Can we have some game testing please?

[piratedan]

As much fun as it is hunting members of my alliance, what happened to the spirit of this round? Namely trying to find and fix the flaws of all the new features and how they affect/effect the game play. Surely someone has a level 70 by now with the supporting planets and such. Why isn't this being tested? We have a pretty good idea that the treaty stuff is working, stacks and planets are allowing other members to park and seed, you get the messages that you don't really want to attack an ally do you msgs when allied ships come IS upon examine. If you folks are awaiting enemy planets to be lvl 70 or upper level before you bust 'em, hitting us at level 10-12 isn't a very good test, so either... go play with each other and find out if/how this stuff works or leave us alone long enough to get there and THEN bust us up. If you guys are bored, get bigger ships and fleet fight each other, we even managed to test this out during one of our brief respites. Remember this is beta, no stats are being kept, no reps shall be stained this is all for us to work the game out and have a REALLY good round once the beta is complete.

On a player note, azool, with myself being a humble miner, these screens which display the forces in sector really aren't doing it for me, can we go back to the + and - signs next to the type of force in each stack, I find that when mining, it's easier to drop a single seed this way than any other and tbh it seems like each time i hit the examine button on forces, it doesn't appear to work every time. For humble miners who are killed relentlessly, it seems that this is a disadvantage that is completely unneccessary. Also on the planets themselves, the ability to destroy buildings is great, but why can't it be extended to the primary buildings as well? It seems to me that this would allow builders to correct mistakes and allow busting fleets to further hurt the alliances that they are warring against.

As a suggestion, since force clearances are incredibly easy as well, you just get a couple of FU's which are essentially cheap rides these days (which may or may not be adjusted), how about adding the ability to place an emp drone in a stack once the amount of forces in said stack reach a certain point per exit level. That may be too powerful, I dunno, but if you survey the vets, I think you can see that clearances of minefields is almost to the point of why bothering to have them if they don't slow anyone down tactically. Also, the sloping of the game to the side of good is incredibly obvious, I don't see that it's been stated anywhere, but with all of the benefits that are available to "good" players, there's almost no need to have a UG at all unless there's some tangible benefit that has yet to be uncovered.

constructive comments are welcome, please spare me the comments about how I'm posting this just because we're getting pwned in the game, IT'S A BETA TEST.

[Baalzamon]

Going in reverse order of your post...

Good vs Evil. We need to remember that being searched while trading isn't in yet, and we are also considering putting in "UG Outposts" to balance out the Gov't Outposts, where you will lose align for donating, rather then gain.

Forces and the +/- signs...I think that was just an oversight, and will probably be fixed soon.

EMP Drones...it's been discussed, and nothing has come of it as of yet.

Planets...you guys aren't the only ones constantly hit at low planet levels, so don't take it personally, and also, I think we're seeing a lack of large scale ops because people are trying to build up their resources before hitting...large military build up, kinda like the Cold War...but thats just a guess, and I don't know that for certain.

I hope I addressed your issues in a helpful manner

[Hate]

I agree with you here pdan. I for one am giving up on trying to learn and or test out anything. If the real game is anything like this i forsee alot more people leaving. Right now you cant leave fed without 2 or more hunters after you. This style of play is great for big alliances with alot of active players but for those of us that have limited time to play and or are in small alliances stand absolutely no chance.

When i joined this round to test beta that was my attention. I understand people are allowed to play the game the way they want to but look at how many people have already quit playing cause they cant move from fed to check things out without dying. Alot of these changes are great. But for the small guys like me i cant test them out to see what everything does.

Honestly i think the combat testing is complete. How about changing it to where the weapons dont do damage to a trader unless they are parked on planets. This will allow the traders a little bit of safety to truely test out other things such as excavating, route building, ship upgrades and the like. Something needs to be done cause pretty soon more people will be quitting since they cant compete witht he big dogs.

[Page]

[quote="piratedan"]On a player note, azool, with myself being a humble miner, these screens which display the forces in sector really aren't doing it for me, can we go back to the + and - signs next to the type of force in each stack, I find that when mining, it's easier to drop a single seed this way than any other and tbh it seems like each time i hit the examine button on forces, it doesn't appear to work every time. For humble miners who are killed relentlessly, it seems that this is a disadvantage that is completely unneccessary.[/quote]

I have already added the +/-, just waiting on access to get it committed.

[seldum]

agreed that people need to remember this game shouldnt be played to win its about finding the bugs, balancing, and supporting the coders so we can reach a finished product

[Infinity]

If you folks are awaiting enemy planets to be lvl 70 or upper level before you bust 'em

Nope. We're not.

cause they cant move from fed to check things out without dying.

Sorry, but there were same problems before. Learn how to move safely. It's even easier now, cause universe is bigger.

IT'S A BETA TEST.

Yeah, it is. Some alliances just test shooting. And we are contributing by doing so.

As a suggestion, since force clearances are incredibly easy as well, you just get a couple of FU's which are essentially cheap rides these days

Try some clearing. It EATS ship condition. Literally. After that, hitting a planet is a tough job, cause by the time you get to 350 repairs you do no damage.

