2022-01-13 FYI

[OriginalGangstaStaines]

I heartily agree with Celarious. The people who want to play a safe game of empire building can play HSS. Perhaps they will grow lonely there and decide to join the rest of us in the "real" universe.

HSS builds side-by-side with SoH. Only the top-most client app is different. They both share all changes. In fact, this caused me to revamp and improve a huge internal interface that had grown very ugly and prone to error. Now changes are reliably shared between the apps, with minimal uncomplicated programming effort.

I had just implemented that interface before taking a year off. Unfortunately, I only recently discovered that those changes broke the preview mode in the designer, for both HSS and SoH. I'm terribly sorry about that. It will be fixed in the next update, some time before the end of February.

Me and Celarious rather agree that the real universe should be small enough to encourage player interaction, while reducing the abrupt and brutal aspects of warfare. Any mechanical system where the entire population is within a dozen sectors of each other, but don't feel immediately threatened, results in much better gameplay. Any threat of war should be tense and creeping rather than an immediate "I conquered your empire in a day" situation.

Many people that originally intensely disliked the ultra compact game area have grown to remember it very fondly because of the social interaction and excitement.

My suggestion...
Make planets develop over the course of months (outpost, colony, core) so that developed planets have value. This could be increasing region population limits.
Make capturing planets difficult (you must have a certain tonnage of warships in a system for days to generate a "threat" level that is compared to the development level before you can actually invade). A system under "occupation" generates threat from the original owner twice as fast so they can respond to occupations faster, but not immediately.
Make the game area about 31x31x7 sectors so that there's PLENTY of room for all. That's hundreds of thousands of systems for hundreds of people.

The closer you can get people without them feeling hopelessly in danger, the better.

[Wincil]

I heartily agree with Celarious. The people who want to play a safe game of empire building can play HSS. Perhaps they will grow lonely there and decide to join the rest of us in the "real" universe.

HSS builds side-by-side with SoH. Only the top-most client app is different. They both share all changes. In fact, this caused me to revamp and improve a huge internal interface that had grown very ugly and prone to error. Now changes are reliably shared between the apps, with minimal uncomplicated programming effort.

I had just implemented that interface before taking a year off. Unfortunately, I only recently discovered that those changes broke the preview mode in the designer, for both HSS and SoH. I'm terribly sorry about that. It will be fixed in the next update, some time before the end of February.

Me and Celarious rather agree that the real universe should be small enough to encourage player interaction, while reducing the abrupt and brutal aspects of warfare. Any mechanical system where the entire population is within a dozen sectors of each other, but don't feel immediately threatened, results in much better gameplay. Any threat of war should be tense and creeping rather than an immediate "I conquered your empire in a day" situation.

Many people that originally intensely disliked the ultra compact game area have grown to remember it very fondly because of the social interaction and excitement.

My suggestion...
Make planets develop over the course of months (outpost, colony, core) so that developed planets have value. This could be increasing region population limits.
Make capturing planets difficult (you must have a certain tonnage of warships in a system for days to generate a "threat" level that is compared to the development level before you can actually invade). A system under "occupation" generates threat from the original owner twice as fast so they can respond to occupations faster, but not immediately.
Make the game area about 31x31x7 sectors so that there's PLENTY of room for all. That's hundreds of thousands of systems for hundreds of people.

The closer you can get people without them feeling hopelessly in danger, the better.

I don't agree with that suggestion tbh its not the scale that's the problem

[GaelicVigil]

I heartily agree with Celarious. The people who want to play a safe game of empire building can play HSS. Perhaps they will grow lonely there and decide to join the rest of us in the "real" universe.

HSS builds side-by-side with SoH. Only the top-most client app is different. They both share all changes. In fact, this caused me to revamp and improve a huge internal interface that had grown very ugly and prone to error. Now changes are reliably shared between the apps, with minimal uncomplicated programming effort.

I had just implemented that interface before taking a year off. Unfortunately, I only recently discovered that those changes broke the preview mode in the designer, for both HSS and SoH. I'm terribly sorry about that. It will be fixed in the next update, some time before the end of February.

Me and Celarious rather agree that the real universe should be small enough to encourage player interaction, while reducing the abrupt and brutal aspects of warfare. Any mechanical system where the entire population is within a dozen sectors of each other, but don't feel immediately threatened, results in much better gameplay. Any threat of war should be tense and creeping rather than an immediate "I conquered your empire in a day" situation.

