Cheerios at 06:03, 20 July 2005

2005-07-20T06:03:18Z

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Before We start the interview I would like to send a big thank you out to Spinner
for taking the time to answer all these questions so concisely, and not skipping
any of them. I know I threw quite a lot at him. My questions are in bold, and
Spinner's answers are in indented, and in italics.

How do you feel about large alliances like the concordium for example, is
it something you wish to encourage after the reset or do you think alliances
should be capped? 
<ul>
Alliances are fine, but only to a certain point. The way some of the larger
alliances work today, its not fine, if you hit one of them, you get 365 planets
attacking you, even if you are small. This is not nice, and we certainly would
like to encourage smaller alliances. But we shall see, with better protection
of smaller planets, more focus on cooperating in the galaxies, we will see
if the problem is still as bad. 
</ul>
What sort of support will there be for alliances spanning across galaxies
after the reset?
<ul>
In-Game support for this will probably not be there in this coming round,
but the round after 
</ul>
Galactic alliances seem to be encouraged at the moment what are you going
to do to encourage them even more after the reset? 
<ul>
Well, first of all, we will enhance some functions to allow the galaxy to
work as a unit, better than today. A new minister post will emerge, the minister
of Communication. He will be responsible for keeping the Politics board nice
and clean. He will be given more duties in the coming round, to make room for
some more politics, or relations. Furthermore, we will introduce the Galactic
Defense Fleet, which will help protect the smaller planets in the galaxy. Everyone
can put ships into it, and transfer their ships back out, and at any time, a
certain percentage of the fleet will be within range of each planet, ready to
assist in a possible defense operation there. This will happen automatically,
as long as anyone puts something into the Galactic Defense Fleet. 
</ul>
At the moment you have SC's and MOD's, do you have any other special posts
planned for after the reset? 
<ul>Ah, well, there is the mentioned Minister of Communication, a MOC..(-: </ul>
Are you going to enable MOD's to donate to the MOD's of other galaxies? 
<ul>there has
been some speculation about this. Yes, we intended to, but we are not sure.
I reckon I will take a round on the boards to hear what people think. Personally,
I am not against it, and it would open up some interesting possibilities, but
there is always the problem of cheating and this must be inspected thoroughly.
Short answer: I don't know! </ul>
Are you going to make the funds donated to MOD's separate so that everyone
can see what is in the galaxies MOD account, and the MOD won't accidentally
use stuff that he/she shouldn't? Something like this could also stop abuse of
MOD powers. 
<ul>
What you refer to as abuse of MOD power, is part of role-playing within the
game. If you are not happy about your MOD, then get a new one! If your SC does
not agree, well, get a new one of him too! See what I mean? If you abuse your
power, you will be elected out of the minister-job by the SC. 
</ul>
There was talk of being able to vote undesirables out of the galaxy, are
you going to implement this? 
<ul>
I can safely say, this is a feature which received quite a bit of attention
in the discussion boards when we mentioned it, and I still believe it is a
good and needed feature. Many feel strongly against it, and therefore I have
been forced back to the drawing board on this one. So for now, it's not going
in, but we're adding support to put it in quickly once we have made our minds
up. </ul>
If so aren't you worried that it could be a good tool for multis to try
and get all their planets in the same galaxy, or people to try and make sure
they get all their friends in the same galaxy, or even as a tool to kick out
a powerful player from the galaxy out of jealousy? 
<ul>
Well, part of the thing with this feature, was to delete the account after
say 5 moves. So a multi jumping to get his planets within the same galaxy, would
certainly have to be very lucky to achieve this. But possible, yes! As for kicking
out a huge player our of jealousy, would be a really stupid thing to do. Since
galaxies will be ranked, and galaxy cooperation will be vital, I really believe
our players are more intelligent than kicking out their top player! And if you
are a top player, kicked out by envious little people, you are better off in
another galaxy! 
</ul>
What of the talk of a galactic defense fleet, is this going to be implemented?
 
<ul>
Yes. It might be one of the features we do not have time for, but if not,
it will be implemented very quickly after the reset, about 1 week. What it does,
is allows you to transfer a part of your ships to the Galactic Defense Fleet.
This fleet will orbit the galaxy, being ready to intercept attackers. So at
any time, if there are 20 planets in the galaxy, 1/20th of the fleet will be
at every planet protecting it. So the smaller ones will have constant protection
by their fellow galaxy members who put bigger ships into that fleet. 
</ul>
If a member of the galaxy goes inactive and his account is deleted what
will happen to the ships he has given to the galactic defense fleet, will they
de removed as well, or will they stay? 
<ul>They will die with the player. </ul>
What sort of protection have you got planned for newbies? 
<ul>
The protection thing is a complex thing. But not really (-: 
 <ul>
<li> No one can attack a planet in its first 72 hours of playing. 
<li> All planets are created without asteroids, so there is little to gain
by attacking one. (Yes, this means you need the basic telescope to get a
hold of asteroids) 
<li> Asteroids will be cheaper to come by, for bigger players as well, to
make the small planets a less attractive target 

