Official Announcements

[Sheriden]

@Andromeda Has dropped for the round to focus on real life and work.  We wish them well and hope they'll come back to us soon!

@Vonar Roberts Has switched to Rothana.  We wish them luck on this bold new planet choice!

[Sheriden]

TPC Construction Rules have been amended.  Forget everything you thought you learned about it previously.  TPC now costs a flat 200,000,000 credits per unit to build, modified by your planets research rating.  Construction now takes a variable amount of time depending on how much TPC you are trying to build (formerly this value was capped at 10% of existing TPC).  The baseline is around 15 months of game time.  This is modified by your planets research rating and by how much TPC you are trying to build.  If you try and build more then a ten percent increase in existing TPC the build time will increase.  If you try and build less then a ten percent increase the build time will go down. 

All players who had ongoing TPC construction under way had their original actions responded to with updated times and costs for ongoing projects.  No times increased.  When times decreased players were informed when the project would now be complete.  When costs increased those new costs were waived as part of the rules change.  When costs decreased, credits were refunded to player treasuries.

If you have a TPC construction action that was not updated by staff, please respond to it with a query asking for an update on construction times and costs.

[Sheriden]

@GeneralCrazy Has requested a planet switch from Salliche to Lantillies.  It has been granted.

[Sheriden]

@Mandalore the Negotiator has joined us as the player of Tepasi.

[Sheriden]

An update on the game pause.

There are four actions left to process.  It's been that way for a few days.  There aren't particularly difficult actions to process, or particularly important in relation to growth automation or budget processing... But they deserve to be processed like every other action that was processed before we move forward.  Unfortunately staff bandwidth has been low following our push to clear the rest of the queue last week. 

So while we are eager to finish processing these actions and move forward with the procedural steps of processing GDP growth, Population growth, opening budget submissions, and resuming the game round.  We haven't had the capacity to get it done quickly.  We are a small team, and we have responsibilities in real life, and we have responsibilities to other aspects of the game as well.

In addition to running the present game round we are continuing development work on features that will improve the game in the future, QOL features for players, and for staff.  One of the goals I had for this pause was to create more resources for players to explain how aspects of the game worked.  We began the round with the notion that while we beta tested game systems we would respond to player inquiries with a policy of "find out in character".  I believe that such a system has merit - but it has proved frustrating for some players. 

However, thus far during the pause I have had no time to write up player facing descriptions for how things work.  Which remains a priority to ease player frustrations.  This remains a priority, but may not realistically get done before we un pause the game.  Our goal is for the game to be fun  but some aspects of running the game and delivering that fun experience to our community are time consuming and not fun for staff.  That doesn't mean we won't do them, just that it might take time.

As always we remain open to growing the game staff to increase the work we can get done on any given project at any give time.  And I would like to thank Xaph who volunteered to help at the assistant staff level - but we are not looking to add assistant level workload at this time, as our experience is that it often yields less work output then the supervision time required.  None the less we appreciate the offer. 

If you are interested in joining the team please feel free to contact me so we can discuss how well you might fit in with the team at present.

For the present, we will continue to move toward re opening the game round as quickly as possible and improving the game experience as best we are able, and hope you'll hang in there with us.  Cheers.

 

[Sheriden]

Among the QoL (Quality of Life) improvements I've bene working on for staff, are improvements to the unit spreadsheets that staff use to calculate unit costs and generate the text that gets inserted into the unit database.  I've been working on adding missing fields (like Atmospheric speeds for units) and delineating options for units to have consumables tracked by days or months, and cargo to be tracked by metric tons or Kilograms.  I've been working to integrate two separate spreadsheets that track starships vs smaller units into a single sheet with formulas that delineate by unit type and category.  And in the course of that integration discovered a divergence in unit formulas for TPC, which ballooned TPC costs for specific unit categories like Large Transports.  Also during this work it was discovered that Starfighter type units were being charged 35 times as much as other unit categories for cargo and consumables.  I also took time to fix the consumables tracking to our new official 35 Day / 10 Month calendar. 

Long term this work will make work easier for staff, allow us to track and publish more variables for unit stats, and make unit costs more accurate. 

In the short term, what it means is that unit Costs, Upkeeps, and TPV are being updated to reflect that changes and fixes that were made to the formulas and the unit data.

At this time all Starships of size Freighter and larger have been updated with corrected values.  Starfighters, Large Starfighters, and Large Transports are being updated presently and will be done before the unpause.  Other unit types will continue to be reviewed and updated in the future.

[Sheriden]

Budgets are now open.  You may submit budgets at this time. Go. Go. Go. 

[Sheriden]

All submitted budgets have been processed.  Org Taxes are presently being collected.  If you are part of an organization with published taxes, expect to see your share of that payment deducted from your treasury.  Also, please anticipate the round resuming sometime in the next 24 hours, and plan accordingly.

