As an additional clarification: nothing will happen on trips until a new policy is posted.
Announced at Sat Jul 6 22:57:49 2024 UTC (7 months, 4 days, 2 minutes, and 58 seconds ago)Policy 3 was written a while ago and it's now 2023, so just to be perfectly clear, "gender critical" ideology, biological essentialism, and similar justifications for intolerance DO fall under Policy 3, will be considered scrutiny of gender identity, and will not be welcome here. Please make a note of it, and thank you!
Announced at Wed Aug 2 18:41:21 2023 UTC (1 year, 6 months, 9 days, 4 hours, 19 minutes, and 26 seconds ago)While the donation reward program is temporarily suspended, those who have a pending support ticket regarding donation items have been credited with one request and those tickets have been closed. Please use the @DONOR command to make your request, following the usual guidelines for tradesman items. If you have any questions, please submit a new ticket. Thank you!
Announced at Thu Dec 30 21:52:10 2021 UTC (3 years, 1 month, 11 days, 1 hour, 8 minutes, and 37 seconds ago)We hope everyone had an excellent Christmas! We are running a bit behind (what else is new?) but diligently working through Icy's list. We will plan on delivering during a little New Year/Christmas celebration. If you can't make it, your gift will be mailed to you. If you have any sudden post-Christmas Icy wishes, please get them in tonight. Thank you!
Announced at Sun Dec 26 19:28:52 2021 UTC (3 years, 1 month, 15 days, 3 hours, 31 minutes, and 55 seconds ago)If you're using a screen reader and can't tell what you've achieved, type FORMAT-O and turn on option #6.
Announced at Tue Sep 15 01:28:40 2020 UTC (4 years, 4 months, 25 days, 21 hours, 32 minutes, and 7 seconds ago)New OOC message boards have been added for discussing Signal Nine, if anyone should so wish.
Announced at Sat Jul 25 05:40:11 2020 UTC (4 years, 6 months, 16 days, 17 hours, 20 minutes, and 36 seconds ago)The first Signal Nine dev diary has been posted, covering our city simulation and the background NPCs you'll encounter! You can read it at https://web.squidsoft.net
Announced at Sat Jul 25 00:47:40 2020 UTC (4 years, 6 months, 16 days, 22 hours, 13 minutes, and 7 seconds ago)The Signal Nine Q&A is here! We're managing to survive the real world's headlong rush toward becoming the dystopia we're attempting to depict and we hope all of you are well also. As we dust ourselves off, it's past time to answer your questions and tell you a little more about the new text-based roleplaying game we're developing. This post is a big one, and we hope you enjoy it!
https://web.squidsoft.net/2020/06/signal-nine-dev-qa/
Announced at Mon Jun 8 00:22:09 2020 UTC (4 years, 8 months, 2 days, 22 hours, 38 minutes, and 38 seconds ago)As part of the server migration, the link to the Squidsoft account servicing website will now be:
http://account.squidsoft.net/
Please make a note of it.
Announced at Sat May 30 05:54:07 2020 UTC (4 years, 8 months, 11 days, 17 hours, 6 minutes, and 40 seconds ago)As you might know, Signal Nine is our upcoming cyberpunk text-based roleplaying game. Is there anything you want to know about it? Use the @S9QA command to submit your questions for an upcoming Q&A! If this is the first you've heard of it, read its introductory post here: http://web.squidsoft.net/2019/10/announcing-signal-nine/
Announced at Tue Jan 14 04:39:28 2020 UTC (5 years, 25 days, 18 hours, 21 minutes, and 19 seconds ago)Icymas is on! If you haven't heard, Icy the Snowfish's Holiday Ice Castle o' Wonders is open, with a holiday party scheduled for the 24th around midnight! Please try to make your holiday wishes known before the 24th!
Announced at Sun Dec 22 04:04:47 2019 UTC (5 years, 1 month, 20 days, 18 hours, and 56 minutes ago)To clarify about Fashion Fair cosmetics products, they contain ten times the number of uses as their storebought equivalents.
Announced at Sat May 11 15:39:53 2019 UTC (5 years, 9 months, 7 hours, 20 minutes, and 54 seconds ago)Greetings! We hope everyone has been enjoying coming up with their Fashion Fair requests for this year!
A few words about some things we're running into:
- Please mail all of the tokens you intend to spend in one package, and make your full request in one letter. Fulfilling any of your requests permanently removes your name from our automatic to-do list, and so separate packages mailed at different times may result in a request being accidentally overlooked.
- While one or two might have snuck by over the years, our standard is for tattoos to be a single sentence. They cannot be a whole paragraph or they would completely overwhelm your character's description, especially if you have more than one someday! Longer tattoos will be edited down while retaining as much detail as we can reasonably work in.
- "Plastic surgery" refers to changing or customizing any single description choice. Your character description must still fit the basic template.
- The item count is nearing fifty just for the first twelve customers! That's great, but it's also a lot of work! While we're happy to give every request our personal attention, please keep in mind that the more specific requests tend to be, the easier it is for us to do events like this.
- To that end, if you can write well, feel free to give us your own object names and descriptions! Nothing makes us happier than a request that only involves some copying and pasting, and there's no better way to make sure you end up with something you really like. But please spellcheck them first, and thank you!
The deadline for requests is midnight on Saturday (or, if you prefer, 2359 on Friday), and unless there are any very last minute requests, they'll all be sent out at that time. We will send another reminder when 24 hours remain.
Announced at Wed May 8 17:47:06 2019 UTC (5 years, 9 months, 3 days, 5 hours, 13 minutes, and 41 seconds ago)Reminder that connectivity will be impacted for a while on Monday the 18th during the US morning. The process will likely take a few hours, and we'll keep you posted with any updates on our twitter at @SquidsoftNet.
Announced at Sun Feb 17 21:11:17 2019 UTC (5 years, 11 months, 22 days, 1 hour, 49 minutes, and 30 seconds ago)There will be maintenance on the server's connection on Monday the 18th. You will lose connectivity for at least a few hours. We'll keep you posted with any updates on our twitter!
Announced at Sat Feb 9 23:18:42 2019 UTC (5 years, 11 months, 29 days, 23 hours, 42 minutes, and 5 seconds ago)Twenty years ago today, Star Conquest was first started. Happy Development Initialization Day to Star Conquest. Next year, it's going to die of alcohol poisoning on its next Development Initialization Day.
Announced at Fri Oct 12 20:54:41 2018 UTC (6 years, 3 months, 30 days, 2 hours, 6 minutes, and 6 seconds ago)A Question Was Asked / A Decision Made In Peace / A New Name Given
Announced at Fri Jun 8 18:48:25 2018 UTC (6 years, 8 months, 3 days, 4 hours, 12 minutes, and 22 seconds ago)There now might be a HELP CITIZENSHIP.
Announced at Sat Apr 28 15:04:52 2018 UTC (6 years, 9 months, 13 days, 7 hours, 55 minutes, and 55 seconds ago)In an attempt to fix minor inconsistencies, several help files have been changed. HELP LEAGUE POLITICS, HELP AEU POLITICS, and HELP FRINGE POLITICS have all been edited slightly, with HELP LEAGUE PARTIES, HELP AEU PARTIES, and HELP FRINGE PARTIES adding back a list of the various political entities in those alliances. HELP ALLIANCE GOVERNMENTS has been removed, and in its place are HELP LEAGUE GOVERNMENT, HELP AEU GOVERNMENT, HELP FRINGE GOVERNMENT, HELP EAOS GOVERNMENT, and HELP MUTUALITY GOVERNMENT. If anything still remains inconsistent, appears missing, or does not make sense relating to alliance governments, political parties, or the various forms of parliament, please let us know.
Announced at Fri Apr 13 19:36:47 2018 UTC (6 years, 9 months, 28 days, 3 hours, and 24 minutes ago)Don't forget that Fashion Fair 2318 is currently ongoing! Check the recent entertainment headline or ask a knowledgeable friend for where you can find the details! We're planning to try to get everything out by the weekend, so if you haven't submitted your request yet, please do so within the next couple of days. Thanks!
Announced at Wed Jan 10 02:44:44 2018 UTC (7 years, 1 month, 20 hours, 16 minutes, and 3 seconds ago)Merry Annual Festive Holiday-Related Gift-Transferring Celebratory Event!
This year, like last year, we hosts are busy in all sorts of ways! However, we're going to try to make things go a little smoother this time so we can make sure everyone gets a gift!
First of all, please make your holiday wish at Icy's station at any time within the next few days. We will aim for having a proper Icy visitation and celebration a little closer to the holiday!
Please try to make your holiday wishes modest ones. We would appreciate wishes for things which are relatively easy to make, like variations on things that already exist in some form. Examples: clothing, jewelry, felo games, action figures, temporary tattoos, actual tattoos, custom hair styles, small "plastic surgery" type tweaks, custom communicators, dispensers with a sensibly modest selection, or perhaps you'd just like a nice cactus. Please have all the details for your holiday wish prepared. If you think your first wish might be too much, please include a more modest second choice. Use the WISH command repeatedly to add additional lines of text!
Thank you!
Announced at Mon Dec 18 02:28:38 2017 UTC (7 years, 1 month, 23 days, 20 hours, 32 minutes, and 9 seconds ago)Just kidding, it's there now.
Announced at Thu Aug 10 19:09:17 2017 UTC (7 years, 6 months, 3 hours, 51 minutes, and 30 seconds ago)There will be no FRINGE POLITICS help file, since it is a dictatorship and has no political parties.
Announced at Thu Aug 10 19:09:10 2017 UTC (7 years, 6 months, 3 hours, 51 minutes, and 37 seconds ago)There is now an AEU POLITICS help file.
Announced at Thu Aug 10 19:07:53 2017 UTC (7 years, 6 months, 3 hours, 52 minutes, and 54 seconds ago)There is now a LEAGUE POLITICS help file.
Announced at Thu Aug 10 19:06:47 2017 UTC (7 years, 6 months, 3 hours, and 54 minutes ago)HELP LEAGUE PLANETS now exists as well. Sorry Fringers, yours is going to take a while.
Announced at Sat Jul 29 23:09:03 2017 UTC (7 years, 6 months, 11 days, 23 hours, 51 minutes, and 44 seconds ago)HELP AEU PLANETS now exists. Ulias made me do it.
Announced at Sat Jul 29 22:58:04 2017 UTC (7 years, 6 months, 12 days, 2 minutes, and 43 seconds ago)There is now a HELP PILOT CONTRACT to give some additional background towards what civilian pilots in the planetary alliances actually agree to when they gain their licences. This does not apply to Mutuality characters, naturally. If anything in it does not make sense or you feel requires clarification, please let us know.
Announced at Sat Apr 15 22:03:40 2017 UTC (7 years, 9 months, 25 days, 57 minutes, and 7 seconds ago)We'd like to remind you that we're looking for some new blood to infuse into the horrifying abomination of flesh that is the Squidmind!
Check OOC/Announcements/All for more information!
Announced at Sat Mar 12 07:05:47 2016 UTC (8 years, 10 months, 29 days, 15 hours, and 55 minutes ago)While restoring a portion of a build from an old backup copy of the database, an overzealous maintenance task removed several instances of stored book text that it considered invalid. Unfortunately, some book text has been irretrievably lost. Fortunately, it affected only a handful of books. To see if any of your books were affected, particularly if you have published to the market, please use the BADBOOKS command. Many apologies for the inconvenience, and rest assured that we have learned at least two lessons from this experience. Perhaps three.
Announced at Fri Mar 11 20:10:04 2016 UTC (8 years, 10 months, 30 days, 2 hours, 50 minutes, and 43 seconds ago)Dear chart-havers: Please do not copy & paste and then distribute the entire possible output of your charts. This is certainly OOC and arguably a Policy 6 violation. Thank you!
Announced at Wed Jan 6 15:58:35 2016 UTC (9 years, 1 month, 5 days, 7 hours, 2 minutes, and 12 seconds ago)Brief announcement: We're instituting a grace period for starcharts not in cases. After the grace period, any chart not in a case will take damage.
Announced at Thu Nov 19 23:54:38 2015 UTC (9 years, 2 months, 21 days, 23 hours, 6 minutes, and 9 seconds ago)The Bugley Laboratory on Dure is now ready for costume requests! Please go into the back room and SHOUT into the well!
Announced at Sat Oct 24 00:31:01 2015 UTC (9 years, 3 months, 18 days, 22 hours, 29 minutes, and 46 seconds ago)Fashion Fair items have been mailed out! This concludes the event. If you requested body modifications, they have been applied in the past few minutes, and you will receive only a thank you note to signify that the work was done. If you requested a personalized hair style, it will now be available to you forever through your hair care kit.
Announced at Sat Apr 11 21:14:22 2015 UTC (9 years, 10 months, 1 hour, 46 minutes, and 25 seconds ago)Miss the Fashion Fair? Never fear! Your requests are now being taken by mail!
1) If you have not already, travel to Sheffield Plaza (Japan Boulevard on New Earth) and pay the entrance fee to receive three Fashion Fair tokens. Review the sign there for pricing information.
2) Decide exactly what you want to get with your available tokens. Names and descriptions are very, very helpful. Being vague or uncertain will drastically increase our workload and reduce the odds of getting exactly what you want.
3) Travel to your favorite mail room. Buy a package.
4) Put enough tokens for what you want inside the package. Make sure you have added up correctly! Insufficient tokens will mean we decide which requests to fulfill.
5) Write out a letter describing exactly what you want. Place the letter in the package with the tokens.
6) Mail the package to Fashion Fair.
PLEASE MAIL YOUR REQUESTS BY FRIDAY, APRIL 10TH, 2359 UTC. We will do our best to have the completed items mailed out over the weekend.
Announced at Tue Apr 7 21:58:14 2015 UTC (9 years, 10 months, 4 days, 1 hour, 2 minutes, and 33 seconds ago)We have concluded the exciting live version of the 2315 Fashion Fair! We will shortly announce a solution for those who couldn't make it tonight, and will probably try to have the event concluded by next weekend. Thanks to all who participated!
Announced at Sun Apr 5 01:51:12 2015 UTC (9 years, 10 months, 6 days, 21 hours, 9 minutes, and 35 seconds ago)Fashion Fair tokens are now available at Sheffield Plaza in New Phoenix! It's on Japan Boulevard!
Announced at Fri Apr 3 23:18:37 2015 UTC (9 years, 10 months, 7 days, 23 hours, 42 minutes, and 10 seconds ago)Expanded HELP MARRIAGE and added HELP NAME CHANGE to clear up some confusion and better explain things.
Announced at Mon Mar 23 17:30:57 2015 UTC (9 years, 10 months, 19 days, 5 hours, 29 minutes, and 50 seconds ago)All about database bloat, again!
We've talked about database bloat many times, but most people seem to assume this can't possibly apply to them, as they busily purchase one of every color and style of a dress. So, would you like to know how many items you really own? How much of the database is devoted, personally and solely, to you? Well, now you can! It's available under the INFO command, replacing the old, unenforced 100 item rule.
This new version displays items you own personally, objects locked up in starships, and objects locked up in apartments you personally rent. Which is, of course, much more inclusive than before, but do remember that this number, if anything, underestimates your total database footprint! However, exported items are not included, since their impact is in processing rather than storage and memory.
Your bloat level then receives one of several ratings. In order of severity: none, minimal, moderate, moderately excessive, excessive, and critical!
Some stats: By the old 100 item standard, 70 active players are rated as causing some measurable bloat. 50 active players have a bloat rating of moderate or above. 13 active players have an excessive bloat level. And, last but far from least, 5 active players have a bloat level rated as critical! That's over 2000 items per player, between 1 and 2% of the game's entire database... each! About 12% of the entire database is devoted to the top ten bloatiest players.
Our database size is creeping up towards critical levels again. We would like to ask players with measurable bloat to take some voluntary steps toward alleviating it -- we really do not wish to set hard limits, as this would be unpleasant for you and for us. In particular, players with excessive levels of bloat should really make an effort to get rid of any object that isn't actively relevant to their character. If the few most bloated players make this effort, it will have a tremendous impact.
You can destroy items by pawning them or putting them into a trash can. Clothing can be placed into most armoires, closets, dressers, and so on to export it, which removes its information from the active database. Unused ships can be sold, and the better part of their value will be returned to you.
Your database footprint measurement will be updated once per day, in the wee hours, when our other maintenance tasks take place.
Announced at Thu Feb 19 05:53:18 2015 UTC (9 years, 11 months, 20 days, 17 hours, 7 minutes, and 29 seconds ago)Our fellow host and friend Lindsey Gaiman lost his home to a fire last night. Everyone escaped unharmed, but he has lost everything.
We're hoping to raise a little money to help him get back on his feet. We've set up a fundraiser here: http://www.youcaring.com/emergency-fundraiser/all-he-owns-is-ash/299650
It doesn't need to reach the goal in order for Lindsey to receive the money, so anything will help, but certainly don't feel obligated to donate either. Thank you.
Announced at Sat Jan 31 02:27:19 2015 UTC (10 years, 8 days, 20 hours, 33 minutes, and 28 seconds ago)Welcome back! The scheduled maintenance went off without a hitch, though it may take a while for DNS to propogate.
