Announcements

This month's plans have been posted to the website! http://squidsoft.net/2010/09/star-conquest-plans-for-september/

The Star Conquest storyline relaunch will take place on Saturday, 11 September!

In preparation, we're launching an advertising campaign TODAY to get lots of new players into the game and get them involved in the new storylines coming up!

MENTORS! We're relying on you to welcome new players to the game and ease the learning curve for them! We'll need your help!

Everyone else! Please respond positively and helpfully on the newbie channel, and be tolerant of the new players and the various faux pas they may commit!

If you want to see new players in the game, this is an excellent time to get some word-of-mouth going and get your friends in as part of this new player rush!

LET'S MAKE THIS A GREAT MONTH FOR STAR CONQUEST CHEERING ETC. WOOOOOOO

If it makes sense for your character to be fluent in multiple languages, you can ASSIST and talk it over with our friendly host staff!

Attention consumers! We'll be holding an event THIS SATURDAY (4 September) at 11PM game time (7PM eastern, 4PM pacific)! A long weekend is generally not a good weekend for text gaming, though, so this is NOT yet the official relaunch event, which will instead likely follow next weekend. We'll keep you posted! But be here Saturday if you can!

Here's an update about our event schedule, since I promised to address it by the end of the month!

We have the Star Conquest Relaunch event outlined and it's pretty much ready to proceed. There will be a few minievents in the next few days, plus additional narration coming to you via the news.

I'm not exactly certain which date the relaunch will be, since we'll have to see what fits everyone's schedules. However, I can promise this much: we'll have SOME event this weekend, even if it's not the relaunch event. I'd say it's most likely that the relaunch will occur the weekend after, since there is another component to this whole effort that we'll have to gear up for at the same time.

In any case, specifics will come in future announcements as we firm up our own schedules.

This isn't a big announcement or anything, but I would like to say that we are going to re-commit ourselves to making a determination on all profiles within 24 hours of submission. Because I made it so that the game itself yells at us if we don't.

Just a reminder that hosts and announcements that they make (such as this one) are OOC and there is no proper method of addressing them IC. If you must discuss them, please use the OOC section of the message board.

Our latest PROGRESS REPORT is now available on the website! http://web.squidsoft.net/2010/08/star-conquest-august-progress-report/

Introducing the Mentor system!

Let me just go ahead and paste the help file to you.

----

The Mentor system is an out-of-character method of grouping together newbies and experienced players and helping the new people get their bearings within the game.

An experienced player (500 aggregate points and 60 days old) may type MENTOR to register for the program. Then, as long as you remain active in the game, your name will come up when new players for your alliance select a mentor.

New players will be prompted to choose a mentor during the creation process, or they may type MENTOR at any time afterwards to choose a mentor.

A mentor may take several newbies under his or her wing. These are referred to in the system as "proteges."

A mentor and his or her proteges share a private, out-of-character channel. They may speak on this channel by typing MENTOR [any message]

While this mentor channel is out-of-character, it should be used for questions and answers about the game and not for general chatter.

And finally, mentors don't necessarily have to give all the answers. The proteges can help each other out too!

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We're looking to try to add a lot of new players to the game pretty soon, so if you're experienced and active, please register to become a mentor!

Also, the changes are retconned. Meaning, retroactive continuity. Meaning, in character, space has always been this way! Questions about it are probably OOC and should be asked on the newbie channel.

We've converted permanently to the new space system. Please read the changelog for details.

After a successful test, we're on track to officially launch the new space system sometime this weekend. Stand by for further announcements!

If your standings seem weird for a Fringe/AEU/League/whatever dude, please make a REPORT about it and we'll look into it. Thanks!

Added a way for players to get a very, very rough estimate of where they stand with various factions, visible through the STANDINGS command. In the future, this command will be somewhat more detailed.

We switched the CAPTCHA engine to reCAPTCHA earlier today. It has a sound button. If registration still poses a problem for you dudes, give us a heads up somewhere.

I've tediously changed a whole bunch of things throughout the space system in preparation for switching to the new system. Please report any issues! Issues are most likely to occur with displaying or interacting with planets and space stations. So, you know, nothing too important.

Just so everyone knows we're not just twiddling our thumbs, we have the following plans to resurrect SC after a rough month of heavy downtime:

1) Finish the new space system that was discussed a few months ago. The principle features of the system are:

- A new, smaller, more true-to-life scale for sectors. Mostly there will be one planet to a sector, and ships will actually be traveling at sublight speeds. Yes, this means a lot more sectors.

- A sort of hierarchical cluster system for intersector travel. Instead of going to the New Earth sector to find New Earth, Telex, etc., you'll instead go to a gateway sector, from which you'll be able to travel directly to New Earth or Telex or any of the other destinations currently in Sector 21. Again, a lot more sectors. But no worries, travel between the common destinations you know and love will not really take any longer. This is to give space more of a geography, plus it'll give certain sectors a heavy strategic value.

- Sector clusters will vary in how heavily they are patrolled by the controlling alliance's navy, and how resource-rich they are. In general, less safe areas will contain more valuable resources. Conversely, this means that capital sectors and other major populated locations will be safer than they are now. This allows for PvP to be both possible and entirely voluntary.

- Resources (particularly ones like asteroids, uncharted debris, and artifacts) will no longer be "everywhere" but will instead be linked to particular resource points. Many points are permanent property of one alliance or another, others will be influenced by Conquest, and still others will be outright capturable in PvP conflicts. This will give conflict a material benefit but also allow each player to decide how much they want to personally risk.

- From a game design standpoint, the nature of sector clusters will allow us to easily expand the game world to add unique places to visit and explore. It'll make SC almost a whole new game, and that'll be exciting.

2) The other part of our plan is to launch a new plot advancement arc and re-commit to a goal of holding a planned event every weekend as much as our schedules will allow.

I can't give a specific ETA, but it should be safe to say that the new space system will be launched and we'll be holding scheduled events by the end of the month.

Additionally, the old web content for squidsoft.net is still up at http://moo.squidsoft.net

So, we had some downtime! As some of you noticed, we put up a website on a separate host so that we could keep you updated on our status. However, it seems that a lot of people never realized it existed, so let's fix that now.

MAIN WEBSITE: http://squidsoft.net - Kept updated with general news about Squidsoft.

FORUM: http://squidsoft.net/forum - An all-purpose forum!

IRC: #Squidsoft on gamesurge.net - I don't know about the other hosts, but I plan to keep idling in here, so it'll be a good place to keep in contact outside the game.

It seems like the subdomains are all playing nicely, but just so you don't encounter any problems in the future, you should make sure that your connection information for SC uses the host MOO.SQUIDSOFT.NET.

Paid couriers, since the game was down for over a week and it didn't get a chance to pay anyone.

Just to clarify, that means use in-game mail.

We are presently in the process of adding descriptions to items in older stores in Star Conquest. As you can imagine, the list is very long, and it will probably take many months to get around to all of them. But if you have a favorite store that doesn't have descriptions, write a short note to Lily Calico, and that store will go to the top of the list. Also, if you have an idea for a new store, especially one selling items that would help with roleplay, we'll consider adding it.

HELP CIVILIAN PILOT LEAGUES has been slightly reworded regarding combat. Pacifism is no longer a valid excuse for refusing to fight, as a refusal to enter starship combat would mean you were violating the terms of your pilot licence agreement. As the help file states, the human alliances have escape pods that grant 100% survival against other humans (not counting the unregs) and something similar appears to be used by the alien races encountered. With a species dedicated to exterminating humanity and several others that attack on a regular basis, pacifism in a pilot makes no sense. If you really are a pacifist, you would not choose to join the civilian pilot league of your alliance. This does NOT mean that all pilots must be combat-hungry psychopaths, it's perfectly valid to refuse to attack certain specific things, but a blanket 'I don't fight' or a conscious decision not to enter most combat scenarios just doesn't cut it.

