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Unread 11 Jan 2010, 15:45   #1
JonnyBGood
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Game Direction

There's a bit to say on this, most of it not exactly pleasant. First off building a game towards newbies is just pointless at the minute. Most of them don't bother playing for longer than a few days, few of those that do actually pay for the game, and the vast, vast majority don't stick around for more than one round. Simply put the game looks like shit and is so poorly laid out it's extremely difficult to actually get into. Seriously, load up the portal or your overview and try to imagine what it's like as a new player. The manual is an outmoded bunch of walls of text stuck together. You could probably read the entire ****ing thing, which would probably take about 6 hours, and still be almost no wiser as to how the people who do well at the game actually do it. Here, I'll write out some basic points that would be more useful than the manual.

RESEARCH SHIPS.
BUILD SHIPS.
DO NOT LOSE SHIPS.
ATTACK SMALLER PLANETS TO GAIN ROIDS.
JOIN YOUR GALAXY'S IRC CHANNEL (with an explanation on how to do this)
TALK TO YOUR GALAXY MATES
JOIN AN ALLIANCE

If you don't do all of these things there's pretty much no way you'll be playing the game for longer than a month as it's totally uninteresting without the alliance/galaxy meta-game.

Until these things are actually fixed I'd rather see pateam attempt to build a game that's better suited to the current playerbase, who are relatively active, wish they weren't and are fairly bored by the lack of changes. PA probably has a general base, ie people who would be willing to play a round, of some 2000 people, of whom maybe half actually play each round. If you can get say 1500 of these playing, and willing to stay fairly active for most of the round, it's really going to improve the quality of the game, and as such there's likely to be a small amount of growth. To be honest most of these players don't like total randomness. Total randomness is really just annoying with the amount of hours people put into the game. Even "slightly unpredictable battles" won't really add much. What Planetarion players do like is options. Different things to do with your fleet and different ways to do it. Give everyone more of that and they'll play a bit more.

One thing I definitely wouldn't do is try to address the situation by introducing a new and relatively complicated formula to the game. For those of us with short memories PAteam did this in r10 and gerbie ended up with 5 times the amount of score of the #2 planet because his 3 fighters killed ships belonging to a planet that was way bigger than his. The track record of implementation of such changes is diabolical, just look at this round and the butchered changes pateam, under the prompting of various alliance HC, forced on us. Well, first off they didn't address the "problem" they were trying to, as I know my alliance has fortress galaxies already (which I predicted pre-round and asked for total random galaxies to be introduced if they really wanted to stop it </blowingmyownhorn>). Luckily galaxies without active randoms are now utterly ****ed due to the fact that they don't have 4 people to do exiles in order to get active planets and pateam, in their wisdom, didn't bother reintroducing the galaxy disband. Fan-****ing-tastic. Although xp for different things might be interesting I have my doubts it'd actually make the game significantly more appealing and, given the likelihood of it all going totally fubar, probably not worth bringing in.


Edit (Appoco): Originally posted in response to posts here
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Unread 15 Jan 2010, 15:20   #2
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Re: Game Direction

I'm obviously bored with all the playing on this forum.

Just to note, the only people who ever claimed the changes were to stop fort galaxies were alliances and forum users.

We probably should have made it slightly easier to disband (we've disbanded some galaxies but not a large amount), but it's been rumoured that some players have signed up several accounts to join good galaxies, and these inactive accounts are probably causing the problem more than anything.

By the way, Cin and I are very interested in much, much, much more concrete ideas in manual / layout suggestions for making the game more playable.
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Unread 15 Jan 2010, 15:51   #3
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Re: Game Direction

Let me defend my friends. And don't limit my alliance. There you go!
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Unread 15 Jan 2010, 17:13   #4
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Re: Game Direction

Quote:
Originally Posted by Appocomaster View Post
Just to note, the only people who ever claimed the changes were to stop fort galaxies were alliances and forum users.
Being completely truthful I think you'd have to admit that was a good part of it.

Quote:
We probably should have made it slightly easier to disband (we've disbanded some galaxies but not a large amount), but it's been rumoured that some players have signed up several accounts to join good galaxies, and these inactive accounts are probably causing the problem more than anything.
To be honest I'm in two fairly active communities, ascendancy and apprime, and I haven't heard anything about this so I doubt it's that big.

Quote:
By the way, Cin and I are very interested in much, much, much more concrete ideas in manual / layout suggestions for making the game more playable.
Maybe when I finish the pa wiki history I'll give it a go! Realistically though the whole thing needs changing.

