5/11/2009

12/18/03

12/16/03

12/15/03

12/14/03

The amount of NevCash is being increased to $10,000,000 per point, from $6 million.
Skill multipliers are being increased to 3 DP
Skill improvements are being lowered to 2 DP
Ressurections are being increased to 3 DP
The following mech adjustments are being made:

MECH TYPE   OLD     NEW
---------   ----    ----
MAD-4A      30      35
ON1-LW      14      20
NEM-HOC01   400     340
PIL-SLY01   230     200
PLD-SLY02   180     140
VX-HOX02    150     90
STY-3C      20      25
OTT-7J      7       15
RVN-1X      7       12
AWS-8Q      16      20

12/13/03

A registration option is available just to help us get an idea of how many people are going to be attending. People needing rides from the airport should contact Chetter at (603)-224-8077 and he or his minions will handle it.

12/10/03

12/9/03

We have said many, many times before that your password is your responsibility. Electronic hacking is taken extremely serisouly by us and the sole time that this has happened the lost items were replaced. Every other time it has been extremely clear that the security compromise was due to players freely giving out their passwords. DO NOT GIVE OUT YOUR PASSWORD. There are multiple features in place (battleplayers and player logins) that fully facilitate the running of an empire in war time with only 1 person knowing the emperor login. It is understandable that in very large empires this becomes especially cumbersome, which is why logins can now have specific privileges (sending money, attacking) to allow them to handle things without the emperor being online. More of these features will be implemented when we have time.

We have decided to implement a new system that will prevent an empire from deleting more than about 10% of their empire's BV or infrastructure in a 24 hour period. This will allow players the freedom to manage their empires while both allowing their enemies the ability to create havoc if the login changes hands and preventing people from burning their empires to the ground in the path of an advancing army. This of course will NOT prevent people from getting a password, accessing the empire and simply changing the password. This is why you need to not give out your password at all.

This had been shaping up to be a very productive day for us but instead we spent fully half of it investigating, arguing and dealing with this situation. It is a waste of our time and takes a lot of the fun out of the game when things like this happen. Be careful with your logins, and if you are not careful with them be honest about it. If you spread your password around, even to people you think you can trust, EXPECT it to be abused. Players in this game are constantly trading sides, holding grudges and misleading each other. There isn't any logging we can implement or rules we can add that will change that.

While complete details are yet unavailable, people should know that the pirates will NOT be some unstoppable force that is coming to completely destroy their empire. They will most likely buy a drop zone and begin heading for a city. After each zone is conquored they will pause before attacking the next zone, giving defenders time to move forces to defeat them (or move vulnerable forces out of the way) as well as time to get online and get organized. If they do conquor a city, they will most likely simply sit on the city for a time, and then split their forces. Part of the force will head for a new city while the others defend their loot. When pirates capture a city they will do larger than normal plunder damage to the structures.

Pirates can be bought off preemptively for an as yet to be determined fee. This means that if you plan on going on vacation or simply do not have time/resources to fight them, you can buy them off ahead of time and avoid having to deal with them. We are also continuing to implement a comprehensive player login system so that others can easily log into empires of their friends/allies and defend them against attacks. This will be particularly necessary in larger empires, as large empires will need many pilots to assist in their defense. Estimates on an attacking force (which was usually broken into a dozen or so seperate attack squads) for Kizo Major was typically in the 200k-400k BV range. While this is a huge force to be reckoned with, Kizo Major has nearly 9 MILLION BV, which means that the majority of the pirate force could easily be defeated by simply putting a battalion or two of vehicles in a zone and letting ABR run. More vicious elements of the attack force would probably need to be piloted against, which is an excellent opportunity for players to learn battle skills, get experience, and most importantly have a LOT of fun.

Empires that have their armies mobilized will have a reduced chance of pirate attack, dependant on how much of their income is used by the mobilization. This is to help prevent empires that are currently engaged in war from having to worry about pirate attacks, which would clearly be cumbersome to player versus player wars, which are always more fun.

All in all this will keep the number of 'junk' empires in the game low, making it very difficult for anyone to manage more empires than they are capable of defending against pirates. When pirates are implemented we will lift the current 5 empire ban. It will probably force empires to be more geographically concious, instead of having unprotected cities scattered all over the map they will want to build and conquor cities in their immediate areas, thus making them more defensible against a pirate threat. We have encountered many players who know literally nothing about combat and war in the game, which we agree is an enigmatic part of the game and scary/confusing to get involved in. This will provide newer players (level 1 and up) an opportunity to learn about combat. More help files will clearly be implemented as well.

12/8/03

12/2/03

12/1/03