Building Decay Enabled
Building decay due to abandonment was implemented in the last update but the actual decay of buildings was delayed through the weekend, to give people plenty of time to tag the systems they wanted to keep

Buildings and cities will begin to decay in this update. The rules posted in the previous thread apply.

A lot of buildings are going to disappear soon after the servers wake up. The current count on the empire standings page is 124,044.

City Founder
Someone suggested that the founder retain some level of control over their cities.

This was an interesting idea that has several effects:

• City founder is now in the chain of command of their own cities, if the founder is in the same empire as the city. No government office is required.
  
• Government office can add other people to the chain of command of a city.
  
• Cities are surrendered using the Cities and Bases page of the Governance window.
  
• Cities can only be surrendered by the founder, unless the founder is not a citizen of the empire. In other words, the emperor can't give away cities founded by citizens but it can give away cities founded by non-citizens, such as cities it captures or cities surrendered to it.
  
• This enables the founder of a city to transfer their own cities before changing empires, unless the cities belong to another empire, in which case they aren't listed on the Cities and Bases window.
  
• City founder permissions were removed from empire policies. No office is automatically granted to the founder of a city. No office is needed.
  
• Founder of a city never changes, even if the city changes empires. However, you must be in the same empire as the city to be in its chain of command and to surrender it.
  
• Founder relationship to city empire affects morale.
  • 0 if founder is not in any empire
    
  • 0 if founder is dead and gone
    
  • +2 if founder is in city empire
    
  • +1 if founder is in friend empire, based on founder empire's stance toward the city's empire
    
  • +1 if founder is in vassal empire
    
  • -1 if founder is in neutral empire
    
  • -2 if founder is in enemy empire
    

• Right To Found Cities - All citizens can now found cities on any world in their chain of command and any world they claimed. That means a citizen with no government office can only found cities on worlds claimed by them.
  
• Zone Build Permissions - Removed zone build permissions because they were no longer compatible with new city build rules. No code was using zone build permissions any more.
  
• Trespass Policy - Trespass policy was removed. A Trespass diplomatic incident is logged when a neutral city or station is detected within sensor range of an empire station; that is their ADIZ. Cities are also supposed to log an incident but they aren't currently doing it; it's on my to-do list.
  
• Rewards - Rewards page removed from empire policies.
  

So I heard mention of asteroids not too long ago and blew it off, it being many many months since I last played. 

..

Logged in today to find my homeworld destroyed and only one small moon base remaining. Guess I should have listened closer!

Land Bug
Land designations are lost if you teleport.

Fixed. This is the reason for the server update today. Otherwise things were chugging along just fine.

Respawn Broken
The respawn sequence is broken. You can't recall to a building.

The problem was caused by some validation code checking your spawn city, which might not be a "city" these days, if it was just a random building. Recalling to a city only worked if you were tied to the capitol building, due to some obsolete logic. Now you can tie to any building, even unincorporated buildings, which was the original intent.

This is the spawn sequence.

1. Arena exit if you are in an arena.
   
2. Berth aboard your ship. Ship must be private or you must be a passenger or you must not be an enemy.
   
3. Home building. You must not be neutral or enemy.
   
4. Galaxy capitol of your current galaxy. Building must belong to your empire.
   
5. Capitol of a random city on your current side of the discontinuity. Building must belong to your empire.
   
6. Empire capitol. Building must belong to your empire.
   
7. Current habitable world. Must be suitable homeworld. Must have no buildings other than empire 0 or your own empire.
   
8. Habitable world in current system. Must be suitable homeworld. Must have no buildings other than empire 0 or your own empire.
   
9. Newly generated homeworld.
   

Players can invite other players to teleport to their location.

This teleporting is kind of an exogame activity. Its intended purpose was to enable friends to easily join up with one another. Without it, players who start far apart might have a hard time getting together.

I would like to make changes to reduce its usefulness as a convenient form of transportation.

One simple change would be to permit teleporting be used only between two avatars in the same empire.

Thoughts?

I just watched my crew dive straight into a habitable world instead of going to orbit.
I was not able to catch it in time.  Instead of slowing down as the ship got closer to the planet the AI seemed to go to full throttle.

This was on a 14 day build ship.

Haxus please...

Officer's final log:

Land
Avatars now have land associated with them, in the form of solar systems. Land is an important factor in the next topic Abandonment and Decay.

The solar system that contains the avatar's home building is automatically part of their land. The solar system is not protected from abandonment if the home building is destroyed. The solar system remains protected even if the home building is destroyed.

In addition to their home system, each avatar may designate up to ten solar systems to be their land. The land designation is arbitrary. Any solar systems can be chosen.

This does not claim those solar systems as property. There is no way to know if a solar system is already part of another avatar's land. Any number of avatars may designate the same solar system as their land.

Land is shown on a new Land page on the Bio window. There, land can be removed and the current solar system can be added to your land.

Land can also be added using the Cities and Bases, System Scan, and Star Map windows. The cities list supports multiple select, so you can do a bunch of them at once.

Abandonment and Decay
The previous update produced some good ideas on this topic. Here are the new rules for abandonment and decay, with some clarifications.

Abandonment
A building can become abandoned.

• Building abandonment begins three days after: 1) an avatar on line was last present in its solar system or 2) it stops being protected by the land designation of an avatar.
  
• Buildings in the land solar systems of an avatar are protected from abandonment while the avatar's account remains active.
  • Buildings do not have to be part of a city. All buildings in land systems are protected.
    
  • Empire of the avatar and the buildings is not a factor.
    