I've only got a few minutes but say like this. When you sign up an account you have an option "new player". Tick it and either your overview is alerted slightly (probably a bit awkward) or an e-mail gets sent to you with a link to "so you've started to play pa" type manual. This would take you through, clearly and succinctly, what you need to do in PA. Pretty much everyone has signed up knowing it's a space based browser game so there's no need to tell them this or related shit.

1) Welcome to your planet. This is your base of operations and improving this planet is the point of the game.

2) To improve your planet you need to do 4 things. Research new technologies, construct new buildings, produce new ships using these two and then capture asteroids so you can build even more ships.

3) These things take time, you have start-up bonuses to help you. Go look at "the quests" to find out what order to best do them in (make the quests slightly more informative).

4) Your best advantage is your galaxy. Galaxy's communicate via IRC, mail your galaxy mates to find out how to use this simple program. They will be able to give you advice on how best to build your planet.

These are the four steps that get people from "wtf is this incomprehensible shit" to where the game is actually played. If they don't like it fair enough but you have to at least get them there.
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Unread 15 Jan 2010, 17:54   #5
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Re: Game Direction

Your last suggestion here JBG is magic. Im convinced this will provide more players to the game then any other current suggestion. It is also easy to implement.

about #4 , just point out the obvious "comunit" instead and point out getting a separate irc client would be an alternative.
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Unread 16 Jan 2010, 02:05   #6
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Re: Game Direction

It's a ten-year-old browser-based spreadsheet game. You can't do a hell of a lot with it without a complete re-code...and it's way overdue.

I'd much rather spend $15 a month on a huge MMO than $9 for a round of PA. There just isn't any comparison.

Also there's no text's to get out of bed at night to send fleet, or waking up early to check attacks. I play as much as I want to, then log off. That simply isn't the case in PA at the higher levels, and the game is really dull if you're not playing (or in my case, failing!) at the higher levels.

Skills still train, my stuff is safe, and I play the game on my terms and my time. Yes, the world goes on around me when I'm logged out, but that doesn't mean I can't still do very well and be competitive.
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Unread 16 Jan 2010, 03:15   #7
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Re: Game Direction

Quote:
Originally Posted by Appocomaster View Post
By the way, Cin and I are very interested in much, much, much more concrete ideas in manual / layout suggestions for making the game more playable.
An overhaul. Please get someone with experience on how to do game UIs instead of taking ideas with the intention of doing it yourself. The fact you've let the interface and the new player experience to rot so badly indicates that nobody can look at the game from a new players perspective.

Do you have any friends who have never played Planetarion before? Give them a challenge. Ask them to sign up for Planetarion, only giving the URL of the main page and ask them not to visit the manual. The average player is not going to want to read through 40 pages of manual just to get going with a game. Monitor this new user and sit back, don't answer any questions or give any advice - it should give you an indication of a brand new player.

I did this to a friend who asked about Planetarion, he lasted all of 2 minutes after logging in.

Just look at the signup, you're asked to choose a race which locks down a player into making a decision which they're going to have no clue about. You should not ask a player to make a choice that early which can ruin the rest of the round (if they stay that is). It's not like an MMORPG where you can play a class to try it out then logout and create another, to avoid being a multi you have to wait a whopping 24 hours to reset your planet.

Just assuming they manage to get to the overview screen, what do you think is going to happen next?

You'll have bonus resources to allocate, yet a user isn't going to have any real clue over what option to pick. There's a quest system, which is full of lists of tasks in no real order - and you have to manually start them! A new player could just miss this out entirely.

Now I'm assuming that your new player has gone through all of this, managed to activate quests, started a research lab, started HCT, what happens after that? The game itself doesn't give you a path to follow, it doesn't recommend that you should be doing certain researches afterwards.

The game should be playable without a manual or someone at your side for advice.
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Unread 16 Jan 2010, 13:43   #8
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Re: Game Direction

Quote:
Originally Posted by Cochese View Post
It's a ten-year-old browser-based spreadsheet game. You can't do a hell of a lot with it without a complete re-code...and it's way overdue.

I'd much rather spend $15 a month on a huge MMO than $9 for a round of PA. There just isn't any comparison.

Also there's no text's to get out of bed at night to send fleet, or waking up early to check attacks. I play as much as I want to, then log off. That simply isn't the case in PA at the higher levels, and the game is really dull if you're not playing (or in my case, failing!) at the higher levels.

