Introducing "Hiatus" a new and Powerful Computer Player

This is the first version of Hiatus giving us the basic intelligence framework which includes logistics, ship building, fuel management, path finding, objective and resource mapping and basic tactics. It does not yet include deep levels of unique play for each race. Hiatus is quite good at exploring, colonizing and utilizing planets and resources. Over time we will teach Hiatus more tricks and tactics and it will become more and more powerful. 

Hiatus does not cheat in any way. It sees what you see, and uses up resources exactly as you do. It plays it's turn immediately before host runs using the same set of data that you get. 

Our plan is to create a single player edition of Planets. Where new players will be able to learn the game by advancing through levels of increasing difficulty. Starting against the computer, all players will be able to advance at their own pace. We plan to introduce a new "Cadet" ranking where all players will start. Once they have advanced through several levels they will have the opportunity to start joining "real" games in multi-player environments or continue to play through difficult levels against the computer alone or with a friend.  

We will be enhancing the assistant and creating more tutorials to help users get through these opening levels and to provide reference material for all players. 

Building a computer player is a massive undertaking. In fact, building Hiatus has taken as much programming code as the entire host program. 

After some seasoning and more testing we may begin to use Hiatus to pickup dropped positions in certain circumstances.

If you would like to try playing against Hiatus you can try creating a game against the computer using the Design Game function under Hosting. We have done extensive testing but no amount of testing will compare to what you, our community, can do. As you play you will see that from time to time Hiatus makes what appears to be very bad moves and at other times what appears to be brilliant. Keep in mind, it is still learning! Intermediate to Expert players should have no trouble defeating Hiatus. Remember, the primary goal here is to provide a positive gaming experience for new players.  

We welcome your feedback as always, have fun playing against your newest opponent!