Announced at Mon Jan 26 20:12:44 2015 UTC (10 years, 13 days, 2 hours, 48 minutes, and 3 seconds ago)We're back! We apologize for any inconvenience, and we apologize for some inconvenience coming soon!
The cliff notes version is that a piece of ISP-owned networking hardware was determined to be faulty, but in a way that couldn't have been easily pinpointed until a few days ago, when the power outage caused the ISP to mistakenly relinquish our primary IP.
We will be having a (much, much shorter) downtime within the next few days to replace it.
Announced at Wed Jan 21 22:03:37 2015 UTC (10 years, 18 days, 57 minutes, and 10 seconds ago)Interruptions in connectivity are expected to occur on Monday, December 29.
We're upgrading several parts of our network to provide a more reliable internet text game delivery service.
We apologize in advance for any inconvenience that this may cause.
Announced at Sat Dec 27 13:33:52 2014 UTC (10 years, 1 month, 15 days, 9 hours, 26 minutes, and 55 seconds ago)Everyone who participated in the completion of Plan A should now hypothetically have a bonus title.
Announced at Tue Dec 23 17:47:53 2014 UTC (10 years, 1 month, 19 days, 5 hours, 12 minutes, and 54 seconds ago)Due to circumstances beyond our control (hostly illness) the countdown relating to the current plotline has unfortunately been postponed until Monday. This is an OOC change, please consider the original IC deadline to always have been Monday. We apologise for the inconvenience.
Announced at Sat Dec 20 02:14:42 2014 UTC (10 years, 1 month, 22 days, 20 hours, 46 minutes, and 5 seconds ago)Time for our Annual Festive Holiday-Related Gift-Transferring Celebratory Event!
Icy the Snowfish is due to awaken this year on Friday, December the 19th, at a minute before midnight! And then, after we inevitably run out of time (because Icy events take forever), and for those who can't make it that night at all, we will provide a means to request a gift at Icy's Holiday House until Monday, December the 22nd, at a minute before midnight.
Our goal will be to send out all gifts by Christmas Day, but the likelihood of this depends on how large the list is.
For guidelines on appropriate requests, please read Help Tradesmen.
Announced at Sun Dec 14 22:50:15 2014 UTC (10 years, 1 month, 28 days, 10 minutes, and 32 seconds ago)IN COLD BLOOD
Two years ago, it took a great deal of effort to help the Children of the Sun understand humanity and how it differs from them. The soldier known as Morning Dew on Grass showed great promise... until the rest of its species decried it as dangerous and insane.
The last time humanity spoke to the Children of the Sun, they were told that disunity would result from conflicting 'true' images that were shared. Now the disunity has been confirmed to be a civil war that shows no sign of abating, and it cannot remain unnoticed forever.
In Cold Blood: Part 4 - "Holder of a True Image" is over.
In Cold Blood: Part 5 - "To Grasp and Destroy" has begun.
Announced at Sun Nov 30 02:28:33 2014 UTC (10 years, 2 months, 11 days, 20 hours, 32 minutes, and 14 seconds ago)Posts regarding the survey results and our future plans for development have been posted under OOC/MTTNS.
Announced at Mon Nov 10 19:03:28 2014 UTC (10 years, 3 months, 1 day, 3 hours, 57 minutes, and 19 seconds ago)It is time to gather your input! Please type @SURVEY whenever you like to take Star Conquest Development Focus Survey '14!
Announced at Fri Nov 7 19:09:26 2014 UTC (10 years, 3 months, 4 days, 3 hours, 51 minutes, and 21 seconds ago)Costumes are now enabled, probably until the early morning hours of Monday, game time.
This year's costumes will be mailed out momentarily. Many people asked for interactive features this year, so we implemented a framework for adding these. Some of you can USE your costume piece, and/or USE it AT other people and things. If you asked for an interactive feature, please try it out before the party tomorrow and let us know if anything seems wrong.
Also, as always, please report anything that makes it trivially easy to discover a costumed character's identity, as that takes all the fun out!
Announced at Fri Oct 31 23:59:51 2014 UTC (10 years, 3 months, 10 days, 23 hours, and 56 seconds ago)There are 24 hours left to request a costume!
For details, use the ANNOUNCEMENT command!
Announced at Sat Oct 25 00:08:23 2014 UTC (10 years, 3 months, 17 days, 22 hours, 52 minutes, and 24 seconds ago)Re-instituted account verification requirements.
As before, unverified accounts will be considered cadets until they verify their email addresses.
Announced at Tue Jul 15 02:45:16 2014 UTC (10 years, 6 months, 27 days, 20 hours, 15 minutes, and 31 seconds ago)FYI: We haven't been having any server crashes. The problem is loss of connectivity, likely due to weather in the area, but the server has remained stable and running with no data loss. You can tell by the "last reset" date on the login screen.
Announced at Mon Jun 30 18:22:48 2014 UTC (10 years, 7 months, 11 days, 4 hours, 37 minutes, and 59 seconds ago)Sorry for the downtime. Looks like we lost network connectivity, but the server remained running. I believe all ships lost during that time have been restored. If not, please open a support ticket.
Announced at Sun May 18 00:52:10 2014 UTC (10 years, 8 months, 24 days, 22 hours, 8 minutes, and 37 seconds ago)Apologies for the downtime, particularly the poor timing of it. The cause was severe weather in the region the server is in, including multiple tornadoes and record flooding. Unusually, it looks like we never lost power, but we did lose connectivity. Today, as you can see, we're back, and the forecast looks good. Let's hope it stays that way.
Announced at Wed Apr 30 12:35:38 2014 UTC (10 years, 9 months, 11 days, 10 hours, 25 minutes, and 9 seconds ago)We're aware of something going on with network infrastructure somewhere, but it's not local to the server and it isn't affecting every user. There is no need to report it as we can't do anything about it.
Announced at Mon Apr 28 21:01:10 2014 UTC (10 years, 9 months, 13 days, 1 hour, 59 minutes, and 37 seconds ago)A reminder that the only OOC mediums in the game are OOCSAY, the newbie channel, and MTTS. All other forms of communication are in character.
Announced at Fri Apr 4 19:43:37 2014 UTC (10 years, 10 months, 7 days, 3 hours, 17 minutes, and 10 seconds ago)Our usual newbie policy remains in effect: If a question is asked on the Newbie channel that you would answer readily on the General channel, please answer it on the Newbie channel. It is not necessary to require newbies to repeat their questions on a different channel.
I'm not sure where this idea keeps coming from or why we need to slap it down every few weeks. This policy has not and will not change. Bothering newbies about where they chose to ask their newbie questions results in an unfriendly, pedantic welcome to new players. Please help newbies freely and allow the game to grow.
Announced at Fri Mar 14 14:42:19 2014 UTC (10 years, 10 months, 28 days, 8 hours, 18 minutes, and 28 seconds ago)It is now specified in policy that players must be 18 year of age or older in order to engage in sexual activity within the game.
Announced at Wed Feb 12 16:51:10 2014 UTC (10 years, 11 months, 27 days, 6 hours, 9 minutes, and 37 seconds ago)We apologize for interrupting your fine day with this announcement.
A host has started up a server for PSP ad-hoc gaming over the internet! If you have a PSP or PSP emulator, you can play games with your friends through psp.theferox.biz! If you want to see what people are playing, just aim your browser at http://psp.theferox.biz/!
Announced at Thu Jan 30 18:38:52 2014 UTC (11 years, 9 days, 4 hours, 21 minutes, and 55 seconds ago)Remember if you encounter bugs, "matching issues," or any other such thing, use the SUPPORT command to report them! Just telling other players, contrary to popular belief, does not help! Oddly enough, other players cannot fix bugs for you!
Announced at Sun Jan 19 15:34:26 2014 UTC (11 years, 20 days, 7 hours, 26 minutes, and 21 seconds ago)We apologize for the recent downtime. A switch failed at the SquidSoft Dot Net Corporate Media Conglomerate Headquarters.
Announced at Tue Jan 7 21:35:51 2014 UTC (11 years, 1 month, 3 days, 1 hour, 24 minutes, and 56 seconds ago)We are now caught up on all support tickets after our holiday backlog. Hooray!
Announced at Thu Dec 26 18:58:42 2013 UTC (11 years, 1 month, 15 days, 4 hours, 2 minutes, and 5 seconds ago)HAPPY EASTER
Announced at Wed Dec 25 17:09:28 2013 UTC (11 years, 1 month, 16 days, 5 hours, 51 minutes, and 19 seconds ago)Enjoy speaking like Icy for the rest of the day!
Announced at Wed Dec 25 01:16:30 2013 UTC (11 years, 1 month, 16 days, 21 hours, 44 minutes, and 17 seconds ago)You may use the @email command to check your account's email address on file, learn where to update it, and check your subscriptions.
Announced at Sat Dec 21 19:09:40 2013 UTC (11 years, 1 month, 20 days, 3 hours, 51 minutes, and 7 seconds ago)This is a reminder to please keep your account's email address up to date! We do not have security questions or any other secondary methods of identifying you, so if you lose your password, sending a password reset to the email address on file is your only fallback. If you have no password and no valid email address, there is literally nothing we can do that doesn't potentially breach account security. We take this seriously, so, please, keep your email address up to date! Thank you!
Announced at Sat Dec 21 19:00:50 2013 UTC (11 years, 1 month, 20 days, 3 hours, 59 minutes, and 57 seconds ago)We would like to announce that Naoki and Naomi are different names. They are spelled and pronounced differently. Please stop sending tickets about the same person being listed twice on WHO. Thanks!
Announced at Fri Dec 20 22:58:03 2013 UTC (11 years, 1 month, 21 days, 2 minutes, and 44 seconds ago)Elena's Appendix to Jason's Diatribe Supplement II: Some Things Just Aren't IC: Example Edition: The Wrath of Khan has just been posted for your viewing pleasure and private enjoyment on the OOC/Messages To The Not-Staff board.
Announced at Tue Nov 26 00:54:59 2013 UTC (11 years, 2 months, 14 days, 22 hours, 5 minutes, and 48 seconds ago)As a general service announcement, we would like to announce that we are once again tracking a handful of players who have at least partly automated the starship combat gunning process. As always, we would prefer for players to cease this practice on their own before we have to take unpleasant measures. Experienced players know that we do, sooner or later, follow up on this quite harshly. Please read Policy 7 and make sure you are following it in full.
Announced at Sat Nov 2 18:59:37 2013 UTC (11 years, 3 months, 8 days, 4 hours, 1 minute, and 10 seconds ago)Costumes are now activated!
Announced at Wed Oct 30 23:11:22 2013 UTC (11 years, 3 months, 10 days, 23 hours, 49 minutes, and 25 seconds ago)Dimitri Stevens will be returning to the game. It has been determined that at the time of his outburst, his account was under the control of someone else entirely. Try not to hold it against him, and remember to never share your password!
Announced at Mon Oct 14 22:34:53 2013 UTC (11 years, 3 months, 27 days, 25 minutes, and 54 seconds ago)Let's all remember September 11th! Forty years ago, the democratically-elected government in Chile was overthrown by a US-backed coup to install an oppressive dictator.
Announced at Thu Sep 12 04:07:41 2013 UTC (11 years, 4 months, 28 days, 18 hours, 53 minutes, and 6 seconds ago)Announcing the first annual white tie Celestial Ball!
The event will take place on the evening of Friday, September 13th, at midnight GST (or 23:59 if you're in doubt about which day)!
But don't go shopping yet! Further announcements will follow in the coming days regarding where you can shop for the ultra formal clothing you'll want for this very special occasion!
Announced at Tue Sep 10 02:51:37 2013 UTC (11 years, 5 months, 20 hours, 9 minutes, and 10 seconds ago)Reminder to those who donated: Remember to file your donor requests before the end of the month!
Announced at Fri Aug 30 00:03:36 2013 UTC (11 years, 5 months, 11 days, 22 hours, 57 minutes, and 11 seconds ago)As many of you may have noticed, there are currently issues with some game systems. We are doing our best to fix them as they become obvious, please bear with us. If you or your ship are physically stuck or there is a similar game-breaking problem stopping you from playing then please ASSIST, while if you are able to otherwise continue to play the game, use the REPORT command. Keep in mind that you may not be seen to immediately, as not only are other people being affected, but we are also attempting to fix the underlying issues.
Announced at Fri Aug 23 13:57:16 2013 UTC (11 years, 5 months, 18 days, 9 hours, 3 minutes, and 31 seconds ago)Reminder that the SQUIDSOFT.NET BUY ADDITIONAL REDUNDANCY HARDWARE FUNDRAISER is still ongoing! Read the post on OOC/Announcements/All for more information!
Announced at Thu Aug 22 19:23:25 2013 UTC (11 years, 5 months, 19 days, 3 hours, 37 minutes, and 22 seconds ago)It is not necessary to send a report when you submit a profile or an assist request.
Announced at Tue Aug 20 17:44:43 2013 UTC (11 years, 5 months, 21 days, 5 hours, 16 minutes, and 4 seconds ago)IT'S THE YEAR OF LUIGI
Announced at Tue Aug 13 23:09:10 2013 UTC (11 years, 5 months, 27 days, 23 hours, 51 minutes, and 37 seconds ago)Discussions of how best to manipulate ground mission autobalancing are not in character. If you perceive an imbalance, it should be reported to the staff.
Announced at Mon Aug 12 21:08:59 2013 UTC (11 years, 5 months, 29 days, 1 hour, 51 minutes, and 48 seconds ago)'Local space' is only a concept here in that anything within a few thousand lightyears is considered to be within the 'local space' region.
Announced at Sun Aug 11 20:11:44 2013 UTC (11 years, 5 months, 30 days, 2 hours, 49 minutes, and 3 seconds ago)Contrary to popular belief, the correct response to encountering an error is not to immediately retry the same command as many times as you can as fast as you can.
Announced at Fri Aug 9 18:58:01 2013 UTC (11 years, 6 months, 1 day, 4 hours, 2 minutes, and 46 seconds ago)IT'S SHARK WEEK
Announced at Fri Aug 9 04:15:25 2013 UTC (11 years, 6 months, 1 day, 18 hours, 45 minutes, and 22 seconds ago)After a long discussion a couple of days ago on the Newbie Channel regarding soundpacks, the Squidmind communed for some time. While we have repeatedly and loudly stated that we would give 'Official' status (IE, it would be available from us and we would add help files to assist in its installation) to any soundpack whose creator was willing to allow us to check the soundpack for violations of policy, we have yet to be taken up on this offer. So after much discussion, we have come to a conclusion: First, we once again publically make this offer. Second, we must assume that any soundpack whose creator does not wish us to check for policy violations is in fact violating the policies, and as such we feel that we can no longer support the use or discussion of any unofficial soundpack unless they have been reviewed by us.
Announced at Thu Aug 8 21:08:26 2013 UTC (11 years, 6 months, 2 days, 1 hour, 52 minutes, and 21 seconds ago)Welcome to SQ-0.4.3! We're leaner, meaner, faster, and stronger now. We don't expect any issues, but if you suddenly run into something strange or something that crashes the server horribly, feel free to report it to us!
Announced at Thu Aug 1 09:52:44 2013 UTC (11 years, 6 months, 9 days, 13 hours, 8 minutes, and 3 seconds ago)Enough is enough!
We're making some changes to our profile acceptance policy.
Namely, we're denying any profile that appears to be one of several templates. We're not stupid and we know that they're out there. These templates produce shoddy, barely acceptable profiles at best, and the practice has gone on long enough!
Write your own profiles without relying on Mad Libs.
P.S. Stop scripting and for the love of god, please put some effort into roleplaying. If nothing else, roleplay.
Announced at Sat Jul 27 20:46:50 2013 UTC (11 years, 6 months, 14 days, 2 hours, 13 minutes, and 57 seconds ago)Rerolls are not their own previous character's half-sisters from a totally different alliance. Please stop making up silly, completely out-of-character things and just roleplay. For the love of all the gods that have ever existed, please roleplay. Thank you.
Announced at Wed Jul 24 02:22:54 2013 UTC (11 years, 6 months, 17 days, 20 hours, 37 minutes, and 53 seconds ago)The details for the exciting SQUIDSOFT.NET SECOND ARBITRARY TIME UNIT FUNDRAISER are now up on the OOC/Announcements/All board!
Announced at Thu Jul 18 22:00:02 2013 UTC (11 years, 6 months, 23 days, 1 hour, and 45 seconds ago)The downtime is not in-character. Stop trying to make it so.
Announced at Thu Jul 18 00:28:14 2013 UTC (11 years, 6 months, 23 days, 22 hours, 32 minutes, and 33 seconds ago)Thanks for your patience and understanding with regards to the recent downtime. If you lost anything because of it, please send an assist and we'll handle the situation as soon as possible, which might be a little while as we clean up some other messes.
Announced at Thu Jul 18 00:25:51 2013 UTC (11 years, 6 months, 23 days, 22 hours, 34 minutes, and 56 seconds ago)Ready for a blast from the past? For a possibly limited time, Star Conquest: Classic has reopened at port 7888! Enjoy a world where humanity never violated the terms of occupation!
Announced at Sun Jul 7 22:33:07 2013 UTC (11 years, 7 months, 3 days, 27 minutes, and 40 seconds ago)Some organization command station facilities have belatedly been placed where requested.
