going to be starting up a Mohtalim game of Neptune's Pride 2

[Jonathan]

Edit2: Click here to play Empire of New Dirt

Neptune's Pride is not like any other 4x strategy game because it's streamlined mechanics allow players to focus on high level strategic decisions and diplomacy.

http://triton.ironhelmet.com/help/index

Defender has 4 weapons technology (+1 for defending) and 10 ships. Attacker has 6 weapons technology and 10 ships.

Round 1: defender does 5 damage, attacker loses 5 ships leaving 5 ships.

Round 2: attacker does 6 damage, defender loses 6 ships leaving 4 ships.

Round 3: defender does 5 damage, attacker loses 5 ships leaving 0 ships.

Defender wins with 4 ships remaining!

Neptune's Pride is not really real time, everything happens in ticks. In a standard game a tick is 1 hour. This means that carriers only move at the end of each whole hour on the production clock. Then when they move they jump forward 1 hour blocks.

It's HTML5, free but not F2host (but I've paid the premium to host a private game already, so it's free for you). There's an option for asynchronous continuous turn-based play, if those of you with babies can't handle the uber manliness of real time. Every time all player turns are submitted, the game advances several ticks. Or, if one player fails to log in, the universe has a deadline (default 24 hours, can be 48 hours) after which it advances several ticks.

http://triton.ironhelmet.com/help/turn_based_games

Who's in?

[Jonathan]

http://triton.ironhelmet.com/game/6287245336117248 - test game to show off. 7 player limit is unlikely to get filled, so I'll probably recreate the game with the proper number of players.

Edit: test game password is mohtalim

[Jonathan]

Just to explain my thoughts on the settings (edit: more learnings):

33% should be enough to determine who's really firmly in the lead, without a long drawn-out endgame.
Expensive economy because it's an exponential growth economy. Making it expensive doesn't change the exponential growth, but flattens the curve a bit.
Formal alliances so you can coordinate better out-of-game with shared scanning.
Trading with anyone. The universe isn't that big.
48 hour turn deadline so you can take the poop out of your baby occasionally. Or whatever it is fathers do.
12 tick turns so the game actually happens, but without the huge turns of fortune that could occur with 24 ticks per turn.
Dark Galaxy because figuring out position is an important strategic decision.
Level 2 scanners so you can fly on the first turn.
Level 2 terraforming, manufacturing, and banking so experimentation doesn't make a huge difference in early-game economy.
Crazy expensive weapons research.
50 ships so you can scout effectively on the first turn.
Medium starting distance so you don't get too comfortable before conflict starts.
Circular starting positions so nobody gets sandwiched into a dangerous start.
Standard natural resources so industry doesn't feel real cheap.
Medium number of stars so the game doesn't drag on forever.
Double starting cash ($1000) so we can start interesting decisions faster.
Random star field so there's some terrain considerations.
Warp gates expensive and rare so there's terrain considerations but they don't become dominant.
Default all the other stuff because I've never played this game before!

[Jonathan]

Probably should bump down to 25% win condition?
Probably should limit trade to scanning range to make terrain a thing? Not sure.

[Jonathan]

Tutorial:

http://triton.ironhelmet.com/help/vid_first_day

[Jonathan]

Well, we know Joe wants to play because he hacked his way into the passworded test game!

[Jonathan]

Probably very expensive weapons research because it's clearly the best late game tech?
Edit: Possibly even crazy expensive weapons research?

[Jonathan]

Password on the test game is mohtalim if you want to play with the UI or test it on your device/browser of choice.

Apart from the HTML5 audio being poorly supported on mobile browsers, it's pretty cross-platform, though.

[Jonathan]

48 hour turn deadline so you can take the poop out of your baby occasionally. Or whatever it is fathers do.
12 tick turns so the game actually happens, but without the huge turns of fortune that could occur with 24 ticks per turn.

Just to put this in context, I have 6 stars within visible range, at distances of 4, 6, 6, 10, 11, and 11 ticks. So 12 tick turns flattens out all those distances into one-turn jumps.

Also, protip: don't build on your home world on the first turn. Most of your other stars will be cheaper and each marginal unit of infrastructure gives a flat bonus.

Edit: there's some kind of bulk upgrade button to auto-build the cheapest upgrades.

[Jonathan]

http://triton.ironhelmet.com/game/5710785739227136 - Empire of Dirt begins!

password is mohtalim

[Jonathan]

I am the God Emperor of Dwin (blue).

[Peijen]

blocked at work, but I will check it out. Might be interested and can probably play a turn per day (the whole blocked from work thing)

[quantus]

Play on your mobile browser through the cell network?

[Peijen]

I am, but the map is hard to navigate on a small screen

[Jonathan]

Neal said he wanted a slot, so that's four. Anyone else?

[Jonathan]

Peijen, on my phone I basically play the game through the Galaxy tabs. I didn't need the map to do my turn except for ship movement. Pinch zoom and rotate if you can't mash stars correctly.

[Jonathan]

https://plus.google.com/117903310261452 ... yvBz9LWLT8

Here's some stuff about strategy for real-time games. The author thinks most of this advice isn't very useful for a turn-based game where you can't pivot fleets towards new destinations quickly.

[Jonathan]

http://imgur.com/a/vMAlI/all

AAR from a real-time game.

"Luckily, I woke up around 2AM that evening and spotted the ship coming in"

Yikes, that sounds awful. Turn-based FTW!

Anyway, this AAR is good about illustrating the basic tactics of funneling ships towards the front line, etc. The whole slide about the surprise Weapons tech gift smells bogus or patched out to me, though. According to the FAQ,

If I'll complete Weapons Tech in the same hour as a carrier arrives, will I fight with the new Weapons?
Unfortunately no, carrier movement and combat is the first thing that happens each tick.

So in the current game, you must complete the production tick before the combat tick to get the benefit of Weapons.

[Jonathan]

I set my default carrier action to "Collect All But" so I will tend to leave garrisoned ships scattered across my systems without needing to build or route a carrier to do it.

http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk ... ost3367387

[quantus]

So, when is this game going to start?