We'll aim to have this event arc continue midweek, Wednesday, at 11PM game time (that's 7PM eastern, 4PM pacific).

Looks like we need to get back into the swing of things after our extended downtime earlier this week, so on Saturday we'll have an EVENT where THINGS HAPPEN, starting around 11PM game time. That is 7PM eastern, 6PM central, 5PM someplace nobody lives, 4PM pacific, 3PM in Alaska, 1PM in Hawaii, and 9AM in Australia. If you need more assistance please use the REPORT command to tell us your time zone and we will be happy to assist you.

The extended downtime was due to a storm that knocked out the DSL line and a bit more at the server location. We're back at full speed now. We apologize for the inconvenience.

After the work of the pilots and the Battle Thrall known as Morning-Dew-On-Grass, meetings have begun in earnest between Flight-Over-Hill and the diplomat Gwyneth Lithmore, hindered only by the rather lacking translation unit. Man of Science Peter Fienstein works feverishly on a number of inventions, one or more of which may (or may not) in fact be related to this problem! What is the next step for the negotiations? Time will tell - In fact, 4pm Sunday 30th May will tell!

POLICY 3 ADDITION

In the wake of a couple of recent incidents, we've added a new rule that falls under Policy 3.

Basically, this rule says that aggression should be a properly roleplayed, justifiable part of your character before you attempt to spark a conflict with other players.

It's important to understand that this is a very loose, very inclusive rule, and by definition it WILL NOT apply to any player who connects and plays regularly and has an investment in his or her character. Established characters are essentially as free as before to engage in conflict, although as always we will, in character, prevent any such conflict from exploding into general warfare unless that is what a majority of players seem to want.

Essentially, if you're wondering whether this applies to you, it doesn't. If you're doing this, it's conscious and intentional.

What this policy seeks to prevent is the behavior of a tiny minority of players who connect to the game with no interest in roleplaying or even in gaining points, and instead attempt to rile up other players either with verbal harassment over the communicator or by more aggressive actions. This sort of thing adds nothing to the game and it'll be a better experience for everyone if it's stopped.

As with all policies, any punishment up to and including banning is considered to be an option. Although, as these people are by definition not terribly attached to their characters, banning may often be the first option we choose.

You can read the full text of the rule by typing POLICY 3. It's the second-to-last paragraph.

This has been announced several times before, but I think it's time for another reminder about good roleplaying practices!

- Play a character. You play a character, firstly, by deciding his or her personality and background. The purpose of the profile system is to make sure this is a solid concept that's consistent with the gameworld. With that done, you choose words and actions consistent with this character, things that follow logically from his or her background and worldview.

- You do not play a character by discussing his or her thoughts, feelings, and possible actions with other people via the OOC command as a substitute for that character's logical progression in behavior or relationships.

- The OOC command is for occasional asides when they are absolutely necessary, not for entire conversations. Remember that this command is rate-limited. We relaxed the limitation because it wasn't being abused as much, but it is very, very quickly going back the other way. If you must have a long discussion which is principally OOC, especially if it doesn't even concern the game, there are many external IM clients you can use.

- Using the OOC command does not in fact excuse you from being OOC in all circumstances. Particularly if you're in a public room, or around other players who would prefer to remain in character. The long, 100% OOC discussions on landing pads or in lounges are resulting in complaints from players who are trying to roleplay, and this isn't acceptable.

Basically, the rule is "100% in character 100% of the time." If your cat is on fire and you have to leave the computer and you can't think of a way to excuse yourself in character, THAT is when you use the OOC command. It has no other purpose. Thanks!

The League shall require a special application (meaning that new players can't simply start as cadets) until such time as it ceases to be half of all players ever.

Sunday, 2 May, at 1700. Be there for another enthralling episode in the continuing saga of Aliens Among Us!

The NPC help files have now been expanded. The old NPC list is gone, replaced with the following files: EAOS NPCs, League NPCs, AEU NPCs, Fringe NPCs, Mutuality and Unreg NPCs, Coalition and Accord NPCs, and Alien NPCs.

Remember! Book Fair tonight (22 April) at the Arboretum, starting around 7 GST!

Good Books! Films! Booky Wook Cookies!

The upgrade was completed successfully. Additional downtime may be required for further optimizations to enhance the Star conquest Experience(tm)

1900 GST. Wear boots.

SCHEDULED DOWNTIME:

This saturday, 20 March 2010, around 9 AM CDT, Squidsoft.net and related services will go down in order to perform server upgrades. We expect the downtime to only take around thirty minutes to an hour, though a longer downtime may be required.

A reminder that Policy 2 is still in effect. One MUST remain 100% in-character on the comms or in a public space. Find out more by reading policy 2.

My friends, the purpose of the newbie channel seems to have become rather clouded of late.

As stated when the newbie channel was first created, its purpose is as follows:

To provide a convenient medium through which new players can have their many questions answered by experienced players who are interested in making the game welcoming to new players, where it is not necessary to remain in-character, and which players who are not interested in helping newbies can simply toggle off.

There are a few questions that are not appropriate for the newbie channel, but these include only requests for information that must be discovered through exploration or through some in-character medium; basically, any information that is difficult to discover by design. Some examples are:

- "Which planet sells a better engine component?"

- "I have to find a person for this quest, where is she?"

- "Which sector should I start from to find alien artifacts?"

Players CAN, however, ask and have answered pretty much any other kind of question, even if it's conceivable that it could be asked and answered in character! Some examples of such questions are:

- "Is it possible to improve my ship's performance?"

- "What do I need to start asteroid hauling?"

- "How do I repair my ship?"

It is not necessary for a question to be 100% out-of-character before it can be asked on the newbie channel. The principle purpose of the newbie channel is to HELP NEWBIES, regardless of the nature of their question, unless it fits the restriction detailed above. If you're not sure whether a question is appropriate, ask yourself: would the average pilot, even one fresh out of the academy, have this knowledge? If it seems likely that they would, then it is entirely appropriate to answer the question.

The only thing that should be on the newbie channel are questions followed by an answer. The question can be phrased ICly or OOCly, it doesn't matter. However, OOC chatter unrelated to newbie help is not appropriate for the newbie channel, nor is it a place to address the hosts.

Of particular importance, the amateur moderation of the newbie channel by other players needs to stop, particularly where these players are enforcing rules that don't exist. A day one new player asking a question only to be shouted down by ten people saying "YOU CAN'T SAY THAT HERE" does NOT send the proper message to new players and will not help our game grow.

One of our previous games with a newbie channel eventually had to implement a mechanic whereby certain player accounts could be banned permanently from using the newbie channel. I trust that Star Conquest has an intelligent and mature set of players and that nothing so heavyhanded will be required here. Let's try harder to be welcoming and helpful to new players and not come down on them so hard for the rules they don't understand yet. We all want to see the game continue to take in new players to become happy and active participants in our roleplaying.

Thanks!

tl;dr: If a newbie has asked a question and you don't intend to provide a helpful answer to it, just don't say anything at all.

Just as (yet another) reminder: People in 2310 are not prone to sudden outbreaks wherein they gaze distantly out into empty space. Unless they're disturbed or something.

The wedding of Emma Calhoun and Lee Hughes will take place in approximately one hour in the Unity Church on Church Street in Manhattan. Please remember to keep extraneous emotes to a minimum. Thank you!

A friendly reminder to players to please CANCEL their assists if the problem is resolved or if they are about to walk away from their computer. By putting in an assist request, you're asking another human being to spend a few minutes of their valuable time working personally with you. Please allow us a bit of consideration and respect, and act accordingly. Thank you!

