Market will be fixed at some time during January round to have resources left on planets when placed on market.

This change will be announced at least a week in advance. All existing resources on the market will remain on the market and will not automatically be placed on planets (sometimes the planet they were placed on the market from no longer even exists, so they can not be automatically be moved back to planets). However, these existing resources on the market which do not have an assigned planet where they are stored will decline in price 1 credit per 100k resources for each day they are left on the market and not assigned to a planet. Resources which are on a planet will not decline in price. This is only a temporary measure which will be taken to clear out resources which are not assigned to planets.

There will be no other changes in aspects of the game which will affect strategy thereafter until April.

There may be some improvements in buttons or screen interfaces which make it easier to use functions, and some changes in background code to improve game speed and scalability, but these changes will not affect strategy.

The new player missions will be completed (hopefully by end of January). A few players will be permitted to have a second account to test out new player missions once they are online. With the introduction of the new missions for new players, voting for credits will also be restored. If this is viewed as a change, I will agree to wait until April to make that change. If it is viewed as fixing a bug or problem we had when moving the server, which has never been fixed yet as I did not want to promote the game much while we were losing 99% of new players before completing the newbie missions, then voting for credits can be restored earlier than April.

Changes expected in April or May 2006 (not sooner, we will keep game same as in January until then):

1. Interest rate paid for resources on HWs will be adjusted, and probably decreased. It may change from round to round based on risk of losing a HW, so that "investing" in a HW provides a fair and reasonable return for the risks involved. Interest will be quoted on a effective simple rate of return per round (now about 30% per round).

2. A few new buildings, to be discussed and voted on by EARLY MARCH. Could include shipyard for repair and salvage (scrapping) of ships. Might be something very different. Not sure. Open to new ideas and suggestions.

3. Possibility of new technology. Nothing planned, but open to ideas and suggestions. One or two new technologies will be considered, but not lots of changes. Might also make changes to existing technologies then.

4. Possiblity of a new ship. Nothing definite planned. Lots of talk about commanders and death stars, ets. Only ONE new ship will be introduced to keep game from becoming too complex. Maybe nothing will be introduced, if majority of players do not like any of the proposed ideas. But, only one new ship at most at that time.

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"Of all the things I have lost, I miss my mind the most."

Voting, its not a change its a bug fix

But as i said else where unless these changes have an adverse effect on the game (e.g. one player can rule all) then i have no problem with them

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Naltsa Abe, The one, the only, the craziest welshman in the game!

You may have the troops and the assaults to go with them, but always remember....

I have crashed the server!!!

"1. Interest rate paid for resources on HWs will be adjusted, and probably decreased. It may change from round to round based on risk of losing a HW, so that "investing" in a HW provides a fair and reasonable return for the risks involved. Interest will be quoted on a effective simple rate of return per round (now about 30% per round). "

I still not understand why you want to make damege to the game so much? Isn't it obvious that if you want to adjust the interest rate and minimize damage the best way is to start from small changes and then increase it in time if it seems not enough than putting huge change at once with a risk completely destroy the balance of the game (especially when this balance is so vulnerable now)?

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Country music, whiskey and OK

HWs have gone into hiding. This needs to change. The majority of players in the game disagree with your risk analysis, and wanted interest of 2% per day as reasonable compensation for the risk they are taking. I think you are underestimating risk of losing a HW in your analysis, and it is very clear now that we have less than 1/10th the number of HWs we had in the game just six months ago. Three months of higher interest while people rebuild HWs is not a bad tradeoff.

And, if you feel strongly that I personally will benefit too much from these changes, then please feel free to attack my planets THIS ROUND before shield effect increases. I believe you know the coords of many of my defended planets (they have been published in forums), and none of my planets have more than 60 M defenses. The planets in the battle zone don't even have turrets (they did, but people keep killing them as soon as I build them, so they are turretless).

As for other players taking over the game, no one has enough resources now to come close to domination of the game, and few players even have ONE homeworld with anything close to 80 million of defense on even a single planet. Give them time to build up their planets, and in the meantime, attack me now while it is easier to do so than it will be next week.