Announced at Mon Jul 1 15:40:44 2013 UTC (11 years, 7 months, 9 days, 7 hours, 20 minutes, and 3 seconds ago)A reminder that excessive hoarding of unnecessary objects (for example, a box containing almost 200 sheets of paper) is against Policy 5: Game Integrity and will result in a penalty.
Announced at Thu Jun 27 18:43:40 2013 UTC (11 years, 7 months, 13 days, 4 hours, 17 minutes, and 7 seconds ago)In light of recent game events, it seems fitting to remind our players that human trafficking is a very real issue that is by no means a thing of the past. It was estimated in May of this year that twenty-one million people, adults and children, are currently trapped in forced labor.
Some characters in the game have donated to a made-up organization called the Interstellar Civil Liberties Union. This is based on a real organization called the American Civil Liberties Union, or ACLU, which fights against human trafficking as well as for many other just causes around the world.
The ACLU is an accredited charity and accepts tax deductible donations at their website, ACLU.org. Please visit their website for more information.
Announced at Wed Jun 26 00:50:33 2013 UTC (11 years, 7 months, 14 days, 22 hours, 10 minutes, and 14 seconds ago)A friendly reminder that unnecessary OOC asides should be avoided. Included in the list of things that are unnecessary is asking for Twitter information on a capital planet landing pad.
Announced at Mon Jun 24 20:38:21 2013 UTC (11 years, 7 months, 16 days, 2 hours, 22 minutes, and 26 seconds ago)Reminder of our policy for quests, puzzles, and efficiency-based activities:
Exact solutions to quests should generally never be shared. In the context of each individual quest, asking others for information about them is often outright OOC. Puzzles such as the Glyphmakers' Grave color locks should also be treated carefully. It's fine to help a friend one-on-one, but the practice of handing out exact solutions to everyone you come into contact with both in and out of the game is not exactly in the spirit of things.
In addition, no information should be published in the game which contains an exact step-by-step method of how to complete any activity based on individual efficiency. In other words, simplified one-size-fits-all approaches to asteroid mining, trading, debris chunk grappling, and similar activities should not be shared. To publish this sort of information gamewide eliminates the need for players to actually have to figure out how to do these things, which is not our aim.
If you want to publish a book and you are not sure whether you've crossed the line between general strategy and an exact solution, please ask a host to approve your book. Any books with exact solutions to any quest, puzzle, or efficiency-based activity will be pulled from the market.
Announced at Sun Jun 9 22:52:45 2013 UTC (11 years, 8 months, 1 day, 8 minutes, and 2 seconds ago)We have just learned that the player of Austen Michaels has passed away. I am sure I speak for all of the staff and the players when I say that our thoughts are with his family and friends.
Announced at Sat Jun 8 23:12:28 2013 UTC (11 years, 8 months, 1 day, 23 hours, 48 minutes, and 19 seconds ago)Dear players: When a bug occurs, remember to REPORT the exact circumstances. This means what you were doing, exactly what happened, what the results were, and any steps that you believe might lead to replicating the bug. 'A bug happened' is generally not helpful information. Reporting it to other players is not helpful, as they cannot fix it. Please report bugs to the staff and leave it at that. Thank you.
Announced at Thu May 16 13:42:31 2013 UTC (11 years, 8 months, 25 days, 9 hours, 18 minutes, and 16 seconds ago)We promised this a while ago but never followed through! If your organization station had custom rooms or items that you can no longer access, please (if you are the founder or the item owner) send us a report letting us know what you would like done with them; that is, where you would like us to try to put them.
Announced at Thu Apr 25 19:32:06 2013 UTC (11 years, 9 months, 15 days, 3 hours, 28 minutes, and 41 seconds ago)Because it came up earlier today: It still appears to be the case, in the code, that a person transferring debris that they did not salvage themselves will receive no credit in points. If this is not the case -- if people are in fact able to "powerlevel" other players by salvaging or grappling debris that they do not have the points to gather themselves, and then having them transfer it for full credit -- please report the specific exploit so that it can be fixed. Thank you.
Announced at Thu Apr 25 17:48:26 2013 UTC (11 years, 9 months, 15 days, 5 hours, 12 minutes, and 21 seconds ago)Once again, we have eliminated all combat points for the top three players showing robotic behavior while gunning. Policy 7 remains in effect for all players.
If our judgment was in error and you are in fact performing your own typing, please go to this website: http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/contact/
Once your record is confirmed, we will restore your combat points.
Thank you to the many players who continue to refrain from petty cheating!
Announced at Thu Apr 18 20:54:37 2013 UTC (11 years, 9 months, 22 days, 2 hours, 6 minutes, and 10 seconds ago)It took hundreds of hours to write our room descriptions, but they can all be gone forever in a split second with the BRIEF command!
A solid majority of active players currently utilize the BRIEF command, enabling them to wander the game freely without any troublesome knowledge of the game's setting or their own surroundings. We have observed this and we have heard your complaints, and we have decided to expand this feature to cover the most complained-about text.
Introducing the MEGABRIEF option! With MEGABRIEF enabled, you can play the game and see only the text that you care about the most! We have heard your input, we have listened to it, and all text deemed unnecessary by the average player shall no longer reach your screen!
Since so many people are currently enjoying the BRIEF feature, and since the people who need it the most never read announcements anyway, we have automatically enabled MEGABRIEF for every player on a trial basis.
Please enjoy!
Announced at Mon Apr 1 00:00:49 2013 UTC (11 years, 10 months, 9 days, 22 hours, 59 minutes, and 58 seconds ago)It is not a bug for an op to be able to be ended as soon as the canister has been delivered to a salvage processor. I hope this clarifies things!
Announced at Sun Mar 24 03:55:07 2013 UTC (11 years, 10 months, 17 days, 19 hours, 5 minutes, and 40 seconds ago)Please do not share final quest/puzzle solutions.
Announced at Sun Mar 24 02:16:07 2013 UTC (11 years, 10 months, 17 days, 20 hours, 44 minutes, and 40 seconds ago)Remember, folks, that bugs should be reported to staff, not to other players, and in particular should not be discussed in an IC medium. Thank you.
Announced at Tue Mar 12 18:48:58 2013 UTC (11 years, 10 months, 29 days, 4 hours, 11 minutes, and 49 seconds ago)Roleplaying. Try it sometime!
Announced at Sun Mar 10 17:25:23 2013 UTC (11 years, 11 months, 5 hours, 35 minutes, and 24 seconds ago)Reminder that not only are giving out windfalls for an impending character retirement against policy 6, ACCEPTING windfalls from a character who is going to retire is against policy 6. This isn't a change in policy, just a friendly reminder.
Announced at Wed Mar 6 03:36:44 2013 UTC (11 years, 11 months, 4 days, 19 hours, 24 minutes, and 3 seconds ago)While we're at it, it's also still against policy to volunteer OOC information about other players, particularly identifying information.
Announced at Thu Feb 21 04:18:11 2013 UTC (11 years, 11 months, 17 days, 18 hours, 42 minutes, and 36 seconds ago)Don't share quest or puzzle solutions. Don't share quest or puzzle solutions. Our policy on this has not changed. Thank you.
Announced at Thu Feb 21 04:11:08 2013 UTC (11 years, 11 months, 17 days, 18 hours, 49 minutes, and 39 seconds ago)Ladies and gentlemen, right here in my right hand I have a copy of the top twenty players showing consistently robotic behavior. The top three have had their combat points removed, with perhaps more to follow! Read Policy 7 carefully and then follow it! Thank you!
Announced at Tue Feb 12 17:14:11 2013 UTC (11 years, 11 months, 26 days, 5 hours, 46 minutes, and 36 seconds ago)Anyone who was part of the trip should have a SPECIAL TITLE and citizenship privileges. If you are not a citizen, then send us an assist.
Announced at Sun Jan 13 03:41:35 2013 UTC (12 years, 25 days, 19 hours, 19 minutes, and 12 seconds ago)Due to unexpected power outages, one or more missing person(s), and an Event Kickoff Celebration Cake that failed to properly rise, we must reluctantly put off the New Quebec once again. We will endeavor to collectively get our one or more shit(s) together and we will inform you when we are ready to go. Many apologies!
Announced at Sun Jan 6 04:52:05 2013 UTC (12 years, 1 month, 4 days, 18 hours, 8 minutes, and 42 seconds ago)We apologize for the extended downtime we had. Gremlins took out the connection while cackling madly. Thankfully, no data was lost, and in fact, the server kept on truckin' throughout the ordeal.
Announced at Fri Jan 4 07:13:44 2013 UTC (12 years, 1 month, 6 days, 15 hours, 47 minutes, and 3 seconds ago)Policy 7: Scripting has been edited slightly. There is nothing really new in here, but it does include a couple of points which have previously only been clarified on the MTTS channel.
We are still tracking a handful of players who display similar robotic behavior while gunning. This is mostly being distributed amongst the Fringe, it appears. If you are using this, this is your final final warning for really reals this time. The next time we deal with this will probably involve some kind of New Years' Day Massacre.
Announced at Fri Dec 28 22:46:51 2012 UTC (12 years, 1 month, 13 days, 13 minutes, and 56 seconds ago)The Icy event will be happening in a little over an hour. We will take requests by mail for anyone who can't make it tonight. Please see an elf for details.
Announced at Fri Dec 21 22:51:55 2012 UTC (12 years, 1 month, 20 days, 8 minutes, and 52 seconds ago)Rerolling for often questionable reasons seems to be the latest HOT TOPIC, which a half dozen or so assists handled on this subject just in the past week. We have created HELP REROLLING to give our thoughts and recommendations on this issue, along with a couple of minor policy statements related to Policy 14. Please check it out!
Announced at Sun Dec 9 17:16:52 2012 UTC (12 years, 2 months, 1 day, 5 hours, 43 minutes, and 55 seconds ago)A reminder that in-character information should never be shared out of the game. This is covered by Policy 9: Metagaming and is not a new policy.
Announced at Fri Dec 7 21:38:38 2012 UTC (12 years, 2 months, 3 days, 1 hour, 22 minutes, and 9 seconds ago)The brave pilots who took part in the simple test last night now have title-y proof.
Announced at Sat Dec 1 16:41:36 2012 UTC (12 years, 2 months, 9 days, 6 hours, 19 minutes, and 11 seconds ago)Just as a heads up, we're still debating whether we want to allow station beacons to bypass rift trips as they can now. It might change in the near future. For now, it is not an exploit.
Announced at Sun Nov 25 02:47:54 2012 UTC (12 years, 2 months, 15 days, 20 hours, 12 minutes, and 53 seconds ago)Sorry about that downtime again. Communication breakdown between us and the hardware portion of the Squidmind got mixed up with the software portion, and the server went down for hardware maintenance without proper notification all around. We'll try to avoid that in the future.
Announced at Sun Nov 25 00:50:01 2012 UTC (12 years, 2 months, 15 days, 22 hours, 10 minutes, and 46 seconds ago)The new systems required for organization changes are essentially complete. They will go live over the weekend.
Announced at Wed Nov 21 03:05:09 2012 UTC (12 years, 2 months, 19 days, 19 hours, 55 minutes, and 38 seconds ago)Please refrain from sharing quest or puzzle solutions out of character. Thank you.
Announced at Mon Nov 12 17:34:14 2012 UTC (12 years, 2 months, 28 days, 5 hours, 26 minutes, and 33 seconds ago)We are currently, once again, tracking a number of individuals displaying non-human behavior while gunning. Yes, we can tell the difference. We have a number of indicators which can flag players displaying non-human behavior, and over time, we can make a final determination with full confidence.
Star Conquest is a game where scripting is not necessary. Combat is balanced around the idea that each individual player will be manually typing LASER (or LAS), MINICANNON (or MINI), and the other combat commands, and manually responding to the prompt that follows. Automating any part of this process or binding these commands to a single key is not necessary and creates an unbalanced playing field, and this has always been against policy.
As veterans of the game know, our tracking of combat-related scripting typically occurs over a length of time. Players often assume they're getting away with it, when in fact we'll be in the process of making a long-term determination. On the last occasion, we identified a half dozen players using a functionally identical system of scripting, and upon making our final determination, these players lost up to 75% of their combat points permanently.
If you are not manually typing your commands and responding to the yes/no prompt, we are likely already aware of it. Until we decide to crack down, you may cease this behavior at any time with no repercussions. This is your final warning.
Announced at Fri Nov 9 00:17:48 2012 UTC (12 years, 3 months, 1 day, 22 hours, 42 minutes, and 59 seconds ago)So, we heard you liked information about people who compromise accounts.
The first person on the list of people who compromise accounts and are thus now no longer with us go by the following names on skype and other places: 'vt.studios', 'vt-studios', and 'giant boulder'
Skype username: 'daniel.gililov' Other used names include: 'chaos beastlord', 'gian boulder', 'daniel gililov', 'mr. rmrf', 'growler 2.0', 'danielmaster', 'woof', 'balbus', 'nihilism' (Alter Aeon), 'Shane Johnson' (Spaceworlds)
He has also posed as Miriani hosts using the skype names 'oliver newton figsbury' and 'Albori Isahost Sninvel'.
Again, Squidsoft.net's account system was never compromised. For optimal security, only use your Squidsoft.net account password for your Squidsoft.net account!
Announced at Tue Nov 6 17:41:55 2012 UTC (12 years, 3 months, 4 days, 5 hours, 18 minutes, and 52 seconds ago)There is a new help file: HELP RELIGION. This is a very long, very spammy file. You have been warned!
Announced at Mon Oct 29 21:52:52 2012 UTC (12 years, 3 months, 12 days, 1 hour, 7 minutes, and 55 seconds ago)We have listened to this discussion about organizations take place with great interest. The fact that several very long-term players feel that they have been deeply affected by organization mechanics is certainly concerning.
In order to get a handle on this situation and decide what our response should be, we'd like to begin by running a short survey about organizations and the role they play in the game. We will collect answers for a little while and take them into consideration as we formulate a response.
Please type @SURVEY if you wish to participate.
Announced at Sun Oct 28 18:54:48 2012 UTC (12 years, 3 months, 13 days, 4 hours, 5 minutes, and 59 seconds ago)The Halloween plan!
We are no longer accepting new costume requests. Costumes will be mailed out momentarily.
Costumes will not work in their certain special way until about five minutes before the party. Once they're switched on, we'll keep them on through October 31st, so feel free to host your own parties.
Announced at Sat Oct 27 22:14:42 2012 UTC (12 years, 3 months, 14 days, 46 minutes, and 5 seconds ago)We understand that the person or people who recently sought to compromise our account system are upset that we released their email addresses.
Here are the IP addresses they used:
85.65.44.168.dynamic.barak-online.net
77.29.219.158
dsl-173-206-249-247.tor.primus.ca
Announced at Mon Oct 22 19:46:00 2012 UTC (12 years, 3 months, 19 days, 3 hours, 14 minutes, and 47 seconds ago)We have other information from Miriani that another tactic being employed in order to compromise accounts involves someone representing himself as an admin of a game and inducing people to reveal personal information. Remember, never believe anyone on the internet! And never reveal personal information, including passwords. Squidsoft staff will never ask you for your password.
Announced at Sat Oct 20 20:18:43 2012 UTC (12 years, 3 months, 21 days, 2 hours, 42 minutes, and 4 seconds ago)At least two Squidsoft accounts were compromised this afternoon.
The Squidsoft account database remains secure. Passwords here are encrypted. The source of the compromise is in fact another text-based game (we believe Cosmos) and a "Tristan" has claimed responsibility for logging the passwords at this other game and releasing them for use in Star Conquest.
The person who actually used this information today goes by Viktor Tosevski (viktor.tosevski@gmail.com) with account ID "stranger," as well as account ID "blinky" and email address blindguy250@gmail.com. We believe both of these accounts are held by the same person.
We suggest that every player change their password immediately using the @PASSWORD command in game, particularly if you have ever logged into any other game using the same password. Always remember that game admins can see your password if they choose. While no honest admin (including Squidsoft hosts) looks at plaintext passwords, it's trivial to accomplish.
Some password best practices:
1) Use unpredictable combinations of upper and lowercase letters and numbers. Avoid whole words.
2) Change your password frequently, at least every three months.
3) Never use the same password in multiple places.
The IP address of the person responsible has been banned, so if everyone goes ahead and changes their password, this will hopefully be the end of it. Again, our own account database remains secure.
Announced at Sat Oct 20 18:41:47 2012 UTC (12 years, 3 months, 21 days, 4 hours, and 19 minutes ago)A reminder that we have exactly four approved forms of OOC communication in the game: OOCSAY only as needed, the newbie channel for helping newbies, MTTS for communicating casually with the staff, and the OOC message boards for their various individual topics. Every other form of communication must be in character. This includes mail.
Announced at Sun Sep 30 21:46:22 2012 UTC (12 years, 4 months, 10 days, 1 hour, 14 minutes, and 25 seconds ago)We have completed a primitive but functional external support system. This can be used by people without an account, or people who can't access their account for whatever reason. It's available at the following address:
http://moo.squidsoft.net:3333/support
Announced at Sat Sep 29 17:31:44 2012 UTC (12 years, 4 months, 11 days, 5 hours, 29 minutes, and 3 seconds ago)Quick maintenance completed.