<li>The Galactic Defense Fleet will be a major Newbie Protector. Goes without
saying I guess?
</ul></ul>
If you have planned a form of protection that does not allow you to hit
people at a certain score or somebody who's score is a certain percentage below
yours don't you think this might be unfair if you have 2 large players who fight
it out and one player loses all his fleet dropping his score enough to prevent
the other one stripping his roids after doing all the hard work? 
<ul>
Yes, but we have not planned anything like this. This is way to artificial
for our liking. 
</ul>
There has been a lot of concern with multi's and inactive players, what
can you tell me about your plans to cut down on them after the reset? (I understand
it's unlikely you will go into great technical detail because you don't want
to help them get round it) 
<ul>
First of all, you're right about assuming I will be careful on the info I
give out here on this subject. We do not wish to make it easier for them (-:
But: What I can tell you, is that the 3 of us, the creators, will not be the
only ones able to rid the universe of multi's, we will have trusted help on
this matter. We will of course have strict rules so that hopefully none are
deleted in mistake. We are also logging more info about the users in the next
round, so we have access to more factors who can point towards or against mutli's.
So on the multi-thing: We will still have them, but they will be less than in
this round, and they will be harder to keep undetected. As for inactives, as
some may have noticed, we have just deleted approximately 14.000 accounts who
were clear inactives. We have had problems with this for a while, but in the
next round, we will have a Vacation option in the game. With this enabled, we
will deleted inactives much quicker. So I do believe inactives will not that
big a problem in the next round. 

</ul>
Will you be supporting the use of managers that some people have created
to automate tasks and such like?
<ul>
No, I am sorry to say that we do NOT support them. In fact, we might be looking
for ways to limit their use. Some of them have some nasty features that allows
message spamming and such, and we will do something about that. But whether
I like them or not, they are a sign of missing features in the game. Eventually
I hope that Planetarion will have all the features it is meant to have, and
people will no longer feel the need to use programs like that.
</ul>
 There are a few people who have been looking into getting a user's ID number
and then somehow getting their magic number and hacking into PA accounts. How
are you going to deal with people that try to cheat like this?
<ul>
First of all, I would like to state that hacking hasn't been a major issues
this round. There were some rumors getting around about it once, and indeed,
a clever guy sorted out our magic number (well done!), but there was never any
abuse. He proved he had done it, and reported it to us. Hence, we fixed it,
changed it, and made it more secure. Naturally we have no problem with this.
However, anyone caught hacking or trying to hack us, will be dealt with harshly.
This game is all we have, and we will not let people ruin it, just for fun.

</ul>
There are apparently some security holes in the current CGI system allowing
you to order things you haven't researched and also make yourself MOD if you
are SC (something I'm told you shouldn't be able to do) Will these be fixed
after reset? 

<ul>They have already been fixed. (-: </ul>
If you do fix these security holes how will that affect people who use managers,
and people who log in from alliance pages? 
<ul>
First of all, I would again say, I do not recommend people logging in from
anywhere but the real Planetarion log-in page. For all you know, your username
and password are not only sent to Planetarion, but also to the makers of that
page, or reported to someone by a Java Script. Managers can easily do this as
well, so be careful! And if something weird happens with an account logged in
from such a place, you are responsible yourself. Now, these security issues
will not affect the managers or alliance pages at all, as far as I can see.
But again,be careful when using them! 
</ul>
It has been said that you must make choices in the tech tree that will enable
you to build some things but not others; can you give me some examples? 
<ul>
Well, there are 6 fields of research and construction in the next round:
Defense, War, Jumpgates, Science, Waves and Mining. The top technology of one
field, excludes another top technology. So if you go all the way in War, wanting
the biggest baddest ship, prepare to sacrifice the best jumpgate you need to
shave the extra hour off your attacks and steal more asteroids! 
</ul>
Do you not feel that this might encourage some people to multi so that they
can experience the whole tech tree? 

<ul>
I certainly do not hope so. What I hope to achieve with this is that some
people decide to use different tactics, and make it so a Galaxy would benefit
from having planets of different specialties. 
</ul>
Everyone is talking about the new combat what can you tell me?
<ul>
Hehe, Yes, everyone is talking about it, and many are worried, and it is
a big deal. Planetarion is about a few different things, like politics, allies,
communication and war. If the war-part doesn't work, the game will pay dearly.
So, why change it at all? There were several reasons to improve the combat,
most of them known to me even before this first Beta round started. Vish, Fudge
and me had a vision about the Planetarion game, and how it would be when it
was finished. And the round we have just played, although surprisingly popular,
has not had all the aspects we wanted in the game. People play Planetarion because
it is fun, it's not too complicated, and you can decide how much you want to
put into it. The real hard-core gamers are usually those on top of the list,
but you don't have to spend hours and hours every day to do well with your planet.
So, we wanted to add more tactics to the game, without creating more hassle
for the users, more complexity if you like. Also, the current system does not
protect the smaller planets from the bigger in any way, and in my eyes, such
a protection is both right and realistic. 
 