[Sheriden]

The game clock has been unpaused.  The round has resumed.  Actions are open.

[Sheriden]

Based on player feedback, and concerns that TPC costs were too high for economically disadvantaged planets, staff spent the last week reviewing our new TPC formula and have adjusted it accordingly.  The TPC cost formula is no based on GDP.  The higher your GDP the more expensive TPC is. The formula we will be using in published below.  We will not be applying this cost retroactively to previously construction, however all new construction will utilize this formula.

TPC Increase * GDP / 100,000,000 * ( 100 - Research ) / 100

In addition to this the cap on construction remains set at 10% per year, except for planets with less then 10,000 TPC who may build an amount to bring their total up to 10,000 in any given year, and thereafter may construct 10% per year.  TPC will take one year to build, however building less then the 10% limit may expedite construction, and planetary Research Rate may decrease construction time as well.

We apologize for the pace at which these rules are being adjusted, but are simply doing our best to make sure that the game systems are both equitable to all players and balanced within the game economy.  Thank you for your understanding.

[Fury]

Game Clock and Military Orders

I've seen it asked a few times how military orders will be affected with a game clock pause. So here goes - it won't be.  The clock may provide you with a date of estimated completion. This is a date that was projected with the assumption the clock won't pause. But the production system DOES NOT operate on a real world time schedule. It works off of UNIX timestamp and calculates off the game clock. If when the game clock was paused you had an order that was supposed to complete in 10 days (game time), when the clock unpauses, it will still complete in ten days after the clock runs.  Let me reiterate, it DOES NOT work off or calculate off of real time. That real time estimate was just a cosmetic design added in that would give you an idea of when to expect it in the real world.  I wish we could design a way to adjust that, and we could - however it is not really a priority development item at this time, especially as we are working on a conceptual redesign of the production system at-large.  

[Sheriden]

Aerocraft typically can be transported by other ships utilizing Starfighter cargo slots.  However they can also be transported utilizing Heavy Walker cargo slots. 

[Shadows]

It is apparently necessary to reiterate something...

You can not submit an action to deploy a military force unless you have all the units in the action. You can't deploy a hypothetical force that is under construction, even if it will finish before the action is processed. And if you have forces across the galaxy, you either leave without them being present or you delay your action start time.

[Sheriden]

I just want to take this opportunity to reiterate that technology is neither something complex and unattainable that you need the help of others to acquire, nor something simple and gift wrapped that you can present as a gift to someone else.  On the one hand technologies are simply a permissions gateway to control unit production and limit access to specific designs.  On the other hand simply being given the designs to a unit does not indicate an ability to build the unit until you have access to the technology.  This might be because you lack the basic industry to complete construction, lack the artisanal knowledge of how the units are built by hand, don't have the advanced technology or knowledge required, are inexperienced in the mass production of units of the type... Or any number of factors.  To gain access to these technologies you need to learn how to actually use them - and simply saying that some other world is going to teach you or vice versus isn't sufficient. 

The best method to gain access to a technology is to learn it through practical application. This means designing a unit that needs its. This doesn't have to be an original design, it could be through reverse engineering a design that they are giving you - not because you need to reverse engineer the design (they are giving it to you after all) but because that same process can represent the act of you learning how to build it. The barrier here often isn't you having access to the knowledge you need, but you (your people) taking the time to learn it and understand it - and this takes time and money.

I say all this not because anyone has done anything wrong, but because there needs to be a minor shift in the expectation of how technologies are handled.  Again, its not something that can simply be bartered, traded, and given away.  It's something that needs to be earned and acquired through work and process. So just like gaining any asset viewed as valuable in game expect on submitting and writing an action to justify making the gain. 

[Sheriden]

The Action Cancel feature does not work. Please do not attempt to change the status of your actions until further notice.  Instead simply respond to the action indicating that you wish to cancel it.  We will review the error when Fury passes his class and has more free time.

[Sheriden]

When you reference something.... LINK TO IT.  This isn't a new concept.  It literally saves staff huge amounts of time and effort.  Referencing a planet that exists in Star Wars?  Embed the link to that Wookiepedia page in the planet name.  We have had this technology for decades.  Please save your volunteer game staff time by doing literally any amount of work to help them!  Referencing a past game action?  Provide a link to it so they don't have to go sort through all your existing actions to find it.  Please don't make me ask again. 

[Sheriden]

The game clock has been paused because of an ongoing shortage of staff time to process actions.  While there has been consistent action processing over the past several weeks, a greater number of "stale" actions more then two/three weeks old has accumulated and those staff who remain available to process actions are not able to keep up with processing new actions in addition to processing the growing backlog. 

The pause will remain in effect until a sufficient number of the older actions have been processed.

