Hello,

Just wanted to stop in and say hello to those that remember me.

How is everything?

Still fun?

What are the three different servers?

Anyone one got room in their alliance for a quick learner that has forgotten nearly everything the great masters once taught me?

Are late night drunken rampages still fun but frowned on? 

- Demitrious Ducas

I agree that any method can be used to transfer credits... but some methods are of little use to the game and make it FAR too easy to do so. There is no way to cature hulls without risk of loss, there will always be bounties collected on pships (new credits not transfered P2P). I'm not saying those should be eliminated. Raids on base for workers and stash is essential to the game, it is pointless to mention it here.

I'm saying the market just makes cheating TOO easy, get rid of the private bids.

These are my new thoughts and reply...
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Argueing that, your using the independant market to recoup losses to a change in the royalty system, is the same as saying

"I'm bending the rule on royalties and ship sales that was recently changed because I belive it is wrong, I'll use this other loophole to get my due!" 

You are fighting the bad fight here, using a game tool, to defeat the changes that Sir Emi actually made, to control this exact issue... I agree that LEGITAMITE ship designers got screwed in the ship royalty changes, but it has no purpose here, and only goes further to highlite that the changing of hands of credits between players through use of the independant market is violating the rules and hurting the game.

Disabling the independant market changes the ACTUAL market very little, since so few people use independant trading for real goods sales/ buying, it is virtually the sole purpose that ANYONE uses the buy/sell goods to make independant offers to exchange unearned credits, except those few times when a commander tries scamming those distracted commanders working the market too quickly to notice that they just bid on an item set up for thier loss. Both of those latter reasons show plenty that this game can do with out and all the more reason independant market trading isn't needed.

This was meant to be posted in this thread yesterday...
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Sent to Sir Emi,

Excessive Money Transfers

About 10 hours ago, before I went to work, there was someone doing excessive amounts of money transfers, that the amounts being traded far surpassed any logical sale or bought info. They were trading High Tech Scanners, I think, and the amounts were 2.5Trillion Credits for the buy, and the seller was at 25Trillion Credits...

I watched them cycle through those two offers appearing, disappearing, and reappearing about 8 - 10 times over the course of nearly 30 minutes. I would imagine that a player willing to trade this many credits, is willing to transfer more than I saw in my limited time. I would estimate the amount transfered to be 200+ Trillion Credits. Once I pointed out the transfers in chat, many people started watching and speculating on who it might be since, only a few people could even make such trades, requiring very large warehouse space/ mothership segs. After a short time and several more transfers, with most of chat talking about what had happened, the transfers stopped, likely because of all the attention.

I would hope you can investigate this matter, and even though this round is virtually over, perhaps keep them in consideration for next round... as someone willing to go so far as transfering this many credits, is willing to stretch other rules or find other unintended loopholes.

Thanks.
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I truely think that Sir Emi should do away with ALL Independent Market use, it has become far to easy to manipulate the reasoning for transfering undeserved credits, on the bassis of an individual sold a ship, BH info, or hit someone I hated, or walked my dog... I find this defeats the purpose of PLAYING the game, if someone is willing to give another player this much credits, anyone can win if only the sweet talk and befriend the right players, it is no longer about being the best but about being a suck up.

Sponsership of weaker players and friends through loopholes and lack of gamesmanship, will ruin Space Odyssey for many players.

My point was paying ANYONE for ANYTHING in those amounts is ruining the game, if it happened at the start of the round lower but proportion amounts it would still be excessive and against the spirit of this type of competative game. This whole round has been one giant fiasco of loop hole amnipulation, alt account abuse, and lacking in fun for most players.

This was meant to be a reply to the other thread... it can be deleted

Sent to Sir Emi,

Excessive Money Transfers

About 10 hours ago, before I went to work, there was someone doing excessive amounts of money transfers, that the amounts being traded far surpassed any logical sale or bought info. They were trading High Tech Scanners, I think, and the amounts were 2.5Trillion Credits for the buy, and the seller was at 25Trillion Credits...

