You may want to look into maxxed players conquering planets.  There's only 15 hrs left but I conquered Kalsis' planet (sorry)   I just wanted to see if it would work.  This could also be a little (lot) unfair.

HAHA
That one was mine.
Trying to implement strategy into a Huge battle.  I haven't even got to try it yet.  I've never found it.

I'm fairly impressed with most of the new missions.  I think some could be improved and maybe stretched out a little longer.  My one pet peeve is hitting a double failure and getting kicked out.

Is there a process for updating missions after they have been added?  I've mailed e already but has anyone else run into this situation?

That extra step would negate the whole purpose of the quick attack button, just mouse over it and you can see the FP.

FYI, not sure if it was intended, but when you are at the attack summary if you hit the 'back' button in the browser (IE atleast) you re-attack automatically and bypass the 3 second rule.

I agree with pirates 100%

We MUST have a way of tracking the popularity of the missions.  Some are a waste of turns, others have ridiculous rewards.  Either put a rating system at the end of the mission or start a thread in the forum for each mission for players to leave their comments.  (As long as there are no spoilers)

I agree that it would be much easier to build a loop fuction into the missions but I agree with e that it WOULD be exploited.  I wanted to make something similar and a loop would have made it much easier, instead I used notepad and copy&pasted everything.  Takes a little longer.

There also seems to be a problem with the rep modifier.  Suddenly I have a bounty out on my for 50 Trillion Creds!
I agree that some mission choices will give neg rep but I think something is outta whack.  can we have posted in the mission HOW MUCH rep we gain or lose?  Right now it says either Gain positive rep or your underworld rep has increased (I assume is neg rep)  Can we have a numerical value for that?

Besides these suggestions the missions are great. 

Crafting
There should be Interactive templates made for the exploration missions, one for each terrain/planet type and have the steps appear in random order to stop people from memorizing which steps lead to blueprints, workers, creds, whatever. 
         "Your away party lands in a large grassy clearing, you see desert to the north and jungle to the east." these two options could be randomly selected from a list or the potential reward found in these locations could be randomized.
If these missions are going to be 0 turn missions then the chance of success should be fairly low as well as the blueprints being a single use item to avoid flooding the market with hundreds or thousands of useless items.
A new station facility would be perfect and 'force' players to build stations if they want to craft.  However as stations are limited in use and availability (expecially at the begining of a round) by introducing the council planets into the galaxy they could also offer workspace in exchange for a cut of the profits (2%-10%)
This could also deserve it's own research branch "Crafting" giving bonuses to ingredients level -X%, item ability +X%, item yield +X%, Crafting XP gained +X%. 


Arena
I thought this would be popular!
I think there would have to be more restrictions as to what fleets would be allowed or have different "weight classes"  Ultralight - Swarmers (Hull <100) Total FP <1 000 000
             Light - Swarmers (Hull 101- 1000) Total FP <10 000 000
             Medium - Single fleet (Hull 1001-10000) Total FP < 10 000 000
             Heavy - Mix (singles or swarms) Total FP <1Bil
             Super heavy - Singles - No FP limit

Again, if the council planets were introduced I would imagine that is where you would sign up for a tourney.  The different classes may have to wait until there are more players interested.  Another possibility would be creating an Alliance Tourney, where the fleet capacity was increased and each alliance could enter their own fleets.  I think we need more Alliance based content to add more of social aspect to the game for those players that want it.
             

I realize there was a thread already started here (http://forum.spaceo.net/index.php/topic,3771.0.html) and alot of good ideas came out of that including the interactive missions which have now been implemented.  I have some more ideas and wanted to start a new thread to see what other players thought. 

The main goals are:
Attract more players to SO and keep them.
Make the Gold Membership more valuable by creating more benefits.
Create more activities that can be done without turns and increase SOs playability without overbalancing the game.

1. Make a "Gambling" area where players can indulge in Blackjack or some other easy-to-code game of chance.  This would cost no turns and the Max Bet would be based on the player's Commander Level.  (Max Bet= Commander Lvl^2*5000)  Gold members have their Max bet raised by 200%

2.  Create a PVP Arena at an out-of-galaxy area players can jump to for 0 turns.  Once their fight is over they immediately warp back to the galaxy but are able to return indefinitely.  The Arena would be just like a system except that no 'real' attacks are possible.  If you want to fight someone you must challenge them and they must accept.  In the Arena no fights are real in that you do not lose your ships.  No real damage is dealt no ships can be captured and no marines are killed.  The Arena would NOT be somewhere to make money but more of a proving ground to see whose ships are best.  Gold members would be able to enter a tournament with 10 lvls of NPC fleets.  If you can finish all 10 levels your name is placed on the bulletin board in the Arena for all players to see.  How long it took, what power etc.  This would not affect gameplay besides allowing your opponent the chance to see what fleet composition you had.


