Neptune's Bountiful Pride: The Sequel

[Darken Skye]

I am terrible. Whats the best way too take a screenshot, so i can show you my positioning? I'm on windows 7 and using chrome. I am terrible for not knowing this. I am terrible.

 

Try the Snipping Tool built into Windows 7. Just run a search for it in the start menu to open it.

[Murdoc]

Oh no, I don't have psialkorups, purple is going for it with 1 ship, I am assuming so he can move a large force down, but I am purely speculating.

[Jaraknarn]

Thanks Darken that really helped

 

 

http://imgur.com/qBzZMaO

[Salacious Snake]

I just joined what I believe is a newer 64-player joint, Zeta Megrez. I've been thinking about getting back into this game, and what better way than a gigantic clusterfuck? I'd also like to join a smaller private game if anyone here is starting another one soon.

[youmeyou]

I'm actually having a lot of fun playing with the game purely on a mechanical level. It was always the personal aspects of it that soured the experience for me. Coworkers getting bitter and such. It's also cool being able to play it almost as a cooperative game with a thumbs cabal sharing tech and strategy.

[Murdoc]

Yeah, I'm doing pretty poorly in the massive game and I am not really doing any politicing as I normally would, because we're spending time organizing our technology and attacks with each other. Should be interesting to see what happens.

[Murdoc]

So we've been told in this giant 64 player game that people created dummy accounts only to funnel money and tech to other people. Which explains a few things.

 

I wonder if there is anything the developers could do to stop that, it's smart and cool, but meh.

 

The Thumbs Cabal is holding their own, we're not huge or doing amazing, but our little group in the south is slowly building, but we have a behemoth next to us, so that is worrisome.

[SGP]

That's sad that people are cheating like that. I don't understand how people could take pride in winning when they are giving themselves such an advantage. 

[Sloar]

Good game and congrats to whoever it was that one that one.

 

Post game review? Who was the true space bastard among us?

[jeremywc]

I was the bug that started the shit stirring and paid for it. But in my defense, I really felt backed into a corner early on.

[Jaraknarn]

On an even less positive note, I am now just getting ABSORBED by a behemoth in the 65 man game. He is attacking single planets with fleets the size of entire armada. He manufactures my losses from the whole war in a single day. Its actually quite humorous, and I wish I could be alive to watch these super giant players smash into each other.

[SGP]

So I was Sacroulix. Good game all! It's definitely weird playing with only 4 in such a small galaxy. I wonder if there had been even one more player how things would have been different, because it seems that we fell into 2v2 pretty easily mid-game. A lot of my play was me sitting high with the most infrastructure. I figure if I'm ahead with those things, I don't need to proactively attack and annex other players' stars. Bishop and I stood off with a large amount of distance between our stars which made defending from each other much more easier than attacking. It wasn't until I sent 300 ships SpaceNorth to The Doctor's starfields that Bishop felt brave enough to attack, and unforunately for him I trumped his fleets with reinforcements.

 

After I had taken most of Bishop's stars, it seemed obvious that King Wizard and The Doctor were setting up to invade me. I had taken significant losses in my conquest, and their ships outnumbed mine, but my infrastructure was sky-high. The longer they waited, the better my odds of survival. For some reason, King Wizard chose to attack The Doctor instead, leaving me with all of my gains. Perhaps it's because attacking me may have laid his SpaceNorth stars undefended against The Doctor? Maybe it was some sort of loyalty that we had fostered by remaining allies all game? I really don't know, but if I played from his position I'm pretty sure I would have attacked me.

 

One thing I enjoyed about the small galaxy is how experimentation played a huge role early game. We were all short on stars and science, so each payroll would nudge us heavily towards one technology rather than what we may have preferred to research.

 

OH! P.S. My parter and I had a newborn baby early in this game, and I didn't anticipate it but having a newborn is the greatest thing in the world for a game like Neptune's Pride. Waking up every 2-3 hours a night? Great, I can update my fleet paths.

[Murdoc]

Small Game:

Yeah it was neat, I'm not sure if I'd ever play that tiny of a game again though. With just three other people it was really easy to track who was trading tech. So at one point I was friends with someone and they were saying they were against this guy, the next, they both had the same technology levels, so I could never really trust them.