Announced at Fri Sep 21 21:44:51 2012 UTC (12 years, 4 months, 19 days, 1 hour, 15 minutes, and 56 seconds ago)Contrary to popular belief, profile rejections are accompanied by rejection notes which you can read. They will tell you exactly how you can make your profile acceptable. This may be preferable to the more common practice of trying to guess what was wrong with your profile and gradually adding ever more bizarre content to it. You may read your last profile submission and its notes with the PROFILE command.
Announced at Wed Sep 5 18:40:24 2012 UTC (12 years, 5 months, 5 days, 4 hours, 20 minutes, and 23 seconds ago)Apparently, Miriani is down! How does this affect us? An uptick in terrible players, apparently! If you see or hear of a cadet being pointlessly disruptive, please send a report to the staff. Our policy with players like this is to isolate them in the applicant chamber until they can write a profile which justifies their character. In other words, you will probably never see them again. So in conclusion, disruptive cadet = REPORT! Thanks!
Announced at Tue Sep 4 17:07:56 2012 UTC (12 years, 5 months, 6 days, 5 hours, 52 minutes, and 51 seconds ago)The helpfile HELP EVENTS has been created to define the specific types of event that occur in-game.
Announced at Mon Sep 3 02:05:27 2012 UTC (12 years, 5 months, 7 days, 20 hours, 55 minutes, and 20 seconds ago)Introducing...
'Outside Interference' events! These are OPT-IN ONLY events that involve your character without your explicit consent! These actually always existed, but due to recent player feedback we've decided to shift to an opt-in only system.
You can opt-in with the OPTIONS command, or @OUTSIDE-INTERFERENCE if you hate menus.
Note that refusing to opt-in does NOT excuse you from roleplaying your character, in-character consequences, or prevent you from requesting a policy 14 event.
Announced at Mon Sep 3 01:03:32 2012 UTC (12 years, 5 months, 7 days, 21 hours, 57 minutes, and 15 seconds ago)Stop volunteering OOC information about other players for the love of all that's holy. Thank you.
Announced at Wed Aug 29 17:09:24 2012 UTC (12 years, 5 months, 12 days, 5 hours, 51 minutes, and 23 seconds ago)After much discussion, we have decided to institute a DONATION REWARD ITEM program!
This will qualify first time donators of US$10 or more, or players who donate US$20 or more within one calendar month, for one custom reward item. Players will receive no more than one item per month regardless of donation amount or frequency, and each item must convey NO MECHANICAL ADVANTAGE WHATSOEVER.
Please read HELP DONATIONS for our full donation policy, and HELP TRADESMEN for general guidelines on appropriate items.
Announced at Mon Aug 20 02:10:54 2012 UTC (12 years, 5 months, 21 days, 20 hours, 49 minutes, and 53 seconds ago)Residential Structure is now open again, assuming this all works properly! Other apartment buildings will follow.
Announced at Fri Aug 17 04:19:11 2012 UTC (12 years, 5 months, 24 days, 18 hours, 41 minutes, and 36 seconds ago)The purge is underway! Residents of the Residential Structure should have the contents of their apartments already, sent to the primary resident. The new system will go live sometime tomorrow.
Announced at Thu Aug 16 06:56:53 2012 UTC (12 years, 5 months, 25 days, 16 hours, 3 minutes, and 54 seconds ago)The apartment purge is nearly ready, and the new apartment system will not be live until this process is complete. In the meantime, however, you can read HELP APARTMENTS to see how the new system works.
Announced at Thu Aug 16 05:15:33 2012 UTC (12 years, 5 months, 25 days, 17 hours, 45 minutes, and 14 seconds ago)All right, folks, we are probably going to run an apartment purge at some point tonight, or possibly tomorrow morning. If you want to manually get things from your apartment, go right ahead. Or if you'd rather avoid the Bari, everything in your apartment will end up getting mailed to you anyway. Unless, of course, any one of a dozen things goes even slightly wrong! But we'll triple-check before we do anything permanent.
Announced at Thu Aug 16 02:14:11 2012 UTC (12 years, 5 months, 25 days, 20 hours, 46 minutes, and 36 seconds ago)Registering new apartments will be unavailable for some time while we make some long overdue changes to the apartment system.
Announced at Wed Aug 15 21:52:51 2012 UTC (12 years, 5 months, 26 days, 1 hour, 7 minutes, and 56 seconds ago)Ever wanted to know exactly what the Outsiders mean by their strict doctrine of subjugation? Now you can! There is a series of help files relating to Outsider Subjugation: HELP SUBJUGATION, HELP STAGE ONE, HELP STAGE TWO, HELP STAGE THREE and HELP MY SPECIES IS DEA... I mean, HELP STAGE FOUR!
Announced at Wed Aug 15 16:00:07 2012 UTC (12 years, 5 months, 26 days, 7 hours, and 40 seconds ago)Please refrain from sharing OOC knowledge or speculation about other players and their characters. OOC asides should be used only as necessary.
Announced at Tue Aug 14 16:48:20 2012 UTC (12 years, 5 months, 27 days, 6 hours, 12 minutes, and 27 seconds ago)Just a reminder that macros and commands bound to single keys are covered by Policy 7; that is, they're against it. We see you!
Announced at Fri Aug 10 23:13:18 2012 UTC (12 years, 5 months, 30 days, 23 hours, 47 minutes, and 29 seconds ago)HELP BASIC PROFILE has now been split, with the forbidden tropes section getting its own help file in HELP PROFILE FORBIDDEN TROPES.
Announced at Fri Aug 10 20:07:41 2012 UTC (12 years, 6 months, 2 hours, 53 minutes, and 6 seconds ago)HELP BASIC PROFILE has been updated and edited, and there are three new profile examples: HELP LEAGUE PROFILE SAMPLE, HELP AEU PROFILE SAMPLE and HELP FRINGE PROFILE SAMPLE.
Announced at Fri Aug 10 20:02:10 2012 UTC (12 years, 6 months, 2 hours, 58 minutes, and 37 seconds ago)The OOC Forum on Saturday 4th August will take place at 23:00 GST!
Announced at Fri Aug 3 14:55:33 2012 UTC (12 years, 6 months, 7 days, 8 hours, 5 minutes, and 14 seconds ago)Sharing unsolicited out of character information, such as instant message or Skype information, or the names of previous characters, will now specifically be considered a policy violation, as it encourages people to bypass roleplaying and involve themselves in metagaming. The habit continues to be to the overall detriment of the game. Remember that our policy has ALWAYS been to never break character uninvited. Thank you.
Announced at Mon Jul 30 19:48:01 2012 UTC (12 years, 6 months, 11 days, 3 hours, 12 minutes, and 46 seconds ago)There will be an OOC Forum on Saturday, 4th August to discuss player participation in events, the events themselves, and the future of plotlines. Exact time to be determined.
Announced at Sun Jul 29 18:41:07 2012 UTC (12 years, 6 months, 12 days, 4 hours, 19 minutes, and 40 seconds ago)Hello there, players.
For the past few weeks, we have been observing a handful of players who appear to all be using identical or substantially similar sets of macros to aid their performance in starship combat. We have several varieties of algorithms that detect "robotic" behavior, and we have several metrics that allow us to quantify this behavior. These people are not in trouble because they're the fastest gunners in the game; they are not, one or two are not even close. They're in trouble because we've carefully studied their behavior and made the determination, in full confidence, that they are not doing their own typing. With the metrics we have in place, human typing and automated typing look substantially different.
At this time, the people who have been using this particular set of macros will have their starship combat points substantially reduced. Again, we have full confidence that we have made this determination correctly.
Policy 7 details our stance on macros and scripting. As stated there, we have designed our game without the need for any scripting, and we believe that scripting creates an unbalanced playing field. As you can see, the warning in that policy that we can detect scripting and will eventually act on it, even if we quietly observe for weeks first, is not a bluff. Using the many tools we have available, we will continue to crack down on scripting whenever we detect it. If you are using macros or automation and you've escaped this penalty, it either means that we haven't noticed you yet or, more likely, that we simply aren't fully confident yet that you're in violation. You're lucky enough to have this announcement as a final warning.
In the course of this investigation, we of course checked up on a large number of players, and we were pleased to find human-looking typing in almost every case. We greatly appreciate the majority of our players who progress their characters in a fair manner. Thank you.
Regards,
The hosts
Announced at Fri Jul 13 23:37:08 2012 UTC (12 years, 6 months, 27 days, 23 hours, 23 minutes, and 39 seconds ago)Please do not attempt to speculate in character about who may or may not be whose rerolled character. Reincarnation is not a part of the Star Conquest universe.
Announced at Fri Jul 13 00:58:54 2012 UTC (12 years, 6 months, 28 days, 22 hours, 1 minute, and 53 seconds ago)We've got a sudden influx of newbies and it seems to be time to announce a reminder of an often forgotten newbie channel rule: "Ask IC" isn't really a helpful response and is usually just frustrating for the newbie trying to get through the game's learning curve. If you would readily answer the same question on the general channel, please answer it on the newbie channel. Thank you.
Announced at Mon Jul 2 15:51:54 2012 UTC (12 years, 7 months, 8 days, 7 hours, 8 minutes, and 53 seconds ago)Also, if you lost anything due to downtime fire off an assist.
Announced at Sun Jul 1 16:14:51 2012 UTC (12 years, 7 months, 9 days, 6 hours, 45 minutes, and 56 seconds ago)So!
We had a bit of downtime. We have about a thousand apologies for everybody.
A tropical storm a few days ago knocked out power for a while. And some hardware failed. There was minimal data loss (about half an hour or so, whatever didn't get checkpointed), but obviously we've been down until (as of this announcement) a few minutes ago!
So anyways, sorry for nature being a cruel, cruel mistress and depriving everyone of everybody's favourite space game. Tell all your internet text game playing friends that we're back!
Announced at Sun Jul 1 16:13:59 2012 UTC (12 years, 7 months, 9 days, 6 hours, 46 minutes, and 48 seconds ago)People requesting or sharing quest solutions on MTTS are likely to be booted permanently from the channel going forward.
Announced at Sun Jun 24 01:14:27 2012 UTC (12 years, 7 months, 16 days, 21 hours, 46 minutes, and 20 seconds ago)Tonight, during our scheduled downtime (The morning of Jun 10 server time), we'll be updating the MOO server. You shouldn't see any delays from this.
Changelog:
- Fixed a major memory leak in string handling.
- Some new builtin functions, namely some that make existing algorithms a whole lot faster.
- Fixed a rarely encountered memory leak in verb execution.
- Server code cleanup to simplify some aspects of the server code.
Announced at Sat Jun 9 22:40:55 2012 UTC (12 years, 8 months, 1 day, 19 minutes, and 52 seconds ago)Please make sure to report bugs to the staff, rather than other players. Unfortunately, players are not currently capable of diminishing our workload by fixing bugs for us. Thank you.
Announced at Fri May 4 00:12:49 2012 UTC (12 years, 9 months, 6 days, 22 hours, 47 minutes, and 58 seconds ago)Just a reminder that this is a roleplaying game, and your experience here will be far more rewarding if your interactions with other players occur in the game rather than immediately transferring to Skype.
Announced at Sat Apr 28 14:57:30 2012 UTC (12 years, 9 months, 12 days, 8 hours, 3 minutes, and 17 seconds ago)Sorry for the downtime and rollback. An extended power outage resulted in the server going down, and server issues temporarily prevented it from booting. But we're back now, or possibly in some sort of quantum un-back. The result is probably basically the same.
Announced at Fri Apr 27 23:31:47 2012 UTC (12 years, 9 months, 12 days, 23 hours, and 29 minutes ago)Dear friends:
Let's talk about events. Again! Contrary to my expectations, real life continues to take precedence over the work that is required to prepare my planned events. I've lost my day off tomorrow, which, unfortunately, clinches it. At this point, I'm just going to postpone it all until I can fully prepare things and then reboot it at a later date. Many apologies to those who were looking forward to these events. I've been looking forward to them as well, but free time is getting hard to come by.
As a consolation prize, we have decided to hold some kind of tradesman event on Saturday evening, so it isn't a total loss!
Announced at Fri Apr 13 01:27:08 2012 UTC (12 years, 9 months, 27 days, 21 hours, 33 minutes, and 39 seconds ago)It's been brought to my attention that Easter is a thing that happens, so make that three weeks and April 14. Apologies real life conspiracies etc.
Announced at Thu Mar 22 23:57:08 2012 UTC (12 years, 10 months, 18 days, 23 hours, 3 minutes, and 39 seconds ago)Dear text-based starship operators:
Let's have a (one-sided) conversation about the event schedule!
As you may have surmised, we've had some big things planned lately, intended to coincide with a changeover in EAOS membership. These events require a good bit of prep work.
None of which has happened! The problem with trying to schedule things so far in advance is that, sometimes, real life does not cooperate. I've reluctantly decided that, rather than rushing things and not running the sort of event I've been envisioning, it would be better to push things back about two weeks.
This means two things for you:
The end of the EAOS rotation will be delayed. This makes some sense IC, since major events are underway and, just like the American public in 2004, the EAOS does not wish to change horses midstream. If any EAOS member wishes to be returned to their original pilot corps immediately, that can be arranged if you send a message to the liaison. However, the position will remain officially vacant and you will continue to be an unofficial EAOS liaison until a replacement is chosen. We'll try to begin running interviews and selecting new candidates sometime in the next week or so.
The second thing is that we have to retcon Mister Kelsey's recent announcement. Retcon means "retroactive continuity," which means that we all agree to pretend that some IC event in the past happened a bit differently so that the game world continues to make sense. Mister Kelsey gave March 24th as the date for a grand heist, but I would like to push this back two weeks to April 7th, Please act as though this was the original date given, as Mister Kelsey is not one to suffer delays.
I apologize for the delay. I fully intended to run these events at the times indicated, but I simply haven't had time for the new programming and bits of foreshadowing that they require. With any luck, the world will cease to conspire against me for a little while, and I can put in the hours necessary to let the game's plot proceed.
Announced at Thu Mar 22 23:52:32 2012 UTC (12 years, 10 months, 18 days, 23 hours, 8 minutes, and 15 seconds ago)The Celebration of the Third Anniversary of the Resistance will take place at the Torus Restaurant on Monday, 27 February, at 23:59. Win prizes, get cake, show off your smarts in a spectacular trivia contest, and TRANSFORM your life! This in-character event is open to everyone.
Announced at Mon Feb 27 01:24:57 2012 UTC (12 years, 11 months, 12 days, 21 hours, 35 minutes, and 50 seconds ago)Just a reminder that the game is much more fun when players choose to roleplay, rather than immediately taking their communication out of the game!
Announced at Sat Feb 25 18:58:27 2012 UTC (12 years, 11 months, 14 days, 4 hours, 2 minutes, and 20 seconds ago)Sorry about the extended downtime. We had a not-so brief demonstration of Murphy's Law in action.
Announced at Sun Feb 12 00:30:07 2012 UTC (12 years, 11 months, 27 days, 22 hours, 30 minutes, and 40 seconds ago)Note to players: There should be no such thing as 'special needs' in the game. We do our best to make everything equally accessible to everyone. Though it isn't possible to achieve perfection in this, we strive for it and do our best to provide a level playing field. Do you use a screen reader? So do over half of all the players in the game. You should be mostly accomodated already. If we can make a system more accessible without simply providing you with a shortcut that bypasses the challenge, then please use the REPORT command. Thank you.
Announced at Sun Feb 5 05:16:10 2012 UTC (13 years, 3 days, 17 hours, 44 minutes, and 37 seconds ago)Just a reminder that whether information given on the newbie channel is IC or OOC is really not important, as long as it is helpful and not specifically restricted information. Please read HELP NEWBIE CHANNEL for the specific policy.
Announced at Wed Feb 1 04:01:25 2012 UTC (13 years, 7 days, 18 hours, 59 minutes, and 22 seconds ago)Welcome back! We're not 100% where we want to be quite yet (expect one or two more scheduled downtimes), but that should be changing within the next week or two.
Announced at Tue Jan 31 10:15:46 2012 UTC (13 years, 8 days, 12 hours, 45 minutes, and 1 second ago)HELP NEWBIE CHANNEL now exists, mostly to detail our newbie channel policy and hopefully eliminate the need for further reminders! While you're looking at it, a lot of you should read #3 very carefully, because this happens all the time!
Announced at Fri Jan 27 22:00:35 2012 UTC (13 years, 12 days, 1 hour, and 12 seconds ago)Please begin limiting purchases of felo chow to a reasonable number. There's no reason to pick up 100-200 bags at a time. This contributes to database bloat, which contributes to lag and the need for hardware upgrades. Thank you.
Announced at Wed Jan 25 19:55:34 2012 UTC (13 years, 14 days, 3 hours, 5 minutes, and 13 seconds ago)Hey! Long time no talk!
Star Conquest costs money for us to run, and we usually just throw it out there for free from the goodness of our hearts.
But sometimes costs come up! We're sitting on the precipice of some hardware failure, so if you like Star Conquest and want it to stay running, consider donating! Read HELP DONATIONS for more information!