There will be a Forum this coming Saturday (6th Feb) at 6pm CST to discuss profiles, profile writing and what should be in them. It's the perfect time for cadets to join us, and even players with approved profiles should attend to not only give their two credits but also join in the discussion!

If you hadn't already chosen a birthday, one has been chosen for you. It appears under the INFO command. YOU WERE WARNED.

Star Conquest: Catalyst shall now be known as simply Star Conquest. The "Catalyst" tagline reflected the new iteration of Star Conquest and the beginning of a new plotine, which is all basically long established and superfluous at this point. So we shall simplify!

A policy reminder from your friendly local neighbourhood host staff!

Getting around IC issues (such as signal strength) via OOC methods (such as Skype) is actually metagaming. This is against our policies, more specifically policy 9.

Sincerely,

Some or Possibly Most or All of the Hosts.

On another topic, I'm going to give about another 24 hours for people to choose their own birthdays with the @CHOOSEBIRTHDAY command before I randomly assign them.

A quick clarification of the roleplaying policy: It's considered out of character to transfer possessions, including knowledge (such as frequency numbers), between characters when you reroll. If your current character has no in-character reason to have the same items, knowledge, or friends as your previous character, and usually they don't, then he or she shouldn't have them. This has been clarified under Policy 2: Roleplaying. Thanks!

Official Announcement that Ground Combat is Live

I imagine most everyone is aware already, but just in case, here is official notification that ground combat is back in the game!

Players can purchase and customize battlesuits at their capital planet. They can then gather on an aerial fortress, carried by a mule transport, and search for RATS nests in uncharted space. These nests must be attacked from the inside.

For more information about the ground combat system, type HELP GROUND COMBAT. For in-character information about the new RATS threat, check the message boards under General/General.

Reason for the horrific lag and subsequent lockdown: A new feature caused around 1000 starships to be created. This caused noticable database bloat and some strain on the server. This was pretty much the only way to reasonably deal with it.

Character birthdays are implemented!

If you are an existing character who has never chosen a birthday (as nearly all of you are), you may choose one now by typing @choosebirthday. If your chosen birthday has come and gone since your character was created, you will have the option of advancing your character's age by a year.

And I swear this to you: If everyone starts choosing a birthday that happens next week or even next month, I'm setting your birthday to February 29th and you can suffer 75% fewer birthdays for the rest of your days. Pick a date out of the air, pick something that somehow makes sense for your character, or just choose your real birthday. Don't just pick a date to have a party!

Just as fair warning concerning the rare items some of you are looking for: You're intended to find each of these yourself, and only one each! There are mechanics in place to try to ensure this. These mechanics mean that if you find one of these things, hang onto it. Handing it to someone else will basically screw you over. Have fun!

It's been a while...

STAR CONQUEST STAR FORUM. SATURDAY AT 6 PM GAME TIME (CST). BE THERE OR BE A NON-FAMOUS PERSON.

Forums are out-of-character question and answer sessions with the hosts, and in them the hosts talk about where the game has been and will go, and the future of Squidsoft as a whole.

Dear players:

Recently the level of overall roleplaying quality has been declining. We've noticed several things that appear to contribute to this.

- Many wide-range communications (mainly metafreqs) are out-of-character most or all of the time.

- Perhaps due to the above, many players who should know better seem unaware that the main communicator should be in character at all times (except for the newbie channel, as necessary).

- Rather than actually playing their characters, many players seem to have taken to describing their character's motivations and actions in intricate detail in OOC, third-person form... and then never actually playing out anything that they've described.

- Generally, a ton of people are OOC pretty much 100% of the time and seem to only roleplay as some kind of special occasion.

Star Conquest is definitively roleplay-focused. This is what sets us apart from other similar games. For this reason, we've decided we can't be so lax in maintaining the roleplaying environment. So, you can expect the following changes to take place:

- Use of the OOC command is rate-limited to what should be an acceptable frequency. This command is for occasional asides as necessary, not entire conversations.

- Metafrequency communicators must be 100% in character.

- Any conversation in public rooms must be 100% in character.

Basically, always be in character. This has always been the policy of the game. The only difference is we'll be enforcing it more. While we can work with players and not be hardasses about this, our general policy of forgiveness here was leading to an overall decline in the quality of roleplaying, and we don't want to see this continue.

Those of you who do take care to stay mostly or entirely in character, we do notice and we appreciate it.

The roleplaying policy, Policy 2, has been updated to reflect these new rules.

Thanks for your understanding.

Sincerely,

Most or all of the hosts

Testing has been completed and we'll have the first official run of the new ground combat system in approximately 24 hours. Your alliance should try to get at least one aerial fortress up and running, and make sure you have a battlesuit ready!

P.S. Policy 7 also includes command stacking, particularly when a stack of commands is copied and pasted into the game, since this cannot be differentiated from a macro or alias.

Another Policy 7 Announcement!

This is just another reminder that macros, aliases, scripts, any kind of client-side automation or any rapid sending of multiple lines of input to the game are all expressly forbidden. We have made an effort to design the game so that these are not necessary, and we expect all players (repeat, 100% of all players in the game, regardless of personal circumstances) to play the game with ZERO use of macros, aliases, scripts, and any form of automation.

Just to repeat this one more time, no player should be using anything that: 1) automatically sends input to the game in response to a particular output, 2) sends multiple lines of input to the game with a single command or keystroke, or last but not least 3) automates any task in such a way that your presence at the keyboard is optional.

This is a policy that was in effect when SC: Catalyst opened, and it remains in full effect today.

If any of this is a problem for you, please use the ASSIST command and we will discuss it.

The pervasive use of scripts among certain players is rather disheartening, and we're very rapidly losing patience for it. All users of scripts (yes, we are generally aware of who is doing this) can take this as their final warning.

The Icy event will resume tomorrow! Also around 5pm!

REMINDER: Icy the Snowfish TONIGHT starting in approximately two hours!

IT IS TIME TO PREPARE FOR THE ANNUAL FESTIVE HOLIDAY-RELATED GIFT-TRANSFERRING CELEBRATORY EVENT.

Let me take a moment to explain.

On this day, December the 25th, people in our world ponder the mystery of why gift-giving has become so important on this day above all others, and wonder at the enigma of Icy the Snowfish himself. It is widely believed that Icy the Snowfish has always been, and always will be, and that humans must strive on just one day out of the year to match his limitless generosity.

Competing theories on the origin of the Annual Festive Holiday-Related Gift-Transferring Celebratory Event earn little but scorn, which is as much as such wild hypotheses deserve.

Regardless! Each year, near the end of December, Icy the Snowfish's Holiday Ice Castle o' Wonders thaws, just a little bit, and the great fish of ice himself invites space-going mortals to his den.

Ushered in by Icy's elves, pilots will go before the lord of generosity himself, and speak their heart's greatest desire, pouring out their greed without shame or regret. And, famously, Icy the Snowfish grants all favors.*

Rumblings from Icy's Ice Castle indicate that he will awaken from his long slumber on the evening of the 20th. Icyologists are predicting the great event will occur around 5pm, and will register approximately a 7.2 on the Festivity Scale.

Be there, and learn the true meaning of the Annual Festive Holiday-Related Gift-Transferring Celebratory Event!

*Product enlarged to show detail.

A problem was found in our profile submission system!

If you've submitted a profile in the past six days or so, you should resubmit it. We'll be rejecting the bogus profiles that ended up in the queue, so affected users should receive an email to this effect.

We apologize for the inconvenience!

Additionally, and perhaps important to know, the command to buy a mining license is LICENSE!

Asteroid Mining Licenses!

Asteroid mining centers now grant bronze, silver, and gold licenses at higher levels of industry points. The bronze license is available at 500 points. Each license will grant you access to asteroids with a higher quality of ore, and therefore a better payout.