Short example: If your fleet with 1000 fighters attack my fleet which is 50
fighters, do you really believe that you would be able to use all your 1000
fighters as efficiently as my 50? Your fighters would have to avoid friendly
units much more, be careful not to hit them. So it is almost like guerilla tactics,
but in space. So, the new system will make use of an efficiency attribute, influencing
the accuracy of each ship type. The smaller your fleet is, compared to the other,
the more efficient your fleet will be in combat. Also, I guess it is safe to
let you know that fast and maneuverable ships, like the Fighter class ships,
will have a bonus when attacking slower bigger targets. Sure, the new War Frigate
(the old Battleship unit) is good for wiping Fighters, as it has a good set
of guns, but it is very open to a Fighter attack. So, a Destroyer (Last round
it was wrongly named Cruiser) which is big, slow and meant to take out big ships,
will get a penalty when trying to shoot at the faster smaller crafts. The last,
but perhaps most important thing, is that ships can now take a different number
of hits before going down. A fighter will be destroyed after just 1 hit, but
expect the bigger ships to take several before going down. Also, the system
is less based on random factors than the old one, and with the new system, two
fleets having the exact same ships, will do the exact same damage to each other.

</ul>
Are some ships going to be unable to attack others?
<ul>
No. In the beginning I hope to accomplish this, but after talking a lot to
many players in the Discussion Boards and on IRC, I have been convinced that
doing this will sooner or later create awkward (?) situations where no ships
shoot at each other. So, instead, we are allowing for ships to have preferred
targets. If there are no ships of the preferred target CLASS in the combat,
it will shoot at random, like it did in the old system. This way, we allow for
specialization, but keep it so that at least you will never get into the deadlock.

</ul>
Have you decided on the final ships yet, and if so can you tell me what
they are and stats if possible (i.e. shields, chance to hit, number of guns),
even if you haven't decided on names? 
<ul>
Well, I certainly know a great deal, there is still 1 ship to be considered
before my list is 100% complete, but I am working on that. For a starter,
the 5 basic ships we have today, from Fighter to Destroyer, will be in the
game, "relatively" with the same stats. There is talk of a possible bigger
ship than the new Cruiser, perhaps a Battleship of some sort, that is the
1 ship I am still considering. Also, as most people know, a new type of ships
will emerge, the ships that can steal other ships. There are two ships of
this kind, one small for stealing the two smallest ship types, and a bigger
one for the bigger ship types The biggest ship (Cruiser, or Battleship if
it gets in) can not be stolen. If you have just small stealing ships, you
may still get to steal a big one (preferred target: small ship) but it could
be that it requires multiple successful stealers to steal one of the bigger
ships. The EMP-based units will survive the game, although be slightly modified.
They are named Spider and Tarantula for now, one small and one large. Now,
EMP Units are relatively immune to EMP, so they are not likely to get held
at all, but they might still be targeted. Also, expect a new Fighter ship,
which is a normal Fighter, with one difference, it is immune to EMP. This
is all I am going to say on the matter, and it is pretty much a full picture
I believe. The stats will be published in the manual. </ul>
Are you going to give some ships hit points in new system so that it takes
larger ships like destroyers more than 1 hit to be destroyed, or are you still
going to just use a high shielding percentage? 
<ul>
 Yes, you can say ships have hitpoints, only one ship at the time. This means,
when your 10 destroyers shoot at my 5 cruisers, you might get roughly about
10 successful hits on my ships. Now, with cruisers taking 5 hits to kill, you
will then kill 2 cruisers (2*5=10), not injure them randomly. We have to do
it like this to save our database and combat simulator from overheating, and
we still have a tick time to keep :-p 
</ul>
Are you going to have different ships inflicting different damage on different
classes? (I.e. fighters not very likely to damage a destroyer if they hit it,
but much more likely to damage another fighter, whereas a destroyer will be
likely to damage both fighters and destroyers equally) 
<ul>
As I stated above, we are allowing for ships to have preferred targets. If
there are no ships of the preferred target CLASS in the combat, it will shoot
at random, like it did in the old system. 
</ul>
Are stealth ships now not going to show up on the incoming screen just suddenly
pop up when they attack you? 
<ul>
Stealth will still be a factor in the game, and it will work differently
in the coming round. Instead of not being able to be shot down by ships shooting
before them, stealth units have 3 advantages. They do not show up in the fleet
size when a fleet is incoming, they are hard to detect with scans, and they
always shoot first!
</ul>
There was talk of asteroids not giving you as many resources as you get
more, is this going to be implemented, and if so how are you going to work out
the resources gained from them? 
<ul>Ah, there is a little misunderstanding here. The thing is, asteroids will
give off less resources than they do today, true. BUT: You will have more asteroids!
So the balance should be about the same, possibly everyone would have more than
today actually, but we needed to raise the number of asteroids captured in combat,
as the 10% limit with the small numbers we had, was a bit weird. </ul>
If so are ship costs going to be lower since we wont be able to gain such
huge incomes or will we all just have to get used to having smaller fleet sizes?
 