I watched them cycle through those two offers appearing, disappearing, and reappearing about 8 - 10 times over the course of nearly 30 minutes. I would imagine that a player willing to trade this many credits, is willing to transfer more than I saw in my limited time. I would estimate the amount transfered to be 200+ Trillion Credits. Once I pointed out the transfers in chat, many people started watching and speculating on who it might be since, only a few people could even make such trades, requiring very large warehouse space/ mothership segs. After a short time and several more transfers, with most of chat talking about what had happened, the transfers stopped, likely because of all the attention.

I would hope you can investigate this matter, and even though this round is virtually over, perhaps keep them in consideration for next round... as someone willing to go so far as transfering this many credits, is willing to stretch other rules or find other unintended loopholes.

Thanks.
==============================================

I truely think that Sir Emi should do away with ALL Independent Market use, it has become far to easy to manipulate the reasoning for transfering undeserved credits, on the bassis of an individual sold a ship, BH info, or hit someone I hated, or walked my dog... I find this defeats the purpose of PLAYING the game, if someone is willing to give another player this much credits, anyone can win if only the sweet talk and befriend the right players, it is no longer about being the best but about being a suck up.

Sponsership of weaker players and friends through loopholes and lack of gamesmanship, will ruin Space Odyssey for many players.

He didn't close off the galaxy to the top players...

He increased the number of encounters at your relative power levels.

He did deny the top 15 players from preying and lurking on the encounters designed for the commanders ranked 20- 300. Your complaining about losing something that shouldn't have been yours in the first place, offered zero challenge, and didn't add to your "fun" except the thrill of gaining 100 turns from all those much lower powered black holes... I have to say too f'ing bad for you. Stop crying and prove that you deserve to be a top player by adjusting your play, rather than a spoiled brat (directed at all the complainers) that can spend a huge amount of real time playing a turn based game, since a weakness in the game was discovered to make it far too easy to gain EXTRA turns, while reducing the "fun" as you call it for the weaker players. I didn't say paying for the BH is a loophole, I said that there were loopholes, you just feel that it was directed at you and the method of paying for BH, hmmmm MAYBE, your showing your hand and know that it isn't in the spirit of the game.

The galaxy wasn't THE "fun" part of the game, it didn't even exist until last round and people had be playing far longer than that. The "fun" part of the galaxy for many players was the ease it made in gaining turns and power, when combined with alt scouting and paying for encounters that were far below their relative power level. The "fun" was the net effect of gaining huge amounts of power while many players didn't... yes it is true.... winning IS fun!  Therefor how can it EVER be a bad thing to get to the top???

I think most of the recent upgrades are great for the long term game. Sir Emi please ignore those that are pregnant doging (should be female, not just pregnant dogs...  ) so loudly... 80% of them are the round leaders that have been using loopholes in the rules to pay for encounter scouting and started the round with super aggressive galaxy alt scouting for black holes, just keep letting them cry they have been the ones running 500% more turns and profit  than everyone else and monopolozing the low power encounters from players that are the appropriate power levels. Too many players are willing to try exploiting loopholes to further boost thier power, but when the loopholes are closed those same players that were rewarded for using them are up in arms about getting cheated out of thier fun tactics... 

Many of these same loud disenters, along with plenty of other commanders are running encounters fast enough that the news box is moving at a fast pace. Searching a quad or even 2-3 quads is not an accurate test of the changes, since it is possible someone else recently moved through that area to do the encounters, only Sir Emi can SEE the galaxy as a whole and KNOW that there are encounters of all powers waiting out there in signifigant numbers. Those that say they spent a few turns looking and got nothing, keep looking you are still 100000 turns ahead of many commanders that could find even a single black hole in months...

I feel that this round has included many positive changes to the game, I only wish that they would have been initiated at the beginning of the round so everyone would have the chance to see their effects long term, and not the narrowminded view as a nerf to the leaders of THIS round. Next round will be a better testing ground for the changes made today, and I would encourage you to return to the technique of adding major changes and adjustments, that heavily effect player feelings and successful tactics, of adding those changes to the start of a new round rather than during the round and even months into the round. It is too bad, that even this will not stop many players from shouting nerf from the top of the world, hoping everyone will hear them and rally to a cause that might only effect themselves or 2% of the players or just a string of bad luck and randomness.