Skills still train, my stuff is safe, and I play the game on my terms and my time. Yes, the world goes on around me when I'm logged out, but that doesn't mean I can't still do very well and be competitive.
Seconded.

Even though I am sure you also mean a redesign coming along with it. Basically creating a whole new game.

Everything else is just water drops on a very hot stone.
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Unread 16 Jan 2010, 17:52   #9
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Re: Game Direction

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Originally Posted by JonnyBGood View Post
1) Welcome to your planet. This is your base of operations and improving this planet is the point of the game.

2) To improve your planet you need to do 4 things. Research new technologies, construct new buildings, produce new ships using these two and then capture asteroids so you can build even more ships.

3) These things take time, you have start-up bonuses to help you. Go look at "the quests" to find out what order to best do them in (make the quests slightly more informative).

4) Your best advantage is your galaxy. Galaxy's communicate via IRC, mail your galaxy mates to find out how to use this simple program. They will be able to give you advice on how best to build your planet.
Edited slightly..

1) Welcome to your planet. This is your base of operations and improving this planet is the point of the game.

2) To improve your planet you need to do 5 things.
a) Research new technologies (More Info Here)..
b) Construct new buildings (More Info Here)..
c) Collect resources (More Info Here)..
d) Produce new ships (More Info Here)..
e) Attack other players for their asteroids (More Info Here)..

3) All good things take time, you have a start-up bonus with which to help you. Taking a look at the "new player quests" will help in better understand how to play the game. Also the PA Manual is a great place to find more in depth information about how the game works.

4) Your best advantage is your galaxy. The galaxy is your last line of of getting defence for your planet. They will also be able to give you advice on how best to build your planet.

5) Joining an alliance will give you more options for defending your planet, and you can also participate in joint attacks, which increases the chance for a successful "Roiding".

6) The best method for both galaxy's and Alliances to communicate is via Internet Relay Chat (IRC for short). Opening the "ComUnit" (in game) will give you access to this and after selecting your galaxy channel. If you get stuck, mail your Galactic (GC)Commander or a Galactic Minister to find out how to use this simple program.


Notes:
Regarding #6, perhaps have message links to current GC/Ministers on the overview.

Also if no GC is present in the galaxy, then no galaxy channel will be set
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Unread 16 Jan 2010, 18:30   #10
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Re: Game Direction

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Originally Posted by Heartless View Post
Seconded.

Even though I am sure you also mean a redesign coming along with it. Basically creating a whole new game.

Everything else is just water drops on a very hot stone.

A "new" game in the sense that it will be re-built from the ground up. The core characteristics that make this 'Planetarion' should obviously remain, though they shouldn't be set in stone.

Make the game playable in different ways, and on different levels.

Give people more freedom to "think outside the box" and play creatively. Different research tree ideas; either with branches and exclusions, or a totally open style. Ship stat modifiers based on race/government, or even advanced levels of research/constructions.

Add geography.

Build in some sort of "instant gratification" system...use the speedgame server for mini-battles between ticks (either against bot planets or other players) where you could gain extra resources, research/construction points, xp, etc. That sort of thing. This could also be used to create a "crash course" tutorial for new players, so they don't utterly **** up their regular account by making bad choices.

I could go on and on about stuff with more complexity, but that's enough rambling.
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Unread 16 Jan 2010, 21:19   #11
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Re: Game Direction

Quote:
Originally Posted by JonnyBGood View Post
When you sign up an account you have an option "new player". Tick it and either your overview is alerted slightly (probably a bit awkward) or an e-mail gets sent to you with a link to "so you've started to play pa" type manual. This would take you through, clearly and succinctly, what you need to do in PA. Pretty much everyone has signed up knowing it's a space based browser game so there's no need to tell them this or related shit.

1) Welcome to your planet. This is your base of operations and improving this planet is the point of the game.

2) To improve your planet you need to do 4 things. Research new technologies, construct new buildings, produce new ships using these two and then capture asteroids so you can build even more ships.

3) These things take time, you have start-up bonuses to help you. Go look at "the quests" to find out what order to best do them in (make the quests slightly more informative).

4) Your best advantage is your galaxy. Galaxy's communicate via IRC, mail your galaxy mates to find out how to use this simple program. They will be able to give you advice on how best to build your planet.

