Survey Says!

I need more feedback. There are only a small handful of players who participate in the online forum, and they have been very helpful. But I need more information than that.

Here are some interesting stats:
354 battles have been played so far. (not counting stalled games that were deleted)
There are 171 players who have signed up and "activated" their accounts.
148 of them have only joined one game or less.
That means there are only 23 people who have played in more than one game.
40 people have participated in the forum.

I am not concerned with the low overall number of players - it is a beta and I have done no advertising. I am concerened with the small fraction of signed up users that actually play.

So I want to know why so many people sign up and then either don't play it at all, or play it once and leave. Now, a large number of those users may have encountered some show stopping bug in the games less stable days, but still it seems like most people come to the site and sign up and then never play.

The forum doesn't seem to cut it. For whatever reason, people don't want to (or can't) post in the forum to ask questions.

So to that end, I have set up a survey. You don't have to be a member of the site to fill out the survey. The survey shows up on the home page. Once you have taken the survey, it no longer shows up.

I will periodically update the survey with new questions as I get answers and as new questions come to mind.

Thanks for those that have given feedback so far! You are the ones that make a "beta" game possible!

Ghost in the Machine

The new AI is finally here!

It was a lot of work to integrate a whole new AI platform, and I was never sure that I would end up with anything useful, but I am pretty happy with it. The AI itself is only a little bit smarter right now than the old one. But the important thing is that the AI is now completely adjustable and extensible. Each AI player can have its own strategy and tactics and changing those tactics is very easy.

So you may not notice a whole lot of difference in the AI right away, they will be able to get much better without a huge effort.

Here are some things you should notice about the new AI right away:
1) The AI fleet should stick together better instead of getting all spread out.
2) they will now use side firing weapons and lay mines
3) they will now target different weapons on different ships
4) they will avoid mine fields
5) They are better at dodging projectiles
6) They are better at pursuing other ships (especially the light fast ones)
7) They will surrender now if they cannot win instead of you having to chase down that one last Lancer that is impossible to hit.

Here are some things they still don't do, but will be able to do soon:
1) They don't use jump drives
2) They don't use tractor/repulsor beams or energy drain beams to any real effect

So Enjoy! And as always, let me know what you think.