markb50k

no, I left the army in 1998, and became a IT programmer, thus EvR and now Galsim. Well, its awesome having you onboard. I was hoping players who would contribute alot of thought into how to make this better would join, and so far so good. some of the other folks playing are vets of my last game and I have enjoyed their feedback and analysis. Im sure you can provide the same.

good analysis on paper. lets try it out ingame and see if you are right. if so, we tweak. im also wondering if you took into account that fighter LCs are less powerful than their cap ship counterparts. But overall, if someone wants to take on the role of BALANCING chief, than I am all ears. I just created the engine and a first shot at content, but the game is really yours (meaning the players).

holy mackeral, i just realized how long ago you were in EvR. Heck you guys where there when it was all email, right? My gosh, how have you been? if i remember correctly, Kobra, you were from Spain, Mallorca right?

hellooooo. good to see you around. please email me at markb50k at gmail dot com to get signed up. EvR vets are few and far between, we hide very well

since this is a testing phase of the game, after ppl lose ships they can request more ships. I will probably put some simple unit request logic in the GUI that will automate this process and it will allow for quicker placement of reinforcements for you. fighters with no hyper capability are simply limited to the sector they are in. They cannot subspace travel out of their sector. THe only way they can leave is onboard a hyper capable ship. They dont have a supply range like they did in EvR. there are no supply rules restricting starfighters to dock periodically, other than the fact that their missile weapons will need to be replenished and can only be done by docking on a cap ship that has WEAPONS components loaded on it. Thanks for the questions

GALSIM is intended to run 24 hr/day Update: put in alot of code today which prevented me from running the turns. But it looks like i got some good stuff done today. the reports stuff is in, i just need to post the new GUI on the site.

THANKS FOR THE FEEDBACK! seriously. I agree that combat should be slowed down some. Here are some tweaks I am putting in. - once a ship is detected, that detection should last a certain number of cycles before it falls off radar. only after that number of cycles expire will I look again. It will actually speed up detection processing alot. - determine a eyeball range where if its close enough its automatically detected by the naked eye. this should speed up detection processing also. - sending detection reports and damage reports back to the user - i have already dropped the cycles per turn to 10. I could drop it to 5 but a better idea would be to just ratchet down damage a bit so that ships last longer but arent crawling speed wise.

another factor was that the Marauders were targeting fighters instead of the NFRG which might happen if you dont set up any priority targets for your ships. i havent been able to pour through the logs in any detail yet but that was one thing i saw right off the bat.

:o Holy mackeral, what the heck happened?!!! when i went to bed last night, 2 Marauder Corvettes and a CRV had just wasted a LFRG, and were closing in on the NFRG of the enemy. This morning, the NFRG is sitting there salvaging wreckage and the 2 Marauders and CRV are destroyed!! My guess: NFRG has TLBs with a range of 15K which means it had quite an advantage for a while on the other ships. But i need to read the logs to get more info. NOTE: dont worry if you lose ships, well just make more. email me for reinforcements.

Put a new version of the code at the sim website. AND we have had our first combat. Looks like a Lancer Frigate has been destroyed and at least 2 or 3 fighter craft. If you are involved in any of these battles, please enlighten us with some battle reports. I am working on some code that will communicate detection alerts and battle alerts to you.

working on the battle reports that you can get to tell you what happened. as for the intel screen, from the main menu you can select a link that will show you all enemy, neutral, and friendly ships detected, broken down by sector, and you can zoom right to that sector from a link on that display.

There is currently no recruiting of special characters but if enough people want it, i have some ideas of how to implement it, but I cant promise of course. Check my sig for the link to the game download.

im pretty good i guess but probably dont have the time to do two project. Heck I dont even know for sure if I have enough time for ONE!

Seems we will be having battle soon. I think two players are in contact with eachother, and a third player is enroute to the sector. I apologize for any delays in the turns. I am running the game engine from my work laptop so I can only do it sporadically. When the code is more stable, which is this testing's purpose, then I will run it safely from home and it will be more consistent.

Currently we have 10 players signed up for the game. So far, it looks like two players are in the battle zone. I took a look and it seemed that even though they were very far away, by sheer luck, one player detected the other. That wasnt my intention so I changed some code on the server side that limits a ships ability to see things out to 5 times their detection rating times 50Km, so a ship with detection rating 1 could conceivably see things out to 250Km, but its a small chance. Also, a strategy tip, you can do mini-jumps within the same sector to quicken things up if you see a ship far away, there is a minimum jump length however, which is set right now to 50km. I'll try to post other updates as necessary.