The purpose of this is to allow asteroid mining to keep pace with other forms of income as players advance, so that the activity remains relevant. We'll be looking at and possibly adjusting balance as players complete the activity.

Bad news:

* We lost everything DB-based after 4 PM CST today due to a server issue. Happy Thanksgiving.

Good news:

* We didn't lose anything else. Happy Thanksgiving!

What if....what if it was all a horrible dream?

No...you've seen things that lesser people wouldn't believe. Marauders on fire off the shoulder of Chetumal, you've watched gravilens lasers glitter in the dark near the third sector gate... The catalyst...it couldn't have been, could it? It was...it was all too real.

Reintroducing...

STAR CONQUEST: CLASSIC (but we changed the recipe to have corn syrup instead of sugar)

squidsoft.net:7888

NOTE: Minimal support will be offered on Star Conquest: Classic. All old players from the date of closing have been kept.

Costume requests will be ENDED FOREVER in about 40 minutes, around which time we will deliver the costumes! MAKE YOUR FINAL REQUESTS NOW.

ATTENTION VASSALS:

Halloween event will now be SUNDAY, 1 NOVEMBER, at 6PM game time. Yes, this is a rescheduling. We apologize for the inconvenience!

However, we're hoping to use this time to add more participants to the event. The celebration will involve a costume contest, but we're not sure the message got out about how to request costumes, so here it is:

To request a costume, go to Dure in Sector 22. There you will find the Bugley Laboratory. Once inside, go into the back room, and SHOUT your request to the Ones Below! You may request one costume and one accessory and they will be delivered, free, shortly before the celebration on Sunday. Be as descriptive as you want!

So, again:

1) Dure, Sector 22, in the Bugley Laboratory, in the back room. SHOUT [thing] to request your costume!

2) Delivery on Sunday, 1 November.

3) Celebration and contest on Sunday at 6PM.

Quick refresher: ICly you most likely don't know about events, so going 'HEY GUYS WHERE IS THE EVENT' is more than slightly OOC! Thanks.

HALLOWEEN FESTIVITIES EVERYONE

Wednesday. 28 October, around 5 or 6pm but depending on individual schedules - TRADESMAN EVENT. Event will be geared toward costumes, party supplies, and other themed things!

Friday, 30 October, 6pm - OFFICIAL INTERNET SPACESHIP GAME HALLOWEEN PARTY. At a location to be announced!

Added CHANGELOG and CHANGELOG NEW commands to help players keep track of changes to the game. WARNING: This will tend to be much spammier than announcements!

If you have a ship in the room o' unclaimed ships (and you have the title) it would be a good idea to assist before Friday.

A little OOC aside: it's not our intention to restrict players from doing beacons while this event is ongoing. You can do beacons without affecting the plot. The thrall invasion a couple of days ago was meant to demonstrate this ICly, but we'll just tell you plainly to clear up any confusion. Have fun!

The event was running longer than we anticipated, so we'll use this point to pause for a while. We'll resume tomorrow evening!

Low-value trade goods are now worth more points than high-value trade goods.

Heavy lasers have been modified so as to hopefully make their usage more attractive.

New Conquest benefit: Top alliances will enjoy accelerated ship construction.

Several weeks ago, physical contact between humanity and the reptilian creatures currently known only as Battle Thralls took place!

Last week, an apparent Thrall diplomat was brought to Known Space, where it demanded to be taken to human leaders. Brought to Resistance HQ, they have had the past seven days to negotiate an agreement between our two species.

What has taken place in the past week? How have the negotiations gone?

What REALLY happened in the Resistance HQ galley, and Why would someone have a chainsaw on board a space station?

Why would fleets of Battle Thralls continually invade our space while negotiations are ongoing?

Did President Warren Garner actually ask out Space Commodore Tashiro Yuki?

Find out the answer to some or none of these, this Saturday the 17th of October.

6pm CST / 7pm EST / Midnight GMT

P.P.S. Completely forgot to mention there's a Conquest help file explaining more of this.

P.S. You'll notice there are already results. That's right, we've been secretly tracking everything you've been doing for the past four days before this was even implemented!

Introducing the CONQUEST OF THE STARS system! Simply put, this is a new system designed to encourage competition among the alliances. Although its initial implementation is small and simple, our aim is for the core Star Conquest game to eventually revolve around this system (hence the lame name).

You can view Conquest results at any time by typing CONQUEST. Conquest results will also always show up in the welcome message when you first connect to the game.

The effects of certain activities and the nature of the benefits for winning will be prone to a lot of rebalancing for a while.

A 'Civilian Pilot Leagues' help file has been created, containing common knowledge about pilot leagues and a pilot's legal relationship with his or her alliance.

Minor flight control change: Stations with multiple docking points will now just say the name of the station, instead of the name of the station and the dock of the station.

Announcing...

NEW FIRMWARE FOR YOUR FLIGHT CONTROL SCANNERS!

You can now TUNE flight control scanners TO either the 'public' scanner or your alliance's scanner. The public scanner is functionally identical to the old behaviour of flight control scanners.

Things should be fine now, though please report any unusual strangeness relating to the third thirty.

Doing some minor restructuring. Things might get weird for a few minutes. PANIC.

Decorations and visible starship abilities should now look somewhat neater in starship descriptions.

Certain starship abilities now show up visibly in starship descriptions. Enjoy!

Owners of carrier-type ships rejoice!

In specific carrier-type ships, you can type in STATUS in the docking bay to view a status report for the ships inside the docking bay.

Also, a very minor change: You can now READ message board readers. Mostly to make things slightly more intuitive for newbies.

Go-bots despair! You now need to manually go places, instead of using go with no arguments.

If there's a go-exit that you can't figure out the name for, REPORT it and we'll look into it.

Squidsoft Donation Drive!

WHY: We need a replacement UPS for the faulty one that was the source of last week's chronic downtime.

WHEN: Now.

HOW: Send a paypal (of any amount) to donations@squidsoft.net

HOW MUCH DO YOU NEED? At the bare minimum, we need around 200 USD, but more will allow us to buy a higher-end UPS.

HOW MUCH SHOULD I SEND? However much you want; every little bit helps.

Note: Donating doesn't confer any tangible benefits to your character, but it does allow us to continue running Star Conquest for your enjoyment and helps us maintain a stable and happy server, as well as any upgrades to the hardware that are needed.

We made a small change to how RATS core rewards are handled. You shouldn't see any visible change on your end, but report any oddities nonetheless.

NEXT PLOT EVENT: SUNDAY, 4 OCTOBER, AT 4PM GAME TIME (5PM EASTERN, 2PM PACIFIC, 10PM GMT)

Costs for repairing a ship's hull will now include a charge for repairing broken failsafes.

NEW FEATURE FILLED WITH NEW: Now at any intersector fund center you can view the exchange rate between your alliance and other alliances in a handy table, including the inverse rate! Enjoy.

SCHEDULED DOWNTIME: Later today (the 26th). Should only last a few minutes.

Good news! The cause for downtime has been discovered!

Bad news! It's from a faulty UPS.

Squidsoft will run sans-UPS for the time being. With any luck, the game will be at least slightly more stable. A new UPS will be purchased and installed once the funds are scraped together.

I've set it up to checkpoint more often while this instability lasts. The server may be significantly more laggy as a result, however.

Probably a long time in coming, but now you can repair things without getting into a menu! Like 'REPAIR TURRET 10' or whatever!

Buy and sell prices will no longer change for marathon trade items for the duration of the event!

L-look at you, hacker. The RATS-core buyers will now take cores from containers, but you must be holding at least one core before they'll start taking them from you, just to make sure that you want to give them your cores.

RATS spawns will show some semi-random variety from now on!

Changed a few things with how red alerts work, mostly to clean up 11 year code and make it strain the server less.