These are the four steps that get people from "wtf is this incomprehensible shit" to where the game is actually played. If they don't like it fair enough but you have to at least get them there.
In Planet.ia several years ago, we toyed with the idea of making some Flash video tutorials demonstrating such things. How to initiate roids, how to build ships, use external tools to find targets and plan (calc) and launch an attack, scanning before landing etc., how to log on to IRC and communicate with your gal mates. Obviously this isn't the redesign that is needed, but it would be hugely better than the manuals I think.
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Unread 16 Jan 2010, 22:04   #12
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Re: Game Direction

I'm not sure if there's much point in using a flash video to describe a text based browser game.
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Unread 18 Jan 2010, 04:31   #13
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Re: Game Direction

It would be better than a wall of text.
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Unread 19 Jan 2010, 19:49   #14
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Re: Game Direction

Quote:
Originally Posted by Appocomaster View Post
By the way, Cin and I are very interested in much, much, much more concrete ideas in manual / layout suggestions for making the game more playable.
Right.

Step the very first: When you click a race on the signup screen it needs to tell you something about that race. This needs to be straightforward and not filled with waffle (put the sci-fi junk in the manual)

For example, Terran: Terrans have heavily armoured ships and can construct new buildings very fast. Their ability to research new technologies is average and their ability to perform covert-operations is weak. They also receive a moderate salvage bonus from destroyed ships during battles.

(No new player cares about the universe trade tax, seriously. They also don't care about precise statistics because they're not the guys who weigh things up with a calculator before deciding what to do.)

This needs to be on the signup page because it's the very first thing you see when you decide you want to play and it has a massive impact on your round.


Step the next in line:

1) Welcome to your planet. This is your base of operations and improving this planet is the point of the game.

2) To improve your planet you need to do 4 things. Research new technologies, construct new buildings, produce new ships using these two and then capture asteroids so you can build even more ships.

3) These things take time, you have start-up bonuses to help you. Go look at "the quests" to find out what order to best do them in (make the quests slightly more informative).

4) Your best advantage is your galaxy. Galaxies communicate via IRC, mail your galaxy mates to find out how to use this simple program. They will be able to give you advice on how best to build your planet. In the meanwhile click on the com-unit


These are the four steps that get people from "wtf is this incomprehensible shit" to where the game is actually played. If they don't like it fair enough but you have to at least get them there.

These need to be quick to read, easy to understand bullet points about how play PA. Even MrLobster's expansion is too long in my opinion. One basic link after/during each point is enough (so that people can find out more if they're interested in doing it). You should be almost "forced" to read it all in your first glance so you get that basic understand concerning how the game is played. This should be the very first page of the manual.



As an aside the manual is total gibberish. The covert-ops page is hysterical. You expect a new player to load that and read it? Jesus ****ing christ it's 1300 words and a bunch of formulae. Yes the details need to be there. No they should not be the first thing a new player reads. My advice would be to have a basic (again) quick to read, easy to understand manual and at the bottom of each page have a "do you want to know more" link which contains all the advanced stuff. Even the menu is miles too long. Forty options with almost no indication as to what's more important to read? Seriously?

As a secondary aside the production page, the research page and the construction page should all come with an advice "what should i produce/research/build" thing at the top of it.

Step the one that comes after the one before:

So you've used your start-up bonuses and you want to know what to do next? First of all some bad news for you, "protection" means you'll need to log back in tomorrow. Start <therightresearch> and queue <thenextone>, build a couple of new constructions and see you tomorrow!

[seriously pateam just delete protection okay, what on earth is it there for?]

So it's now tomorrow and you want to know what do. Well planetarion is about ships. Hundreds upon thousands, and even up to the millions, of ships that you build using the resources you get from your planet and its asteroids. The more ships you have the higher your value and the bigger the planets you can attack. All of your ships do different things so have a look here <hyperlink to individual race ship stats page> and find out what your ships do.

The hyperlinked ship stats page should look something like this:

Harpy: This is a defensive fighter class ship that targets other fighters. (Click on it to find out more, giving you a link to what the current ship stats page says. If the ship is good at doing different things it should tell you this as well).

Pegasus: This is an
ATTACKING HIGHLIGHT ATTACKING USE THIS SHIP TO ATTACK ship that you use with your <nameofrelevantpod> to attack and roid other planets. This attack fleet is good at roiding <nameofrelevantrace>.

Get yourself some factories and use your resources to build yourself some ships and think about attacking someone to gain some asteroids!


