SGP

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Posts posted by SGP

  1. Posted

    Does anyone play HoN ever???

    :getmecoat

    I play HoN but have cooled off of it recently. You can only play it so much. Still, HoN has a pretty accurate rating system and many users use voice-chat (for good and bad). I get sad when I play Dota 2 and am the only person with a mic. It comes with attracting players from LoL and WC3 DotA, games without any built-in VoIP, I guess...

    The reason I play these games is for the VoIP interactions!!!

  6. Posted

    At least Ethos seems to be doing better on the offensive front.

    Yeah, I just wish I was closer to the action. I'm starting to exploit my race's advantages:

    *Merchants are RIDICULOUS! For 10 coins you can double all income from whatever territory they are at. I've been pumping them out and shuffling them into my territories to maximize my economy.

    *Men are turbo boosters. For 1 blue coin you can instantly refresh a territory's force production. I'll soon have 5 squads on my Cyclops territory constantly refreshing it to stack my front line.

    Still, I feel really disconnected because I'm way out there :(

  21. Posted

    Already political discord! It's true though. I've been bummed by idlers the last couple games so I understand why people have reservations.

    On the other hand, I registered and lurked a while and one of my new-ish posts was asking to play.

    Anyways, I hope you all journal or do a special debriefing skype-cast to go over how things go. I'm curious! Just don't let alliances bog the game down like it has the last few. Allies should be fluid, not static!

    Also, don't let the quiet giant slowly grow, seriously :(

  24. Posted

    Wall of text DEPLOY!

    To put things into context, I started the game by sending this message to all players. It contained everything I could want for a final verbal communication:

    Project LAD Debut

    Greetings, fellow space empires.

    I am proud to announce the first live testing of Galaxybert Enterprise's latest attempt at automated empire management: Senior Spacelad! We have worked long and hard to balance LAD's positronic computers and to find a medium between fierce and reserved, between vengeful and forgiving, and between paranoid and gullible.

    Unfortunately, we did not have time to fine-tune LAD's language protocols. Testing thus far has yielded awkward and impolite results, so we have disabled the function completely. Worry not; LAD's linguistic comprehension protocols are top of the line. Any communications sent to it will be processed and integrated into its mainframe.

    We have also made breakthroughs in LAD's Reciprocity Engine . To put things simply, be good to LAD and LAD will be good to you. I will warn you, however, that the system will prioritize acts of greater goodness over lesser acts of goodness, and will magnify good acts by demonstrations of "loyalty" over time.

    In order to maintain the scientific integrity of our test, we will heretoforth cease all communications by Galaxybert Enterprise representatives. We sincerely hope LAD proves to be a useful element in the system.

    Best wishes,

    Squiddy Inkbottoms

    CEO of Galaxybert Enterprises

    I thought that in past games I had an issue with being too domineering and bossy. If I took that out of the equation, maybe other players wouldn't be so hellbent on my destruction. I also wouldn't need to ever explain myself, because I simply couldn't.

    The unfortunate part was that really only 3 of the 11 other players ever engaged me:

    Frakes right out of the gate reached out since we were neighbors. He helpfully communicated his plans for expansion so that we wouldn't butt heads. When he asked how he could get my weapons technology, I sent it over, with the belief that he would reciprocate (which he didn't!)

    Lollie also communicated with me about our borders, but he had a tendency to speak all to everyone that I did not enjoy. It fit his all caps lizard-lord well, but soon after he learned anything he would be tweeting it.

    Darth grew at the same rate as me and was on the opposite side of the galaxy, so I sent technology over and was quickly greeted with technology I didn't have myself. Very simple tech relationship.

    Sending tech and money were my only ways to show agreement, so many times I would send out $25 or more after receiving a message, depending on my enthusiasm. I am really not sure if people understood it, but it made them happy.

    My strategy with the galaxy was to focus on the core. While the outside stars help with economy, I did not want to bother managing so much weight with such little worth. I also didn't want to have a 4-day delay in bringing reinforcements to the front lines (the galaxy is huge!) It worked well but the center of the galaxy had all stars accounted for by major powers. While I sat on them, the other players swallowed smaller players and their peripheral stars and grew. Because of this, for most of the game I was in the middle of the leaderboard. That I was taken down by the most powerful player without having ANYONE else jump on and fight the guy still astounds me, and I wish I had had a voice to yell everyone to action.

    Things were rather quiet till Darth decided to make a move on Lollie, and rightfully so. Lollie had taken up another homestars to be in the lead and given no resistance, would have become huge. I logged in and saw Darth had sent me every tech I did not have and took it as a plea for help. Sticking with my original message, I returned the gesture by allying with him and helping him defend.

    I had preferred to stay on the defensive, not starting any fights with Lollie, when I received a message from him stating that he recognizes I would attack him and would not retaliate, as long as I did not help defend Darth. I figured why not, and moved my ships off.

    Somehow Lollie changed course and decided to go on an all-out offensive against me. This is where I thought Darth really should have stepped in. I had held up my end of the relationship by helping him, but instead he sat and watched us beat each other down, which was all the more insulting because I was at war on behalf of him. All the while, Frakes grew. It's this kind of passivity that drives me insane in Neptune. For their own sakes, I wished that Darth and Jake made a move or did something. Had Frakes been occupied, I would have been able to roll through Lollie and stay in the game.

    Lollie was clearly worn out and was short on reinforcements when I received a message from him: back off and we can fight Frakes together. I wasn't sure if I could trust him, but I realized that of all the players, he had communicated the most to me, so I thought that ought to buy him some sort of credibility. I gave him *4* levels of weapons technology as a gesture of complete agreement and peace. Soon after, Lollie gave all the technology to Frakes, essentially sealing the game in Frakes' favor. Before that, Frakes had been slightly behind in weapons, but was slowly swallowing up my stars (once again, while all other players sat idle *facepalm*) and now he had full clearance to swarm me.

    I hope in future games our players are less passive.

    Also, a fun side-note: to stay in character, I named all my fleets using a random word generator to create one uncommon adjective and one uncommon noun. I did spin it a few times if the word spat out wasn't interesting enough. A couple of my favorites were "Scallawaggy Bastion" and "Nonmutinous Catamaran." There was also "Nonproblematical Obstructiveness" which was stationed on a uncertain border with another player.