Announced at Mon Jan 23 17:47:40 2012 UTC (13 years, 16 days, 5 hours, 13 minutes, and 7 seconds ago)Reminder: Some people just LOVE to reroll! This is fine (sort of) but there's rarely a reason to tell others who your previous characters were or even that you've had any previous characters. If your character can't earn respect without OOC asides informing everyone of how experienced you actually are, then I'm afraid the proper course is to deal with it and forego the OOC asides. Previous characters are not IC and should not affect roleplaying situations in the least. Not even one tiny bit! Thanks!
Announced at Sat Jan 21 00:26:22 2012 UTC (13 years, 18 days, 22 hours, 34 minutes, and 25 seconds ago)To clarify: We would like to remind our players that Star Conquest is a game about alien invasions and unlikely pulp heroes and villains. A few miscellaneous points, in no particular order: This game is not a sex MUSH. Pilots are unlikely to have saved their money and trained for years in order to go into space and become someone's sex slave. Public nudity and other forms of indecency are as illegal in this world as they are in the real one. Do not take this as a moral judgement, but rather as an attempt to keep the game's theme and its roleplaying focus where it's meant to be. You may do whatever you want in your bedrooms. Also, we would take it as a kindness of you refrained from trying to mudsex each other through your metafrequency transmitters. Thanks!
Announced at Mon Dec 19 02:34:04 2011 UTC (13 years, 1 month, 23 days, 20 hours, 26 minutes, and 43 seconds ago)A brief reminder that while this is an adult game, sexually explicit speech, actions or behavior do not belong anywhere but in private. Metafrequency lines do not count as private. Take it somewhere else or begin losing points.
Announced at Mon Dec 19 02:30:29 2011 UTC (13 years, 1 month, 23 days, 20 hours, 30 minutes, and 18 seconds ago)Just a reminder that ALL aliases and macros that send input to the game are completely disallowed under Policy 7, and always have been. If you think a command needs to be easier to type, then send us a report and we will take any appropriate action. In the meantime, the game must remain a level playing field.
Announced at Sat Dec 17 17:31:17 2011 UTC (13 years, 1 month, 25 days, 5 hours, 29 minutes, and 30 seconds ago)Hello! A few people recently have expressed some worry over whether progress on the game has stagnated. It is true that these things tend to wax and wane, you might say, and since salvage ops were added, it's fair to say there has been a bit of a waning.
So, to help alleviate some of the worry, here is a short, vague list of things that will be coming up in December, or thereabouts.
- A new exploration activity, which does not involve slowly plodding through sectors which might occasionally contain an artifact.
- A range of new exploration upgrades to facilitate the above activity.
- Other upgrades for other parts of the game, also originating from the above activity.
- Higher tier components and, perhaps, a couple of ships, with gateway quests to access them.
- A couple of new minor plots, which will result in permanent changes or additions to the game.
- A couple new places to explore.
And best of all, next week we will have our traditional Icy the Snowfish event!
Usually we would have the willpower to wait until these things were ready before announcing them, but hopefully we can alleviate some worries by hinting at a few things now. Full changelog entries or, if appropriate, in character events will announce when these things are ready.
Announced at Thu Dec 15 01:12:17 2011 UTC (13 years, 1 month, 27 days, 21 hours, 48 minutes, and 30 seconds ago)Costumes will remain activated until tomorrow, so long as they're used for parties and not abused in any manner!
Announced at Mon Oct 31 00:59:56 2011 UTC (13 years, 3 months, 11 days, 22 hours, and 51 seconds ago)New post on the Squidsoft.net Wordpress main page thing! It's largely a condensed changelog of game mechanics on Star Conquest in the past ten months.
http://web.squidsoft.net/2011/10/star-conquest-january-to-october-update/
Announced at Tue Oct 25 04:16:31 2011 UTC (13 years, 3 months, 17 days, 18 hours, 44 minutes, and 16 seconds ago)New post on the Squidsoft.net blogotronic post display unit! It's chock full of stuff that most of you guys probably already know about by now.
http://web.squidsoft.net/2011/10/squidsoft-moo-server-updates-the-approach-to-sq-1-0-0-sq-0-1-12a-to-sq-0-3-1/
Announced at Sat Oct 15 23:38:26 2011 UTC (13 years, 3 months, 26 days, 23 hours, 22 minutes, and 21 seconds ago)"And it came to pass in the ninth year of his reign, in the tenth month, in the tenth day of the month, that Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon came, he and all his army, against Jerusalem, and pitched against it, and built forts against it round about. The French socialist and communist literature was thus completely emasculated."
- biblemanifesto.com
Announced at Sat Oct 8 21:29:44 2011 UTC (13 years, 4 months, 3 days, 1 hour, 31 minutes, and 3 seconds ago)Just a friendly reminder: The game is much more enjoyable when you roleplay within in, and avoid taking your conversations out of it! Roleplaying is not just a special occasion!
Announced at Tue Oct 4 04:11:27 2011 UTC (13 years, 4 months, 7 days, 18 hours, 49 minutes, and 20 seconds ago)Hello! Two things today!
First, we must talk to you about a serious issue that we know has occurred before and we have strong reasons to suspect has been occurring again lately, and possibly for some time. That issue can be summed up in the word "bullying."
Now, this isn't an in-character thing, like you're doing something wrong if your character is an arrogant jackass. This is mostly OOC. OOC bullying can take a lot of forms: having some leverage over someone, emotional blackmail (for instance, guilt trips), threats to someone's character in the game, and so on and so on. The end goal for a bully is usually to get a person and a character on their side, or you might say in their possession, making them act exactly the way they want often for reasons that make no sense within the game.
If you feel you are subject to some form of bullying, please talk to us. We will promise two things:
1) We will never tell any other player, and certainly not whoever you complain about, that you spoke with us.
2) Once we have several independent reports, we will immediately take whatever action is necessary to preserve the game's integrity and hopefully remove that person's motivation to bully you.
Remember that valid character development only occurs in the game. It isn't fair for another player to take issue with how you're developing your character, especially if their issue is mostly that you're not helping THEIR character enough. Changing your character for OOC reasons hurts the game's roleplaying environment, and makes the game less enjoyable for you and the people affected by it.
If you feel that you can't just play the game how you want to because of another player, please talk to us about it. Type ASSIST and one of us will come to you, and we can speak in complete privacy. Even if you feel like there is nothing that will fix the problem, just talking to someone else about it may help. We will listen to you. And since this is an issue that comes from out of the game and threatens to drive off some good players, we're willing to offer more options than we would usually make available. Seriously, if this is affecting you, talk to us and we'll see what we can do.
The second thing today is an update to Policy 9: Metagaming & Multiple Characters. This involves no actual rule changes, just a spelling out of things that have always been in the rules. It has grown about a thousand times longer and is important to read and understand, but you may sum this entire policy up with the following statement: STOP PLAYING THE GAME THROUGH SKYPE. Yes, we notice, and so do other players. If your "business" in the game actually occurs in Skype, or if the "real" you on Skype is indistinguishable from your character, you are doing it wrong. You are not roleplaying. We will not tolerate this any longer. It doesn't just affect you and your circle of friends, but rather it is an incredibly huge detriment to the game's overall roleplaying environment. It's going to stop.
That's all! Thanks for playing the popular internet text starship game Star Conquest and have a wonderful day!
Sincerely,
The hosts
Announced at Fri Sep 23 13:00:11 2011 UTC (13 years, 4 months, 18 days, 10 hours, and 36 seconds ago)Dear friends,
It's come to our attention (over several months) that there are some issues with the Conquest mechanic. It was meant to be a motivator, and it does succeed at that, most of the time. It can also be a demotivator, as has been evident with one alliance in particular. It was also meant, to some degree, to encourage resentment of other alliances, and it certainly succeeds at that.
However, everything from the occasional turn of phrase ("Look how many of them are on") to whole conversations make it clear that, the majority of the time, this resentment is entirely OOC in nature, and usually way out of proportion to the actual benefits that winning Conquest provides. This is something we cannot encourage, and given how easily people grow obsessed with numbers, there seems to be only one sure way to put a stop to it, and make sure that people play the game for roleplaying and not for Conquest standings.
Conquest standings will no longer be relevant, except during wartime as a way to know who's winning. The time period itself will continue to be tracked, but each alliance's standing will be invisible to the players. Point bonuses and other benefits will be treated as though each alliance has neither won nor lost; in other words, the effect will be neutral.
This means the Industrial Whip position will change slightly, but fortunately, the new salvage op mechanic gives us something to play with there.
If this turns out to have some massive downside, we might reconsider, but this is the way it is for now!
Sincerely,
Your friendly hosts
Announced at Sat Aug 27 22:43:39 2011 UTC (13 years, 5 months, 15 days, 17 minutes, and 8 seconds ago)You may notice that the game is slightly more responsive.
tl;dr it was star conquest classic gumming up the works
Announced at Wed Aug 17 10:50:37 2011 UTC (13 years, 5 months, 25 days, 12 hours, 10 minutes, and 10 seconds ago)Friendly Reminder #1: In-game mail must be in character 100% of the time. In general, OOC speech should never be sought out, but should occur only as necessary. When this isn't enforced, the game's level of overall roleplay goes downhill quickly. Refer to Policy 2 and HELP ROLEPLAYING for more information.
Friendly Reminder #2: There's a small subset of players that seems to be loving the anti-gay hate speech. While a casual "that's gay" about something abstract is just becoming part of the language these days (although the person saying it sounds like a 12-year-old), calling people "gay" or "fags" in an insulting manner is definitely crossing the line into hate speech. This isn't tolerated in the game. Please refer to Policy 3 for more information.
Announced at Sat Aug 13 14:31:33 2011 UTC (13 years, 5 months, 29 days, 8 hours, 29 minutes, and 14 seconds ago)Reminder: Hotkeys are also against policy seven. This is the final warning before penalties are applied.
Announced at Tue Aug 9 16:28:03 2011 UTC (13 years, 6 months, 2 days, 6 hours, 32 minutes, and 44 seconds ago)Reminder! Aliases and hotkeys on your client count as part of policy seven! No really!
Announced at Fri Jul 29 21:48:58 2011 UTC (13 years, 6 months, 13 days, 1 hour, 11 minutes, and 49 seconds ago)Oh, forgot to mention. Heat only applies in sectors that are less secure than Beta-2. So if you don't want to be randomly assaulted by enemy spaceships, stick to that space!
Announced at Sat Jul 23 13:46:58 2011 UTC (13 years, 6 months, 19 days, 9 hours, 13 minutes, and 49 seconds ago)The OOC boards have been renamed to what (I think) were their original names! And from now on all posts about soundpacks will be summarily deleted. Enjoy!
Announced at Fri Jul 15 03:24:05 2011 UTC (13 years, 6 months, 27 days, 19 hours, 36 minutes, and 42 seconds ago)Hello!
About roleplaying and profiles...
We've noticed a new trend over the past few weeks. Although it's always been common for certain players to regard their profile submission as a silly obstacle to their salvaging madly for points and just submit and forget a throwaway profile, something different has been happening lately. We've been getting players who actually WANT to play a character concept... but they still regard the profile system as nothing but a silly obstacle. They submit a profile they think will get approved easily, then go to other players and roleplay whatever character they REALLY wanted to play. Which often has aspects not consistent with the game world.
The profile system is there to help us and to help you. It's to make sure that you have a character concept that fits into the game world, so that your roleplaying isn't always at odds with other players and what's happening around you. It also, along with the GOALS system, allows us to help custom-fit the game to your character and give you a unique roleplaying experience.
What this comes down to is that we no longer want players to play a character that is completely different from the one they described in their profile. When we notice it, players doing this will receive "inconsistent roleplay" notices similar to the OOC notices that some of you may have seen before. If it doesn't stop, that player may be required to submit and have approved a new profile describing their ACTUAL character concept. Some extreme circumstances may require the player to reroll instead, although we all hope this is not often the case.
So here's the summary:
1) Don't bullshit us in your profile like we're high school teachers asking you to write a five-paragraph essay about a topic you don't care about. Tell us the character you REALLY want to play, the character that's interesting to YOU, and we will work with you on it. The profile is supposed to help both of us,
2) Once your profile is approved, that is your character concept. You character can grow and change, most definitely, and also discover new things about his or her past, but your character MUST be an extension of the one you described in your profile.
Announced at Mon Jul 11 14:31:54 2011 UTC (13 years, 7 months, 8 hours, 28 minutes, and 53 seconds ago)Org station users! Please keep submitting your ideas via the REPORT command! Tell us what you want, and we will probably ignore it! But some things we might do! You never know!
Announced at Fri Jul 8 02:40:27 2011 UTC (13 years, 7 months, 3 days, 20 hours, 20 minutes, and 20 seconds ago)We are very close to an all-time peak of connected player population. Call your friends!
Announced at Thu Jun 30 22:32:26 2011 UTC (13 years, 7 months, 11 days, 28 minutes, and 21 seconds ago)For future reference: Activities which are intended for one alliance only which can in fact be performed perfectly well by another alliance need to be promptly reported.
Announced at Sun Jun 12 20:13:38 2011 UTC (13 years, 7 months, 29 days, 2 hours, 47 minutes, and 9 seconds ago)Our next project, STAR VOYAGE, is now officially announced and will begin alpha testing by the end of the month! Check the website for more information: http://web.squidsoft.net
Announced at Wed May 11 23:59:25 2011 UTC (13 years, 8 months, 30 days, 23 hours, 1 minute, and 22 seconds ago)Please remember that all gamewide channels are in character, including metafrequency transmitters.
Announced at Sat May 7 17:06:56 2011 UTC (13 years, 9 months, 4 days, 5 hours, 53 minutes, and 51 seconds ago)P.S. I meant output.
Announced at Sat Apr 23 01:13:33 2011 UTC (13 years, 9 months, 18 days, 21 hours, 47 minutes, and 14 seconds ago)Just a reminder to all of our associates that using the EMOTE command to replicate game input in a manner designed to mislead others (i.e., emoting "goes east" when you have not in fact gone anywhere) is a violation of game policy and may result in disciplinary action up to and including termination. Thank you for keeping our company profitable.
Announced at Sat Apr 23 01:13:15 2011 UTC (13 years, 9 months, 18 days, 21 hours, 47 minutes, and 32 seconds ago)The constant OOC conversations, particularly in public areas, are getting absolutely ridiculous. Please knock it off already. SC isn't a series of chat rooms.
Announced at Thu Apr 7 14:21:12 2011 UTC (13 years, 10 months, 4 days, 8 hours, 39 minutes, and 35 seconds ago)Reminder: Nominations for the second civilian liaison term are open until tomorrow night! Check your message board!
Announced at Mon Mar 7 15:08:46 2011 UTC (13 years, 11 months, 4 days, 7 hours, 52 minutes, and 1 second ago)If you are enjoying Star Conquest lately, please type HELP VOTING and follow the instructions there. Vote counts have just reset, so this is the perfect time to lend your support! A good showing will bring many more players to the game!
Announced at Tue Mar 1 05:08:28 2011 UTC (13 years, 11 months, 10 days, 17 hours, 52 minutes, and 19 seconds ago)Just a reminder that the OOCSAY command is not for entire conversations, particularly in public places. This has been happening A LOT lately and it's a detriment to the game's overall quality of roleplaying. This is covered in greater detail in Policy 2.
Announced at Sat Feb 26 17:09:06 2011 UTC (13 years, 11 months, 13 days, 5 hours, 51 minutes, and 41 seconds ago)Yes! If you've enjoyed tonight's tradesman fair or anything else about your life tonight, please type HELP VOTING and follow the links!
Announced at Sat Feb 26 02:01:03 2011 UTC (13 years, 11 months, 13 days, 20 hours, 59 minutes, and 44 seconds ago)Thanks for your cooperation. Everybody who lost a ship due to the rebalance got a credit chip/letter worth their ship's value plus a TEN PERCENT BONUS! Enjoy.
Announced at Fri Feb 25 00:03:34 2011 UTC (13 years, 11 months, 14 days, 22 hours, 57 minutes, and 13 seconds ago)A summary of tonight's events is now playing on ISNN!
Announced at Sun Feb 20 03:16:07 2011 UTC (13 years, 11 months, 19 days, 19 hours, 44 minutes, and 40 seconds ago)Don't forget the new general option (type OPTIONS) which reminds you to vote for Star Conquest on popular mud listing sites!
Announced at Sat Feb 19 00:19:31 2011 UTC (13 years, 11 months, 20 days, 22 hours, 41 minutes, and 16 seconds ago)Don't forget to vote for us! Especially on topmudsites! HELP VOTING
Announced at Sun Feb 13 03:10:38 2011 UTC (13 years, 11 months, 26 days, 19 hours, 50 minutes, and 9 seconds ago)We'll be running a purge on old minimods in the next day or so. If you desperately want to keep a minimod, make sure it's equipped on something.
Announced at Fri Feb 4 15:48:07 2011 UTC (14 years, 4 days, 7 hours, 12 minutes, and 40 seconds ago)Thank you for being patient during the introduction of FORWARD ASSAULT STATIONS!
Announced at Wed Feb 2 05:10:45 2011 UTC (14 years, 6 days, 17 hours, 50 minutes, and 2 seconds ago)Turns out there was a mysterious second instance of SC running all day which was leaving a few players feeling very, very lonely. It has been shut down and that port now goes here, as it should!