Step the ****ing last:

So you've got some asteroids and you've built yourself some ships to get more asteroids and we hope you've remember to keep researching new technologies and construct more buildings! Where to next you ask? Well, the best bit of Planetarion is your ability to talk with the others in your galaxy, and elsewhere, and work together to improve your planets. Your galaxy mates may already have mailed you to say hi. Click into the com-unit say hello back and join the galaxy.

Welcome to Planetarion










That's it. Seriously. That's it. Anything else is too long and too boring for someone to actually read through. There are ways to improve it. For example the stuff you should do once protection finishes should only pop up once you've finished protection. The so you've landed an attack stuff should only pop up after you've landed an attack.

The overview should be ****ing deleted and replaced with something relevant to new players (trust me, nobody else reads it anyways) like "INITIATE UP TO 300 ROIDS BUT IT'S NOT ADVISABLE TO GO FURTHER THAN THIS" or "THE TECHNOLOGIES THAT ARE MOST IMPORTANT ARE THE SHIP BUILDING ONES" etc.

The news and mail buttons need to be much more prominent. Like staring you in your face and in colour prominent. The basic screen also looks like shit. Red, blue and black? Make most of it all one plain as shit colour and then make the important stuff really noticeable.

The quest system is in far too prominent a place, you should be hyperlinking people to it regardless. Why do we even have to click start on it anyways? They may ignore it. Make it so that once you do things your news entry telling you you did some quest pops up, maybe then they'll be interested in it and go look for it.

Fleet info should be at the bottom of the screen, below ships. New players need to read about construction and research and if they're not constructing or researching something it needs to be telling them this is in big, bright shiny lights with bells on.

I'd continue but I'm getting bored now.
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Unread 19 Jan 2010, 19:56   #15
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Re: Game Direction

One last thing. The overview, the first thing a new player sees:


Quote:
MOTD (Updated 11/01/10 11:40:11) [Hide]
Who the **** cares when the overview was last updated?

Quote:
Welcome to Round 35 - Mutually Assured Destruction
Who the **** cares what round this is or what it's called?

Quote:
Have problems playing at work? try http://87.124.126.17/
I can have problems playing this game at work? Maybe I shouldn't sign up then. Maybe I signed up at work and can't even login to see this screen anyways. (Stick this in the FAQs or something please)

Quote:
If you share a home/work connection with an other player to play planetarion please stop by #multihunters on IRC for an exception
Spinner went over this. You want me to download a program to go to a channel to apply for an "exception" so I can play this game with my friends, the only people I'm likely to want to play this with at first? Are you ****ing kidding me?

Quote:
For more information on community resources such as battle calculators, please view our Community Resources section on our portal. Please contact Appocomaster to get added to the list
What the **** are you on about? Why is this on the overview? There's a ****ing ingame battle calc now for god's sake.

Quote:
Some information for new users is available on our Strategy Forums on this thread.
Holy **** something useful. Pity it's 18 months old and since the introduction of start-up bonuses totally outdated.


If I had to summarise what I mean in one sentence it'd be "get the spam out of planetarion".



Edit: I realise I curse a lot. Don't bother pointing this out!
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Unread 19 Jan 2010, 22:57   #16
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Re: Game Direction

I was talking to sandman earlier today and he was awesome enough to have saved the original round 1 manual. As you can see it's a lot more concise and sensible, and even, on the most basic level possible, more legible.
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Unread 19 Jan 2010, 23:03   #17
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Re: Game Direction

Quote:
Originally Posted by JonnyBGood View Post
/snip
I pointed this out at this start of this round to get rid of it all

MOTD should simply be the latest information at a maximum of 2 lines long. Simply "Ticks Start on X", or "Ticks have now begun", "We had a problem last night with a resource bug, solved now and ticking again", "We had to rollback last night due to planetarion going offline, see HERE for more details".

With everything else either done on a FAQ or sent as an ingame mail when they signup.
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Unread 19 Jan 2010, 23:14   #18
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Re: Game Direction

I've said that PA went backwards in design when they removed the mail/news buttons away from images to crappy links.

Thats why i always use my own skin..

http://www.fresh-lobster.co.uk/wp-co...1/Untitled.jpg
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Unread 20 Jan 2010, 10:11   #19
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Re: Game Direction

I also still think we need to reduce the 3 resources into a single one, or at least make them unique again in certain situations.

Add to the fact the tech tree is boring, and to have so many shipstats is enough to make anyone go crazy.
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