Ascent: Black Sky

Looks like I may have to rustle some ramish steeds in the near future for the medieval game

Jam, very pleased to hear that our in game constructions are safe

With regards to combat & I say this as constructive because I still enjoy it as is anyways. The AI just makes a B line for the player every time. This leads to a situation where both parties fire pretty much simultaneously. It ends up like a situation where biggest shield/weapons wins. Its also very brief. Jam I'm not sure if you know but weapons have lost their cool down timer & now rapid fire? So when I say brief, it is! Although I never tire of seeing those explosions.
I had some thoughts about Red zone. PVP can cause some pretty nasty situations between players RE: Eve. The community is tight in ascent, it's one of it's assets. Why not change RZ to a PVE arena but along with pirates an alien race or rival human splinter group? The risk would still be there in RZ but no player rages. We could gain alien tech or new BP's from RZ battles?

Not something that needs immediate attention but food for thought.

If you can fix the refresh when deleting or mass building that would be a great polish or add a refresh button so we don't have to jump out and back in.

If you can fix the refresh when deleting or mass building that would be a great polish or add a refresh button so we don't have to jump out and back in.

like maybe a submit button for destroy buildings?

fleas

Hi Jam ...nice to finally hear from you.

If I were to state the two items that are most irritating to me they would be that you seem to have a memory leak that causes frequent crashes and the issue of your celestial objects (particularly planets) acting like jumping beans. I'm not a coder by any stretch of the word but my guess would be that these issues have to do with optimization.

As for the new player experience. I have been here a little over 2 months and can say that my experience has been mostly positive. But then I figure I'm a bit more patient than most. My main issues in this respect would be the lack of a comprehensive galactic map that allows the player to plot a navigation route thru multiple gates.

If I may, I'd recommend that you have a look at "Shores of Hazeron" http://hazeron.com/ ..it is another single dev indie that allows exploration and colonization of a galaxy. (very similar except that it is an empire builder) ...I believe that you may be able to draw some inspiration from Haxus's star map and system of navigation.

Another issue would be the lack of a comprehensive UI that covers and pulls together many of the games functions like the ships computer, dome systems and/or looking at colony/OSB status without the need to visit.

I can honestly say that without the 3rd party tools at ascent extras and the very helpful community you have here I may not have spent more than my original investment on your game. I probably wouldn't still be here either, excitedly hoping that something becomes of this gem in the rough.

On to low hanging fruit

- Combine stock markets into Galactic Markets. It's never been clear to me why those are separate in the first place as the players are still the ones doing the trading.
- Finish npc's. I personally wish I could simply give my captain an order to deliver x cargo from point a to point b, then pick up something else and bring it back ..or even run a specified route.
- Separate the npc pilot/captain from the ship, rather than having him/her "become" the ship.
- Lore ...this game has very little. Lore is the thing that gives a game life and adds focus to new updates and expansions. I would suggest that you open a new section here for fan fiction/art and encourage contributions.
- The Play icon at the top of this page leads to something that no longer exists. I would either link it to the purchase page or get rid of it.
- Make a post on steam that moves the "Donald Trump or Leprosy" post from recent news. I imagine most visitors have no idea what it actually means and I don't know about others, but I come here go get away from politics. It also wouldn't hurt to have something newer than 6 months old there.

I have many more ideas but these are some of the most obvious to me after just two months ...hope it helps.

How is this really going to really differ from Ascent as it is now though?

It does not sound like there will be many differences but more like bugs fixed and existing things like npc's, player stock markets etc made to work properly.

New additions are not a priority so the game will remain essentially the same just working better, which is what most active players want I think.

I really like what Grey had to say ... Not surprised by what he says ... A very early supporter to later new players.

The response, in general, to this thread is very encouraging ... Especially, the support for your efforts, JAM.

I also appreciate your efforts to respond to the player posts in the second thread post.

I think the next step is player threads explaining in greater detail the ideas about the I want this and I want that postings.

I've created the User interface perspectives thread to illustrate how it could be done by other players.

User interface perspectives thread link: http://forum.thespacegame.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3403

Ok as ram stated I can have lots of ideas and over the years posted many, mostly ignored but hopefull a few that developer and players liked.

Now on to LOW HANGING FRUIT

firstly think Jam has capitalized on most obvious ones and may be why nothing quickly leaps to mind.
I am assuming this would be large impact for max one week of work and graphics are mostly out of the question (we have see your portrait of Loui and yikes )

1) think first is a clean up the dead ships in the inner nine. They are annoying, let them advertise at their osb's or pay (SC's) for a billboard. and a clean up of unused deeds, lots of misplaced abandoned locations, looks messy.

2) swap out inner shipyard for the osb look? this is for new players primary, may as well let them learn how outer osb's works. (preset them with shipyard in the right location ;p) 2 options allow new and old players a full osb like the colony ones we build or a simple version for new players with 500ish slots on a preset skeleton.

3) last think for newbie area , the core gates have a designator (colour?) so that new player know they are moving to core areas or to player built areas.

4) not sure this is simple or not, colony deed rings. if there was a filter in the map overlays to see other players deeds, would help to locate a location. bonus would be ability to 'place' a flag point from space where you want your deed center to be.

5) bump in the core system warehouse, bigger ships bigger cargo holds, stations have to keep up.... (possible one time pay SC option)

6) some management stuff, list possible research items and another folder with researched (can elaborate if wanted). sync what you have researched and what unca is selling, really annoying to spend on unca stuff you have already researched.

7) change asteroid age look, currently they look full grown at 7 days, making it a week per growth look will mean it's easer to see rock ages especially if you are mining same field over 3 days for example. change rock aging speed- lol, just kidding, might be my pet peeve but guess it would need to go to vote, problem is players only start to realize the issue after a year of play.

8) polarizing filter. man some of those systems you just need to have shades

9) incorporate some 3rd party items like the dome tools and the ejection tools.

10) reuse building for other purposes, with a light coat of paint you could have hospitals, offices and residential towers also for market buildings, tourist hotels and cultural buildings. also can re-propose domes cut the tops off and place a opaque flat top (make them solid so to speak) and you now have planet hover craft building and with some nice paint same building doubles as a military hanger. great spot to commission small class ships for interplanetary trade and protection (money and moral)
[many possibles but if kept light would not take massive time for one or two?]

11) quest items? not sure if ready for this but spend SC's to buy out or perform quests for special items, like over capacity warehouses and power-plants, e-jump to Apollo or mining beam power boost (push button for 10s of high power off capacitor) for example.

many more will come to mind later
good luck and hopefully some of this helps

Newest batch of players are AWESOME!!

Some much fun this week!! Loving it!

Hello. I'm building a list of that newbie feedback you're after, and will post about that sometime soon ish.

In the meantime, I got the wild idea that a Discord server might be a useful way for the community to keep in contact, while playing or otherwise. Was kicking the idea around via in game chat, and some folks seemed interested, and it was suggested that I kick it to you to see what you think.

That would provide us with a readily available voice chat system, if desired, and would be useful for providing help when not in game. It could of course also be used for Q&A events or the like if that's something you'd be interested in.

I'll have an abundance of other random ideas in the near future as well, but I'll have to get them all properly organized first.

Thanks for your interest in our feedback!