Awesome!

Will there still be regular games without all these custom changes to the races?

I'm not against trying out games with nebulas, custom races, etc - but I play planets because I _REALLY_ like the old game...

Hate the new website design.  The scrolling screen is very difficult to control, the organization is counter-intuitive, and many of the links appear to be non-functional.  It worked fine the way it was.

I can't find anywhere to look at the race customization options, but I suspect I will hate those too.  Why do tech weenies always insist on taking something that works and "upgrading" it to incorporate multiple levels of suckitude just to show off their mad tech-skillz? 

It was not broken.  It should not have been "fixed".  For years, I searched for a place to play this game.  Finally thought I'd found one, and now you've gone and ruined it.  This sucks with great force.

Edit to add:  Hmmm.  I am not Joshua.  I am Greyghost.  I have no idea why this thing decided to attribute my post to Joshua.  I suspect this may be indicative of a problem.

Edit again:  Whoa....I seem to be logged in as Joshua.  I could edit his profile, and possibly do other mischief.  I won't, of course, but this is NOT GOOD.  I think somebody left the engine running and the keys in the ignition.

I sent a message to Joshua about how I somehow appear to have been logged in as him.  Not sure what else to do.  Is there a Bat Signal I could send up?  Should I grab my towel and not panic?

Hi Greyghost at what time did you first visit the new site? I'm trying to track down this "signed in as me" bug which a few people have encountered.

Hi!
I had occasion to see the new format. Like anything new needs time to adapt ... I found it unintuitive.
I would like to mention that many of the players who play vgaplanets in the decade of 90, despite the current games offer: we have chosen to replay planets (same game with same rules...)
I do not know ... changes are complicated but I'm sure that people of planets.nu will do a good job!
Bye
PD1: what do you think about first knowing the opinion of the players?
PD2: I REALLY like too the OLD GAME

@Joshua---I'm not sure exactly, but it would have been no more than 20 minutes prior to the post I made as you, and probably less.  Wife came in to the mancave and distracted me for a few minutes....

1. The metaverse idea is interesting,
2. The UI is just not production-ready, it's a prototype that needs a lot of beta-testing, fixes, and the usability review before everything. If the UI needs a lot of hints to operate - just scrap that UI.

3. But the most important thing: GUYS YOU MESSED UP THE PRIORITIES

You think that planets are missing new fancy features to shine -- that's wrong.
VGA Planets is already overfilled with features, the game is overcomplicated even for those who play it for years. Planets is complicated at the very base, cause there's such thing as fuel logistics. VGA Planets is not newbie friendly because of the features. Maybe it was ok for new players back in 1990s, but surely not now. Your main goal is to simplify the game, to make it convenient to play, to decrease the time required from player to make a game turn.

And the main tool for the goal is the game client. Current game client is far from perfect (I do hope you don't use Winplan or planets.exe as a good reference) That is the priority.

Just remember, adding any new game feature, that's not driven by balancing races or simplification will add the complexity, add bugs, add UI odds, add imbalance that's hard to track, cause typical game span is pretty long.

...And please use existing configuration options to balance the races. ESB should not be disable by default, it was introduced by Tim to fix weak torp races.

Maybe make ESB something you can buy? So not everyone has it in a given match, possibly.

The meta-universe idea as a mechanism to create differences in the games. The UI needs improved, good luck on iterating. Many screens I don't know how to navigate to without some complicated process.

I agree with those who said that 'vanilla' games should continue to be possible, although I really do like the meta-universe idea.

I also agree that things to help the turns (like the planet list/ship list/ sb list) should also be developed.

The first thing in my mind when seeing the new front page was holy shit batman. I can see the point behind it, but I really do not see how this was a good implementation.

The areas are ridiculously far from each other and feel like they have been arbitrarily chosen to some admins liking. Neither it is clear what the new front page is for. Is it an intro page launched for new players or a hub for each player to start at?

These interactions should be designed on the basis what people come to the site for. Newbies need a different first page than people already playing the game.

A good launch page would have our own games clearly listed and the ability to see their scores and play them instantly. Around 99% of my own site visits to planets.nu, I instantly click my games. The only reason why I havent bookmarked to my games directly is because I am lazy.

Secondary information like News and Forum posts should be shown somewhere on the screen, but not exactly in the middle. I would assume most people come on this site to play. Reading the news is important, but they are not updated everytime I come to the site, so I dont see a point having them prominently shown at the front page.

To me it seems that you did not think at all, what people want to achieve at your site. This is not a basic website, where you put news on front and rest of it somewhere else. This is a site that supports the game, the game should be more prominent.

I have to agree with xeye, upgrades like these seem to miss the point. I would like to see an overhaul of the client, basically designing the interactions to fit the game play better.

Here are few examples what would make playing easier.

Make it easier to manage tax rates for multiple planets, for example in the Planets list.

Make it possible to sell supplies and upgrade tech levels while building a ship.

Create a more intuitive UI for managing battle groups.

These kind of things would make playing much easier allowing us to focus on the really hard parts of the game.

Hi There,
I just built my SB, then Researched for a ship.
Got discounted the minerals and cash for the two things.
Now the ship still shows that could be researched, (?) does not appear as active.
Is there Anything I am missing?
Since I play Priv, i tried to deactivate some other advantage only to see if I need free points to assign that ship the active status, but nothin there happens differently.
And now I don't have the minerals anymore :(

Guys,

I'm not normally a negative person, but you asked for feedback, so here it is.

A website is not the place to invent an entirely new control paradigm. It's best to stick with standards adapted by 20 years of commercial web development.

The core error is that your new design makes information harder to find. It also makes the site harder to use, and makes a number of basic mistakes in relation to layout, readability, etc.

You really want to pull that website down, as I imagine you are losing every newcomer who comes to the website right now.

As for the game changes - these MUST BE entirely optional. Offer them as an option if you like, but please ensure 'purist' VGAP is still available.

Also, as someone above notes - there are already mechanisms like Engine-Shield-Bonus built into the game which are not being used properly to find balance.

Perhaps start a thread about what the default config options should be?

Honestly guys, don't break what isn't broken. Your core website design is not something you go crazy with. You'll just put people off.

Thanks anyway for a great host & client :)

>These interactions should be designed on the basis what people come to the site for.
>This is a site that supports the game, the game should be more prominent

Haha, well this is sooo obvious for a player and seems not so obvious for a developer.
I guess the developers should be enforced to play on a regular basis. It will solve all the problems :))

There's a nice German word for this: verschlimmbessern - to improve to the worse.
Just some things I found very early: I can not use the site on my phone, because I don't have a bitten off fruit on it. And not everybody has a touch screen! The usage of the site via a mouse is crappy because it requires additional movements and clicks to find anything. (Déja vu from Ubuntu Unity...)
And about the new gameplay - why do we hear of this for the first time? I've not had time to evaluate what you were thinking hidden in your back room, but why not ask the community, this active and innovative community, about the features you introduced here? For instance the arbitrary values of the race features - why not let the community decide about their values? And again a system that favours players that do a lot of games. But I guess soon we will be able to buy ourselves the awesome features and so

Im so dissapointed.

Another great game sacrificed on the altar of "fancyness"

Its nice to be able to take an emergency turn on your phone, but dont design the interface for phones, this is a serious strategy game, not a kids game like angry birds.

If the utterly confusing interface is not enough to scare of new players, surely they will when they find out they will be up against old players with lots of advantages they cant acces themselves.

Customizable races is a great idea as an optional addon, but not if it is mainly for old players.

As if it is not bad enough that the ranking system disencourages new players, now this also ?

"Welcome to the chess club son, now first you have to play 50 games using only peasants, before you can play the rest of us"


I just hope all this mess have no impact on my existing games. Does it ?

Seems that not everybody like changes,...

I would like to give my opinion:

1.- Website.- I bit too radical change to my taste. I have to get used to it, but anyway it doesn't work on my Android phone,... so here I think there is a problem.

2.- Advantages.- I find it a VERY interesting option. I will make use of it because I think is a good idea and a good way to renew the game. I'm one who think the game should be rebalanced, but I respect people who disagrees.