As always, report any weirdness.

Dear players,

During the forum last week, we polled you players about your desired event schedule. We included "24/7" as a comedy option, and as we should perhaps have predicted, most players chose it. Oh, how we laughed.

Then, afterwards, as we were driving back home in the hostmobile, our laughter faded away, and we began to think. Could there be, perhaps, a way that we could hold more frequent events? And we arrived at the conclusion that YES, there was something we could do. We have the technology.

And so we are proud to make an announcement!

OUR DAILY EVENT SCHEDULE BEGAN TONIGHT.

That is to say, we will aim for daily events, and we'll most likely hold them at least most days of the week. Most will be small and repeatable, and will not advance the plot, but they will be something different to do besides the usual grind. We'll call them minievents! The exact schedule will be unpredictable, but most events will occur during our normal peak hours (about 6pm to 11pm game time).

Rest assured that the addition of minievents will not interfere with our schedule for plot events, small or large. This will be an addition, not a replacement.

Enjoy!

With love,

The hosts

P.S. Write back soon!

The impending ship purge is now complete. Thanks for your time and cooperation.

Server has been up for about two hours. Current status: cautious optimism,

WARNING: SC remains unstable due to poor weather conditions for the time being. Downtime may occur. We apologize for the inconvenience!

@searchhelp will now show you which line matched your search at the end of the help file.

Added some enhancements to belt station shift orders. Also fixed a bug where a station left completely idle would not rest the employees.

For greater ease in determining in which cases ships are transferrable, the INFO command now shows the highest point requirements of the hull and installed components.

It's important to note that this information was freely available previously, but it's easier to know now. These point requirements DO NOT include special enhancements to the ship, like the alliance specific upgrades, so being aware of those requirements is up to you.

As always, transferring ships to other players who do not meet the point requirements or belong to other alliances, or who otherwise could not get the same ship and components for themselves, is illegal by Policy 6.

Fixed a bug where navy ships could become stuck for ever and ever, tending to result in large navies of small ships.

The power's unstable at the server's location, access to SC may be somewhat intermittent for a few hours.

Due to popular demand, the amount of time you're allowed to be idle before being booted has been SLIGHTLY EXTENDED. Enjoy doing nothing!

As discussed in the forum, players can now set up automatic insurance deposits!

At any ATM, you can set a percentage of your income to go directly into your insurance fund, from none of it to all of it!

As always, report any oddities.

SQUIDSOFT.NET FORUM!

It's been a few months since we last had one of these, and we've had a lot of changes since then!

Star Conquest and Squidsoft is nothing without its players. As such, we want to hear what you have to say and where you'd like to see changed or implemented, or to simply air out any concerns that you may have and get a response from the staff at the meeting!

LET YOUR VOICE BE HEARD!

SATURDAY, 12 SEPTEMBER. 6PM GAME TIME (7PM EASTERN, 4PM PACIFIC, 12AM GMT)

For those nerdy enough to love charts and graphs among us (you know who you are):

http://squidsoft.net/graphs/plot_all.png

http://squidsoft.net/graphs/plot_24h.png

DIFFICULTY LEVELS ADDED TO BEACON DROPS

When you launch a beacon, you will first be prompted for a signal strength. This directly affects the level of enemy response.

Previous beacon drops were what is now "standard" strength.

The higher difficulties are indeed quite difficult. The last in particular is very much not recommended, unless your crew is very prepared or you would like to lose your ship in a new and interesting fashion. Seriously.

STAR CONQUEST "WELCOME BACK FROM THE LONG WEEKEND" MINIPLOT INTRODUCTORY EVENT!

While the main plotline waits for some building and coding work, we'll be taking a little break from it to introduce something entirely unrelated!

The people living on the fringes of Known Space, the unregistered, have long told horror stories about the strange things to be found in deep space. often driving themselves half-mad with their terror of the unknown. When the Outsiders emerged into the open, it was thought that the old stories had finally been explained.

But not all of them. There are other things said to stalk starships that travel far from friendly ports. Things that swarm and bite, killing warships with a thousand tiny cuts. Each year it is said that these things grow a little more brazen, and drift a little closer to human space. People who have traveled the deep and seen them for themselves say that, someday, these monsters will emerge into the light.

And we may not be able to stop them.

BEGINNING TUESDAY, 8 SEPTEMBER, 6PM GAME TIME (7PM EASTERN, 4PM PACIFIC, 12AM GMT)

EVENT WILL BE REPEATED FOR THOSE WHO CAN'T ATTEND

Changes to ship stores and COMPONENT POINT REQUIREMENTS this morning!

Component points and diplomacy:

* Pilots will require somewhat fewer points to buy components manufactured by their own alliance.

* A similar, lesser discount will be offered to allied pilots.

* Components belonging to an alliance with which relations are neutral will be very slightly harder to get.

* Components belonging to an alliance which you only have a treaty with, or that you are at war with, will be significantly harder to get.

* For a non-aggression pact, or for defunct manufacturers like the Coalition, point requirements are unchanged.

Ship stores:

* Components are now sorted by type and point requirement.

* The POINTS command is no more! Point requirement information will appear under INFO.

* Information about starships will now appear under INFO even when the ship does not have a market description.

Changes to the help system this morning:

Cadet-level and new players will be redirected to the HELP NEW file when they type just HELP. Players may type HELP INDEX at any time to see all help files.

Help files added:

New to the Game

Salvaging

Decoy Beacons

Teslaworld (mainly just moved from the old help database)

Mail delivery has been made more worthwhile for new players, both in points and cash. The change to point values is retroactive. Enjoy!

We've completed a change to how starship component information is stored. Please report any oddities.

Brand new players can now type CREATE at the game's login screen in order to create a new account, without having to visit the account maintenance website.

You can now also input the email verification code by logging into your account right here on SC.

This doesn't affect any of you in the least, but, uh, tell your friends?

Pilots beware!

You can no longer dock or land right after getting into combat!

CHANGES TO THE WEB PORTAL!

First of all, the address again if anyone missed it: http://moo.squidsoft.net:7779/

This will be SC's main official website.

We've added new links to in-character information in what might be an easier interface: the alliance reports and the news aggregator headlines. The 'Who's Playing' link has been renamed to 'Active Pilots' and made IC, as well.

Also planned: letting you log in with your squidsoft.net account info and browse your ships, components, and other information about your character.

Anyone have any suggestions for things that would be cool/useful? Use the REPORT command!

A small REFRESHER for background information on SC!

* Most people don't speak English ICly.

* Esperanto is the primary language, used in say and over the comms and the like.

Marshals should show up more often again in beacon drops, and Ninlils should be a bit more common.

Announcements on the website now list concrete dates as well as telling you how long ago it was since that announcement.

Tips for current higher-point players and belt management, since this situation won't recur:

* To get up to speed fast, you want to hire two employees immediately.

* Buy a few parts too, but not too many because it'll take a little while before you have enough employees to run them.

* For your first shift orders, you'll only be able to tell one employee to operate your one part twice. But things will get better soon!

INTRODUCING ASTEROID BELT MANAGEMENT!

This is a new activity that will basically allow you to passively earn industry points on a daily basis. This will only be a fraction of your daily cap increase, but it's better than nothing!

We have two purposes here:

1) Allow players to progress without constant grinding (though, obviously, still much more slowly if they don't grind).

2) Make player age a greater component of their general level of advancement.

For more information, see Arty's post in General/General, as well as the Asteroid Belt Management help file.

As always, report any oddities or apparent imbalances!

If you're on Facebook, join the Squidsoft.net group! You can, uh, talk about Squidsoft.net games and stuff! http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/group.php?gid=69860828578

Two quick notes about good roleplaying practices in SC!