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"Of all the things I have lost, I miss my mind the most."

"And, if you feel strongly that I personally will benefit too much from these changes, then please feel free to attack my planets THIS ROUND before shield effect increases."

As I already told you earlier, attacking your HWs are not favourable even this round, as I would loose much more than you. You have no agreement with your own words - if there were big risk to loose HWs now, you would loose at least half of yours, as coords are known by many players, but have you lost any? The game shows that after shield strenghth was increased and some upgrades introduced to the game, no big HWs were captured (I think no even 30mln defence planet was cpatured this round). But you not looking to obvious things and still saying that HWs are not safe enough, which have nothing incommon with the real situation seen form the game...

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Country music, whiskey and OK

I did lose one large one this round, and a few smaller defended planets. More than I gained from having HWs, for sure. Why keep em? Because I am stubborn, mostly, and to give targets others can go after to give other players a bit of a break, and to try to inspire confidence in having HWs again.

Of course, I do not put resources on the planets. That was done a few rounds ago, as an experiment, and it did not take long to lose a strongly defended planet then. I still lose defended planets, but less when I don't have resources on them.

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"Of all the things I have lost, I miss my mind the most."

"I did lose one large one this round, and a few smaller defended planets."

You just told on other topic that you haven't lost any big HWs, and now telling that lost?

"Why keep em?"
because you have no other place to keep resources And if you keeping low defence planets with no shield it's your problem, and this doesn't mean real HWs are risky to have

"try to inspire confidence in having HWs again."

we don't need confidence to have HWs, we just need enough T and E to make them strong btw, after harvesting my planets I've got enough resources to establish my new HW

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Country music, whiskey and OK

Sorry filas did i here you say there was any type of balance in this game???

Where is this balance, These changes will force a balance

Oh wait current balance = Build assaults only attack anything that you can, Where are the forts, the defended areas, the homeworlds? they are gone

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Naltsa Abe, The one, the only, the craziest welshman in the game!

You may have the troops and the assaults to go with them, but always remember....

I have crashed the server!!!

when the game runs for some time, it gets into more or less stable situation - this is balance. every change disturbs this balance - some changes can shif it a lot, some are almost invisible. but if after change you'll wait enough time, the game will reach balance again - I think now we had time when big changes made during summer were already more or less balanced, but the changes for january are as strong as these done in summer, means we'll have at least several more months of swinging...

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Country music, whiskey and OK

Yes Filas we are settling down, but to what.... No homeworlds, massive fleets, no way to defend yourself well thats not the type of balance that i think many people find attractive, we'll have 3 months of nothing changing, so we can see how this change works out, if they make the game more interesting so be it, if not then we'll make more changes, SIMPLE AS THAT

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Naltsa Abe, The one, the only, the craziest welshman in the game!

You may have the troops and the assaults to go with them, but always remember....

I have crashed the server!!!

abe, you are looking to the past, not to this round. And there were some important changes done just in december. And look what we have now - still a lot of old inactive players HWs which were not captured for more than one year, have some resources on, but still no one attacks them. There were no real HWs captured this round - as it's hard to call Hw a planet with defence which I can gather in couple of weeks.
If no one attacks HWs, means they are safe... I have HW, and, as you could see couple of weeks ago, there are ways to defend it

I think uncapturable HWs were not worse than HWs which no one wants to capture... As in old times it was really wery expensive to capture bigger HW, but loss of such HW was real pain as all ships were also lost - it could mean the whole reources of player, gathered for long months of playing. And now loosing even 100mln HW is just about 1-2 months of gathering...
And such changes can lead to only one thing - many HWs and no one attacking them, as can anyone tell me a reason why I should attack any HW? As If I have 50mln T and other player has 10mln T, I can take his HW and we both will have no more T left - the only difference will be some points I'll get. And if I'll not attack him, I'll get 500k T everyday

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Country music, whiskey and OK