Anyway I have to agree that a whole new brach of games should be created. That brach (call them "Campaign games" for example), should make use of this career earned points. You can make that every game you play counts on earning resources for your career, but make those resources and advantages useable only in "Campaign games" only.

Just my 2 cents !

Some more feedback since you asked for it!

Website:
Make a mobile/touch screen version of it if you like, but keep the old one as the default. I can't even use my mouse scroll wheel like I used to and finding things is hard.

Race/ship Changes:
I like that the changes are small in scope and gradual in implementation. With games taking 6+ months, you only want one major change in that time, especially for those of use who play one game properly rather then 5 to 10 at once and drop out of most of them.

Missed opportunity:
Agree with post above... you need to improve the interfaces to make it easier to play (like updating tech in ship building screen) and most importantly *reduce* the time it takes to play a turn. I am sure most players give up when they see the time it takes to play.

Setting order on the autobuild targets for planets for example, or set up a standard action for a route "Swap colonists for minerals".

Well, I guess it's perfectly normal that you get a lot of criticism after a relaunch. People generally don't like change. ;)

But.. I have to say, it's very hard to understand the new design of the page. I switched back to the old version so far because I liked it. It could have used some tweaks, but a general overhaul is really.. courageous.

Regarding the game changes - I'm sorry, I am all into the existing game. I do not play any scenarios or addons. I just like the original. I hope you can keep at least some classic games open.

Cheers,
Rudel

It feels to me that the new website is still in an early alfa version.
A lot of "normal" (as in "expected) website control is missing, like using the scroll wheel to navigate a page.

So please, put the old website as standard when logging in and make the new one optional.


Also, looking at the comments, it seems the requirements were written down by developers and not by end users. Especially the navigation has a high degree of "look-what-I-can-code" (Simplicity is not a crime (KISS) ;)) instead of a high degree of usability.


But not everything is bad. I like the idea of the new game mechanics, as long as they stay for optional games. If Vanilla-Planets would go, I wouldn't remain a VIP when my year ends.

Please, focus on your users. Let them tell you what they need and don't try and think for them.

Does anybody have any details on the first wave of "advantages" we are likely to see ? I can see some from the Colonies but I haven't got enough resources to build the starbase on any of my other officers.

Another question - do the advantages take effect in games already playing or only new games joined ?

Woh ! Think the Empire race might have just been fixed, just for the fun of blowing up whole planets !

Utterly lost by the new design. Can't find my games, and find navigating around the home page aggravating. Bearing in mind, that I'm using 1080*1920 screen, and it takes ages to scroll around the 'map'. Many of the navigation buttons are broken/missing on my setup.

Josh stated last night that advantages will only come in for new games. No current games will be impacted.

I cant log in on the new website

I had that problem too, had to log out on the old site, and then try logging in. When that didn't work, I used the 'Forgotten Password' option, and that worked.

Okay, so my first reaction to the site was... I don't get it.

My second look this morning... I logged in using my Android phone. I now understand the concept better, but there's problems with control of dialog boxes (I had to search around to find the log in window), and I actually couldn't hit enter on my username and password in order to log in.

This still needs some tweaks.

As for game play impacts. I like the move to a VGAP 3.6... if you will. The game needs some updates. I like the idea of the starbase command center, and the special abilities. These are some bold changes. What I would have preferred was an alpha/beta release to a test group to run through a gameplay test.

For instance I find the Cyborg B222b Destroyer to be a bit unbalancing, at the cost of 100 fuel, you can plop a B200 and 2 B222b's with heavy phasers right in the warp well of an enemy planet with mines in place. (in the same turn) considering a ship exiting hyperspace has its warp set to 0 and mission set to explore, and with 30 kt of fuel on board it has enough fuel to serve as the end point of a chunnel. At least with a firecloud you had to move through the mine field. Also, I would assume that cloaked ships would still slip through these chunnel points. So utilizing a B200 to lay the ground work, an entire Bird Fleet could follow a B222b through a warp chunnel. Very bad mojo indeed.

But I really do like the idea of incenting people to stick with a race.

I guess my final question is, what happens to your starbase and all that once you lose a championship match?

Tried the forgotten password option but don't get emails either.

You can still get to the old main site by following this link.

http://planets.nu/home

Nice passion in some of the posts :). That's why we play. FYI I spent an hour last night on the new site for the first time and while it was a little overwhelming at first, by the time I went to bed I was familiar with it. It is beta, so I am sure it will be improved. In no small part to some good constructive comments made by others. Meanwhile, the original interface is still alive and well for everyone's use. There are many good directions Nu could go. Or go nowhere at all. I think Nu should go somewhere. Others may not. And everyone has a thought on what is the best direction. This current direction is creative, and yet takes full advantage with mod ideas from the past. It seems about as great as others, although certainly work remains to be done, including making it more easy to use. But Nu is slowly rolling it out, so I will step back and observe the improvements roll in.

I agree that the web design is hard to navigate. But you deserve points for originality and guts.

Concerning the changes to race advanatge/customization that is a separate issue. I for one think it is an interesting experiment, and might work out well.

Only major problem is that it will make it even harder for newbies to get into the game. I think you need to work on making te site and gameplay easier to get into for complete strangers to the game.

Guys, I understand your goals to enable the game for modern mobile devices and to increase the userbase.
But vgaplan is the game about small dots in large space and pixels between them. You just can't productively play it with touch screen.

As for newbie frendlyness, as I already said, you don't need new features, you need to drop existing features. Planet economy should be automated, fuel logistics should be reduced or dropped, the need for frendly codes should be eliminated, alchemy ships should autoload stuff or just be dropped, battle order should be simplified, etc, etc.

It's just impossible to make a modern, popular, successful game from the existing VGA planets just by fiddling with UI or server side or hostmanager. But it's possible to make completely new game, that will be loved by existing VGAP community...with some luck :)
After all, If we would want a simple, easy game, we'd play something else.

regards

Wow this is a lot to take in.

I'm not going comment on the new website design until I have played with it a little more.

The race customization is a very interesting idea, I'd like to see this expanded to include some of the old config options like Engine Shield Bonus, free fighters at starbase, ground combat odds, ect.

Josh,

I have played the Lizards and COM in the past, so I should have a character for those two races; but, the only character I seem to be able to open is the Rebels which I am currently playing.

Lindy

PS Previous comment was me as well. I did not realize I was not signed in.

Wow. Just when I thought I found a way to play vga planets again. Back to looking for a way to use the old programs.

I think its a great move to provide the new website interface, now I see alot of posts about not liking it but I dont see anyone saying 'I clicked on the feature to take me back to the old view.'. I wonder if anyone else sees that option besides me?

Now the customization is a fantastic idea and I cant wait to try it out!! It will add that element of uncertianty about your oponet. Not everyone will like it and as such will there be an option to not participate and play the original game?

95% of the links on the new homepage don't work for me. Hovering over them shows the link but clicking on it does nothing.

I am using IE 9.

- Robo

Hmmm, I'm very undecided about things.

I like the looks and feel of some pop-out menus.
But in general the website is confusing me as of now. I can imagine it perfect for touch screen input, but it's a pain using a mouse. I can't even scroll down on the stats page...

I'm glad to see that you are also trying to include some feature to the website that previously had to be added with extensions (find open games for certain race, show changes in scores, show team stats). Unfortunately I have to say that for most cases I will still prefer the old page with the extensions (which could and should easily just be made default in some cases).

As for the customization: It's a very nice idea and a very bold one. I have several concerns with it:

1)
Can features be added before joining a game or also added while the game is running? Where can I see the settings my opponents are using?
This is critical for all my game decisions. The best part about planets is that I can account for all things that could happen (even though I normally don't see them all). I need to be able to see those things with ease without having to dig deep in user profiles. And they have to stay constant in a given game.

2)
Directly connected to the point before. Player A drops out and player B joins in his slot. Suddenly the race has completely different advantages. Player C who attacked player A found a weak spot, now player B has different settings that counter most of player C with ease... NOT COOL. Sorry, but I wouldn't ever want to play a game like that.

