies ago. I think having formal alliance groups and leaderboards by alliance would make it much easier to determine who is "winning". It would also give people an incentive to participate actively and cooperatively in alliances, rather than just using it as a mechanism to keep from getting pirated.

Right now, the leader boards reflect mostly cumulative society level. That means that to win, you have to play the game as a giant land grab. But if you look at the empires of most of the leaders, you see that most of the planets are poorly developed. Quantity over quality wins. There are other dimensions to measure success. Planetary improvements should be factored in for example.

If it was easier to "win" by being a member of a group rather than having to go it alone on the leader boards, people would feel much less stress when it comes to managing their respective empires. Even small players could participate in a meaningful way, rather than having to just avoid the wrath of larger neighbors. Just another dynamic to think about. It's something that requires almost no code (at least no UI code, maybe a couple of reports), and adds a different dynamic for sure.

Anyway, I'd be all for standing up a couple of "experimental" instances where gameplay ideas can be tweaked and shared. I'd love to see the game opened up, even if it was with a license that only allowed official changes to be ported back into Dave's master branch.

[David Klug]

Also having the ability to have open allies that everyone can see and hidden allies would bring an interesting element.

Sent from my iPhone

[David Klug]

Thinking more about this there is also the issue of overlapping alliances, a player may have to rank there alliances? I know I have allies who are allies of my nonallies!

Sent from my iPhone

On Nov 7, 2013, at 3:00 PM, Slivver <csho...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Slivver]

There's definitely a difference between the game's current concept of "ally" and the idea of "guilds" along the lines of Eve, WoW, EQ, etc. In the case of the latter, you cannot be in more than 1. 

Maybe there's an idea of "commercial/business" allies vs. "military" allies? That'd give you some extra granularity to work with, where business allies granted you the visibility and right to free passage but gets trumped by military alliances, and you can only be in one of the latter. Would imply that some work needs to get done on the game balance regarding commerce versus war, so the trader has just as good a chance to "win" as the warrior. Just thinkin'...

[Bill Desmarais]

Always interesting to me to mull the tension between the ideas of "listen to your customers" and "why don't you whiners just go write your own software?"

[Slivver]

I think this discussion is happening in the context of Dave's comment to the effect of "I might release the source code". So it hardly constitutes whining. Rather more like planning the user story backlog...

[Bill Desmarais]

Seen in the light of a theoretical future backlog, it's not whining. 

Seen in the light of the history of (often poisonous) whining in this forum, it's just more of the same. But maybe less poisonous.

[David Klug]

The other thing I think that could be looked at is PD's I think they should have a limit to how many ships/fleets? They can take on at one time, I would think it should be based on planet size.

Sent from my iPhone

[Slivver]

Yeah, they used to be easier to beat down. Something has changed on that front. 

I'd like to see a variation on PD that is a type of ship that can only stay in orbit around a planet (defense sats, whatever.) And the planet has to manufacture more in order to continue fending off attackers. At some point attrition would make continued defense impossible. As it stands now, planetary defense is up until you can inflict so much damage in a turn that it takes 2 turns to repair. This ship-based model might work more like the old PD behavior.

I think there's another variant of the game that could be cool, too, which is one where the galaxy is smaller and a HUGE empire might consist of 20 stars. Arcs would cost enormous amounts of money, trade would become mandatory to get certain types of resources to planets that don't have them natively, and the idea of blockades, piracy, and collaborative economy/warfare would be more important. Right now, stuff is too cheap. Taking a planet/star would be a major accomplishment.