Damage resistance would probably be a good term to use.

I'm not sure if you've played it, but Star Trek Online has lots of different types of weapons - and hull resistance stats for each weapon type. Plus you can equip different hull platings to improve your resistance to specific weapons, for instance you can equip Electroceramic Plating for Plasma resistance when you're heading into Romulan space, or Diburnium Hull Plating for Disruptor resistance when you're heading into Klingon space. Or there's even Neutronium Plating for resistance to absolutely everything.

You could have a similar resistance system in Trekwar, if you plan to allow for different weapons types in the game.

Having different types of resistances would probably just complicate it too much.. Just like having structure + armor + shields (which you also have in Eve Online). Nice if you just have a single ship, but with a whole fleet of them you don't want too much to keep track of.

Maybe if the game had fewer and more individualized ships, instead of larger fleets with lots of ships.

I'll definitely be looking at changing how armor works, after getting all the feedback from the alpha test.

Tomorrow =)

Hi folks- I've been peeking in on this for over a year now. I like what I see so far! Decided now was a good time to register for the Forum- looks like things are moving forward. Good news!

If I may be so bold- would y'all like some help in the pre-alpha testing? I'd be happy to lend a hand.

BTW- while I haven't played a whole lot of browser games (I'm fussy that way ) I have played a few, namely O-Game a while back, and STNE (http://game.en.stne.net) for the last 2 years. I've also done some testing for the Starfleet Command series of PC games, so I've had some experience in beating things up lol. 'Specially bugs

Anyhow, if there's a signup process, do tell!

Cheers

The info in the TW site is probably outdated, but some comments anyway:

There are 2 distinct Listening Posts, one is a Special Building (upgrade from Subspace Scanner) and the other a Space Station (the first one).

The Great Link (the Faction Specific Building) only has ++morale as a bonus, everything else is negative. Seems rather crappy, if the stats are correct; it could be that it's missing +shipExperience, like the other factions, but I'm not sure if that's intended, as the Dominion is supposed to have crew experience (lack of) as a disadvantage.

The Components called Civilian Lasers and Civilian Sensors are set to civilian:false - not sure if that's intended? This means they can be used in warships too, not just civilian ships. Isn't the word Civilian in their names kind of confusing?

Yeah, those structures aren't in the game yet, so they haven't been properly adjusted

The Civilian Lasers and Civilian Sensors are just called that because they SUCK.. but I see that it might be a bit confusing.. I'll rename them to Sucky Sensors and Crappy Lasers (or something else)

Maybe something like Basic Sensors and Defensive/Basic Lasers/Beams?
Or maybe they could be only usable by civilian ships.

Renamed them Basic Sensors and Basic Lasers

So, back after a long summer and about to start on making the Alpha2 release, which should be much more stable than Alpha1.

Also there will be a new fleet/system box, this is a preliminary draft:
http://trekwar.org/images/new_ui.jpg

I've gone trough the feedback from the Alpha 1 test (thanks everyone who participated), and taken that into account when setting up tasks for version 0.4.5.

Some of the major focus will be on:

• Client stability
• How and what Information is displayed
• Space combat, and the information users get from space combat (combat log)
• An ingame help system
• Turn report system extended, notifies user of very important events.
• Making stats more intuitive, especially some of the ship stats.
• Fixing lots of bugs

Minor update:
Last few days I've been restructuring some code, cleaning up a bit by separating all client->server communication stuff out from the gui client and into it's own package. Also made a font handler that will allow more interesting and prettier fonts in the game. Also tried twice to fix a bug that makes the game try and download the game data twice at the start of each turn (but hopefully third time is the charm).

Currently working on the new Empire/Starsystem/Fleet control that will replace the old movable windows. Just finished making it so that you can click and drag on the map to re-center it, considering removing the scroll bars on the sides altogether.

Next up will be adding the minimap to the next Interface (screenshot url in previous post), and drawing a square on the minimap which shows what is currently being displayed in the main window

Keep up the good work.

Changed the Roadmap page (http://www.trekwar.org/Wiki.jsp?page=Roadmap) on the trekwar wiki a bit, now contains the Burndown graph for the next version (Alpha2 - 0.4.5):



Just finished defining the tasks I will do in this Sprint (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprint_(scrum)).
The sprint will be about 3 months long, has 65 tasks and is estimated to take 93 hours.

So by doing at least 6.6 hours of work on Trekwar every week, version 0.4.5 should be ready by week 51 (December), that release will result in a bigger alpha (multiplayer, and with less bugs)

Good luck bug stomping and reworking! I look forward to the chance to help out again with Alpha2

According to the chart above I'm still on track (the blue line is below the red line).

Fixed a couple of bugs, currently I'm making a new interface to replace the old one. Today I've been working on showing info for your own starsystems (build queue and button to open system view is still missing):

As the graph a few posts above shows, I haven't done crap for the last month.
I blame Battlefield 3 + Star Wars The Old Republic.

However my contract is done, so I'll have a lot of spare time in January, some hopefully the goal of having Alpha 2 ready in January is still attainable.

1


2


3


Which one do you dislike the least?

#2 has the advantage of having more space to display ships in a fleet.

Thinking of doing #2 or #3, #2 does have an extra line of ships, but if you have more than 8/12 ships you can scroll to see them all anyway.