1) If you're making in-character plans concerning yourself and some friends, particularly about something the hosts have set up, it's best if you discuss these plans WITHIN THE GAME. This gives us advance notice of your plans and helps us to make them happen. If you're discussing in-character plans outside of the game, then you're going to be blindsiding us when you finally bring your plans into the open, which means they probably won't happen. The choice is always yours, and the privacy policy still applies, but this is something to keep in mind. We can't prepare for surprises.

2) Medical technology in the Star Conquest world is quite advanced! Also, starship pilots are not unusually prone to comas. These two things combined mean that extended sleeping or comas are quite rare! So, if you're leaving SC for a day and plan to come back tomorrow, saying you're going to sleep is fine. However, please, enough with the "I was in a coma" or "I was asleep for two weeks." Please either invent some other, in-character reason you weren't in space for that length of time, or just don't comment on it. Thanks!

STAR CONQUEST: CATALYST MAJOR EVENT

Contact has been made with the Outsider Battle Thralls! Although most of the Thralls are still out for blood, a minority of them seem to desire peaceful contact with humanity. With translation devices newly installed on human vessels, a few human and Thrall ships exchanged halting sentences and pictograms and managed to achieve a level of mutual understanding.

In the meantime, the peace of the Accord may be threatened before it has barely even begun. Concerns are rising over the Outsider/human border, and there are rumors of some force at work attempting to turn the pilot leagues to its own ends. Will the Outsiders return to human space in force? What conspiracies may be underfoot at home? Is the Thrall peace effort just an elaborate ambush? Does President Charisse Robinson really do it with chicks?

FIND OUT NEXT TIME

ON STAR CONQUEST: CATALYST

SATURDAY, 29 AUGUST, 6PM GAME TIME (7PM EASTERN, 4PM PACIFIC, 12AM GMT)

We've put together a new website (although it still appears to be from the mid-90s) all served directly by the game through the web portal. This allows us to integrate the website closely with the game, and we'll be adding more features in this vein if our ambition is sustained!

http://squidsoft.net:7779/

If you're curious, you may want to check out the About page, which includes for perhaps the first time ever a clear statement of SC's theme, plus it includes a newly rewritten and expanded timeline that explains many elements of SC's theme. Enjoy!

Some ships have had their max charge rating modified. DO NOT WORRY, FOR THIS IS INTENTIONAL!

This doesn't matter to any of you currently connected, but I did it and that means I am going to announce it. INTRODUCING HELPFUL HELPER NEWBIE DRONES! These will describe the intricacies of various important rooms to new players, as well as guide them step-by-step through their first salvaging trip. The purpose is to provide an alternative to wading through help files and going through the tutorial (which we find a lot of new players skip just prior to complaining about not knowing what to do) and let new players jump right into making progress without feeling lost. Enjoy! P.S. You can't actually enjoy these, they're for newbies.

'Average damage' (in both the AVG command and in scans) should much more accurately reflect how damaged the ship really is now.

For all of you chemistry nerds, we've added STARSHIP PLAQUES for you to craft! (as well as like twenty other things)

Starship plaques are starship decorations, but they can also be bolted inside if you wish. If you're feeling ambitious, you can ETCH the plaques to personalize them.

After some additions to the properties of weapons, components should again be working properly. If you notice any strange output, please send a report. Odd things might include, for instance, the number 12 where something used to say 'laser.' Or errors!

Chemistry's getting a bit more love as some more recipes have changed slightly, and some new recipes have been added. More recipes for the chemistry toolset are on the way in the near future.

Certain ships were a bit wonky with cargo holds, so you may have gained EXACTLY ONE CARGO UNIT. Enjoy.

Space markets now respond to the use of @linelen

A small change to the space markets, possibly in a long string of changes to the space market: The item listing within categories is now sorted alphabetically, to help you find the best deals.

Renaming ships should now be much, much cheaper in most cases.

Some more changes were made to the crafting system. Enjoy.

STAR CONQUEST: CATALYST MAJOR EVENT

A genius has returned! With Peter Fienstein's return comes much hope for the future, not least because he was able to instantly identify the devices the Outsider Battle Thralls left for humans to find. They are learning computers keyed to linguistics, and with them, humans and Thralls may be able to open a dialogue.

Peter Fienstein did not come home alone. During his experiment in hyperspatial space, he apparently encountered a mysterious creature native to the environment, which he calls Euclid. Humans, including Fienstein himself, have yet to completely comprehend the true nature of this being. No one is sure of its intentions. So far, the vast majority of humans refuse to consider the fact that it actually even exists. But now that it has entered human spacetime, it seems unlikely to leave.

The IFS, hostile Battle Thralls, and the Outsiders themselves have all stepped up their number of patrols and attacks. Humanity needs allies, and the motives of these communicative Thralls and Euclid are mysterious at best. Who, if anyone, will agree to stand with humanity as part of the Accord? Will the Accord's grand quest to unite friendly species against the Outsiders end before it begins?

FIND OUT NEXT TIME

ON STAR CONQUEST: CATALYST

SATURDAY, 15 AUGUST, 6PM GAME TIME (7PM EASTERN, 4PM PACIFIC, 12AM GMT)

Adding new functionality to the helpfile system!

If you ask for help on a nonexistent help file, it'll ask you if you want to search the help system for it. If you say yes, then the MAGIC happens.

You can also access this new functionality with @SEARCHHELP.

Trade routes!

I've grown tired of complaints and seeing other players harassed about using EVERYONE'S FAVORITE ROUTE (which is kind of silly, by the way, unless you're RPing someone kind of irrational; nobody owns any trade route). To alleviate this, a second, somewhat equivalent route has been added. It will probably be hard to find. Enjoy!

You may have noticed a small change in your ship name! (Especially if you're Mutuality) DO NOT PANIC. THIS IS INTENTIONAL.

Knocking on ships has been fixed. Hopefully.

Attention Cadets: Introducing PROMPTED PROFILES!

For those who are new to writing profiles or having trouble knowing what to write and what to avoid writing, we now have a series of prompts (for standard profiles only) that you may choose to use.

You should still try to choose a unique character concept on your own, but the prompts will help you keep track of your character's general circumstances and break things down into smaller, easier pieces.

As before, when you want to write your profile, just type the PROFILE command. You will be asked if you want to use the prompts.

Good luck!

Maps and minimaps can now be coloured with COLOUR-O.

Also, released two new toolsets, around the 250-300 industry point range, as well as some new blueprints. Enjoy.

Made nysteel thread more sane in material cost, since after doing some number crunching, certain items would take thousands upon thousands of materials to make.

Changed a bit of silliness in the bounty code.

For all you bounty hunters! A SLIGHT BALANCE CHANGE!

For repeat offenders, the rewards have been increased!

Attention shoppers: We've been making an increasing effort lately to stage minievents and allow players to roleplay their characters in special ways. Since we'd like to potentially include every interested player in this, we're formalizing this aspect of the game in a new policy. Type POLICY 14 to see details about this. This policy will probably be quite subject to change for a little while.

In light of the previous announcement, the 'rogue' status has been added, to chill out with the myriad of other who tags.

Like ace and veteran, this is given through IC means or via special application. However, this is a negative tag. It penalizes you, and effectively is the 'anti-ace'. You're distrusted by your own alliance, and likely everyone else. People in your alliance 'lose' the paperwork for trivial things all the time, and it's probably intentional. If you go too hard against the grain of your alliance in a dangerous enough way, you will most likely attain this status. Much like in action movies, it says that you're a loose cannon, and not in a good way. You're a bad person, and if you keep at it, you'll probably be asked to turn in your badge and gun. Or license and key, I'm not sure which anymore.

Added ace and rogue perks and penalties, respectively.

Added a status tag legend to @who/@users to explain all of those funky [c]s and [a]s beside people's names. You can turn it off with GEN-O.