3. Because the Interactive Missions are doing so well I thought we could expand on that idea.  In the Mothership Missions tab you could add a section with 4 headings:

Away Missions - Explore the planet's surface.
Scientific Discovery - Space based exploration.
Diplomatic Negotiations - Interactive story telling.
Weapons Lab - Crafting

Away missions would be at least 10 steps with many possible outcomes, but low success rate for a reward.  It could be nearly anything such as exploring a cave complex, long abandoned ruins, crop ciricles or whatever.  Rewards would be VERY basic.  (Hack Cards) (100-1000 workers) and based on your Commander Lvl.  Gold Members would recieve 200% rewards.

Scientific Discovery would be almost identicle to the away mission but based on spatial anomolies. 

Diplomatic Negotiations would be somthing totally different.  The mission difficulty could be based on your reputation and Gold members would have the ability to earn a valuable "Schematic" if they conclude peaceful negotiations with the aliens.

The schematics would be an item that could then be used in the Weapons Lab mission.  Without a Schematic the Weapons Lab is unavailable.  Schematics provide a recipe of trade goods that are required to build the standard items.  For example

Schematic Name:  Prophet's Dark Energy Ray
Item Ability: Attack +25%
Market Value: 500,000,000
Ingredients(each): High tech scanner * 1000, Super Conductors * 5000, Rocket Fuel * 100,000

The use of ingredients would give the trade goods more use and reduce the ability to use crafting as an exploit as long as the ingredient value was very close to the market value of the finished item.  Of course if a player wanted to spend hours buying everything on the market at a decent price to craft items for slightly less that is their option.  Each schematic would only produce 1-10 of each item and if you craft multiples you need more resources. 


Please post your thoughts and let's all help emi make SO the best game on the net!

I love this idea and am almost ready to write a mission.

Is it possible to enter an option into the missions to create a "ship list"?  I hope to create a number of missions and would like to tie them together, creating a story, and thought it would be awesome if I could create my own ships as the antagonists use alot of fighters/swarmers.  I'm not sure how much coding that would take or if its even possible, just throwing ideas out.  Thx

Pirates touched on a number of my ideas that i did not post.  For the sake of discussion here is a list of those other ideas.

Keep the single galaxy but place 5-10 Coucil Planets where no attacks occur no missions spawn and players are completely safe when docked.  At these planets the Market would be accesible rather than from the main screen.  Each planet would only offer the basic resources and a different selection of the more expensive items.  You would have to buy from one and transport them to another planet where demand was high.  Put the asteroid resources into circulation as trade goods as well.  Then players don't HAVE to mine if they want to build and miners dont have to build if they just want creds.  Make mining a Gold Bonus.  Planets would also offer workers/slaves, bounty contracts, commander intel, Alliance advertisements, and Alliance missions.  These Game concepts could then be removed from the game console to streamline it and make it more user friendly.  Of course having a Gold membership would give you the option of doing some of these remotely.  The alien inursions could occur at these planets, providing a story/plot.  New content could be an arena to allow PvP battles using 0 turns and not actually destroying the players ships.  Each commander would pay an entry fee (say the FP of their ships in creds)  The winner gets the pot.  This would give players something to do when out of turns without providing a gigantic advantage.
Alliances could then build their own planets and research/buy their own structures, as the council planets.  The Alliance marketplace could generate royalties for the Alliance bank, A shipyard to allow non-alliance players Alliance specific ships, etc.

Create a character class system to allow players to differentiate themselves.  Something like Admirals can send more fleets into battle or provide bonuses to their ships.  Increasing hp, attack etc costs less cp for them.  Traders can mine asteroids better than others.  They get discounts on the turns + creds needed to mine, their warehouse hold more etc.  Bounty hunters are PvP specialists, They hold more marines, get a bonus when filling a contract hit, get more salavage, etc.  This provides a nearly endless opportunity to expand the game as more classes can be introduced and game play can be geared towards a players particular preference of game style.  Alliances could be based on these classes or carry a diverse team, thereby creating more PvP possibly.  2 Bounty hunter alliances could declare war on eachother.  Also, Alliance missions would require multiple players to complete and different specialists. ie, the group must go to a planet and clear the 5-20 fleets of reavers (or whatever), collect millions of units of carbon(or something) then deliver it to another planet but must defeat a Boss fleet.  There could also be class specific missions that have only experience rewards and require no turns to give players with more play time something to do when out of turns (like me right now, hence the essay)

Pirates had alot of good ideas and we need more players giving their opinions to make SO the best it can be.  The ideas here are mine and I think they are good but this might not be what the majority wants and that's who were looking to please so bring on the comments!