Assault result


wes-ulchia(#22576)'s 1 Blood Raven are destroyed during battle.
You boarded wes-ulchia(#22576)'s fleet and mothership.
You destroyed wes-ulchia(#22576)'s 1 ships and lost 0/4 ships.

Incoming transmision!
Thank you for your help commander, you have been awarded 40,128,000,000 credits and 100,000 experience bouns.
wes-ulchia(#22576) lost more power than you during battle.
(+3500 Exp)
==================================================================

I guess this is more of an ABHL, "All-ready Been Hit List". But feel free to update if you dislike him and want him to be put down again in the future

The hit heard round the Galaxy

Assault result


wes-ulchia(#22576)'s 1 Blood Raven are destroyed during battle.
You boarded wes-ulchia(#22576)'s fleet and mothership.
You destroyed wes-ulchia(#22576)'s 1 ships and lost 0/4 ships.

Incoming transmision!
Thank you for your help commander, you have been awarded 40,128,000,000 credits and 100,000 experience bouns.
wes-ulchia(#22576) lost more power than you during battle.
(+3500 Exp)

This sounds like it will work great! I still think you should consider the all alts = gold status option just for the game support 

I wasn't concerned with spamming the news box... I was using an example of how the news box gets spammed, when someone scouts the galaxy with an alt for the best encounters, then does them all in a row with their main using the fewest possible travel turns to do it. I also don't care if they do them all in a row or if they sit and wait until something else hits the news, to try and spread out how their aduse looks, it is all the same, they are using a flaw in the system to gain greater power for their main, those with the alts and the time to invest in this effort will be the ones who likely have a better chance of winning in the end (in the case of blackhole hunters, they will have expended 10,000's of more turns and gained large^x amounts of experiance and command points, more than those that can't use this method of gaming)

How about adding a <search> field to the war screen?

You could enter a name or # and then search for their info, it could be displayed in a small strip across the top looking like the cutout from the rankings page. Or, it could look even cooler with a discription, listing all the important information like ranking, power, ships, segs, truce, alliance, etc. maybe include their picture. It would make attacking much more personal and interesting. This would also help in those cases where your typing in a commander# to attack and make a mistake or forget to chage the number from a previous attack on someone else... the war description screen would show their name and all the info needed to realize you made an error.

There are some players that have DOZENS of alts, floating anound the galaxy...

And not even creatively named, just basename1, basename2, basename33 and so on.

I argee that alts need to be controlled at some point. With the galaxy encounter having such high value, using the alt's turns for scouting can result in extreme abuses and power mongering.

News
******* encountered the Black Hole, engaging 282.969.389 fleet power.
******* encountered the Black Hole, engaging 332.624.922 fleet power.
******* encountered the Black Hole, engaging 199.066.652 fleet power.
******* encountered the Black Hole, engaging 175.592.423 fleet power.
******* encountered the Black Hole, engaging 415.457.325 fleet power.

When a player can spam the news like this it shows there is clearly something wrong with the current system. This example is taken from real news items and I've seen such abuse by multiple players. Heck, I even created my first alt the other day to use for scouting the galaxy sine it works so well!


I disagree ars, yes it is smart, but it is also detrimental to the spirit of the game. Alliances should succeed and fail based on communication and hard work, but by allowing alts to scout the galaxy, alliances have one less thing to communicate and work together on. Galaxy encounters become a  single-player game, we might as well all just play an off-line version of SO, and post our final scores to the forum to decide who wins.

On the other hand controlling alts, is alot of work and it is a never ending project, some games are deluged with alts in the begining, and the owners decide to harness alts... It ends up taking the designers ALL thier time hunting down the alt abusers and other cheaters that the game stops evolving and dies.

I think a good way of controlling alts, is that only Gold Account members can make an alt commander. In addition further control and game support would result from having the proccess of creating an alt cost $20, then as a benifit your alt starts with gold status.