3)
I get the issue of balancing races, but I see some race advantages that are complete killers... For example
-'starbase money transfer' only for one race? Robots are already laying far too many mines with the usual money.
-'super spy command' means any puny little ship with some torps can take any planet...

I also have to say that no matter which races my opponents played, if they played well they gave me a decent fight with uncertain outcome.

4) It's not quite clear how we earn minerals. I have two races with each two won games, but one races has three times the minerals... why? Again along with the first point: I want to know why... put the formula/rules somewhere.


Btw:
-'Enter battle' isn't working: No games with open slots for that race are shown (and obviously there exist some).

"I wonder if anyone else sees that option besides me?" I do, but my comments are made because of the comment here  http://planets.nu/post/the-future-of-planets-nu-is-here  "Everyone is recommended to get used to playing your turns on the new website rather than using the old as we'll eventually be retiring some parts of the old platform".

One more thing: What happens when a Planet destroying Gorbie is captured? Does it keep the capability? Same for some other abilities...

I'm hopefully optomistic about the design.  One issue with the new changes is any testing of the new abilities will be drawn out since their costs are quite high.  i've been able to purchase a starbase but no actual research even though I've won two games as my race.  At the listed costs it would likely be two years(or longer) before i can buy any of the major abilities listed for my race.

anyhow that aside, as to the interface.  It definately needs some tweaking.  I think what is needed is a traditional web interface wrapper which has the forums, news etc...
This makes it easy to navigate, read, scroll, etc..

Then take this entire thing and wrap it into a "play" button.  Which opens this and you don't get any of the leaderboard pages, news etc.. but you do retain the command interface for your games.  This resolves a lot of the issues with scrolling, text selection.
You can still see where everyone is lying in the metaverse and move into the individual home systems of people to chat if you like.  And you can manage your games, research and other things.

Don't want to play on my phone.

Information harder to find.

Think Classic website should stay up as well.

I find the new homepage confusing & suspect new visitors here may move on quickly.

Speaking for myself, play-ability on my iPhone is pretty low on my wish list...it would be nice, but I agree with others that this is a complex game built to be played on a full computer, not a smart phone. Why sacrifice an easy, user-friendly interface in pursuit of the Angry Birds crowd?

Right now I'm using about 7 excellent developer add-ons. Why not incorporate these as permanent improvements? The mine-sweep visualization is a good example. Speeding up game play with a "quick-build" button where we could configure a 'favorite' ship in the Starbase menu would be a great time saver.

As far as the race advantages, I'm intrigued but really hope there's TWO versions made available...one traditional, and a second campaign version. Please don't force the fans of the traditional game to look elsewhere for games.

I’m excited to see that improvements to Planets.nu are occurring behind the scenes, and I commend the crew for taking bold steps to make this a better experience for new and current players. The following observations, comments, and suggestions are specific to this first release of the new site, and the plan to improve the game over time – I assume that there are more improvements and additions on the way that may address some of these.

THE NEW SITE
The new site shows potential to be really cool, but I feel it’s way too rough to release as anything more than merely a demonstration. I find it neither usable or playable on my desktop, iPhone, iPad, or Android tablet. Technically it works, yes, but it’s a miserable experience. There are basic information architecture flaws to this site that should’ve been sending off alarm bells to the team before they showed it to anyone.

- Critical pieces of the game’s mental model are now hidden off-screen, only accessible by hunting through a gigantic map of planetary bodies (which communicate no information), or by the tiny navigation buttons at the top (which will be the main way anyone navigates between leaderboards, new games, news, forums, etc.). Worse, it’s more difficult to tell what the game is about on first arrival (I can’t imagine being a new player landing on this and not being frustrated into leaving within ten seconds).

- Lack of any inductive navigation hints to indicate what information is available on the big screen – again, aside from the navigation menu on top, there is nothing that gives a new visitor a sense of what can be viewed. I’m fairly seasoned with Planets.nu, and I had a hard time sorting out what’s there, what’s been removed, and even when I found something familiar (an overview of a game I’m playing), the information is presented in a non-intuitive mess.

- The map is just too big. That I frequently found myself looking at a blank starfield background, or at a meaningless planet or asteroids is a HUGE usability issue… and that’s on a desktop with a freakishly large resolution. SUGGESTION – you’ve got maybe four to six main areas of the homesite – (What is Planets, My Games, News, Leaderboard, How to play). Lock those onto your map so that you snap to these sections, and pull them closer to you can clearly see them off the sides of whatever position you’re on at the time. “I can see that I can swipe to the top for HOME, left for My Games, Right for Leaderboard, etc”). Reduce the size of the screen… please, no tablet will be out in the next three years or more that will make this a comfortable experience.

- Standard mouse/keyboard scrolling and navigation is now either stunted or gone altogether: Once I arrive at a floating page I’m presented with a scrolling document that falls off my screen… scrollwheels on mouse don’t work, page-up/page-down is gone, I appear to only be left with flipping the page around with mouse-clicks which introduces lateral motion that breaks up my task of reading a large list. Even on a touch-screen, reading vertical information (i.e. a message thread) is irritating as I can too easily swipe the entire pane off-screen leaving me staring at a meaningless black background. And before anyone says mice and keyboards aren’t needed anymore… try playing your turn without them.

I can go on, but these are the main critical flaws that should be addressed ASAP. Building the new site on a platform and framework that addresses touch interfaces is brilliant, don’t stop doing this. Clearly the new site is not ready for use, the only real mistake I see is messaging this as “ready-to-go”. It should’ve been presented as merely a peek, demonstration, or “this is what we’re thinking”.

CHANGES TO THE GAME SYSTEM
I’m struggling with the choice to introduce potentially game-breaking race customization before addressing obvious core issues to the Planets.Nu game experience itself. Playing turns is a hassle, as people have previously noted. We do it because we love the game, and it’s a nostalgia factor. I’ve already lost a dozen people that I’ve introduced to Planets.nu because they’re annoyed at the plodding bit-tweaking needed every turn, especially for tasks that should be easily modified into a simple automation model (freighters round-tripping between core worlds, world-building, ship queues, fleet management, etc.). These folks loved the idea behind Planets, but found the interface and gameplay annoying.

You don’t need the customizable race elements you’re suggesting, at least not before addressing the core playability issues listed above. The game interaction needs a lot more work than your homesite (which already did a reasonably good job at what it is intended to do). At the very least, these new customizations should only be offered as options to the core, un-altered game, to see how they play out over time.

And what about these issues?
- I can only build ONE ship per turn at a Starbase that’s fully stocked to build five or more?
- I have to transport money on a ship, using fuel??? Clearly there’s an electronic frontier in Echo Cluster that can be used to wire money across planets. How else could I communicate orders/tasks, see the status of different worlds, etc.?
- There’s a 500 ship limit? Really?
- My fleet attacks its target one ship at a time? Really?
- I can’t gather my ships into a named fleet and move them as a group?
- Planets need to be micro-managed, with no real automation for building to a specified state?
- Viewing my scoutship takes up a gigtantic slab of unfilled UI real-estate on the left side of my screen, yet mouse-clicks on the map can accidentally set its waypoint erroneously?
- The starmap is a separate mode altogether, preventing me from seeing messages and communicating with allies/other players while in the starmap?

My guess is that there’s an equally aggressive effort going on to address these issues in the game, and we just haven’t seen it yet. I would hope that there’s a bit more care being taken to make improvements first without breaking the gameplay, or even basic UI affordances.

/\__ This post about perfectly expresses my thoughts!

Agreeing with blackbird, I would also add that the current 'how to play' section is totally fine for me as I know my way around, but if I was new, I'd be completely lost.
It needs a decent overhaul into something complete (with in game pictures) that explains things to a completely new person that is not introduced by a friend.

first feelings:

1) hate it that now in-game by double-clicking on a planet/SB the zoom kicks in automatically at 1000%

2) hate it that when i try to scroll pages down with page down button a yellow box appears which will not go away no matter what you do

3) hate it that pages can't be scrolled any other way either than by mouse "drag"

on the new race options, features etc: glad if someone likes them, I for one don't think I will ever find the time to try any of those out properly.