[piratedan]

question regarding forces deployment in regards to jumping into a sector with mines/drones/scouts.....

My previous question to Azool referred to the occurrence of my taking damage jumping into a sector from both mines and CD's and being told that this is how it should be. This led to the question of how do we explain the following:

Spoke with Bowl (Sleeve of wizard) after he jumped into sector 3419....

I had a 125 mine stack with a 125 drones accompanying it.

here's what he sent me from his combat log:

From: Sleeve of Wizard (147) 4/15/2008 4:46:21 AM
anything for you pdan

51 mines explode near Sleeve of Wizard (147) destroying 642 shields.
The forces do 642 damage this round of combat.

26 mines explode near Sleeve of Wizard (147) and destroy 520 plates of armor due to low shield strength.
The forces do 520 damage this round of combat.

here is what my scouts registered:

From: Sleeve of Wizard (147) 4/15/2008 4:36:21 AM
Your scouts have spotted Sleeve of Wizard (147) leaving sector 3419.
From: Sleeve of Wizard (147) 4/15/2008 4:36:17 AM
Your forces are under attack by Sleeve of Wizard (147) in sector #3419
From: Sleeve of Wizard (147) 4/15/2008 4:36:17 AM
Your scouts have spotted Sleeve of Wizard (147) leaving sector 3419.
From: Sleeve of Wizard (147) 4/15/2008 4:35:49 AM
Your forces are under attack by Sleeve of Wizard (147) in sector #3419
From: Sleeve of Wizard (147) 4/15/2008 4:35:49 AM
Your scouts have spotted Sleeve of Wizard (147) jumping into sector 3419.


nary a drone launched, nor was any drone damage noted.

Maybe Bowl edited his data before sending it to me, but if not, what gives?

Respectfully,

PirateDan

Any ideas? is this tied to a ship's special features? gadgets? weapons?

On a secondary note, the tying up of all cash on rocks for 48 hours post the receipt of any planetary shot seems to be a bit extreme imho.

[Edgecrusher]

Well, my alliance has been testing as much as we could of the game since the start, and we're perfectly willing to discuss and share with everyone else, but there's so much that is new out there that you'll have to ask specific questions or I'd be writing for a day.

As for planet busting: we took a level 104 planet with ease, even after clearing, but it is obvious, as was already said, that any decently built planet system can only be busted by a jump fleet, which has to clear only one sector. Once people hit level 50, jump is perfect again. The only alternative would be to have a clearing crew go in first and a busting crew to bust the planets, with the clearers soaking damage but doing none.

As you may have noticed we also tested port raiding, but both times we got butchered by respectively 18K and 7K cd's. Without being able to scan ports, after the first shot there was no point in continuing.

Which indicates the whole problem of this round: we are expected and willing to test things out, but how do we do that? If I run into something, I do not know if it is (a) a bug (b) a game feature or (c) the result of something not being implemented yet. There are too many things to test, we don't know the formulas and bugs interfere with testing. For example, because some people used having 0 xp and dumping goods to mass excavate, we are now stuck with a junkpile of level 1 asteroids. Azool fixed the 0 xp excavating, but the junk asteroids are still there. The same for trading: how are we supposed to test trading when we can't build routes or raid ports. We were promised that asteroids would make the trading system more dynamic, which failed to be the case so far. Gossip was fun for a day or two, but it lost its fun already: I run into more bonuses just trading than by watching gossip.

Anyway, the only way I think we can proceed is by discussing what we can on the board and praying to the coding team that they finally take those ritalin pills.

[Infinity]

nary a drone launched, nor was any drone damage noted.

If Bowl was in a trading ship and without too much fire power he couldn't have made substantial dmg to the stack. I had a close encounter with a huge stack like that in a dead end, it raped me literally. 3419 is a 3-way if I recall correctly there's a location next to it (3449 bar) so Bowl only had to make his green exit not to clear everything, and number of mines that hit still depends on the number of exits a sector has. Drones don't hit while there's still mines on the stack, which leads me to question - how is it possible that from a 0/50/1 stack, scout disappears after someone attacked the stack and about 40 drones stays IS?

[piratedan]

I believe he was in a Fed ship at the time. The sector is a two way sector. The mine stack had 120 mines and 120 cd's on it. After his jump in, and the scout report stated it was a jump. not an enter, and then his movement to a safe sector, there was a report that my forces were under attack. When he left, the 120 stack was now sitting at 48, and no drones forces changes were noted. Also the sector had an additional 16 stacks in it, 85% of them full.

so five scout messages:

the jump, the enter, the attack, then another enter and then a leaving, so he would have been under attack twice, the first on the jump in, then on the attempt to move to the location sector below (also successful w/o any failure noted from any jumper seen coming in). So the one stack lost about 60% of it's mines but no other forces attack was noted.

so the sector size shouldn't matter, per azool himself, the fact that forces were in sector and didn't attack even though they existed on the stack that was hammered is my question, since it applied to me and not to him, I am still left to posit why?