Many people that originally intensely disliked the ultra compact game area have grown to remember it very fondly because of the social interaction and excitement.

My suggestion...
Make planets develop over the course of months (outpost, colony, core) so that developed planets have value. This could be increasing region population limits.
Make capturing planets difficult (you must have a certain tonnage of warships in a system for days to generate a "threat" level that is compared to the development level before you can actually invade). A system under "occupation" generates threat from the original owner twice as fast so they can respond to occupations faster, but not immediately.
Make the game area about 31x31x7 sectors so that there's PLENTY of room for all. That's hundreds of thousands of systems for hundreds of people.

The closer you can get people without them feeling hopelessly in danger, the better.

I'm not going to get into making any detailed suggestions or deep mechanics changes, but I do agree with the general sentiment that player empire interaction should be more accessible. That said, I would hate for players uninterested in it to feel forced into participating in it.

How you accomplish that balance is anyone's guess. I like the KISS rule though. Reducing initial player spawn distance may be the simplest solution.

[Xantheose]

OH THANK YOU HAXUS WE LOVE YOU

Despite its bugs and problems, there is no other game as good as Hazeron. Thank you to giving us a new dose.

Noncombatant state of empires was implemented
Neutral Zone was eliminated
Fog of war implemented

This is true gold

[OriginalGangstaStaines]

OH THANK YOU HAXUS WE LOVE YOU

Despite its bugs and problems, there is no other game as good as Hazeron. Thank you to giving us a new dose.

Noncombatant state of empires was implemented
Neutral Zone was eliminated
Fog of war implemented

This is true gold

The issue is that non-combatant state can be used offensively.

A forward alt-empire can almost always attack a larger empire that has people online, using the forward alt empire as a forward stating area.
When the counter attack comes, the alt empire logs off.

---

I'm not going to get into making any detailed suggestions or deep mechanics changes, but I do agree with the general sentiment that player empire interaction should be more accessible.  That said, I would hate for players uninterested in it to feel forced into participating in it.

How you accomplish that balance is anyone's guess.  I like the KISS rule though.  Reducing initial player spawn distance may be the simplest solution.

Reducing initial player spawn distance doesn't solve the issue.

Reducing spawn distance means that "prey" is always found in roughly the same spot, meaning that they are extremely vulnerable to nomadic predators that know where the best hunting grounds are located. Meanwhile, counter attack is impossible.

I agree that players shouldn't be forced into it. That's why there should be a single player mode and a multiplayer mode.
If you play multiplayer, you need to accept that it's multiplayer.

[Deantwo]

Make planets develop over the course of months (outpost, colony, core) so that developed planets have value. This could be increasing region population limits.
Make capturing planets difficult (you must have a certain tonnage of warships in a system for days to generate a "threat" level that is compared to the development level before you can actually invade). A system under "occupation" generates threat from the original owner twice as fast so they can respond to occupations faster, but not immediately.

Yeah we have talked about that before. Having to have military units and ships stay in a solar system for a week before you can start actually invading would greatly reduce the feeling of not having any way to defend or talk it out. You can ask for help from other empires or workout peace before invasions begin.

I made an old suggestion thread about this sort of idea.
Here: (Idea thread) Conquest of Solar Systems

I miss the old-style building destruction where buildings just entered a destroyed state and then get rebuilt automatically. Less permanent destruction and less devastating losses.

But as you mentioned, cities actually also need to be worth capturing, rather than simply bulldoze and rebuild your own.

Make the game area about 31x31x7 sectors so that there's PLENTY of room for all. That's hundreds of thousands of systems for hundreds of people.

While it was fun back then, I don't know if it would be the right way to do it. And I have a feeling that Haxus would prefer to have the whole universe open.

I would say we need actual gameplay reasons to be near other players. I am not sure how that would work, but it should be the goal rather than just forcing it.

[Haxus]

What is your vision for Shores of Hazeron as a game?

My vision for Shores of Hazeron is to create a game where many people can play and interact in a science fiction universe and role play science fiction stories: to be the captain of their own star ship, the emperor of a galactic empire, or an explorer roaming the universe. Game mechanics would provide all that is needed to build an empire from nothing, construct buildings, manufacture spacecraft, conduct diplomacy, wage war, and pursue adventures.