<ul>As I explained above, no, you will not have to get used to smaller fleets.
</ul>

You said that eonium would be used as fuel, will every ship use the same
amount of fuel to travel somewhere, and will it cost more to travel further
away? 
<ul>
The cost in fuel per launch, is set per Class. If you wish to launch a
destroyer, it will surely cost more than to launch a fighter! The cost is
not relevant to distance. </ul>
There has been talk of making some ships faster than others, and travel
times between galaxies and clusters changing. How are you going to work out
the new travel times? 
<ul>
Right, I have seen some confusion on this area as well. I must try to explain
myself better. Here is the deal: Every ship type has an attribute called Speed.
Now to explain what this is, it is the number of ticks it takes to get this
ship off the ground, refueled, rearmed, reshielded, and to the jumpgate-point.
Now, logically enough, it takes slightly longer to do all this with the bigger
ship types, although they might actually be able to move faster. In addition
to this, the number of ticks it takes to jump from 1 sector to another, depends
on the jumpgate technology you have. 
</ul>
Are things like carrier ships being considered to ship your fighters about?
<ul>I have spent time thinking about it, but we have decided against it. </ul>
There has been a lot of talk about jump gates, are they going to be included
and what exactly will they do?
<ul>
The quickest possible jumptime COULD be 2 ticks. Now, in the Military screen,
where you see the overview of your fleet's, what ships they contain, a new row
at the bottom of that table will display the fleets current travel time, which
is the speed attribute of the slowest ship in that fleet, plus the number of
ticks the jump takes depending on your jumpgate technology. 
</ul>
Some people have said it would be a good idea if you could have a graphics
pack which you could download to add a few animation's and graphics that would
be bandwidth heavy, to make Planetarion even nicer, have you thought of including
this?
<ul>
I am not sure how this pack could work, I guess technically, we would have
to make sure everyone installs it to the same directory on the same drive and
all, but it is possible I guess. So it sounds like it is a good idea, and we
will look into it. But right now, its the coding and moving and reset that occupies
our minds. 
</ul>

There has been rumor of a small prize to the player with the highest score
at the end of the next round, any comments? 
<ul>
Well, we are not negative to such items, on the contrary, but there are a
few important things about things like this. Suddenly, when introducing prizes,
there is the obvious problem of giving people an incentive to cheat. Now, disregarding
that, yes, we would like to find something special for good players, but what
it might be is unknown. You know, if people could do a marathon clicking on
banners, I am sure we could afford prices to every one (-: 
</ul>
With this taken into account, how often are you planning to have resets?

<ul>
Well, originally we assumed 3 resets a year, now we know better (-: I guess
a reset could be done every 6 months, but we will have to see about how all
the new things in this round will affect the playing time. Could be longer,
could be shorter, Most likely somewhere between 6 and 8 months is what my gut
tells me. 
</ul>
Is there anything else you can tell me about Planetarion post reset that
I have not mentioned? 

<ul>Good lord no! What, you want me to spoil everything now? (-: </ul>
Have you got anything else that you can release to whet peoples appetites?

<ul>Not anything right now. </ul>
Finally there has been some confusion as to how long Planetarion will be
down before the reset, most people think it's a week, how long do you think
you will need? 

<ul>
OK, let me clear things up a bit: We will have 2 down periods. 
 
</ul>
<ul>
<li>First of all for putting our servers on the new line. 
<li>Secondly for actually resetting, and deleting EVERYTHING. 
 
</ul>
<ul>
Depending upon when the line is ready, and when all the needed coding is ready,
these two things could happen at the same time, but we do know that yet. The
phone company in Norway is not the fastest in the world when it comes to ordering
Internet lines. But, best case, all we need is a downtime of say a few hours,
worst case, some days. A week? I think not! 
</ul>

Source: UKGamer @ http://www.ukgamer.com/article.php4?id=19&page=1

Round 1:UKGamer Interview - Revision history

Cheerios at 06:03, 20 July 2005