There are presently 60 actions in the queue and over 20 of them are more then two weeks old.

We are not presently looking for more game staff at this time.

[Sheriden]

Unit Stats have finished being adjusted for all units in the Large Transport and Small Transport categories. For many / most of these units the Cost / Upkeep / TPC went down significantly - both because of an existing error in the formula, and also because of minor adjustments made to how costs were calculated for units of these classes.  For several units costs went up slightly or significantly for reasons which I choose not to specify.  😄

[Shadows]

Hello folks! Here to inform you of some changes and give you a heads up that more changes might be coming.

First and foremost, after discussing with Sheriden and Fury agreeing, it has been decided I will be rotated in as Head Moderator. This will last at least until the end of summer, and is our experiment with rotating out Moderator positions to address burn out. Sheriden is still going to be around, providing his help behind the scenes and with action processing as available. Let's all give him a big thank you for getting us this far and sticking around.

The next thing, we are currently discussing adding additional moderators to the team. We will keep you up to date on this, but if you are interested, please feel free to message me privately on Discord or the forum.

Finally, we are looking at ways to assist in Moderator workload when processing actions. Some of this involves the development of additional spreadsheets and tools, but some changes to how players submit actions may be coming as well. Please stay tuned for that. As always, if you have suggestions, please post them in the appropriate thread.

Thank you, and look forward to more info as things develop.

[Shadows]

As we get closer to reopening the round, we've decided to make some changes. The first and most likely biggest, is a new action template for Politics and Economic Actions. This won't actually seem too different for many of you, as you all have your own formats with similar info. We are doing this to help ease action processing for the staff moving forward. Remember, we are all volunteers, working adults with other responsibilities. Please make the job easier for us by submitting actions in this format, that are succinctly written and with the research done already. 

The format is below...

Summary: The overall aim of your action. A few lines that provide a top view summary of the action and the overall goals.
Budget: How much money are you planning to spend?
Method: This is the meat of the action. How are you accomplishing your goals? This can be multiple paragraphs, a bullet point list, etc. Please try to keep it succinct--remember, your action is one of many. If it takes us two hours to read just your action, it'll probably be put to the last on the list so we can clear others faster. 
Involved Worlds: Are there any worlds involved that aren't yours? IF not, ignore this section. If there is, please provide information on what they are doing, and if they aren't player worlds, also a link to Wookieepedia. 
Sources: Are you doing something where you're basing your actions on canon information? Give us links to that here. Please save us the hassle of having to go dig through canon sources to find information for you, have it ready ahead of time.
Expected Results: Pretty simple right? What results are you expecting from this action? We will take them into account, especially for more abstract things that aren't on one of our spreadsheets.

Some other changes. I will be lifting the requirement to pre-write articles for technology actions, non-training military actions, and intelligence actions. If you choose to write an article for any of these, feel free to submit a link to the article with the action, for bonus DP or other results. Just as a heads up, we are looking at how DPOLs are handled, and may make some changes to that as well. We will keep you appraised.

[Shadows]

Our tentative start date is sometime in the evening (PST) on June 1st. Please do not submit actions until we give a final go ahead. 

If you've done any R&D to develop capital ships and DID NOT receive a prototype, send me a message on the forum. Include the unit name and action number. This does not count refit or redesigns, only brand new units. You all should have been receiving prototypes, but that got lost.

Actions are being worked on steadily and we should be done clearing out the backlog by the end of the holiday weekend. Thank you all for your patience.

[Shadows]

So as I've said we're on schedule to start on the 1st. Sadly we most likely will not have all pending actions done by then, however we will have as many as possible processed. When we restart we will be implementing a VERY strict action limit...

3 Actions in total, with no more than 2 per category. Actions already being processed will not be counted against this limit, however if you have a pending action that hasn't been addressed it will (there are very few of these). Consequences for violating this limit will be hefty, including forum warnings--we are at a low staffing level (thanks economy) and are still getting our feet under us. We will adjust the limits as we clear out old actions and get an idea at our processing speeds for new actions.

If you think we've missed your action please feel free to DM me on Discord/message me on the site. Please include the action number from inside the action (not the one on your list) as that is the more accurate number, or simply copy the link to the action and send it. I'll look it over and either process or assign it for processing.

[Shadows]

WE. ARE. LIVE.

Remember the queue limit.

[Shadows]

You will all notice a new news thread. This is for minor things that I feel deserve to be galactic knowledge but also don't feel deserve the energy to write a full article. 

[Shadows]

We will be pausing tomorrow afternoon to process budgets. We are working diligently to try and get actions processed, but this may require a few day pause to get everything cleared and ready to go. I will also be looking at taking on at least one more Av to help process things that rely primarily on spreadsheets, such as tech actions.