Everyone who participated in the event last week got a little point bump.

The combat energy grid and battery changes have been implemented. Comments, suggestions, and so on should be posted to OOC/Messages to the Staff or REPORTed.

@tesla now shows tesla explorers. And people opted out of the tops listings shouldn't be able to see it anymore.

The minimap should now work properly with peer.

Made the minimap slightly more useful by increasing its size somewhat. Should still be okay on smaller screens. If this causes any problems, let us know.

Minimap sorta thing implemented. Off by default, you can turn it on with GEN-O. It may be a bit flakey at the moment, and it works off of @linelen. Post any questions/comments/suggestions to OOC/MttS.

Players who have opted out of the tops boards shouldn't take up a place in the INFO ranking or be able to see @tops-like boards.

Thanks for playing the 'OH GOD WHAT WILL THAT SHIP BE CALLED NEXT' game. Ship renamers should now work properly!

Updated the NPCs help file!

Newsfeed aggregators are now available at any reputable comm store! These show headlines from minor news sources and is more related to mundane things, as opposed to the ship-based news system.

Pilot lounges should now have newsfeeds.

After careful consideration, we've reduced the cost of AEU's Heavy Defense Vessel.

Gunning in multiple WRs should no longer be possible.

The AEU advanced gunship has been made a bit easier to find. Happy hunting!

Logging in should be a bit faster now.

Policy 4 states that it is against policy to initiate conflict against a cadet, however it is not against policy to retaliate in an appropriate manner, without escalating the conflict.

Fixed a bug in the League Prime Defense Cruiser.

A bit of clarification for the new newsfeed system: If you're subscribed to the default newsfeeds, you do not need to take any action. You're already subscribed.

The default newsfeeds are: Intersector News Corporation - Edition (for interalliance) or DeMargas Free Press News (for Mutuality)

A small change to garages: Garages now transport to more than just the 'Alpha' dock of a station.

Something that was supposed to be implemented in ship conversion/hybridization stores but wasn't is now implemented.

UPCOMING EVENT SCHEDULE

* Friday, 26 June, 6PM game time (7PM eastern, 4PM pacific):

The Resistance has taken James Korie's words to heart: It is time for humanity to take a greater role in Galactic affairs. The AEU, League, and Fringe have tentatively agreed to the Resistance's proposal to create a new Coalition and seek new allies among the stars. But the Mutuality is holding out, and the EAOS remains as secretive as ever. Join us for this event to see what happens next!

* Saturday, 27 June, 6PM game time (7PM eastern, 4PM pacific):

Wedding of Miah Agnello and Nissi Valdaire. Though player-initiated, this event has staff involvement. If you received an invitation on 21 June (or if you joined the game after that date), you are welcome to attend.

After observing the earn rate of artifacts for a few days, we've decided to increase their value to make the activity's income more in line with other 300-point activities.

Also, with the announcement of socialization perks, most places where socialization should logically take place (that is, not landing pads, but stuff like bars and pilot lounges) should now be socialization areas. Capital planets and stations are getting, or already have, pilot lounges nearby (as in, connected to that room)

A few cosmetic changes to point center reports.

* If you don't have any unauthorized starship combat points, it just reports as 'Combat Score'

* If you don't have any of a certain point category (aside from aggregate score), it won't show up.

Some minor cosmetic changes to @tops et al, to reflect the transition away from 'overall' points. Also, @tops itself is less overwhelming, but you can find the same information now under @tops-detailed (or just @tops-d).

A new ship command has been added: RUNDOWN, available in all starmap-capable rooms, giving the full coordinate rundown normally available only as part of the starmap in weapon rooms. Intended to be an alternative to viewing the starmap.

Explorers: The MILEAGE command has been added to ship control rooms. It will show you how many lightyears you have traveled, which will often (but not always) be your distance from charted space.

Type MILEAGE RESET to zero out the meter.

OH NO: RESUMING EVENT SCHEDULE

Join us on Saturday, 20 June, at 6PM game time (7PM eastern, 4PM pacific) for SC's next scheduled event!

Today's changes:

* Deep space exploration is now an available activity. Check Corin Shea's post in General/General for details.

* Exploration points added.

* Starship augmentation stores now have a POINTS command.

Reason for the recent downtime:

Power outage. Up to one hour of stuff may have been lost!

Recent Additions and Changes

* The Teslaworld exploring activity is now available.

* Many changes to point balance and changes to the cap system.

Please check OOC/Announcements on your in-game message board reader for details on both of these.

In a similar vein to unauthorized combat points, there are now unauthorized overall points. In most cases, you'll never get them, but in a handful of cases, such as the point gain bug a few days ago, or if your cap somehow fluctuates and you find yourself above your cap, you'll only have the points counted up to your cap. They're not gone, but they won't count until your cap increases to that point.

Additionally, you can check your unauthorized points at any reputable point center near you.

Combat score calculation has been changed slightly!

There's now 'Unauthorized' and 'Authorized' combat points. For upgrading, @tops, and so on, only authorized points will count. However, as your cap raises, the authorized points will gradually raise to your unauthorized point level.

The implementation of the tattoos provided by the tradesman last night bothered me, so they have been converted into a new tattoo system similar to body paint. This means the tattoos will no longer appear if covered by clothing. This will also allow us to implement tattoo parlors at some point! YAY.

Pretty huge bug fix: Some players were allowed to gain points past their cap. This has been fixed.

A little change to ship AI:

* Disarmed ships won't lock anymore.

Report any oddity, as always.

A condensed version of some recent changes:

* The value of repair points has been slightly increased, since the conditions for gaining them are so strict. This hasn't produced much change in anyone's combat points, but it'll add up for people who engineer a lot.

* A small change to the beacon drop algorithm has slightly (or significantly, depending on the situation) increased the difficulty of beacon drops.

* Certain ships that have no business (either for IC reasons or for game balance reasons) having a FTL drive no longer have FTL drives.

* Mutuality ships now have special internal descriptions, to represent their stylization more completely.

* Some changes were made to the alert system.

* Failsafes are now coloured similarly to the appropriate damage level.

* Failsafe algorithm changed slightly. Shouldn't affect player ships much, if at all.

* Simulator ships now have symbols and colours on the starmap.

As always, report any weirdness.

New object matching functionality!

In addition to other, third, etc., you can now type MY whatever. This will match only objects that are yours: things that you bought or last had possession of.

Tracking of who last had possession of an object has just been added, and may therefore be unreliable for older items until they've been held by you.

Quick reminder that players are to REPORT any ways in which any type of point can be farmed (as in, when you can gain basically as many as you want, beyond any reasonable expectation), rather than quietly exploit them. This includes things like weapon hits, which will now be capped to a certain amount depending on enemy ship size. Thanks!

A few changes to beacon drops and combat points:

* Fixed an exploit where ships could get credited for beacon drops without fighting.

* Fixed an exploit where players could farm combat points by leaving beacon drops incomplete.

* Removed evasion points for any ship where the control room has weaponry (fighters and other one-person ships, plus corvettes) as the combined point gain proved excessive. Evasion points work as before in larger ships.

* Changed beacon drop cap interval from 24 hours to 22 hours, to account for battle time. This means you can drop a new beacon once one of your previous drops is 22 hours old. You can check this with the INFO command.

POLICY UPDATE

Policy 6

Workarounds of Game Limitations

This paragraph has been added to the policy:

"We also restrict the operation of warships to members of their controlling alliance who have the correct amount of points. Currently this is a hardcoded restriction, as well as an in-character verification when you seek launch clearance. Attempting to circumvent this would fall under this policy."

This means that when you attempt to launch any warship (defined by its number of turrets and launchers), a verification will be run, checking to make sure that an alliance member with the correct overall and combat points is awake aboard the ship. If not, launch clearance will be denied.