The foundation for doing this was to create a high level game of empire building and conquest. This would cause players to establish empires and build cities and manufacture spacecraft unique to their chosen style. The cities would be sensible and exist for specific purposes, such as harvesting resources or forming a nexus of travel.

Adequate uniqueness would require players to design the 3D models used for their buildings and spacecraft. It would also require the unique generation of all solar systems, suns, worlds, plants and animals. This enables true discovery, as players can encounter truly alien races, creatures, and architecture. The upgrade to the designer made this really blossom. I have seen spectacular alien ships and breathtaking cities, beyond anything I might have imagined; that was a dream come true.

Those cities and spacecraft create a setting that makes sense, to be used by players who inhabit the game universe but do not choose to be empire builders. These other players would pursue adventures, perhaps fight for the empire when called upon, if they so choose. Cities and their associated facilities would provide the infrastructure needed to support players who travel around in star ships, conducting trade and personal business.

Adventures would rely on a story system that adapts itself to locations based on the needs of the story, so all players are not drawn to the same few locations in the game. Anyone who has ever waited in line to finish a quest understands why.

Adventures are the least complete portion of the game, at present. This is the main reason there isn't much to do for the non emperor players. The software is almost to the point where this will become the primary focus of my development efforts. Short adventure stories aren't hard to write. I believe this part of the game will blossom once I begin working on it in earnest.

My vision was to create a continuous multi player game environment in which the scenes of Star Trek and Star Wars could play out. I imagined space battles at about the same scale as the original Star Trek series, where most conflicts involved two to four ships and a battle between six to ten ships was considered big.

My vision was to create a game space so large as to seem boundless, to eliminate the impenetrable wall at the edge of the game board. Small finite game spaces always become dominated by a single player who is then the "winner", like a game of chess or checkers, exactly what quickly happened when we implemented a restricted box for players in the galaxy. I did not want this which is why I resist things that enable a single player to dominate the universe.

I can probably never achieve this goal mainly because the server effort per player is too great. This game really needs a large number of players but I don't think that my servers can support it. I think they could support a large number of players if they were not all emperors building infrastructure. A balance could be achieved by charging a different rate for emperors ($10?) vs citizens ($1?). Then we find ourselves back to the lack of adventures.

This fire might never get started but only ever exist as a spark. But I don't need a raging fire; even a spark is bright in the dark. It was fun having a small group of players on line. It fit my vision better than HSS. So that's why we are here again.

[Haxus]

creeping rather than an immediate "I conquered your empire in a day" situation

That was the intent of the noncombatant state of an empire. It requires that players from both empires be on line so at least your stuff doesn't get snuffed while you are out. That really burns people because they feel they had no chance to defend or even to flee.

When the counter attack comes, the alt empire logs off.

<head smack> Blast you chess player.

What if an empire who has attacked any other empire remains in a combatant state for a minimum amount of time? At present, when the last player logs off, the empire becomes noncombatant after 3 minutes. That could be an hour or a day if they've just attacked someone.

[Deantwo]

When the counter attack comes, the alt empire logs off.

<head smack> Blast you chess player.

What if an empire who has attacked any other empire remains in a combatant state for a minimum amount of time? At present, when the last player logs off, the empire becomes noncombatant after 3 minutes. That could be an hour if they've just attacked someone.

An hour or two maybe yeah. But can definitely start imagining more unpleasant scenarios for this feature now.

It depends a bit on what it is the feature is supposed to defend. Is it supposed to protect the cities of the empire? Or is it supposed to protect each and every unit?
From the adventurer point of view, I can definitely see it being nice if your ship isn't just blown up while you are offline for a few days. But maybe that should be the risk of leaving your ship away from a friendly harbor.

On the empire scale we are more worried about the cities and fleets. For the fleet it might be reasonable to say that it should only be protected if it is at a safe harbor, for example in orbit over an empire claimed world.

Still if conquest of a solar system only takes a few hours, it doesn't matter if someone is online or not. As we were discussing a bit, a way of claiming a solar system so it is protected would help a lot. An enemy would have to siege the solar system for upward to a week before they can actually destroy the infrastructure.
It might be something worth brainstorming more over at least, like in my above mentioned idea thread, (Idea thread) Conquest of Solar Systems.

[Haxus]

A suggestion was proposed that new empires must be purchased for a one-time cost, to discourage the creation of excess empires. The purchaser would be the emperor.

Some might cry "pay to win". I don't know if it would make that much difference.

It would certainly cut down on the number of different empires.