I've spent awhile thinking about this, and here's some of my thoughts:

Improve Alliances to make the game more social,(if the players choose to be.)
        Create an alliance 'Bank' where the leader can set a tax that is subtracted from all members.  for example, 2% of creds and workers won from missions/encounters are placed into an alliance account and can be distributed by the leader.  Modify the ship cloning so you can set ships to private, public, or alliance.  create an alliance title system that would allow the leader to designate players as ranking members.  create a set of special missions that could be "team play" for a group of players to take part in together. 

Make starting out easier for new players.
        Create a 'catalogue' of sorts with premade ships for new players to purchase rather than the misleading components that they get now.  The catalogue could have basic designs for ships for the entire round.  I like the idea of a tutorial to guide you through your first mission and also have an faq for beginners perhaps even a printable version.

Find a balance between grinding missions to stay competitive and using all your turns in 30 minutes.
         This is probably the most difficult.  The die hards want to play the game 24/7 and the casual gamer wants to play 15 mins-1hr but how to keep them competitive?  This would take extensive testing but if you reduce the turns drastically, say 1-5 turns per HOUR.  Eliminate turn costs from research and mining, keep the turn costs for building stations and planets and just have encounters cost turns.  Keep the missions but their rewards would be experience and if you are a Gold Member you get special items (eliminate the ability to sell them but they make doing encounters easier)  This would obviously require tweaking but provides a balance between those that can spend HOURS each and every day online and those that can't. (Hopefully)

Create more incentives to having a Gold Membership.
         Cloning ships, Royalties, Discounts.  Keep everything that Gold members get, and add some more.  Not to be too overpowering but to add an extra incentive.  Perhaps some special missions or secret ship components.  In most cases these are your players that have more time to spend online, they need stuff to do.  It dosn't have to have huge rewards, just fun.

Create more graphics and eliminate the mind-numbing text.
          This is the complaint i get from most new players.  They want to SEE their ships, not just the mathematical vomit that their ships are made of.  It dosn't have to be animated in full 3D with textures and explosions and trillions of marines floating through open space during each and every combat, maybe just a "Fleet view" of the armada.  Make the missions more interactive and add some strategy.  Allow players to choose a formation.  Attack Flank, right/left, focus on largest/smallest, all-out attack, defensive attack.  Each formation would have certain bonuses/penalties versus specific formations.  make missions 3-5 steps.  1/Long range sensors indicate enemies appoaching, do you attack, retreat or scan the ships?  scans tell you the number of ships and their FP.  attack or retreat?  choose formation and attack.  You have 3 tries or whatever.  I dunno, just throwing ideas out now!

Just a few ideas.  I've got tons more but no time.

Is this another push towards PvP?  I mean if all my ships attack power is 1/10th of normal and the enemy has 100% def and Hp how am I supposed to kill them? 

Yeah, I vote for rounds only lasting 3-4 weeks before reset too! Aliens are so cool and making ridiculous amounts of money every day is fun.  Oh, and PVP is so much better now too!
(sarcasm dosn't translate online)

You lost 0/37.066.364.956 fleet power (0%), while the enemy lost 2.762.773.905/4.277.000.557 fleet power (65%)

Primary Objective: Destroy 50% of the enemy while losing less percent of the armada then the enemy.


Incoming transmision!
You are clear to use any salvage anything you may find useful.
Your salvage crews found the following items trough the alien wreckage:
Alien parts and alloy worth 0 credits.
30 x Gold Hack Card

Is this how we are re-balancing the exploration exploit?  4.3 Bill Fp encounter gives 15 Mil credit reward?
Bah.  Chance of reclaiming pre-exploration rank 0%
Chance of me continuing to play SO, fading quickly!

2 hours ago I was finding aliens with 2-5 probes and no exploration tech.  I just blew 50 pinpointers on 1 signature and found nothing.  Did another update go through? 

I left on Monday morning and 1st place has just broken 100 Bil, I come back on thursday and 1st place is at 44 Tril?  What's the point of me even trying to keep up?  I think I may but a station and become a dirt farmer.   

This idea sounds great but needs tweaking. 
I think bonuses should max at 30-50%.  Items max at roughly 35 and the commander would be a glorified item that is permanent.  As for XP gain, perhaps they could gain xp while you are offline as well to give the less active players a chance.  Say, 1xp/10 mins (96/day) 
I wouldn't mind seeing some other abilities as well.
Scavenger - Recieve 2X Items from missions.
Bounty Hunter - Recieve 2X Bounty Hunter Award.
Scholar - Gain XP faster
Tactical Commander - Increase swarm bonus
Drill Sergeant - A percent of rescued workers from Endangered Planet Missions become Marines for free.
Shipwright - Gives a discount on un-reserving fleets.

I also like the idea of building commanders.  And get rid of the penalties.  Just make the bonus lower.