I assume the team hasn't expected such a roar of the community. My ideas:

1. I like the "role playing" add-on and will certainly try it out. We've done similar things in the past where everyone had 100 points to alter his ship list or race stats.

2. I haven't tested the new web site but I now see why many important improvements of the existing client haven't been realized. Most resources were dedicated to the new site and add-on. This is disappointing.

3. As an active community member I'm surprised by the surprising character of this development.

4. I can understand the intention to make more money with this site. I'm quite sure it won't take long and every bad player will be able to directly buy his super tech. Well, a lot of us dreamed of making money with a hobby like planets, isn't it? So this is ok, congrats to the team! ;) But take good care that the nature of the game doesn't get lost. It is not guaranteed that the fascination of planets rises if
* no two games are comparable any more
* you can compensate skill with money
* the game gets even more complex

5. Will all this end like Planets 4? I hope not!

Cool but flawed interface for the site.

Basically Blackbird +1

Today I'm glad that I had purchase only the 3 months premium membership.

I think that you totally miss understood what your priority should be. There are quite few games where you have to pay with as many bugs as this one, yet your efforts are not headed to solve your existing problems but to make new ones. There is a big list of bugs reported that need fixing and we, your customers, have to wait for weeks just to have our reports put in under review status.Now I understood why this happens.

The improvements in the races only make them unbalanced in other ways. Just the money transfer option for some races is a game breaker by himself. The game mechanics were right, the interface was the one that needed changes. There is too the problem with the docs. Till now any one that wanted to know how the game works had to go to donovans and read there as many things as he could. Now major changes had been made in the game and donovans is obsolete but here we can't find a guide half as good as donovan's was.

In the other hand the new web is nice if you want to lose some minutes just moving around but it is not user friendly. It works a lot worst that the last one so we took another steep back.

I hope you'll reconsider and will put this like optional. I'll continue playing till my current games end but if this major changes continue active you'll lose another customer.

Regards,

Nitemare

instead of altering the game mechanics the developpers should make the existing game more easy to play.
in the old days i used winplan, echoview and tanascius. There are some main advantages of planets .nu. But there are still many things worse.
some examples which i and many others posted one year ago:
- no growth tax, i still have to tax by hand, this costs me 5 to ten minutes and worse causes some errors liek overtaxing and riots.
- no "next turn"; try to play norg, there can be nice domino chunnelings
- no information after battles, i have to view the 23. vcr to see what ship is standing over my lost planet and what beams it had, i hate this especially...

and there are so many other things to improve. it is not necessary to make the game more complex, it is still complex enough for people who have played it 20 years.

regards,

ulki13


by the way its funny that i have to scroll to see the new webpage. i have a 27 inch monitor :)

totally overwhelmed... cool style somehow, but for someone who spent about 1000 hours on this site here it's pretty shocking :)

i personally would enjoy more condensed information on the site, which is imho in no way contrary to the new navigation, and i would reduce the necessary clicks in the regular ingame interface to make this product competitive to the very big eco-and-war games on the net.

about the game balance thing, i personally think the klingons are overdone, and the vendetta classes need more -mass- and cargo, not crew, to be an alternative to the nebula or lcc.
or the stealth version a recloak intercept mission?
and -hmmrmmh- where ist the chameleon device?
it's so much fun...

;)

anyway, keep it up - the new thing looks much more serious and grand than the one before !!

two things I would most like to see are:

1. see games with no ship limit as this would be a big help the the torp races with weaker ships.

2. multi ship combat.

Turned the new web site off.

Could not find info on who had turns done.

Could not know to what direction scroll the screen to reach the stuff of the top menu of the old look (that I'm back to using).

I think the new game dynamics will be good. My personality fits the Feds better than, say, the Fascists. I just can't bring myself to hissss the poor natives! However, that leaves me playing a disadvantaged race.

I'm glad to see the option for a Classic game will be kept.

The home page layout is a neat idea, with different areas on a large background. However, moving it around gives me vertigo. I'd rather jump between the parts.

The idea of many battles in star clusters within a larger system is neat, but waiting for the various battles to show up is boring. Maybe show more of them at once, with colour showing age.

The homeworld is a neat view, but icons mean nothing until we learn them well. Include a few words with each icon. We can hover to learn the rest, but those few words are critical.

I'd clean up the remaining bits with the client, several of which are mentioned above, and the most-requested changes to the game options (such as dependence on ID for combat sequence) rather than fancy, pretty, vertigo-inducing interfaces.

You want to find out if the new design is any good? Put them both out there and let the community decide. If the new interface is good enough, people will migrate to it. When more than two-thirds have migrated, you'll know it is finally good enough and you can start to pull the plug on the old one. For now, I like the old one. For the most part I find the old .nu interface to be a significant improvement over the old DOS version, though there are a few quirks...

And what is this about giving experience that carries between games. No no no!!! This is not about marketing schemes to try to build continuity in a user base. Keep the playing field even and based on one game at a time so the newbs have a chance. The more you muck with the game play, the less anyone will be able to figure out the rules and you will drive people away! Again, let the community decide. Don't stop offering standard games without enhancements. Make all enhancements optional and host configurable and let the players decide what games to join. If you want to add [optional] game enhancements, look to add the features found in the old starbase+ and race+ add-on enhancements to the DOS version!

There are more glaring improvements needed too. For one, I just had two games end just as they were getting interesting. Your win scenerios are crap for only 2 or 3 people. There needs to be the option to let the game continue until the opponents choose to surrender, not to have the game vanish because one player beats the other to half the map or builds nothing but BR4s for 25 turns!!! I don't like to win accidentally! Waste of some perfectly good matches and 4 days worth of my free time!

You also need to let E-S bonus and other config settings (including any and all "enhancements") be controllable by the player setting up the game host. There should be a menu option for viewing the host config underneath "diplomacy" within the game screen for reference.

Hey Nuniverse team,

I can feel that you're very disappointed about the reactions to the big work you did. Don't overlook that these reactions also show how much we like this site and want to keep on playing&meeting here.

The new system reminds me of the original military score system. It "fixes" a percieved problem by replacing a well known and functional system (the original planets scoreing system) with an overly complicated, hard to understand system that is easily manipulated (move your fighters off your starbase and onto your ship for an instant score bump). Even now you can join an open race in #1 position at turn 60 and earn much more score per turn than say starting from scratch at turn 1 and earning it.

Lets say that we all think that the Fasc are weak. The classic way to fix that is to bump them in the host game settings, say up their ground attact from 15:1 to say 20 or 25:1. One also could up the Engine shield bonus which was a old relaibe fix for all torp races; this has been asked for for some time. Solutions already exist; planets is not a new game.

Besides, we all choose what races to play and, as a reward for playing less polular races, I bet it is easier to get to the top 10 with them.

With this system, is someone going to run complicated multivariate stats to see if the advantages are weighted correclty? I personally think the Borg with a cheap ship that they could chunnel to would be a BIG DEAL to a player that care about logistics. If the borg can get there, they can chunnel in A LOT including a firecloud, cubes, merlins, etc. Like the military score, this means well but may be overly complicated and cause much more problems then it fixes.

We could also talk about improving the game of chess. Perhaps the knights could have light sabers and the Queens death rays. . . Perhaps we should leave a good thing alone. . .

If we really want to help new players, Nu could set up a mentor system. Tech is great but it isn't the solution to everything. Sometimes simple is best.

If we want to challenge old players, setup a double elimination style tournament where both races and what game players are in is randomly asssigned. Keep in mind most of your clients are old players who are not playing planets 4 or hosting their own games with wierd addons. A lot of people just want vanilla games, they are long and complicated enough.

Sometimes simple is better. I do like the idea of rewarding good play but don't think this is the way to do it.