• Abandonment appears as a negative morale modifier on the city report. The negative modifier is the number of days since the building began feeling abandoned, up to -1000.
  
• Land may take up to 24 hours to register the change of an avatar's account status, whether active or inactive.
  
• Solar systems may take up to 24 hours to be notified when they become land, to gain that protection.
  
• There is no extra benefit to overlapping the lands of multiple avatars.
  

• Up to three abandoned buildings in a city will decay at each city report cycle. Decayed buildings are listed on the city report.
  
• Unincorporated buildings on a world will decay. This goes unreported.
  
• When a building decays due to abandonment, it is completely destroyed.
  
• Probability of decay increases as the negative abandonment modifier increases.
  
• Decay conforms to city build rules so bases will decay before cities, on any given world.
  
• A city report with decaying buildings is marked with a highlighted icon.
  
• The final city report from a decaying city does not expire in the mail queue. It is marked with a highlighted icon.
  

I'm experiencing another instance of the old scan quality vs harvest quality bug. 
AFAIK this had been fixed once before.

The issue occurs on Hub System 01 Beta Ia(YP,RSF,MC,c Beta Ia)

I'll leave Impel(WLEFXKB) on site if you want to have a look.

Buildings in Zone 3 are harvesting crystals and minerals, scan report says Q236 crystals, and Q212 minerals
Mines are harvesting Q99 crystals, and Q50 minerals.

Gathering by hand gets the same results, Q99 and Q50.

Edit: It seems this is affecting multiple systems, number of bodies listed, as well as types is not always correct either.

Abandonment and Decay
Some kind of decay is needed for the new style buildings. The data load keeps getting bigger and heavier, with no relief. Also, it is possible for one person to maintain a ridiculously large empire, something that was expicitly not supposed to happen. If possible, the mechanism for decay should not penalize players who cannot log in for a while. Something must be done; the smaller servers are getting overwhelmed.

There is a finite amount of server resource available. It must be managed and shared by all players.

One way to keep the servers running smoothly is to eliminate data that nobody is using. A big contributor is buildings that get constructed then forgotten or abandoned. Those buildings chug away, doing their work forever, even if their emperor never comes back.

Several strategies have been tried over the years to do this in a way that is fair and works with the way people play the game. We are about to experience the carnage of yet another attempt. If anyone is going to rage quit, now is as good of time as any.

This is how buildings will decay, once this code is fully enabled. The update today does not destroy any buildings due to abandonment. Abandonment will be reported in city reports as a negative to morale, to give people time to make adjustments.

Buildings that are not incorporated into a city are subject to abandonment and decay, the same as buildings in cities or bases. There are no reports to show the abandonment status of unincorporated buildings.

Abandonment
A building can become abandoned.

• Building abandonment begins three days after an avatar on line was last present in its solar system.
  
• Exception, every building is immune to abandonment, in the supersector (3x3x3 sectors) centered on the home building of any avatar on an active account. Empire of the active avatar is not a factor. This is only signaled once per day so don't bother running around declaring new homes everywhere.
  
• An avatar whose account status changes, becoming active or inactive, may take up to 24 hours to register the change of account status.
  
• There is no extra benefit to overlapping the home supersectors of multiple avatars.
  
• Abandonment appears as a negative morale modifier on the city report.
  

• Up to three abandoned buildings in a city will decay at each city report cycle. Decayed buildings are listed on the city report.
  
• Unincorporated buildings on a world will decay. This goes unreported.
  
• When a building decays due to abandonment, it is completely destroyed.
  
• Probability of an abandoned building decaying increases as the negative morale modifier increases.
  
• Decay conforms to city build rules so bases will decay before cities, on any given world.
  
• A city report with decaying buildings is marked with a highlighted icon.
  
• The final city report from a decaying city does not expire in the mail queue. It is marked with a highlighted icon.
  

Servers Crashing and Burning
The Thanksgiving break did not go as smoothly for the servers as I hoped it would. A problem appeared that results in death of the manager server and subsequent death of the entire grid. This happened several times recently and seems to be slowly increasing in frequency.

This one had me stumped because there was never anything left to trace. One or more servers were usually uncommunicative, requiring remote hands assistance from the computer center to reboot them. The rest were all dead.

Sunday morning, yesterday, I checked the server monitor only to see red text and flames from a few servers that weren't completely dead. The rest were gone.

I got to work cleaning up the zombies. Most of them needed a slight wave to send them on to the promised land. One of them wasn't dead! It wasn't deadlocked either. It was using 37GB of memory! What could it be doing?

I got to work sifting through the call stacks of its thirty plus threads. This revealed a world suffering the effects of an asteroid collision. The world was destroying all of its buildings. One building was stuck in an infinite loop trying to destroy itself. A peculiarity of its tiny design caused it to fail.

Once understood, the bug was easily fixed. It was also fixed in similar code copied from spacecraft, though the condition could never logically occur in a valid spacecraft design.

Four days of time were added to all active accounts, to make up for the server down time.

1. Make the game free to play again, possibly with buyable cosmetics/whatever, as long as it doesn't affect the gameplay whatsoever.
2. Make a patreon, add a link leading to it to the launcher.
3. Get sseth to review it.[url=https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCD6VugMZKRhSyzWEWA9W2fg][/url]
4. Wait.
5. Watch as servers crash due to new players, which quite possibly will donate on patreon. (which they have link to on a silver platter)
6. Upgrade the servers from patreonbux allowing more players to join, creating an infinite money-upgrade loop.

I've seen the playercount and it's what, less than 100 at any given time these days? Heartbreaking. Entire universe to explore, but for who?