We are making this a hardcoded restriction because we noticed players using ships they cannot buy, because they do not have the points and/or it belongs to another alliance entirely, even when the owner isn't even awake. This runs against the spirit of Policy 6, and we hope this is now more clear.

Ships like transports and asteroid haulers are unaffected by this change, and as a matter of policy we don't really care if industrial ships like these are shared.

Policy 7

Macros & Scripting

This isn't so much an update as a reminder: Macros and aliases are considered automation and are NOT allowed, particularly if you are using them in the process of gaining income or any type of points. Using these gives you an unfair advantage over other players.

For further clarity, the INFO command now includes: 1) Your last mining site completion times, 2) Your last beacon drop times, and while I was at it, 3) The worth of your starships.

Beacon drops: Corin hinted at it ICly, but just to clarify, beacon drops (or at least credit for them) is capped at two in 24 hours, to keep combat point gain somewhat rate-limited.

Tesla salvaging monetary reward has been slightly increased. Point reward remains unchanged for now.

Until we get a new help file up for Teslaworld, you can read OLDHELP TESLA for mostly current information.

The Fringe is now going on the special application list temporarily. This means that players cannot start as cadets in this alliance, but they can join it if they first submit an acceptable profile. If a new player wishes to start as a cadet, they must join the AEU (specializes in lasers and speed) or the League (specializes in cargo and armor, and now featuring a new upgrade applicable to all League ships). This does not affect existing players. Fringe will leave special app status once alliance populations are more equal.

Oh, and your previous frequencies are labeled 'Default.' You can change this by removing and re-adding them.

Transmitters have been altered!

TUNE TRANSMITTER now sets up frequencies similarly to before, with the addition of custom labels.

TRANSMIT now sends a message with your transmitter.

The USE command is no more.

We will soon be releasing craftable objects that expand transmitters to multiple frequencies.

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT:

AEU is spelled 'A E U'

EAOS is spelled 'E A O S'

ROID DOGS is spelled 'R O I D D O G S'

In light of recent events, we have decided to lower the successful kill rate of a 'roid dog to 95%. However, they are still to be regarded ICly as nature's perfect killing machine.

We are now compiling suggestions/advice for new help files. Help us figure out where the game is confusing, particularly if you're new! Type SUGGEST-HELP to add your suggestion!

A few changes related to asteroid mining:

* You may now only complete two sites within a 24 hour period.

* Asteroid mining site payouts increased significantly.

* Roid dogs now permakill your character.

IMPORTANT NOTICE:

ALL EVENTS CANCELLED FOREVER.

UNTIL SATURDAY, 25 APRIL, 3PM GAME TIME, THE DATE OF OUR NEXT EVENT! (4PM EASTERN, 1PM PACIFIC)

Players who aren't you and are incommunicado generally won't show up on @WHO anymore.

Reason why server went down last night:

Power was out for 8 hours

Reason why server just went down again:

Power went out again.

Apologies for the downtime last night. Still finding out what happened. It appears we lost all data since the last checkpoint, so recent progress might be erased, but this should only be the last 15-20 minutes or so before the downtime. If you have lost anything verifiable as a result of the downtime, besides that last 20 minutes, please ASSIST.

You may find that you have much fewer combat points than expected. DON'T PANIC! This is normal. Ground combat points have been seperated out into a newer and creamer category!

ATTENTION! Given the extreme inconvenience of the Hudson River Ferry, we've implemented a subway system in Manhattan. At the moment, it only transports you between the Spaceport and Battery Park, but it will be expanding soon. Enjoy the enhanced convenience! (*Remember to bring League credits.)

New ground mission command: SQUAD to see the status of everyone on the ground. Also, you can SAY anywhere and everyone will still hear you regardless of where they are. This is called squad communication!

Mule transports are now available! This is the ship required to transport an aerial fortress.

You can now assist to be removed from the @tops listing, if you so desire.

A reminder again that the ASSIST command is only for serious problems that need our urgent attention, or for other personal one-on-one assistance. If you encounter a bug or typo which is less than a priority, the REPORT command is appropriate. We have a lot of things going on and we have to prioritize, so we're asking that you help us with this by not urgently requesting assistance about things that really aren't serious. Thanks.

Standard torps are cheaper now. We found some behind the couch.

Oh yeah. Just in case anyone forgot, there are multiple channels for each alliance's metachannel comms! For example, channel 3 is for trading!

As announced in-character during the earlier event with Corin Shea, our crafting system is going live.

Stores have just been placed on each capital planet/station and the help file is up. Type HELP CRAFTING for more information.

NOTE: If you really want to get started immediately, be aware that the Sonic Tech and Hand Weaponry licenses currently do not have the necessary supplies available anywhere. However, this should change within a couple of days, so go ahead and buy those licenses if you want to make stun weaponry eventually.

This system has an entry barrier of 20 points.

The newbie comm channel is now live!

Type TR NEW to speak on it.

Out-of-character speech IS ALLOWED on the newbie channel. However, it is not to be used for OOC chatter. The only thing on this channel will be newbie questions and answers.

FLASH FACT: Outsider battle thralls ARE NOT Outsiders. At all.

The Recent Events page has been updated, and now has brief summaries of all major events from the opening night event to now: http://moo.squidsoft.net:7779/recentevents

Debris changes: Debris is now worth a bit more. Hooray!

Starship bounty fixes/changes: Hits against an enemy starship now count equally for everyone crewing aboard the attacking ship. Except for the killing shot, which is still special! Also bounty payouts have been increased across the board.

BOARD READERS BOARD READERS BOARD READERS

Introducing 'HELP COMMAND' for all your starship command needs! Or most of them at least. Also available through the web portal at http://moo.squidsoft.net:7779/help?Starship_Command_Reference

Starship bounty rewards have been reworked!

1) First of all, bounty wasn't being awarded for ship kills at all a lot of the time. This has been fixed!

2) Now everyone who contributes to the destruction of an enemy ship gets a piece of the bounty, in proportion to how much they contributed.

3) The crew of the ship that lands the killing shot each get a bigger piece of the bounty, with the largest bonus going to the person who actually made the kill.

As always, bounty is actually awarded when you land at an alliance-controlled port.

Introducing Star Conquest's Recent Events web page!

http://moo.squidsoft.net:7779/recentevents

The page currently covers only the beta week and opening night event. It will be updated with additional recent happenings shortly!

Introducing TACTICAL COMMUNICATIONS.

Here's how it works!

General communications: suitable for transmissions like "Where can I find a shop that sells a single fingerless glove which is tight but not too tight?" and "I have reflected long on the fact that you believe me to be a moron and after painstaking self-reflection I have come to believe that YOU in fact are the moron."

Tactical communications: suitable for transmissions such as "OH MY GOD OUTSIDERS EVERYWHERE KILLING EVERYONE ALL DEAD WHO AM I EVEN TALKING TO" and... well that's about it really. Basically this channel is all business, so that ideally people could turn off the general channel and still be kept informed about exciting things happening.

These rules won't be staff-enforced but I suspect a lot of you players will tend to enforce it yourselves!

Probably everyone has forgotten this command, but you may type GEN COMM to toggle the general channel off and on. Similarly, TAC COMM has been added.

Attention, cadets! If you are having trouble writing your profile application, please check the Squidsoft Community LiveJournal here: http://community.livejournal.com/squidsoft for posts on what to do and what not to do.

Worried about your profile? Worry no more! Use the PROFILE command to see if you're in the queue. If you are, please don't assist about it, we'll get to you! If you aren't, write a profile to get in it!

Star Conquest's unarmed combat system is now in effect. This is a way to grapple, disarm, and cause (usually) minor injuries to opponents.

The PUNCH, KICK, and TACKLE commands are now part of this combat system.