I strongly recommend that all major changes are first debated with feedback from the Nu community. This top down "surprise!" approach is going to cost you some cred. While no solution is perfect, a good debate will point out some of the limitations of a particular solution ahead of time - before you invest a lot of time programming. Before most of a community, who is behind you, pubicaly says "not so much" to a lot of work. Discussion first, then action, will also help generate buy in. Saving your time and buy in are very good things to have on your side.

As for the website, I mostly just want to get in and play my turns. Occasionally I read the forums. I care a lot more about functionality then flashy shinny things.

I'm unable to figure out how to reply from the new interface so I'm going back to the old one to post this.

Yes, as Emork said: We love NU and the fact that you guys work on improving... :) We care... :)
Keep up with it.

I second emork's sentiment. Still love the site, just hope choices remain. I also ENJOY playing different races, which adds variety and new challenges, and I'm afraid your idea will force me to choose "MY" race to build points and stay competitive. Also agree you might be making even harder for newbies to compete, and it's hard enough for them to stay even with us old farts.

I would like to add to the overwhelming sentiment. Please focus on basic functionality and make any new features optional. I am afraid this move is not entirely successful.

the longer i see the changes in the ship and ability lists, the less i like them as a lizard.

if starbases can lay mines and sweep, the classic lizard advantage of having more mines than anyone else (except the bot and crystal) becomes practically zero. starbases will become super hard to capture under these circumstances.
and while we suddenly give the fed the possibility to not only spread their cash really fast, and the possibility to build a proper thor class, while we have a firecloud target or a really dangerous deth specula or diplomacy hitter, death rays and such things, the lizards should get vendetta classes with one engine?

While I'm not a fan of these changes, Nu gets a huge thanks for reviving one of my favorite old classic games. As long as there are vanilla games, I'll be here.

Like Tom N, I also hope I can play all races and be competitive. If not, that would be another example of unforeseen consequences of messing with a good thing.

The website itself was never much of a problem here. it was simple and easy to navigate. while i appreciate the continued improvements to the game that are made here, the developers have to be careful to not overly complicate things with attempts at a fancy interface. There are many examples of great games which were ruined by making the interface more complicated than it needs to be. One such example is Master of Orion 2. Fantastic game, clean and easy to play. enter Master of Orion 3. For those of you old enough to remember it, the interface made the game feel like you are doing your taxes. Even though the graphics got a bit flashier, the interface just got too damn complicated for the average user. A more recent example is a great little game called Sword of the stars. very simple game that did space combat extremely well. The most recent version, with its impressive graphics was so buggy and complicated in its interface that there was a huge outcry among the fans, enough so that the developers started giving away free copies of the original game to pacify the fans while they fixed and streamlined it (currently on steam, read the forums if interested).

same thing tends to happen in newer versions of other software. each successive version seems to want to add and add functionality, whether it is needed or not. look at photoshop. early versions were simple for the average user to figure out. the most recent version is all but unusable unless you are a computer graphics professional or someone who lives in their parent's basement.

please don't fall into that trap!

the concerns about driving away new players are well founded. The original game is complicated as is. More effort should be spent on making the in game interface more efficient rather than on making the website flashier. The growth of the community really depends on attracting new players. The new website is confusing and weird to navigate, and just may drive them away.

The other thing to remember is the target audience. most of the players here are older. I am in my mid thirties, but there are many players here in their 40s, 50s, and 60s. even a lot of new players are just old players from the 90s rediscovering the game. Flashy new gimmicks are great for teenagers, but most of us play planets after work to relax for an hour or so. speed and efficiency are more important in my opinion than flashiness, and anything that removes the game too far from what these people are familiar with will just drive new players away.

planets v 3.5 survived so long because it is simple to learn and play (but difficult to master, keeping players coming back for more). but who still plays vgap 4.x?

now, as for the new racial abilities, they are interesting, but the fact that i have to give up some well known pirate abilities just to try out a new ships (the only one of the new ships in the pirate research tree worth anything is the storm carrier). why not at least raise the base advantage to 500 for example, so that you can try out new things without giving up the tried and true?

I feel that something akin to a raceplus addon in select games would have been a better way to implement these type of changes. Similar to stellar cartography and giant melee - play it if you want to, avoid if you don't. the new abilities are also so expensive for the new players that it would be a loooooong time before anyone but advanced players can try them. in races where i finished one game, even if i won it, i still can't build a starbase, never mind have enough to research some of these abilities. why would any player play in these new ability games over conventional or melee ones if they will be going against players who do have them? why not just stick to conventional games until you build up enough points to buy the new fancy stuff?

the work done by independent developers to improve the interface has been tremendously useful. those changes should be phased into the official game interface.

to help newbies, resources such as donovan's have always been available. when i just started, i learned most things i know about reading a pirate from reading donovan's and other websites with guides. with all these weird changes, no such guides are available, and the existing guides are even less accurate and less applicable than they are now, further increasing the learning curve.

Also, while I am not a fan of math, the formulas for everything dealing with vgap were always well known. There is no explanation for example as to what makes your empire's resources or money go up? what do players need to do if they need money to research some new thing but their empire only makes 1 mc per turn for example? it would be nice to know.

Will be sticking to the default site for now until this one matures. first order of business should be to improve navigation to allow the use of normal mouse commands such as the mouse wheel and that little box on the side which you can drag up and down to navigate a thread faster. also, please make the forum text not float side to side as you try to scroll down.

just my 2 cents..

Vepr + 2 more cents. Well thought out and excellent post, bravo! My guess is you're one of the younger players here, ha!

Spot on about "Master of Orion" & I remember looking forward to that newer version...what a disappointment and waste of money. Civilization had similar follies of over-complicating a game to the point of making it more work than fun.

If NU ends up with 2 platforms I expect I'll pick a favorite race in the 'Campaign' wars and play one game there, while continuing a few 'regular' and 'melee' games at the standard site.

Well, to echo many sentiments here, I would say time would have been better spent coming up with minor client enhancements that would stream-line doing a turn. Most of us (I suspect) started playing VGAP back in the 90's, which means we range in age from at least 30-odd to 50-odd. In that age bracket we have very little time on our hands for hobbies, so making turns quicker to do would keep us engaged.

Adding something that takes more time and energy to handle will just end up driving people away. The nice thing about the interface that you had built was that if you were familiar with the original VGAP interface, it was a snap to pick up. Us old folks don't like learning new interfaces, no matter how tech-savvy we are (and I am a programmer). I understand about wanting to add your own stamp, etc, but I would have left the game running the way it was (adding functionality to make doing a turn easier) and then created a parallel game that starts breaking from traditional VGAP (maybe make it something like MOO2 meets VGAP).

That's just my 2c worth.

I had to go back to the old design. I've been playing Planets for many years and generally look for the vanilla games. I agree with the negative views already posted on the new layout: confusing, too complicated, and a waste of precious developer's time which should instead have been devoted to making the previous site easier to use (such as auto-routing a ship to trade clans for minerals). If the vanilla games vanish, so will I.

I am not sure if Starbases can lay webmines or sweepwebmines as it just say mines, but anyway it is a desaster for the Crystalline.
Starbases can sweep webs that will make any planet a save haven for ships?? The Borg can chunnel in 7 Heavy Phasers to any of his Probes, great? The fed has another 10 Beams ship, the Lizard can build a new 9 Beams ship and both have the eco the build in HP?? How should the X-tal compensate all these costs?? I can not even transfer money on my SB. And on top, Web mines are the most expensive advantage (150) even rob ship, that can suck you dry directly is cheaper (140).
How about a eco bonus for the X-tals, like SB money transfer or Advanced webs that suck fuel AND MCs of the ships that hits a web mine?

I like the new design, at least what i have seen so far,(but please enable my scrol weel again)

just learned that i have to wait another 400 days untill i can research lay mines on my SB. even then i am not sure if it would be Web mines or just normal mines.

I guess in xx days i can simply buy this option for xxx$. I am happy to support NU, as the team is doing a great job but it would been appritiated if they find a way that will not unbalance the game.