Announced at Sun Jan 30 23:32:29 2011 UTC (14 years, 8 days, 23 hours, 28 minutes, and 18 seconds ago)So to clarify, voting will end at midnight tonight (game time), which is 7PM eastern, 4PM pacific, etc. There will be a brief meeting with your liaisons starting a few minutes before. They will unveil the election results and handle any ties or other tricky situations that pop up.
Announced at Sun Jan 30 14:45:20 2011 UTC (14 years, 9 days, 8 hours, 15 minutes, and 27 seconds ago)Please check out the addition to your pilot league liaison office and vote for civilian liaisons in your conference room!
Announced at Thu Jan 27 02:49:02 2011 UTC (14 years, 12 days, 20 hours, 11 minutes, and 45 seconds ago)Reminder: If you're interested in any of the new civilian liaison positions, check your board reader and make a post soon! We will be finalizing the ballots later tonight!
Announced at Wed Jan 26 23:30:39 2011 UTC (14 years, 12 days, 23 hours, 30 minutes, and 8 seconds ago)A reminder to players (although it has been plainly written in the policy for many months) that aliases which send input to the game and any form of multi-line command stacking is against Policy 7, which concerns macros and scripting. Any such activity will result in a penalty when observed. This game is designed and balanced around players doing their own typing, and using aliases provides an unfair advantage over those who play by the rules. If you believe a command is too complex for easy use, the proper course of action is to bring it to our attention either through the REPORT command or by posting a suggestion to the OOC message boards. Our thanks to the great majority of players who do not need this reminder!
Announced at Wed Jan 26 05:32:30 2011 UTC (14 years, 13 days, 17 hours, 28 minutes, and 17 seconds ago)All is in readiness! Tomorrow we will unveil TESLAWORLD 2.0! A new Tesla for a new Star Conquest!
Announced at Sat Jan 22 22:41:20 2011 UTC (14 years, 17 days, 19 minutes, and 27 seconds ago)All players are collectively urged to turn on their board readers, navigate to their alliance's general category, and BEHOLD THE RESULTS.
Announced at Wed Jan 19 15:59:00 2011 UTC (14 years, 20 days, 7 hours, 1 minute, and 47 seconds ago)For the love of god people please read the changelog. It's there for a reason!
Announced at Wed Jan 12 23:19:22 2011 UTC (14 years, 26 days, 23 hours, 41 minutes, and 25 seconds ago)This week.....
WE'LL BE HAVING A (SMALL) EVENT EVERY DAY! Tell your friends!
Announced at Mon Jan 10 19:39:10 2011 UTC (14 years, 1 month, 1 day, 3 hours, 21 minutes, and 37 seconds ago)Dear diary,
I gave a rundown of new features and changes from October to today on our website!
Here's a link, so you can read it, if you really want to... http://web.squidsoft.net/2011/01/star-conquest-october-to-january-update/
Announced at Mon Jan 10 19:22:54 2011 UTC (14 years, 1 month, 1 day, 3 hours, 37 minutes, and 53 seconds ago)Real, normal humans do not stare into space blankly in a state of catatonia for long periods of time. This is basically just as OOC as saying you're away from your keyboard. If your character is unresponsive, think of another reason. Thanks!
Announced at Sat Dec 25 22:12:05 2010 UTC (14 years, 1 month, 17 days, 48 minutes, and 42 seconds ago)Icy is finished taking requests for the year!
Announced at Fri Dec 24 06:05:42 2010 UTC (14 years, 1 month, 18 days, 16 hours, 55 minutes, and 5 seconds ago)All right, here is the deal! Icy will take your holiday requests right up until AFHRGTCE Eve! Simply mail him a letter if you didn't already request something last night! Yes, even if Icy rejected you previously. Please read HELP TRADESMEN to help you choose an acceptable item. The plan is to give out the completed items on AFHRGTCE Day!
Announced at Mon Dec 20 22:33:14 2010 UTC (14 years, 1 month, 22 days, 27 minutes, and 33 seconds ago)~*~ SERVER UPDATE ~*~
* One hour of data loss. (approximately) This is regrettable and somewhat unavoidable we're afraid.
* Scheduled downtime tonight late US Pacific time. Should only last about 2-3 minutes. No data will be lost in this downtime.
Announced at Tue Dec 14 03:59:22 2010 UTC (14 years, 1 month, 28 days, 19 hours, 1 minute, and 25 seconds ago)Has your favourite ship been infested by the alien insectoid menace that escaped from the EAOS Experimental Research Structure? Were you forced to quarantine or destroy your biggest transport? Have you been trapped on the wrong side of the QSA? Can't the EAOS think of something? Why hasn't Brandon Ryland been handing out plasma bombs like candy on Halloween? How much worse can things get?! Find out tonight on Star Conquest: OH GOD THE HOWLING!
Announced at Sat Dec 4 15:58:36 2010 UTC (14 years, 2 months, 7 days, 7 hours, 2 minutes, and 11 seconds ago)We've just released a new command to the playerbase called GOALS. This is especially important for people who are involved in roleplay events or would like to be, or appreciate having a place to track their character's progress. It ties in heavily with Policy 14, and while its use is not mandatory, it is highly encouraged that you update your character's goals every few weeks. If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to send a REPORT our way!
Announced at Thu Nov 18 01:07:58 2010 UTC (14 years, 2 months, 23 days, 21 hours, 52 minutes, and 49 seconds ago)There appears to be an issue with our mail server! Until it can get sorted out, the requirement for email address verification will be waived.
Announced at Fri Nov 5 01:34:50 2010 UTC (14 years, 3 months, 6 days, 21 hours, 25 minutes, and 57 seconds ago)Hey guys we love Halloween SO MUCH that we decided we couldn't fit all the festivities into one single day! So instead, we're having HALLOWEEN WEEK! Costumes coming soon! If you haven't requested one yet, you still have time to go to the back room of Bugley's Lab on Dure to SHOUT what you want into the well. (Also, prizes!)
Announced at Mon Nov 1 01:17:46 2010 UTC (14 years, 3 months, 10 days, 21 hours, 43 minutes, and 1 second ago)Due to not much interest, we're not going to have a big thing. However, Bugley's Laboratory on Dure has been opened! You can go there and shout your costume requests into the well in the back room. Costumes will be delivered shortly before the Halloween party at the end of the month!
Announced at Fri Oct 15 23:04:33 2010 UTC (14 years, 3 months, 26 days, 23 hours, 56 minutes, and 14 seconds ago)Due to unforseen circumstances, this evening's event has been temporarily postponed. We apologise for any inconvenience.
Announced at Thu Oct 7 20:32:10 2010 UTC (14 years, 4 months, 4 days, 2 hours, 28 minutes, and 37 seconds ago)Okay, we've received a couple complaints about roleplaying (or the intrusive lack thereof) recently, plus seen some bad stuff ourselves, so a couple notes:
- Most people who truly enjoy roleplaying don't want to break character unless absolutely necessary. This means that striking up a conversation using the OOC say command or whispering something OOC is NOT something you should assume will automatically be welcomed by others.
- Telling people your previous characters (as if it should make some sort of difference as to how they treat your current character), or especially telling people about other people's previous characters, is just bad form all around. Again, people who come here for roleplaying don't need or want to know this stuff.
- Spreading OOC gossip about other people in game is, well, awful. I'm not sure how else to describe it. Please stop doing it.
- Talking about commands or typing is not IC.
- Any special knowledge or items that your character has must be justified by your profile or come by an invocation of Policy 14. Anything else is simple powergaming and doesn't help others stay in character.
Remember, you should only be OOC for quick asides, such as: "Sorry, an emergency took me away from the computer" or "Oops, I screwed up that sentence, pretend I said X." It's also acceptable to break character to help a new player learn the game, if they agree to do so. But other than that, entire OOC conversations should not occur in the game, and certainly not in public rooms.
Above all, remember that some people are here to actually roleplay. Never assume it is okay with everyone else to break character without warning.
I'll make a topic in MTTNS right after I announce this, so if anyone has any questions, we can discuss them.
Announced at Thu Sep 30 03:23:35 2010 UTC (14 years, 4 months, 11 days, 19 hours, 37 minutes, and 12 seconds ago)A September update on the state of Star Conquest has been posted! http://web.squidsoft.net/2010/09/star-conquest-september-update/
Announced at Fri Sep 24 03:23:53 2010 UTC (14 years, 4 months, 17 days, 19 hours, 36 minutes, and 54 seconds ago)Want to help us decide where we should focus SC's development? Have an opinion about what we should be doing to attract new players? Please type SURVEY and answer six short questions to help us out!
Announced at Sun Sep 12 17:40:40 2010 UTC (14 years, 4 months, 29 days, 5 hours, 20 minutes, and 7 seconds ago)The civilian pilots have won a great victory for the Accord! But what has it cost them? And how will the Tandem Pact respond to this loss? War might now be inevitable, and it might be only the three military commanders of the Accord who have the ability to conduct it successfully. Is it truly too late? Will the civilian pilots have to cooperate with the military wing of the Accord to ensure their very survival?
FIND OUT NEXT WEEK AT THE NEXT SCHEDULED STAR CONQUEST EVENT! SATURDAY, 18 SEPTEMBER, AT 11PM GAME TIME! 7PM EASTERN, 4PM PACIFIC!
Announced at Sun Sep 12 04:46:42 2010 UTC (14 years, 4 months, 29 days, 18 hours, 14 minutes, and 5 seconds ago)Hello, friends! This Saturday, the 11th, is the official relaunch of regular scheduled events in Star Conquest!
Tensions have been rising, and neither side seems ready to back down! Can this be stopped before it's too late, or will the cold war turn hot? Has humanity taken its eye off the tentacled, eye-banded ball?
Find out Saturday, 11 September, at 11PM game time! That's 7PM eastern and 4PM pacific!
Announced at Wed Sep 8 04:15:09 2010 UTC (14 years, 5 months, 3 days, 18 hours, 45 minutes, and 38 seconds ago)This month's plans have been posted to the website! http://squidsoft.net/2010/09/star-conquest-plans-for-september/
Announced at Sun Sep 5 17:20:12 2010 UTC (14 years, 5 months, 6 days, 5 hours, 40 minutes, and 35 seconds ago)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
Announced at Sun Sep 5 15:21:37 2010 UTC (14 years, 5 months, 6 days, 7 hours, 39 minutes, and 10 seconds ago)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!
Announced at Sat Sep 4 22:01:23 2010 UTC (14 years, 5 months, 7 days, 59 minutes, and 24 seconds ago)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!
Announced at Fri Sep 3 00:35:02 2010 UTC (14 years, 5 months, 8 days, 22 hours, 25 minutes, and 45 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Wed Sep 1 01:42:31 2010 UTC (14 years, 5 months, 10 days, 21 hours, 18 minutes, and 16 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Sun Aug 29 20:05:59 2010 UTC (14 years, 5 months, 13 days, 2 hours, 54 minutes, and 48 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Tue Aug 24 22:24:23 2010 UTC (14 years, 5 months, 18 days, 36 minutes, and 24 seconds ago)Our latest PROGRESS REPORT is now available on the website! http://web.squidsoft.net/2010/08/star-conquest-august-progress-report/
Announced at Tue Aug 24 14:30:50 2010 UTC (14 years, 5 months, 18 days, 8 hours, 29 minutes, and 57 seconds ago)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!
----
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!
Announced at Wed Aug 18 00:05:58 2010 UTC (14 years, 5 months, 24 days, 22 hours, 54 minutes, and 49 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Sun Aug 15 00:40:10 2010 UTC (14 years, 5 months, 27 days, 22 hours, 20 minutes, and 37 seconds ago)We've converted permanently to the new space system. Please read the changelog for details.
Announced at Sun Aug 15 00:36:15 2010 UTC (14 years, 5 months, 27 days, 22 hours, 24 minutes, and 32 seconds ago)After a successful test, we're on track to officially launch the new space system sometime this weekend. Stand by for further announcements!
Announced at Thu Aug 12 23:50:18 2010 UTC (14 years, 5 months, 29 days, 23 hours, 10 minutes, and 29 seconds ago)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!
Announced at Thu Aug 12 21:21:44 2010 UTC (14 years, 5 months, 30 days, 1 hour, 39 minutes, and 3 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Thu Aug 12 19:34:43 2010 UTC (14 years, 5 months, 30 days, 3 hours, 26 minutes, and 4 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Wed Aug 11 04:49:34 2010 UTC (14 years, 6 months, 18 hours, 11 minutes, and 13 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Sat Aug 7 01:21:53 2010 UTC (14 years, 6 months, 4 days, 21 hours, 38 minutes, and 54 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Wed Aug 4 02:35:44 2010 UTC (14 years, 6 months, 7 days, 20 hours, 25 minutes, and 3 seconds ago)Additionally, the old web content for squidsoft.net is still up at http://moo.squidsoft.net
Announced at Sat Jul 31 00:56:23 2010 UTC (14 years, 6 months, 11 days, 22 hours, 4 minutes, and 24 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Sat Jul 31 00:54:53 2010 UTC (14 years, 6 months, 11 days, 22 hours, 5 minutes, and 54 seconds ago)Paid couriers, since the game was down for over a week and it didn't get a chance to pay anyone.
Announced at Sat Jul 31 00:38:51 2010 UTC (14 years, 6 months, 11 days, 22 hours, 21 minutes, and 56 seconds ago)Just to clarify, that means use in-game mail.
Announced at Fri Jul 16 00:11:27 2010 UTC (14 years, 6 months, 26 days, 22 hours, 49 minutes, and 20 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Fri Jul 16 00:07:05 2010 UTC (14 years, 6 months, 26 days, 22 hours, 53 minutes, and 42 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Thu Jul 1 12:10:21 2010 UTC (14 years, 7 months, 10 days, 10 hours, 50 minutes, and 26 seconds ago)We'll aim to have this event arc continue midweek, Wednesday, at 11PM game time (that's 7PM eastern, 4PM pacific).
Announced at Sun Jun 20 00:30:04 2010 UTC (14 years, 7 months, 21 days, 22 hours, 30 minutes, and 43 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Fri Jun 18 03:35:21 2010 UTC (14 years, 7 months, 23 days, 19 hours, 25 minutes, and 26 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Sat Jun 12 19:10:56 2010 UTC (14 years, 7 months, 29 days, 3 hours, 49 minutes, and 51 seconds ago)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!
Announced at Sat May 29 23:23:15 2010 UTC (14 years, 8 months, 12 days, 23 hours, 37 minutes, and 32 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Sun May 23 21:03:37 2010 UTC (14 years, 8 months, 19 days, 1 hour, 57 minutes, and 10 seconds ago)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!
Announced at Tue May 18 14:10:32 2010 UTC (14 years, 8 months, 24 days, 8 hours, 50 minutes, and 15 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Mon May 17 01:28:34 2010 UTC (14 years, 8 months, 25 days, 21 hours, 32 minutes, and 13 seconds ago)Sunday, 2 May, at 1700. Be there for another enthralling episode in the continuing saga of Aliens Among Us!
Announced at Sun May 2 00:07:23 2010 UTC (14 years, 9 months, 9 days, 22 hours, 53 minutes, and 24 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Wed Apr 28 21:46:23 2010 UTC (14 years, 9 months, 13 days, 1 hour, 14 minutes, and 24 seconds ago)Remember! Book Fair tonight (22 April) at the Arboretum, starting around 7 GST!
Good Books! Films! Booky Wook Cookies!
Announced at Thu Apr 22 20:44:17 2010 UTC (14 years, 9 months, 19 days, 2 hours, 16 minutes, and 30 seconds ago)The upgrade was completed successfully. Additional downtime may be required for further optimizations to enhance the Star conquest Experience(tm)
Announced at Sat Mar 20 15:54:06 2010 UTC (14 years, 10 months, 22 days, 7 hours, 6 minutes, and 41 seconds ago)1900 GST. Wear boots.
Announced at Thu Mar 18 21:39:53 2010 UTC (14 years, 10 months, 24 days, 1 hour, 20 minutes, and 54 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Mon Mar 15 19:31:05 2010 UTC (14 years, 10 months, 27 days, 3 hours, 29 minutes, and 42 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Sun Feb 21 02:10:45 2010 UTC (14 years, 11 months, 18 days, 20 hours, 50 minutes, and 2 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Fri Feb 19 04:07:04 2010 UTC (14 years, 11 months, 20 days, 18 hours, 53 minutes, and 43 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Mon Feb 15 04:29:26 2010 UTC (14 years, 11 months, 24 days, 18 hours, 31 minutes, and 21 seconds ago)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!
Announced at Sat Feb 13 22:11:38 2010 UTC (14 years, 11 months, 26 days, 49 minutes, and 9 seconds ago)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!
Announced at Thu Feb 4 16:33:39 2010 UTC (15 years, 4 days, 6 hours, 27 minutes, and 8 seconds ago)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!
Announced at Mon Feb 1 20:47:09 2010 UTC (15 years, 7 days, 2 hours, 13 minutes, and 38 seconds ago)If you hadn't already chosen a birthday, one has been chosen for you. It appears under the INFO command. YOU WERE WARNED.
Announced at Sun Jan 24 20:51:04 2010 UTC (15 years, 15 days, 2 hours, 9 minutes, and 43 seconds ago)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!