 

There was a tipping point where three of us were going to come down on Sacroulix (SGP) but at the last second I decided to double, double cross and continue my blood feud with Dr. Zaius. I thought it was funnier, but it just made the game play out by the numbers as we were both over powered by Sacroulix.

 

An interesting suggestion to the dark galaxy mechanic, would be to black out a players stats, how many stars they have, maybe even tech levels, it would have made the smaller game more interesting I think.

 

Also, congrats SGP, I hope you name the baby Neptune.

 

65 player game:

I was only half paying attention and didn't really do a lot of politicking so was never in a position of power. The Thumbs Cabal at least set out to do a couple things and we took out a guy to more or less unify our little cluster. Meanwhile in other parts of the galaxy the real game was going on and eventually just washed over a couple of us. For the last few cycles I've just been diverting all funds to "youmeyou" as he has a greater chance of surviving a bit longer. But the behemoth is producing 500 ships an hour, at most, I was making 25.

 

It's the very example the Idle Thumbs talks about with the fog of war. In our little corner of space we were doing alright, we were taking out the little guys and working together which was a lot of fun... then the fog of war lifts (figuratively, we could have been more aware what others were up to) and other people were a million years a head of us.

 

Really interesting, but I noticed most of the behemoths in that game were the ones that started on the outer edges, which may have given them a slight advantage, then combine that with the dummy accounts, etc..

[SGP]

dummy accounts

 

If he wants to make these 64 games viable, he has to come up with some sort of protection against this sort of thing. I'd like to think it's possible, but who knows.

 

Should we get a non-dark more traditional game going?

[youmeyou]

Small Game:

Yeah it was neat, I'm not sure if I'd ever play that tiny of a game again though. With just three other people it was really easy to track who was trading tech. So at one point I was friends with someone and they were saying they were against this guy, the next, they both had the same technology levels, so I could never really trust them.

 

There was a tipping point where three of us were going to come down on Sacroulix (SGP) but at the last second I decided to double, double cross and continue my blood feud with Dr. Zaius. I thought it was funnier, but it just made the game play out by the numbers as we were both over powered by Sacroulix.

 

An interesting suggestion to the dark galaxy mechanic, would be to black out a players stats, how many stars they have, maybe even tech levels, it would have made the smaller game more interesting I think.

 

Also, congrats SGP, I hope you name the baby Neptune.

 

65 player game:

I was only half paying attention and didn't really do a lot of politicking so was never in a position of power. The Thumbs Cabal at least set out to do a couple things and we took out a guy to more or less unify our little cluster. Meanwhile in other parts of the galaxy the real game was going on and eventually just washed over a couple of us. For the last few cycles I've just been diverting all funds to "youmeyou" as he has a greater chance of surviving a bit longer. But the behemoth is producing 500 ships an hour, at most, I was making 25.

 

It's the very example the Idle Thumbs talks about with the fog of war. In our little corner of space we were doing alright, we were taking out the little guys and working together which was a lot of fun... then the fog of war lifts (figuratively, we could have been more aware what others were up to) and other people were a million years a head of us.

 

Really interesting, but I noticed most of the behemoths in that game were the ones that started on the outer edges, which may have given them a slight advantage, then combine that with the dummy accounts, etc..

 

Yeah it was an interesting game for sure. I'm about get eaten up by one of the mammoths. In some ways it kind of feels realistic? We had our own little squabbles but were never a match for the superpowers.

[Murdoc]

If he wants to make these 64 games viable, he has to come up with some sort of protection against this sort of thing. I'd like to think it's possible, but who knows.

 

Should we get a non-dark more traditional game going?

I'm up for another since I was just casually playing the last two, it didn't seem like such an exhausting experience this time around.

 

Yeah it was an interesting game for sure. I'm about get eaten up by one of the mammoths. In some ways it kind of feels realistic? We had our own little squabbles but were never a match for the superpowers.