I played as Lizard, Bird, Klingon, Borg and Robot here so far, but now my profile is reduced to Crystalline. Can you kindly change that? Just make new officers, i will then rename them if needed.

spacesquad,

Ity seems you can only view your character for a particular race if you have an active game playing that race. If you create a training game with the Lizard, Bird, Klingon, Borg or Robot you will be able to view your character for that race.

This is something that needs to changed.

While your profile does only show current games, you can click on "Show Historic" and see all the games / Races where you have finished games. For me, once I do this, then I can check out my six different Homeworlds for Races where I have finished games, instead of just the one Race when I have "Hide Historic" -- which is the default for your profile.

No clue what all this talking about buying starbases for your officers, advantages and stuff is about. Logging in takes me forever on the new site, and after closing the browser and restarting at least I seem to be logged in. Clicking on "profiles" shows only the lil' starship with my profile's name, that's all. Since I can not access my games from the new site, I have bookmarked and swapped to the old design.

Using Firefox 12.0 btw.

Hello!
Adapt Planets to tablets and smartphones seems ok. Anyway, I need to play in a PC with: add-ons, with a translator and other support web sites.

Another thing is to change the basic rules of the game.

How much has changed chess (example of strategy game) in recent years? People continue playing Chess.
As many of you say, you have to facilitate / simplify the game.

In my opinion, it's interesting to play against OTHER PEOPLE. The important thing is to take ADVANTAGE of the ships and characteristics of your race! The game changes ALLYING with one or another! So, I don't need a ship with 2 torps more...

Now, I try to do 1 turn in the new web... I've given up.
I prefer the old system.

SAY NO to the NEW system.
SAY YES to do more EASY the game!

Thanks

Mouse scroll doesn't work and that is a showstopper in any web-site I use.

As for game changes, you shouldn't make players more stuck to one race they are now. Getting some bonuses for playing certain race more achieves just that. Also giving in-game benefit to players for playing more is suspicious and unfair imo, already getting any recognition (achievements/score) is achieved too easily by joining multiple games played left-handed.

I also think that you have failed to communicate about your mission on developing the planets.nu.

The grammar on 2X faster beams is ambiguous. "Two times faster than normal" would be 3x. Which is it?

i am playing in one game now. I can not even find the game with out going through a whole bunch of screens.


But my main complaint is I do not understand the new creen and can not find any info that actually explains it.


I am 50 years old. I have been in computing since the cpm operating system. if I can not figure out how to get to my game or even how to get to the forums then we got a train wreck.

This looks a lot like the game screen where you have a lot of planets and you are suppose to move around and find games. I never use that web page.

You need to keep the main screen simple.

I have know ideal what this new homeworld thing is. It does not make any sense. Does this mean that my game that is at turn 99 now has new rules ? What the frack.

I'm sure you guys worked hard on the interface change, but its frankly unusable on a desktop. This is cool for cools sake - I see only drawbacks and no benefits for desktop users.

Here are some _specific_ criticisms
-Login is hidden on a planet image. Why is this not in the menu bar?
-If I'm not logged in, I can scroll around the "view" quickly with the mouse. But if I am logged in, I have to drag around a little starship with my user name... slowly. WTF???
-I click on forums in the menu... and I go to a summary of recent topics. Where are the forums?!?!?!
-How to I find How to Play? Its just gone from the menu
-How to I give you guys money (upgrade)? Apparently I can't.
-No join games in the menu?!?!?!
-Where do I find my own profile?!?!

after my current game is over, I will ask for a refund of the rest of my subscription. This is no longer vgaplanets. It was good while it lasted.

How can you play when other players will have hidden abilities.

I really am happy to see that a big update was made. It is good to see that the dev team is at least trying to make the game better. I've seen quite a few games that stay the same for 5 years just to sit and collect membership fees. And maybe 2-3 admins who keep the forums clean.

The new website is kind of cool and being able to chat with other people in a universal chat room is kinda neat. But being able to scroll near infinitely in any direction without knowing what is where is confusing. I've played this game for a year now and I know what to look for on the site. But now I'm lost again. The only reason I find it confusing is because of how HUGE the opening page is. If you could place some hovering icons that take you to each section that would be a great quick fix.

I wouldn't suggest having the chat on the main page. Make it its' own area. I tried looking at the page with my iPhone 4 the other day and it took me about 20 minutes to upload the site with about 10 people chatting in random confusion to Joshua. I can't zoom in or out with the Iphone so the little "Log In Circle" icon on the page takes up 3/4 of my view. So with infinite scrolling going on its a bit frustrating to conceive what it is I'm looking at. I don't think there is a method of chatting from the phone. But I'm not sure, I could just be lost.

I think having the ability to add or remove certain abilities makes the gameplay interesting. Especially if you keep it to where you can't create "Super Races". OFC careful research needs to be done to ensure that these options are both useful to the race as well as plausible to use.

The Death Star blowing up planets is kinda neat. But way to expensive to likely to even be worth the fight. Not to mention if it becomes a method of getting "PBP" I see that as a possible method to rack up way too many points in a very short amount of time. Not to mention there needs to be a reasonable method of determining which planets will blow up in a chain reaction. That can REALLY ruin someone's day to find out they evacuated to a death trap and ruined their entire position.

Making a chunnel ship that can chunnel too a b200 probe does seem a bit overpowered in long term dynamics, also if it works like a firecloud and everything chunnels with it vice just that ship since you can now hyp then chunnel. Making a already powerful cyborg offense able to point and shoot past a waiting offensive line and into their lush green factory fields. Also forces other players to play more spread out and unable to stop a cyborg attack from head-on either.

The facist "recloak intercept" is a really cool feature. Now the facists are way better suitted to kill any carrier race. I hope that ship has a mad 15 KT p/tn fuel burn to make up for the amped up cloaking computers ran to perform such an action. A few deth specula's can easily handle some cobol's or tranquilities especially after a glory device has been set off to tilt the fight. And since they can recloak the carrier is stranded and defenseless. I think this could become a very very dangerous feature.

The command ship looks neat, turns your entire fleet into an impervious force against minefields. Better hope the colonies don't get something like that to...oh...wait. I guess it would serve as a suitable counter to the fascist player hunting all your cobols without a sweat.

The Romulan Educator ship is a good tool. The romulan lack of economy can now be repaired. Not to mention that EVERYONE will be begging for resolutes towed by educators now. At the expense of knowing when your going to back stab the Romulan. The 1 engine Bright Heart is a great idea, sacrifice the ability to tow for 1/3 less cash. The Valiant Wind is a alright carrier for fighting merlins and the like and not wasting an entire cargo hold of torpedoes. But with the Red Wind ability, now the birds have a medium carrier to fight with. Not to mention every carrier race will be begging for one of these to make their carrier way more ridiculous. I think this just means the birds will have something everyone else wants.

The Ion Storm shield is a great idea for new players and such who don't always make long term plans for such annoyances. And end up sending their fleet far away to be marooned without fuel. Or just get pushed along by the storm till the ships can no longer push through the storm. However, as a Romulan. Decloaking all my ships over the planet just to have protection from that when my resolutes and darkwings are safe from that anyways? That is just giving my opponent a free ticket to blow all my ships up.

The robots/rebels now have the ability of a portable SB. With a ship that can repair ships away from home that makes life interesting against carriers that can repair themselves very quickly. I hope it can't re-crew ships also.

It really looks like there are a few major abilities and ships that can really change the pace of the game. Like the Stealth Specula, Gorbie, Sage, educator, command ships. While I'm open to new configurations and change. One player able to customize with one thing makes things difficult in other ways. Having the ability to select either a cheaper, bigger, or better armed variant of a ship in sacrifice of a weaker version of another ship or a reduction in race abilities would be a worthy thing.

At my rate. It will be about another year until I can even build a SB at my "Homeworld" I hope I don't fall behind the learning curve.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy some of these changes. And I'm happy your trying. I guess really it is a matter of trying them out and seeing whether or not people like them or not. Or if they are plausible changes. But I agree, there should be a way to always play the original version, without any of the mods or bonuses.