Announced at Sat Jan 23 15:34:12 2010 UTC (15 years, 16 days, 7 hours, 26 minutes, and 35 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Sat Jan 23 14:52:50 2010 UTC (15 years, 16 days, 8 hours, 7 minutes, and 57 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Tue Jan 19 15:09:25 2010 UTC (15 years, 20 days, 7 hours, 51 minutes, and 22 seconds ago)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!
Announced at Tue Jan 19 15:03:23 2010 UTC (15 years, 20 days, 7 hours, 57 minutes, and 24 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Mon Jan 18 02:33:53 2010 UTC (15 years, 21 days, 20 hours, 26 minutes, and 54 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Sat Jan 16 23:54:59 2010 UTC (15 years, 22 days, 23 hours, 5 minutes, and 48 seconds ago)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!
Announced at Sat Jan 16 04:29:28 2010 UTC (15 years, 23 days, 18 hours, 31 minutes, and 19 seconds ago)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!
Announced at Mon Jan 11 23:45:08 2010 UTC (15 years, 27 days, 23 hours, 15 minutes, and 39 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Mon Jan 11 19:02:20 2010 UTC (15 years, 28 days, 3 hours, 58 minutes, and 27 seconds ago)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
Announced at Fri Jan 8 19:17:53 2010 UTC (15 years, 1 month, 2 days, 3 hours, 42 minutes, and 54 seconds ago)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!
Announced at Fri Jan 8 01:50:55 2010 UTC (15 years, 1 month, 2 days, 21 hours, 9 minutes, and 52 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Wed Dec 30 22:57:22 2009 UTC (15 years, 1 month, 11 days, 3 minutes, and 25 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Wed Dec 30 22:31:40 2009 UTC (15 years, 1 month, 11 days, 29 minutes, and 7 seconds ago)The Icy event will resume tomorrow! Also around 5pm!
Announced at Mon Dec 21 02:02:41 2009 UTC (15 years, 1 month, 20 days, 20 hours, 58 minutes, and 6 seconds ago)REMINDER: Icy the Snowfish TONIGHT starting in approximately two hours!
Announced at Sun Dec 20 21:12:46 2009 UTC (15 years, 1 month, 21 days, 1 hour, 48 minutes, and 1 second ago)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.
Announced at Fri Dec 18 01:01:13 2009 UTC (15 years, 1 month, 23 days, 21 hours, 59 minutes, and 34 seconds ago)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!
Announced at Thu Dec 17 22:31:53 2009 UTC (15 years, 1 month, 24 days, 28 minutes, and 54 seconds ago)Additionally, and perhaps important to know, the command to buy a mining license is LICENSE!
Announced at Tue Dec 15 02:26:17 2009 UTC (15 years, 1 month, 26 days, 20 hours, 34 minutes, and 30 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Tue Dec 15 02:15:37 2009 UTC (15 years, 1 month, 26 days, 20 hours, 45 minutes, and 10 seconds ago)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!
Announced at Fri Nov 27 01:58:48 2009 UTC (15 years, 2 months, 13 days, 21 hours, 1 minute, and 59 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Wed Nov 4 00:39:39 2009 UTC (15 years, 3 months, 6 days, 22 hours, 21 minutes, and 8 seconds ago)Costume requests will be ENDED FOREVER in about 40 minutes, around which time we will deliver the costumes! MAKE YOUR FINAL REQUESTS NOW.
Announced at Sun Nov 1 22:19:04 2009 UTC (15 years, 3 months, 9 days, 41 minutes, and 43 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Fri Oct 30 21:11:33 2009 UTC (15 years, 3 months, 11 days, 1 hour, 49 minutes, and 14 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Wed Oct 28 22:41:18 2009 UTC (15 years, 3 months, 13 days, 19 minutes, and 29 seconds ago)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!
Announced at Sat Oct 24 15:29:49 2009 UTC (15 years, 3 months, 17 days, 7 hours, 30 minutes, and 58 seconds ago)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!
Announced at Thu Oct 22 23:42:39 2009 UTC (15 years, 3 months, 18 days, 23 hours, 18 minutes, and 8 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Mon Oct 19 18:15:33 2009 UTC (15 years, 3 months, 22 days, 4 hours, 45 minutes, and 14 seconds ago)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!
Announced at Sun Oct 18 01:52:26 2009 UTC (15 years, 3 months, 23 days, 21 hours, 8 minutes, and 21 seconds ago)The event was running longer than we anticipated, so we'll use this point to pause for a while. We'll resume tomorrow evening!
Announced at Sun Oct 18 01:23:17 2009 UTC (15 years, 3 months, 23 days, 21 hours, 37 minutes, and 30 seconds ago)Low-value trade goods are now worth more points than high-value trade goods.
Announced at Sat Oct 17 15:38:22 2009 UTC (15 years, 3 months, 24 days, 7 hours, 22 minutes, and 25 seconds ago)Heavy lasers have been modified so as to hopefully make their usage more attractive.
Announced at Sat Oct 17 13:28:18 2009 UTC (15 years, 3 months, 24 days, 9 hours, 32 minutes, and 29 seconds ago)New Conquest benefit: Top alliances will enjoy accelerated ship construction.
Announced at Thu Oct 15 23:50:32 2009 UTC (15 years, 3 months, 25 days, 23 hours, 10 minutes, and 15 seconds ago)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
Announced at Thu Oct 15 22:48:20 2009 UTC (15 years, 3 months, 26 days, 12 minutes, and 27 seconds ago)P.P.S. Completely forgot to mention there's a Conquest help file explaining more of this.
Announced at Wed Oct 14 17:05:45 2009 UTC (15 years, 3 months, 27 days, 5 hours, 55 minutes, and 2 seconds ago)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!
Announced at Wed Oct 14 16:57:34 2009 UTC (15 years, 3 months, 27 days, 6 hours, 3 minutes, and 13 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Wed Oct 14 16:55:34 2009 UTC (15 years, 3 months, 27 days, 6 hours, 5 minutes, and 13 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Tue Oct 13 19:01:18 2009 UTC (15 years, 3 months, 28 days, 3 hours, 59 minutes, and 29 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Tue Oct 13 15:12:46 2009 UTC (15 years, 3 months, 28 days, 7 hours, 48 minutes, and 1 second ago)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.
Announced at Thu Oct 8 08:20:10 2009 UTC (15 years, 4 months, 2 days, 14 hours, 40 minutes, and 37 seconds ago)Things should be fine now, though please report any unusual strangeness relating to the third thirty.
Announced at Wed Oct 7 12:27:25 2009 UTC (15 years, 4 months, 3 days, 10 hours, 33 minutes, and 22 seconds ago)Doing some minor restructuring. Things might get weird for a few minutes. PANIC.
Announced at Wed Oct 7 12:10:45 2009 UTC (15 years, 4 months, 3 days, 10 hours, 50 minutes, and 2 seconds ago)Decorations and visible starship abilities should now look somewhat neater in starship descriptions.
Announced at Tue Oct 6 04:55:46 2009 UTC (15 years, 4 months, 4 days, 18 hours, 5 minutes, and 1 second ago)Certain starship abilities now show up visibly in starship descriptions. Enjoy!
Announced at Mon Oct 5 12:04:49 2009 UTC (15 years, 4 months, 5 days, 10 hours, 55 minutes, and 58 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Mon Oct 5 11:21:47 2009 UTC (15 years, 4 months, 5 days, 11 hours, and 39 minutes ago)Also, a very minor change: You can now READ message board readers. Mostly to make things slightly more intuitive for newbies.
Announced at Sat Oct 3 16:30:16 2009 UTC (15 years, 4 months, 7 days, 6 hours, 30 minutes, and 31 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Sat Oct 3 15:55:58 2009 UTC (15 years, 4 months, 7 days, 7 hours, 4 minutes, and 49 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Sat Oct 3 13:59:21 2009 UTC (15 years, 4 months, 7 days, 9 hours, 1 minute, and 26 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Sat Oct 3 04:44:54 2009 UTC (15 years, 4 months, 7 days, 18 hours, 15 minutes, and 53 seconds ago)NEXT PLOT EVENT: SUNDAY, 4 OCTOBER, AT 4PM GAME TIME (5PM EASTERN, 2PM PACIFIC, 10PM GMT)
Announced at Sat Oct 3 02:34:46 2009 UTC (15 years, 4 months, 7 days, 20 hours, 26 minutes, and 1 second ago)Costs for repairing a ship's hull will now include a charge for repairing broken failsafes.
Announced at Wed Sep 30 14:25:09 2009 UTC (15 years, 4 months, 10 days, 8 hours, 35 minutes, and 38 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Sat Sep 26 19:10:57 2009 UTC (15 years, 4 months, 14 days, 3 hours, 49 minutes, and 50 seconds ago)SCHEDULED DOWNTIME: Later today (the 26th). Should only last a few minutes.
Announced at Sat Sep 26 18:04:01 2009 UTC (15 years, 4 months, 14 days, 4 hours, 56 minutes, and 46 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Sat Sep 26 18:02:57 2009 UTC (15 years, 4 months, 14 days, 4 hours, 57 minutes, and 50 seconds ago)I've set it up to checkpoint more often while this instability lasts. The server may be significantly more laggy as a result, however.
Announced at Sat Sep 26 03:18:03 2009 UTC (15 years, 4 months, 14 days, 19 hours, 42 minutes, and 44 seconds ago)Probably a long time in coming, but now you can repair things without getting into a menu! Like 'REPAIR TURRET 10' or whatever!
Announced at Sat Sep 26 02:24:38 2009 UTC (15 years, 4 months, 14 days, 20 hours, 36 minutes, and 9 seconds ago)Buy and sell prices will no longer change for marathon trade items for the duration of the event!
Announced at Fri Sep 25 00:18:55 2009 UTC (15 years, 4 months, 15 days, 22 hours, 41 minutes, and 52 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Thu Sep 24 20:59:06 2009 UTC (15 years, 4 months, 16 days, 2 hours, 1 minute, and 41 seconds ago)RATS spawns will show some semi-random variety from now on!
Announced at Tue Sep 22 22:35:29 2009 UTC (15 years, 4 months, 18 days, 25 minutes, and 18 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Tue Sep 22 00:54:02 2009 UTC (15 years, 4 months, 18 days, 22 hours, 6 minutes, and 45 seconds ago)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!
Announced at Mon Sep 21 00:25:04 2009 UTC (15 years, 4 months, 19 days, 22 hours, 35 minutes, and 43 seconds ago)The impending ship purge is now complete. Thanks for your time and cooperation.
Announced at Sun Sep 20 16:55:17 2009 UTC (15 years, 4 months, 20 days, 6 hours, 5 minutes, and 30 seconds ago)Server has been up for about two hours. Current status: cautious optimism,
Announced at Sat Sep 19 00:20:14 2009 UTC (15 years, 4 months, 21 days, 22 hours, 40 minutes, and 33 seconds ago)WARNING: SC remains unstable due to poor weather conditions for the time being. Downtime may occur. We apologize for the inconvenience!
Announced at Thu Sep 17 21:00:10 2009 UTC (15 years, 4 months, 23 days, 2 hours, and 37 seconds ago)@searchhelp will now show you which line matched your search at the end of the help file.
Announced at Thu Sep 17 18:42:30 2009 UTC (15 years, 4 months, 23 days, 4 hours, 18 minutes, and 17 seconds ago)Added some enhancements to belt station shift orders. Also fixed a bug where a station left completely idle would not rest the employees.
Announced at Thu Sep 17 17:20:42 2009 UTC (15 years, 4 months, 23 days, 5 hours, 40 minutes, and 5 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Thu Sep 17 16:44:28 2009 UTC (15 years, 4 months, 23 days, 6 hours, 16 minutes, and 19 seconds ago)Fixed a bug where navy ships could become stuck for ever and ever, tending to result in large navies of small ships.
Announced at Thu Sep 17 16:09:46 2009 UTC (15 years, 4 months, 23 days, 6 hours, 51 minutes, and 1 second ago)The power's unstable at the server's location, access to SC may be somewhat intermittent for a few hours.
Announced at Thu Sep 17 13:55:32 2009 UTC (15 years, 4 months, 23 days, 9 hours, 5 minutes, and 15 seconds ago)Due to popular demand, the amount of time you're allowed to be idle before being booted has been SLIGHTLY EXTENDED. Enjoy doing nothing!
Announced at Tue Sep 15 21:59:28 2009 UTC (15 years, 4 months, 25 days, 1 hour, 1 minute, and 19 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Sun Sep 13 11:22:29 2009 UTC (15 years, 4 months, 27 days, 11 hours, 38 minutes, and 18 seconds ago)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)
Announced at Thu Sep 10 18:28:40 2009 UTC (15 years, 5 months, 4 hours, 32 minutes, and 7 seconds ago)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
Announced at Thu Sep 10 16:13:36 2009 UTC (15 years, 5 months, 6 hours, 47 minutes, and 11 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Thu Sep 10 15:25:03 2009 UTC (15 years, 5 months, 7 hours, 35 minutes, and 44 seconds ago)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
Announced at Mon Sep 7 18:31:37 2009 UTC (15 years, 5 months, 3 days, 4 hours, 29 minutes, and 10 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Thu Sep 3 15:24:06 2009 UTC (15 years, 5 months, 7 days, 7 hours, 36 minutes, and 41 seconds ago)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)
Announced at Wed Sep 2 16:11:02 2009 UTC (15 years, 5 months, 8 days, 6 hours, 49 minutes, and 45 seconds ago)Mail delivery has been made more worthwhile for new players, both in points and cash. The change to point values is retroactive. Enjoy!
Announced at Wed Sep 2 13:54:57 2009 UTC (15 years, 5 months, 8 days, 9 hours, 5 minutes, and 50 seconds ago)We've completed a change to how starship component information is stored. Please report any oddities.
Announced at Sat Aug 29 14:38:48 2009 UTC (15 years, 5 months, 12 days, 8 hours, 21 minutes, and 59 seconds ago)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?
Announced at Fri Aug 28 01:48:24 2009 UTC (15 years, 5 months, 13 days, 21 hours, 12 minutes, and 23 seconds ago)Pilots beware!
You can no longer dock or land right after getting into combat!
Announced at Thu Aug 27 01:15:48 2009 UTC (15 years, 5 months, 14 days, 21 hours, 44 minutes, and 59 seconds ago)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!
Announced at Mon Aug 24 00:54:10 2009 UTC (15 years, 5 months, 17 days, 22 hours, 6 minutes, and 37 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Sun Aug 23 03:00:36 2009 UTC (15 years, 5 months, 18 days, 20 hours, and 11 seconds ago)Marshals should show up more often again in beacon drops, and Ninlils should be a bit more common.
Announced at Sat Aug 22 20:12:11 2009 UTC (15 years, 5 months, 19 days, 2 hours, 48 minutes, and 36 seconds ago)Announcements on the website now list concrete dates as well as telling you how long ago it was since that announcement.
Announced at Sat Aug 22 05:53:25 2009 UTC (15 years, 5 months, 19 days, 17 hours, 7 minutes, and 22 seconds ago)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!
Announced at Fri Aug 21 21:23:20 2009 UTC (15 years, 5 months, 20 days, 1 hour, 37 minutes, and 27 seconds ago)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!
Announced at Fri Aug 21 21:09:54 2009 UTC (15 years, 5 months, 20 days, 1 hour, 50 minutes, and 53 seconds ago)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
Announced at Fri Aug 21 02:10:52 2009 UTC (15 years, 5 months, 20 days, 20 hours, 49 minutes, and 55 seconds ago)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!
Announced at Thu Aug 20 21:46:26 2009 UTC (15 years, 5 months, 21 days, 1 hour, 14 minutes, and 21 seconds ago)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)
Announced at Wed Aug 19 23:44:03 2009 UTC (15 years, 5 months, 21 days, 23 hours, 16 minutes, and 44 seconds ago)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!
Announced at Wed Aug 19 23:15:45 2009 UTC (15 years, 5 months, 21 days, 23 hours, 45 minutes, and 2 seconds ago)Some ships have had their max charge rating modified. DO NOT WORRY, FOR THIS IS INTENTIONAL!
Announced at Tue Aug 18 01:04:22 2009 UTC (15 years, 5 months, 23 days, 21 hours, 56 minutes, and 25 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Tue Aug 18 00:04:18 2009 UTC (15 years, 5 months, 23 days, 22 hours, 56 minutes, and 29 seconds ago)'Average damage' (in both the AVG command and in scans) should much more accurately reflect how damaged the ship really is now.
Announced at Mon Aug 17 22:21:08 2009 UTC (15 years, 5 months, 24 days, 39 minutes, and 39 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Mon Aug 17 19:55:36 2009 UTC (15 years, 5 months, 24 days, 3 hours, 5 minutes, and 11 seconds ago)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!
Announced at Mon Aug 17 15:11:37 2009 UTC (15 years, 5 months, 24 days, 7 hours, 49 minutes, and 10 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Sun Aug 16 23:48:49 2009 UTC (15 years, 5 months, 24 days, 23 hours, 11 minutes, and 58 seconds ago)Certain ships were a bit wonky with cargo holds, so you may have gained EXACTLY ONE CARGO UNIT. Enjoy.