In short, it is like Rebellion, but a lot more detailed. Currently, you can do space combat mine resources construct different commodities to sell or trade or use to build ships run merchant trading routes actually construct ships eventually you can do land combat, boarding of ships. I dont foresee being able to do assassination mission or anything where you can see an individual person, but who knows.

Please use this thread for any suggestions/feedback. If anyone remembers EvR, the game was a completely different game by the time I stopped working on it, and that was primarily because of all the great suggestions and ideas of the EvR community. Thanks, Mark

Please post any questions on gameplay. I want to allow alot of freedom of what we discuss in this thread, but I want to try to NOT make this thread a discussion on recommended settings. We have a Gameplay Suggestions thread for that. Thanks, Mark

I really dont have alot to write about right now, but I am just happy for all people that have shown interest in the game. Currently we are conducting a pure battle scenario where every new member can start to get a feel on how the game interface works and get some knowledge on the gameplay mechanics. please visit the GalSim website at http://galsim.nickersonm.com . There you will find some information on how to join, the ships and weapons included in the game, and some background and features. There is also a FAQ page where I am putting alot of the questions I am getting from the players. Please check it out. Also, please dont hesitate to ask questions. I will create an official question thread. Just add your questions there. Thanks again, Mark

Cool, I have 6 people signed up so far. Have you already sent me an email?

added you in and sent you a welcome email. Thanks for the interest. let me know what ships you want by email and I will add them in. The details are in the email I sent you.

Hi folks, my name is Mark. Anywho.. I am a Java programmer by trade and by hobby. So much so, that a few years ago I built a strategic galactic conquest game called Empire vs Republic. It went on for a couple of years and had nearly 100 participants from around the globe battling for control of the galaxy. It was a fun game, but had limitations. Five years later, I have finally finished the core programming on the next generation of that game. I call it Galactic Simulation, or GalSim for short. Basically, you can read up about it at http://markb50k.dyndns.org:12345/gal_sim , where I give a little history and some of the features provided. I also give pics and stats for all the ships you can play in the game. All ships are in a top-down 2D view and the models are heavily simplified version of alot of old SWNR and warlords models. In short, if you liked Rebellion (guessing that is a given on this site), or like Empire At War but would love to have dozens of players, this game could be up your alley. Build ships, launch attacks, mine resources to fuel your war machine, whatever you want. And all the while, you could command a fleet of star destroyers, like we all have wanted to do. This game is designed to be content-intensive giving you eventually alot of options on how to make your fortune, plus the ability to see your units down to the individual fighter. Anyway, I hope I have interested you enough. Check out my site (I am NOT a web designer, so it is REALLY REALLY basic) and write me if you want to sign up. Once I get a few people signed up I will start the game turn engine and the war will be on. Thanks in advance for any interest.

Hi folks, my name is Mark. Anywho.. I am a Java programmer by trade and by hobby. So much so, that a few years ago I built a strategic galactic conquest game called Empire vs Republic. It went on for a couple of years and had nearly 100 participants from around the globe battling for control of the galaxy. It was a fun game, but had limitations. Five years later, I have finally finished the core programming on the next generation of that game. I call it Galactic Simulation, or GalSim for short. Basically, you can read up about it at http://markb50k.dyndns.org:12345/gal_sim , where I give a little history and some of the features provided. I also give pics and stats for all the ships you can play in the game. All ships are in a top-down 2D view and the models are heavily simplified version of alot of old SWNR and warlords models. In short, if you liked Rebellion but wanted more control, or like Empire At War but would love to have dozens of players, this game could be up your alley. Build ships, launch attacks, mine resources to fuel your war machine, whatever you want. And all the while, you could command a fleet of star destroyers, like we all have wanted to do. This game is designed to be content-intensive giving you eventually alot of options on how to make your fortune, plus the ability to see your units down to the individual fighter. Anyway, I hope I have interested you enough. Check out my site (I am NOT a web designer, so it is REALLY REALLY basic) and write me if you want to sign up. Once I get a few people signed up I will start the game turn engine and the war will be on. Thanks in advance for any interest.