Only think I dont like about #2 is that it feels a bit more cramped. Maybe I'll make another mock up tomorrow that's a compromise, showing 9 ships instead of 12 or 8.

New devblog post up with the latest starsystem / fleet management screenshots:
http://trekwar.org/Wiki.jsp?page=Devblog-10042012

Just peeked in on that- good to see it's progressing again! I'm in anticipation mode again

Looking good!

Quick update:

Recently I've updated the way the server and client communicate, I think this will eliminate some bugs and the new code is much more robust and easier to extend/maintain. For example this:
was replaced by this:


But it took a bit longer than I had hoped (many hours of very boring work, ended up being almost 3000 lines of new code and 55 new classes/objects in the game), but now there is a very extendable and easy to use messaging system.

There are currently 27.5 hours of work left until the alpha test (which this time will contain actual multiplayer). 11 hours of making new stuff (orbital bombardment) and improving old stuff (extending animation framework). And the rest is fixing bugs.

Hopefully I'll get the combat simulator ready pretty soon, which will allow me (and anyone else who wants to), to create two users (set up techs) and design ships for both sides and put them into combat simulations.

A little poll about server/user account stuff

Below are 3 models of how Trekwar could work. I'd love to hear inputs on them and which one you prefer:

Simple
A server is set up by anyone, they publish the server address to whoever they like (a few friends, an open forum, etc..).
Everyone that want to play have to connect to the server (preferably before the game starts) and register* a user account that is valid for that game only.
This is the way the game currently works
*Registering on the server for a game requires only a username + password + faction and an optional avatar image.

Moderate
Everyone who want's to play Trekwar registers on trekwar.org and has an account there (restore password, select an avatar from list, username, etc...).
When someone sets up a server they publish the address to whoever they like.
Those who want to play on that server connects to that server and click "join game", the server then registers the user locally based on the user information on the server.

Fancy schmanzy
Everyone who want's to play Trekwar registers on Trekwar.org and has an account there (has statistics, achievements?, restore password, select avatar from list, custom avatar?, etc...).
When someone sets up a server they publish the address to whoever they like. AND they have the option of making the server public which makes it show up in the list of public games on trekwar.org.
Those who want to play on that server connects to that server and click "join game", the servers will then use the players trekwar.org account when playing, and statistics and other info will be put on your trekwar.org profile page.

Fancy, for the statistics if they're interesting.

24 work hours left.. I'm tempted to go on a Jack Bauer style coding spree..

For the beta version I will change it so that the game objects (ships, structures, etc..) get their stats from xml files, so that the game can be tweaked without needing to be recompiled from source code.

The game source code will be released under the Apache License version 2: http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Depends on what you mean by interesting

At first it would be pretty simple stats like:
number of games played / won / lost
number of ships built (+ average per game)
number of ships destroyed ( + average per game)
number of structures built (+avg)
number of starsystems colonized
number of starsystems invaded
number of starsystems lost
and stuff like that

I was thinking some form of ranking, according to your victories and defeats against other players; experience (# of games won) would make you go up in rank, etc. We had a nice system back in the old days playing ToS:WS.

Yes, each game you do gives you a score (based on number of enemies destroyed/conquered, colonizations, techs, structures builds).

Adding a ranking system would be easy, however that raises the following issues:

Since the game will be open source, and you can modify the server, it would be very easy to cheat (make your game server send in report of a game where the user had their score increased by 10, or report more destroyed ship than what actually happened, etc..)

The only way to prevent cheating would be to ONLY count "official games", that is games that run on the official trekwar.org server where I know all the settings are fair and cheating would not be possible

Personally, I'd only be interested in the information of a user on a specific server, namely the server I'm participating in. Furthermore, I would likely only play one server at a time, which is basically the reason for this attitude. Admittedly, I suppose there is something to be gained by reviewing total data from different servers to get a more accurate profile of a player's record. Perhaps it's me with blinders on, but knowing that kind of information is outside the direct realm of the game to some degree. Perhaps that attitude may change over the passage of time, it's hard to say at this point. I'm merely drawing upon my own experiences in similar situations. I prefer gaining information by experience rather than relying upon collected statistics.

As far as registration goes, it seems to me that it would be convenient to only need to register an account once at a central point, then that information can be accessed either by the user, or the server he registers with.

So by the sound of it, I'd prefer to 2nd option (Moderate).

It may be off topic, but this brings up a concern which usually shows its ugly head in situations like this. Namely, the issue of multi accounts. I can only assume that you are aware of this, but I will bring it up just the same, since it can lead to undesirable activity. The need for security is critical to the enjoyment and balance of the progress of the game. The idea that a server admin can alter statistics is also disturbing, and the potential for skewed statistics sheds doubt upon such statistics, thus rendering them to be questionable.

If there is any statistics for each user you will be able to examine it combined, or on a per-game basis.


The information will be mostly for fun, I doubt it will give you a HUGE insight into a winning strategy.



If the statistics are to mean anything (a ranking of some sort) then only official games done by unmodified servers can count towards this.

Each server admin will be able to see:
* All players who are participating int he game
* The IP address of all players
* The login times of all players


With these he will be able to somewhat detect multi boxing. But eliminating this entirely is impossible if the player uses a proxy to connect to the game server