Announced at Sun Aug 16 17:49:01 2009 UTC (15 years, 5 months, 25 days, 5 hours, 11 minutes, and 46 seconds ago)Space markets now respond to the use of @linelen
Announced at Sun Aug 16 16:55:34 2009 UTC (15 years, 5 months, 25 days, 6 hours, 5 minutes, and 13 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Sun Aug 16 16:44:26 2009 UTC (15 years, 5 months, 25 days, 6 hours, 16 minutes, and 21 seconds ago)Renaming ships should now be much, much cheaper in most cases.
Announced at Sun Aug 16 01:21:20 2009 UTC (15 years, 5 months, 25 days, 21 hours, 39 minutes, and 27 seconds ago)Some more changes were made to the crafting system. Enjoy.
Announced at Sat Aug 15 20:42:36 2009 UTC (15 years, 5 months, 26 days, 2 hours, 18 minutes, and 11 seconds ago)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)
Announced at Sat Aug 15 01:21:11 2009 UTC (15 years, 5 months, 26 days, 21 hours, 39 minutes, and 36 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Fri Aug 14 01:33:25 2009 UTC (15 years, 5 months, 27 days, 21 hours, 27 minutes, and 22 seconds ago)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!
Announced at Tue Aug 11 18:45:32 2009 UTC (15 years, 5 months, 30 days, 4 hours, 15 minutes, and 15 seconds ago)You may have noticed a small change in your ship name! (Especially if you're Mutuality) DO NOT PANIC. THIS IS INTENTIONAL.
Announced at Tue Aug 11 02:03:28 2009 UTC (15 years, 5 months, 30 days, 20 hours, 57 minutes, and 19 seconds ago)Knocking on ships has been fixed. Hopefully.
Announced at Mon Aug 10 15:25:50 2009 UTC (15 years, 6 months, 7 hours, 34 minutes, and 57 seconds ago)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!
Announced at Sun Aug 9 15:11:03 2009 UTC (15 years, 6 months, 1 day, 7 hours, 49 minutes, and 44 seconds ago)Maps and minimaps can now be coloured with COLOUR-O.
Announced at Sun Aug 9 14:31:33 2009 UTC (15 years, 6 months, 1 day, 8 hours, 29 minutes, and 14 seconds ago)Also, released two new toolsets, around the 250-300 industry point range, as well as some new blueprints. Enjoy.
Announced at Thu Aug 6 15:59:44 2009 UTC (15 years, 6 months, 4 days, 7 hours, 1 minute, and 3 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Thu Aug 6 15:57:52 2009 UTC (15 years, 6 months, 4 days, 7 hours, 2 minutes, and 55 seconds ago)Changed a bit of silliness in the bounty code.
Announced at Thu Aug 6 12:29:02 2009 UTC (15 years, 6 months, 4 days, 10 hours, 31 minutes, and 45 seconds ago)For all you bounty hunters! A SLIGHT BALANCE CHANGE!
For repeat offenders, the rewards have been increased!
Announced at Wed Aug 5 16:38:10 2009 UTC (15 years, 6 months, 5 days, 6 hours, 22 minutes, and 37 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Tue Aug 4 03:23:25 2009 UTC (15 years, 6 months, 6 days, 19 hours, 37 minutes, and 22 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Thu Jul 30 20:53:54 2009 UTC (15 years, 6 months, 11 days, 2 hours, 6 minutes, and 53 seconds ago)Added ace and rogue perks and penalties, respectively.
Announced at Thu Jul 30 20:48:47 2009 UTC (15 years, 6 months, 11 days, 2 hours, and 12 minutes ago)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.
Announced at Thu Jul 30 20:28:55 2009 UTC (15 years, 6 months, 11 days, 2 hours, 31 minutes, and 52 seconds ago)Everyone who participated in the event last week got a little point bump.
Announced at Thu Jul 30 19:12:01 2009 UTC (15 years, 6 months, 11 days, 3 hours, 48 minutes, and 46 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Thu Jul 30 15:48:22 2009 UTC (15 years, 6 months, 11 days, 7 hours, 12 minutes, and 25 seconds ago)@tesla now shows tesla explorers. And people opted out of the tops listings shouldn't be able to see it anymore.
Announced at Thu Jul 30 04:50:56 2009 UTC (15 years, 6 months, 11 days, 18 hours, 9 minutes, and 51 seconds ago)The minimap should now work properly with peer.
Announced at Thu Jul 30 04:35:56 2009 UTC (15 years, 6 months, 11 days, 18 hours, 24 minutes, and 51 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Wed Jul 29 05:10:44 2009 UTC (15 years, 6 months, 12 days, 17 hours, 50 minutes, and 3 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Wed Jul 29 04:52:24 2009 UTC (15 years, 6 months, 12 days, 18 hours, 8 minutes, and 23 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Tue Jul 28 20:19:47 2009 UTC (15 years, 6 months, 13 days, 2 hours, and 41 minutes ago)Thanks for playing the 'OH GOD WHAT WILL THAT SHIP BE CALLED NEXT' game. Ship renamers should now work properly!
Announced at Mon Jul 20 02:36:52 2009 UTC (15 years, 6 months, 21 days, 20 hours, 23 minutes, and 55 seconds ago)Updated the NPCs help file!
Announced at Sat Jul 18 01:00:46 2009 UTC (15 years, 6 months, 23 days, 22 hours, and 1 second ago)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.
Announced at Thu Jul 16 00:55:16 2009 UTC (15 years, 6 months, 25 days, 22 hours, 5 minutes, and 31 seconds ago)Pilot lounges should now have newsfeeds.
Announced at Tue Jul 14 21:13:48 2009 UTC (15 years, 6 months, 27 days, 1 hour, 46 minutes, and 59 seconds ago)After careful consideration, we've reduced the cost of AEU's Heavy Defense Vessel.
Announced at Tue Jul 7 21:01:57 2009 UTC (15 years, 7 months, 3 days, 1 hour, 58 minutes, and 50 seconds ago)Gunning in multiple WRs should no longer be possible.
Announced at Sat Jul 4 02:58:17 2009 UTC (15 years, 7 months, 6 days, 20 hours, 2 minutes, and 30 seconds ago)The AEU advanced gunship has been made a bit easier to find. Happy hunting!
Announced at Fri Jul 3 04:37:16 2009 UTC (15 years, 7 months, 7 days, 18 hours, 23 minutes, and 31 seconds ago)Logging in should be a bit faster now.
Announced at Thu Jul 2 13:38:06 2009 UTC (15 years, 7 months, 8 days, 9 hours, 22 minutes, and 41 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Tue Jun 30 20:22:24 2009 UTC (15 years, 7 months, 10 days, 2 hours, 38 minutes, and 23 seconds ago)Fixed a bug in the League Prime Defense Cruiser.
Announced at Mon Jun 29 21:54:53 2009 UTC (15 years, 7 months, 11 days, 1 hour, 5 minutes, and 54 seconds ago)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 -
A small change to garages: Garages now transport to more than just the 'Alpha' dock of a station.
Announced at Mon Jun 29 14:48:17 2009 UTC (15 years, 7 months, 11 days, 8 hours, 12 minutes, and 30 seconds ago)Something that was supposed to be implemented in ship conversion/hybridization stores but wasn't is now implemented.
Announced at Mon Jun 29 13:48:22 2009 UTC (15 years, 7 months, 11 days, 9 hours, 12 minutes, and 25 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Wed Jun 24 04:06:20 2009 UTC (15 years, 7 months, 16 days, 18 hours, 54 minutes, and 27 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Sat Jun 20 16:46:11 2009 UTC (15 years, 7 months, 20 days, 6 hours, 14 minutes, and 36 seconds ago)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)
Announced at Sat Jun 20 04:46:35 2009 UTC (15 years, 7 months, 20 days, 18 hours, 14 minutes, and 12 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Thu Jun 18 13:47:06 2009 UTC (15 years, 7 months, 22 days, 9 hours, 13 minutes, and 41 seconds ago)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).
Announced at Thu Jun 18 03:32:27 2009 UTC (15 years, 7 months, 22 days, 19 hours, 28 minutes, and 20 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Wed Jun 17 23:04:26 2009 UTC (15 years, 7 months, 22 days, 23 hours, 56 minutes, and 21 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Wed Jun 17 13:02:32 2009 UTC (15 years, 7 months, 23 days, 9 hours, 58 minutes, and 15 seconds ago)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!
Announced at Wed Jun 17 04:14:51 2009 UTC (15 years, 7 months, 23 days, 18 hours, 45 minutes, and 56 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Tue Jun 16 23:59:42 2009 UTC (15 years, 7 months, 23 days, 23 hours, 1 minute, and 5 seconds ago)Reason for the recent downtime:
Power outage. Up to one hour of stuff may have been lost!
Announced at Mon Jun 15 22:45:19 2009 UTC (15 years, 7 months, 25 days, 15 minutes, and 28 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Sun Jun 14 01:28:24 2009 UTC (15 years, 7 months, 26 days, 21 hours, 32 minutes, and 23 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Wed Jun 3 01:17:31 2009 UTC (15 years, 8 months, 7 days, 21 hours, 43 minutes, and 16 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Tue Jun 2 22:31:36 2009 UTC (15 years, 8 months, 8 days, 29 minutes, and 11 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Mon Jun 1 12:45:39 2009 UTC (15 years, 8 months, 9 days, 10 hours, 15 minutes, and 8 seconds ago)Pretty huge bug fix: Some players were allowed to gain points past their cap. This has been fixed.
Announced at Mon Jun 1 07:36:44 2009 UTC (15 years, 8 months, 9 days, 15 hours, 24 minutes, and 3 seconds ago)A little change to ship AI:
* Disarmed ships won't lock anymore.
Report any oddity, as always.
Announced at Mon Jun 1 05:49:51 2009 UTC (15 years, 8 months, 9 days, 17 hours, 10 minutes, and 56 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Sat May 30 14:08:23 2009 UTC (15 years, 8 months, 11 days, 8 hours, 52 minutes, and 24 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Tue May 26 01:51:41 2009 UTC (15 years, 8 months, 15 days, 21 hours, 9 minutes, and 6 seconds ago)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!
Announced at Sat May 23 12:18:01 2009 UTC (15 years, 8 months, 18 days, 10 hours, 42 minutes, and 46 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Wed May 20 04:25:10 2009 UTC (15 years, 8 months, 21 days, 18 hours, 35 minutes, and 37 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Sat May 16 12:23:08 2009 UTC (15 years, 8 months, 25 days, 10 hours, 37 minutes, and 39 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Thu May 14 23:59:39 2009 UTC (15 years, 8 months, 26 days, 23 hours, 1 minute, and 8 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Thu May 14 23:06:48 2009 UTC (15 years, 8 months, 26 days, 23 hours, 53 minutes, and 59 seconds ago)Tesla salvaging monetary reward has been slightly increased. Point reward remains unchanged for now.
Announced at Thu May 14 22:31:56 2009 UTC (15 years, 8 months, 27 days, 28 minutes, and 51 seconds ago)Until we get a new help file up for Teslaworld, you can read OLDHELP TESLA for mostly current information.
Announced at Thu May 14 03:15:16 2009 UTC (15 years, 8 months, 27 days, 19 hours, 45 minutes, and 31 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Sun May 3 20:03:15 2009 UTC (15 years, 9 months, 7 days, 2 hours, 57 minutes, and 32 seconds ago)Oh, and your previous frequencies are labeled 'Default.' You can change this by removing and re-adding them.
Announced at Sat Apr 25 23:18:29 2009 UTC (15 years, 9 months, 14 days, 23 hours, 42 minutes, and 18 seconds ago)Transmitters have been altered!
TUNE TRANSMITTER now sets up frequencies similarly to before, with the addition of custom labels.
TRANSMIT
The USE command is no more.
We will soon be releasing craftable objects that expand transmitters to multiple frequencies.
Announced at Sat Apr 25 23:16:30 2009 UTC (15 years, 9 months, 14 days, 23 hours, 44 minutes, and 17 seconds ago)IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT:
AEU is spelled 'A E U'
EAOS is spelled 'E A O S'
ROID DOGS is spelled 'R O I D
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.
Announced at Thu Apr 23 02:45:47 2009 UTC (15 years, 9 months, 17 days, 20 hours, and 15 minutes ago)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!
Announced at Wed Apr 22 16:25:57 2009 UTC (15 years, 9 months, 18 days, 6 hours, 34 minutes, and 50 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Wed Apr 22 08:05:25 2009 UTC (15 years, 9 months, 18 days, 14 hours, 55 minutes, and 22 seconds ago)IMPORTANT NOTICE:
ALL EVENTS CANCELLED FOREVER.
UNTIL SATURDAY, 25 APRIL, 3PM GAME TIME, THE DATE OF OUR NEXT EVENT! (4PM EASTERN, 1PM PACIFIC)
Announced at Wed Apr 22 07:02:21 2009 UTC (15 years, 9 months, 18 days, 15 hours, 58 minutes, and 26 seconds ago)Players who aren't you and are incommunicado generally won't show up on @WHO anymore.
Announced at Tue Apr 14 02:10:04 2009 UTC (15 years, 9 months, 26 days, 20 hours, 50 minutes, and 43 seconds ago)Reason why server went down last night:
Power was out for 8 hours
Reason why server just went down again:
Power went out again.
Announced at Tue Apr 14 01:59:34 2009 UTC (15 years, 9 months, 26 days, 21 hours, 1 minute, and 13 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Mon Apr 13 12:36:10 2009 UTC (15 years, 9 months, 27 days, 10 hours, 24 minutes, and 37 seconds ago)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!
Announced at Sun Apr 12 02:53:41 2009 UTC (15 years, 9 months, 28 days, 20 hours, 7 minutes, and 6 seconds ago)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.)
Announced at Wed Apr 8 02:04:43 2009 UTC (15 years, 10 months, 2 days, 20 hours, 56 minutes, and 4 seconds ago)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!
Announced at Sun Apr 5 04:20:52 2009 UTC (15 years, 10 months, 5 days, 18 hours, 39 minutes, and 55 seconds ago)Mule transports are now available! This is the ship required to transport an aerial fortress.
Announced at Fri Apr 3 14:51:29 2009 UTC (15 years, 10 months, 7 days, 8 hours, 9 minutes, and 18 seconds ago)You can now assist to be removed from the @tops listing, if you so desire.
Announced at Fri Apr 3 02:01:00 2009 UTC (15 years, 10 months, 7 days, 20 hours, 59 minutes, and 47 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Tue Mar 31 20:00:15 2009 UTC (15 years, 10 months, 10 days, 3 hours, and 32 seconds ago)Standard torps are cheaper now. We found some behind the couch.
Announced at Tue Mar 31 00:49:08 2009 UTC (15 years, 10 months, 10 days, 22 hours, 11 minutes, and 39 seconds ago)Oh yeah. Just in case anyone forgot, there are multiple channels for each alliance's metachannel comms! For example, channel 3 is for trading!
Announced at Sun Mar 29 03:56:27 2009 UTC (15 years, 10 months, 12 days, 19 hours, 4 minutes, and 20 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Sun Mar 29 02:37:40 2009 UTC (15 years, 10 months, 12 days, 20 hours, 23 minutes, and 7 seconds ago)The newbie comm channel is now live!
Type TR NEW
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.
Announced at Wed Mar 25 19:59:49 2009 UTC (15 years, 10 months, 16 days, 3 hours, and 58 seconds ago)FLASH FACT: Outsider battle thralls ARE NOT Outsiders. At all.
Announced at Wed Mar 25 01:16:13 2009 UTC (15 years, 10 months, 16 days, 21 hours, 44 minutes, and 34 seconds ago)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
Announced at Tue Mar 24 20:16:05 2009 UTC (15 years, 10 months, 17 days, 2 hours, 44 minutes, and 42 seconds ago)Debris changes: Debris is now worth a bit more. Hooray!
Announced at Wed Mar 18 04:02:22 2009 UTC (15 years, 10 months, 23 days, 18 hours, 58 minutes, and 25 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Wed Mar 18 03:59:30 2009 UTC (15 years, 10 months, 23 days, 19 hours, 1 minute, and 17 seconds ago)BOARD READERS BOARD READERS BOARD READERS
Announced at Mon Mar 16 20:11:05 2009 UTC (15 years, 10 months, 25 days, 2 hours, 49 minutes, and 42 seconds ago)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
Announced at Sat Mar 14 00:03:31 2009 UTC (15 years, 10 months, 27 days, 22 hours, 57 minutes, and 16 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Wed Mar 11 21:34:53 2009 UTC (15 years, 10 months, 30 days, 1 hour, 25 minutes, and 54 seconds ago)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!
Announced at Tue Mar 10 14:25:38 2009 UTC (15 years, 11 months, 8 hours, 35 minutes, and 9 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Tue Mar 10 03:33:32 2009 UTC (15 years, 11 months, 19 hours, 27 minutes, and 15 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Sat Mar 7 22:57:37 2009 UTC (15 years, 11 months, 3 days, 3 minutes, and 10 seconds ago)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!
Announced at Sun Mar 1 06:44:30 2009 UTC (15 years, 11 months, 9 days, 16 hours, 16 minutes, and 17 seconds ago)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.
Announced at Sat Feb 28 21:18:54 2009 UTC (15 years, 11 months, 10 days, 1 hour, 41 minutes, and 53 seconds ago)All original work located on this site and within Star Conquest is copyright Squidsoft.net 1998-2025, unauthorised reproduction prohibited.