They already said that there will be always pure classic games. The problem is that they are making huge changes before ensuring that the game works perfect.

While we wait patiently that they review our bugs reports and fix them they are spending their time improving things that are not urgent things. Plugins developers are doing a better job from my point of view. They are really upgrading things to have a better playability.

And the worst of all is that they released major updates before even beta tested it. Some links seems broken, the ship from time to time stops of been able to move and you have to change to pan mode in order to be able to have access to some parts of the information. I had been able to build the starbase and upgraded the sky garnet just to see how it worked... and what happened is that the mats had been spend but the upgrade had not been made.

By the way crystalline upgrades worth nothing, to be able to set mines with our starbases has no impact since what the crystalline players need is to overlap webs and for this it needs to be able to move. To be able to sweep mines is not really an upgrade either our sweep power is good enough.

The ion storm shield is not an upgrade either. Crystalline has no static ships to maintain over their planets, and with the fix on the ionstorms bugs they are no longer a problem to evade.

And finally from the new shiplist the only ship that is an upgrade is the skygarnet since the other ships can't lay webmines!!! And it just make opals not worthy to be build since it cost more or less the same but skygarnet has more cargo, more fuel capacity and more beams.

So after all it seems that they hadn't weighed carefully the changes that they had made.

Regards,

Nite

Don't get me wrong, I appreciate that there is effort being made here, but I am perplexed about the direction this is going.

VGA planets is a deep complicated game. I have been trying to get friends into it and have been unable to do so, mostly because of the time and learning curve.

How do you look at a game like that and say, "lets add more complexity"?!?

When I first found Nu, I was impressed by the improvements made over the old days. Time machine, web interface, in game messaging to other players. Note, these are all improvements to the experience of playing the game, not to the game itself.

As I have been playing there were a few more improvements, ship/planet/SB list screens, the API which allowed other players to make their own improvements.

I was hoping that future improvements would continue to address the bugs and issues with the game experience so that it's actually easier to play and recruit new users, but without altering the core game balance and mechanics.

More map tools like custom size circles to help plan mine fields, scan ranges. Adding gravitonics to the line map. An overlay showing your current mine scan coverage area, or sensor/bioscan coverage area. A mine sweep visualization so it's easier to determine where to move after sweeping or which ships in a stack should sweep.

There are a ton of other minor improvements to be made, or even major ones like an AI player that can take over a race when somebody quits so it's not so unbalancing. Or to fill out a private game with friends, or as a solo game experience for when you want to play but can't commit to a new game.

Between the 90's and now I have been playing for around 3 years and haven't finished a game with all races, there is still tons of game to be discovered and replay value without adding more. But there are a lot of fixes that can be made to the annoyances in the game that already exist.

I guess my main issue is that it feels like giving every chess figurine a special ability. It will take weeks or even months to figure out the balance changes. It's completely changing the rules of the game that we all like. Without a proper testing. Balancing is like walking on a pretty thin rope, you can drop down fast if you are careless.

I assume that we are charged in the future for using those features. Either pay $$$ or play for five years and be stuck with one race. This is okay with me if we do not have to pay a monthly fee. But if you stick to this subscription idea, you shouldn't force us to pay even more just to be competitive.

I understand that you invested a lot of time into this site and you want more than a niche game. But try not to scare away all the traditional gamers that made this game like it is today.

I'm sure there are pesons who spends lot of time and efforts to improve Planets.
But I'm agree with Rudel and ThinLizzy (I think) that it can be a system for pay to get improvents in the game....
Please, don't break down it!

I'm sure there are pesons who spends lot of time and efforts to improve Planets.
But I'm agree with Rudel and ThinLizzy (I think) that it can be a system for pay to get improvents in the game....
Please, don't break down it!

I'm sure there are pesons who spends lot of time and efforts to improve Planets.
But I'm agree with Rudel and ThinLizzy (I think) that it can be a system for pay to get improvents in the game....
Please, don't break down it!

I think the same, jomiii. For them it seems a way to make some more cash. It's an usual way in other on-line games. I'm sticking on the old planets although I don't mind some visual improvements ^_^

Tried the new homepage on my iPad today. The canvas doesn't grow outside the screen. On my desktop, there is lot of extra space outside the originsl borders.

The shiplist shows a Sage Repair Ship for the Robots. However, this ship is nowhere to be seen at my personal homeworld. I've no idea what it costs to be able to build this new hull.

This new interface is presented to the public without proper testing. My guess is that it's still in an early alpha stage.

I agree with Rudel that paying for upgrades should be a possibility, but not needed to keep playing a well balanced game.

My very quick 2 monetary units

1) The new website should _NOT_ be the default for now. It will only scare new players away. I recommend moving it to a testing area ASAP, and fix all the links (current email links when your turn is ready leads you to the new website). It needs much more work before it is usable in any way.

2) Regarding the changes to the game, I've looked it over and like most add-ons for planets, I'm not sure it is something that I want to play. That does not mean it is a bad idea, and I'm all for options. But I do have an issue with the wide range of different games currently being hosted. I'm afraid that it will become increasingly difficult to find a "classic" game to join. The playerbase is only so large, and there can only be so many new games in the "joining" fase. Right now there are 7 open games, of which only 3 are "classic" games (against 2 giant meele, 1 stellar and 1 team game) - with this new feature as an option as well, I'm scared that the "classic" games will fade even more into the background :(

A couple suggestions:

- I would agree that the new interface is a bit clunky, though it is pretty to look at. The old one did pretty well with showing a lot of information on one screen though, and this is definitely an information rich game.

- Since it seems like it will be a long ways off before many players can actually use any of the new race advantages, why not open some test games with them to let people try it out? You could just create some games where (just for that game) the players are treated as if they had already researched all the advantages/ships and can test-drive a "modified" race. This would also help see what advantages are good/bad/game-breaking.

Also, what do we need to include now for usescripts to work? http:/play.planets.nu/* ? I haven't looked to see where all you can access the games from now.

I'm okay with the new changes, just one question: how do i see the other races that i played as? I only see my first race.

I don't need any of the new stuff.

Please keep the old website and the standard games available.

Just given the new layout another go. Running Chrome fullscreen, on a 1080x1920 (full HD) screen, with the zoom set to 33%, I still can't see the whole page at once. That's insane. And as others have said, on the PC platforms (confirmed on IE, Chrome and FF), there are no boundaries to the page.

Good thing -- notes are now visible with the rest of the ship / planet info! That saves me a step.

Starbase notes aren't shown. I assume that's an oversight?

I have tried to use the new page a number of times over the last few days. It is not only not intuitive, I think it is counter intuitive. I can not get into the forums from the new home page and other parts of my screen run over the edges of my monitor (1920 X 1200 or when in surround 5760 X 1200 across three monitors).
I would like to be able to ocosional play from my Windows pone and in fact I can get loged in but I do NOT want to play using a touch screen. As someone else wrote, VGAP is not angry birds.
I will keep looking at it and hopefully it will improve but one thing for sure, DO NOT TAKE AWAY THE CLASSIC VGAP, that is why I am here. Also, VGAP is hard enough for a new player to learn, the future of VGAP is in getting the next generation playing and adding complexity will not do that IMHO.
For now I withold judgement.

Let me repost (one improvement for posts would be an edit ability)

I have tried to use the new page a number of times over the last few days. It is not only not intuitive, I think it is counter intuitive. I cannot get into the forums from the new home page and other parts of my screen run over the edges of my monitor (1920 X 1200 or when in surround 5760 X 1200 across three monitors). I must say however that I can see much MUCH more of the new home screen in surround (the 5760 X 1200 mode across three monitors) so in that way the new home page make better use of a resource I have.
I would like to be able to occasional play from my Windows pone and in fact I can get logged in but I do NOT want to play using a touch screen. As someone else wrote, VGAP is not angry birds.
I will keep looking at it and hopefully it will improve but one thing for sure, DO NOT TAKE AWAY THE CLASSIC VGAP, that is why I am here. Also, VGAP is hard enough for a new player to learn, the future of VGAP is in getting the next generation playing and adding complexity will not do that IMHO.
For now I withhold judgment.