 

I'm just curious how the super powers began. I still don't know how a real spectators mode would exist for Neptunes Pride, but this 65 player game is precisely where I'd want it.  In some point in history Neptunes Pride 3 is made and makes a bazillion dollars, I'd like to see Iron Helm just hire a news team to cover matches and release an edited version of the larger stuff after it's completed.

[jeremywc]

OH! P.S. My parter and I had a newborn baby early in this game, and I didn't anticipate it but having a newborn is the greatest thing in the world for a game like Neptune's Pride. Waking up every 2-3 hours a night? Great, I can update my fleet paths.

 

You asshole. :-P

 

I had the opposite issue. Work was kicking my ass the first week and the second week I was in the process of preparing for a house move. A lot of days I was making my upgrades like 5-6 hours after everyone else. That didn't help my situation either. :-/

[Sloar]

I think SGP's analysis of the game was totally accurate, and also the note that we all knew who was trading tech with everyone else made the diplomacy a bit too transparent for some real Game of Thrones backstabbing from happening.

 

All in all I think it was a really enjoyable game, even if I never saw The Bug in person before his fleets were destroyed, since he was effectively my only ally (due largely to that we were never in competition).

 

I was really enjoying the banter we all had back and forth, I showed some of the logs to my flatmate and he was laughing his ass off, especially at the banter between me and Murdoc.

 

Gotta agree that 4 player is a teeny bit too small, shall we try to round up more people for a larger scale conflict?

[Jaraknarn]

Id definitely be up for another inhouse game, especially after mechanics refresh in the 65 man.

Im also having an interesting time in another 8 man, someone abandoned day 1 and now the AI is just crushing everyone elses stats, he's currently in the lead on stars, ships, industry and econ and is probably only going to die because of wierd way he deploys his ships to defend planets. He's already absorbed one afk human player, I tried to come in behind and mop up and keep the planets for myself and the human player responded by sending mutual assured destruction suicide attack fleets to all of my beachheads and set my wars efforts back about 2 days.

[Sloar]

Id definitely be up for another inhouse game, especially after mechanics refresh in the 65 man.

Im also having an interesting time in another 8 man, someone abandoned day 1 and now the AI is just crushing everyone elses stats, he's currently in the lead on stars, ships, industry and econ and is probably only going to die because of wierd way he deploys his ships to defend planets. He's already absorbed one afk human player, I tried to come in behind and mop up and keep the planets for myself and the human player responded by sending mutual assured destruction suicide attack fleets to all of my beachheads and set my wars efforts back about 2 days.

 

Spite is the mantra of life in this game it seems

[Wrestlevania]

I tried playing the original Neptune's Pride early on but failed miserably.

 

I'd like to try again though, if you'll have a stinking n00b in your game.

[Murdoc]

Weird... the guy that was just eating us alive quite when I was down to my last 2 stars. There is no climbing out of this hole, but it's worth a shot to keep playing.

[Jaraknarn]

Spite is the mantra of life in this game it seems

Yer, but it aint all bad, everyone else seems to be almost completely ignoring manufacturing which means im almost 2 levels ahead and completely outproduce everyone, couple that with being ahead on planets and industry and I think ive got a winning formula.

[SGP]

Still have the newborn, still up to play Sorry jeremy!

 

I enjoy writing messages in character, but sometimes you just want to send a blip of a message, especially when you're in Neptune on a mobile phone.

 

One thing I've wanted to try is have a Neptune's Pride game night where people gather with laptops and play a turn-based Neptune's Pride. Each turn shifts 12 hours, so you could roll through the game in a day and have the diplomacy happen in-person and live. I think it could be amazing!

[Sloar]

Still have the newborn, still up to play Sorry jeremy!

 

I enjoy writing messages in character, but sometimes you just want to send a blip of a message, especially when you're in Neptune on a mobile phone.

 

One thing I've wanted to try is have a Neptune's Pride game night where people gather with laptops and play a turn-based Neptune's Pride. Each turn shifts 12 hours, so you could roll through the game in a day and have the diplomacy happen in-person and live. I think it could be amazing!

 

I think I would like that aswell, is it possible to tweak the settings to allow it?

 

We could all get on skype or something like that and be right bastards to each other as it happens