New features/game scenarios are fine. Right now, I would prefer to play the classic game. I came to the site looking for a place to play VGAP classic games

For the new UI, I found it difficult to do the page navigation, scroll-bar work fine for me on my MacBook. If this was the site interface when I first showed up, I probably wouldn't have stayed around.

I do like the idea of customizing the races but think it should be a per game change and everyone in the game should have equal points to use.
I like add-on in the games(stellar geography is great) but if others get more bonuses in a game then me, other then small differance to balance the races. I see no point in playing the game. I can play WOW if I want to play against people that got way better stuff then me.
I plan to play all the races.
but if this comes in as is. I will not be able to do that which may shorten my time here. The vanilla games are not what I am looking to play.
This was a great starting ideas to improve the game. customizing the races with points like MOO2 would be great in a game. the customizing for each race still needs some work as one would expect.

Thanks for all the hard work
Regicide

@Joshua: Can I alter the advance points when ever I feel like it?

I mean to have something available before the ship limit, then something else for midgame and then something else for the endgame.

Also could be a different setup for attacking / defending.

Also can I play two simultaneous games with a race with different advantages active in the two games?

I mean I would expect to do the modding on joining a new game and then have the ability to see what setups my enemies are using as well.

It HAS to be static from the beginning of the game, or there may as well not be a limit. Early game you need a resource boost so we'll take points from minefields to take out the 70% mining feature (for instance.) "Oh, now I've got some enemies about, I guess I'll put that back in and regain my ability to build minefields." "Oh, now I need to take out some carriers, let's shift some adv points into starbase money transfer and the heavy Thors for a few turns..." Not the best examples maybe; Feds are top of the shiplist and you get the picture, eh?

Also, the advantages you've chosen for a game have to be public. The greatest aspect of VGA planets is that all the cards are on the table as far as mechanics and equipment goes. If you hide the advantages chosen, it becomes less of a chess game and more of a poker game.

And on that note, the advantages should be hidden until the first turn rolls to prevent people from stacking advantages based on what their opponents have chosen, otherwise whoever picks last gets a huge advantage.

Well as an experiment for touch screens it is interesting. It also showed me why touch screen UIs don't get along with mouse/keyboards; Now I'm very confident windows 8 will bomb.

I went to the homeworld thing, that was curious; I'm not sure what to make of it. In any case at my current rate of "mineral extraction" it will take years to do anything at all.

Some of the choices even sound good for a normal custom game (ie, host option for all races participating).

I'd rather keep the old design, and perhaps add the interactivity things there.

I also agree to keep to the original races, and instead improve client mechanics. If there are going to be "improved" races, there must always be a means to start classic games without these.

Planets.nu could also implement more host options, which did actually exist as host addons. Things such as worm holes, toroidal maps (if you head to an edge, you end up in the opposite side); 999 planets, 999 ships (specially in those super-melees where people really do start too close); fleet battles; etc, things like these: ftp://ftp.circus-maximus.com/pub/VGAPlanets/Host.Addons/unity.txt always optional of course.

I don't mind the direction Nu is taking in general. Keeping the older players happy should be a priority but new blood is good and whatever it takes in terms of incentives, modifications and format.

I think the most important thing for the game is improving the algorithms for making the map.
I don't like the change to circular maps and I don't think the maps are at all balanced.

The current near-completely random distribution also leads to a near-completely random game.
More checks and balances to ensure a % of natives, % of moly, etc... and a more smooth distribution of these should be implemented.
The old host had settings like "rich", "poor", "average", the current host you never know.

Bit late for comments, but here we go;

1. This game cannot be played on a phone, a tablet is an emergency measure when on vacation but a game cannot be won when played on either.

2. The new website doesnt work well on IE9, lots of buttons dont work. It does work on Chrome or Firefox.

3. The customerbase for this game is old-school planets players. Fancy mobile gaming is not for planets, there are better games for this and Planets will never catch up. Just isnt designed for it. This is a micromanager PC game for nerds, not a fancy app for the public.

4. Love the new options (cross game buying/selling/reseaching/etc) but will destroy the core game. Starbase Money transfer alone will wreck the whole balance to the ground.

5. What the is the feedback section for we have? The new design incoporates about 5% of the top 20 wishes listed there, the other 95% is ignored. Use that feedbacksection, make small leaps and not a giant one, however well intended.

6. Great game. Great effort. Nicy try, shame it failed. U guys rock, dont be put down. Regroup and try again.

Excellent reply. I agree except for the starbase money transfer. What spacefaring civ would not be able to transfer money. In fact the very populat Starbase + add in allowed that and it did not hurt anything at all
I also want to add my concern that the new look does not support the largest used browser IE9, how screwy is that?

The site has been reverted to old one now, but I would like to speak my mind about the new tech and ship improvements.

Some said it was bad idea to balance the game by letting active players to improve their hulls/SBs. I disagree with this since for some time players are forced to join games of their level (hooray for this!), so no newbie will have to deal with more experienced players with added boni. So, in principle, the new SB/hull improvement system does not seem flawed to me.

BUT

if you want to balance the races (I think original Tim list is way unbalanced) I do not see why not use PList 2.4 or 3.2 together with Phost features which have hugely improved the game. Phost has removed many counterintuitive features*, thus favouring the better strategists instead the of the one who knows more gimmicks.

* Example. Tow conflict resolution under Host: basically the ship with lowest ID wins, it does not matter whether it is a 2-tech1-engine 130-hull mass Cat´s Paw against a 6-tech10-engine 980-hull mass Gorbie; ID rules. Under Phost it is decided by the number and tech of engines, which is way more logical and fair. Another example: under Host destroying bases do not award PBPs, tilting players toward defensive play. This was apparently deviced in order to avoid halting of the cue. Under Phost, destroying bases award PBPs thus favouring offensive and dynamical games and yet it is impossible to halt the cue. On the other hand under Host it is pretty easy to halt the cue almost completely.

Finally, someone suggested you should have asked the community about how to balance the races. I do not agree on polling the community about this as most players are not experienced enough to vote on such a sensible issue.

Best regards,


Manuk

an educator ship?......condensor?.....command ship.........where do I get explanations of these and how they work , please??

Point at the device name with your mouse there is a tool tip that explains the function.

I find that all the advantage stuff is really interesting, but I have a complaint on the research costs and the acquisition of advantages.

First of all, if I understood correctly, races with less victories are rated with lowest overall advantage points for their abilities. That is correct in my opinion. BUT, for making them competitive with the rest, they have to research MORE technologies than others, which means that they have to win more games before being competitive,... but they win less because are unbalanced....

Isn't it a bit contradictory ?? I have to win more games as Fascist in order to reach the 450 advantage points than a Privateer. Fascist start at 335 and Privateer as 450. Privateer doesn't need to research anything and can enter a 450 point game. Fascist must win a lot of games to make research before being able to play that game... but since it is more difficult to win as Fascist a normal game... it will be near impossible to do that much research !!!

By the way... how resources are gathered at homeworlds ?? On my Fascist HW with a game won, I nearly had resources for an Starbase... but as Colonial with also one game won, I cannot build an Starbase... do resources gather different from race to race ??

I researched a ship but when i joined a new game i was unable to build it from any starbse, any advice on how to use researched vessels.

The biggest problem VGA Planets has always been that it is dated. The graphibs, the sound. My wife plays Angry Birds and even she laughs at the beeps and bleeps or the dots that are planets.
I do see improvements over the DOS version and VPA in terms of looks and sound, and I know nothing of the effort involved in increasing these areas.

Still, an addictive game as always, so I am certain it will do fine nontheless.

Old Winplanets had multiple ship pic packages flying around iNet, or it coulda been easily created on site. Voices were upgraded by buying (or streaming) Christopher Franke's music. And the map... a map of well developed game around turn 60 looks so hard core that sunday gamers vomit when they see it. Even the interface has certain appeal, thou that could be a little bit more streamlined.