I agree with Jay, tech trading is a key part of diplomacy and should be permitted in team games. I don’t have a problem with making it an option, but I don’t consider it a show stopper. The impact of trading on the first game was negligible, and maybe turning off the auto-AFK rule in the team games might be a better option to combat the problems described in the second,.
Were you in that first game? I don’t recognize your screen name, as it isn’t one of those used in that game. As for negligible, I don’t think you can say that. Weapons was given to my opponent right before I would have taken several key battles. As a result of the cheating, I lost those. There was general outrage among most of the other players in that game, even by the receiving player’s own teammates.
Please don’t act like you are an authority on something (particularly referring to a specific game) when you don’t know what you are talking about.
click on my icon, I play as Brian Boru.
Thats nice. Still, your statement about it not impacting the game was inaccurate. The breaking of the house rules, aka cheating, did impact the game.
I agree that the CHOICE should be there to limit trading to ONLY players you are formally aligned with.
I can see this being kinda interesting in non-team games … i.e. if I want to trade tech with you, I have to formally align … so you see my Scan … plus no battles for at least 24 hours plus when we go to WAR, everyone knows! 
I.e. the more I think about it, I think these are good choices for tech transfer at game creation:
“Standard” (you can send to anyone)
“Scan Range ONLY” (newly added featured)
“Formal Allies ONLY” (recommended newly added feature)
“Scan Range AND Formal Allies ONLY” - D’OH!
My guess is this would not be difficult to implement since Jay just added an option for tech trading and is familiar with the code since he was recently mucking with it. I say that with a GRIN because I know when I first look at code I wrote a while ago, I have to figure out WTF was I doing!
Alternatively, Making tech trade messages public, rather than only involving the players trading would be a nice option.
LOL Ross … now that would be bad-a** !!!
This would certainly be a cool additional but separate option from the list above.
I.e. if Jay decided this was worthwhile, in the game create options, he currently has Trade Cost and Trade Scanning (I would change the later to “Trade Conditions” and implement the suggestions above) and I would add a “Trade Notifications” with these options:
“Standard” (only notify players involved)
“Extra” (also notify any player formally aligned with the traders - heh, heh!)
“All” (notify all players of the trade)
So in this thread (and wayyyyy back on April 15th), I wrote that I would have some extended offline time in early June - will actually be off the grid for a week.
A week ago, I wrote in the game that would need to bail in a week … and then a follow-up note a few days ago. Unfortunately, it would be unfair to my teammates to not be actively be engaged in the game … plus not being able to submit on a timely basis holds up the game for everyone.
So unfortunately, I had to quit …don’t believe I have ever quit a game (or gone AFK) unless there was agreement to do so in order to finish a settled game sooner. However, it won’t alter the end result of this game.The Ender’s were a well oiled machine and IMHO it was clear they were going to win a week ago - the best team will win this game … which doesn’t always happen in NP! 
It’s been an honorably good game played especially well by the Ender’s - be fun to play another team game. Hats off to Brian for organizing and managing.
P.S. We started this turn game on April 18th and it is now June 1st. So it as taken us 42 RL days to play 31.25 cycles of NP (final expansion map from me below) - i.e. rate of 1.34 … which is slightly more than 1.33 which is the slowest a 8/6 game would go with no delays … but we had a few … plus very few turns advanced significantly before the 8 hours were up. So while we probably would be even more “behind” with a 10 hour cycle, I actually think that is a really smart turn time as it moves around the production times.
Click on expansion map below to see in bigger - actually half size due to imgurl limitations
As mentioned, it’s unfair to my teammates not to be able to be actively engaged in the game due to RL issues … so I quit (first time ever) … even though as seen in the images above, I was actually on top of the leaderboard … although I was doomed to start falling as the Enders have played a great game.
But then people said WTF … and Brian graciously suggested I be re-instated to abandon stars for my team … which I did.
So if you ever wonder what a holy NP star abandonment Batman! looks like, check out the GIF below as I went from 120 stars to 31 in one turn … creating about 80 new carriers to add to the existing ones to send ships to my teammate Captain America playing Yellow Circle.
Note that when you abandon a star, everyone can see that, but your position on the leaderboard doesn’t change. Also, abandoning stars takes a WHILE (especially when you do 89 of 'em) and several times the game timed out on me.
And HEY, did anyone notice that one of those Yellow Cicles is a Square - look carefully. That’s Ross … who I (again - D’OH!) accidentally sent ships at. Trust me it’s easy to make that mistake.
Also, check out Cyan Hex (under AI Automation) which Captain America just wiped out … but not before he noticed my abandoned stars and launched 5 carriers at 'em - LOL! 
Click on image to see BIG
Even though I’m not longer in the game, I thought a before/after vacation snapshot might be interesting for others to see - please see below. Unfortunately, Captain America (Yellow Circle) had some RL issues come up and had to leave the game about a week ago … so this hastened the demise of the Western stars.
But it’s all a moot point - I wrote 15 days ago that “The Ender’s were a well oiled machine and IMHO it was clear they were going to win a week ago - the best team will win this game … which
doesn’t always happen in NP!”
P.S. We started this turn game on April 18th and it is now June 16th. So it has taken 59 RL days to play 40.25 cycles of NP - i.e. rate of 1.46 … which is slightly more than 1.33 which is the slowest a 8/6 game would go with no delays … but we had a few … plus very few turns advanced significantly before the 8 hours were up. Note the game has actually “slowed” down slightly since my post two weeks ago - one would think it would speed up with less players.
Click on Image to see BIG
Well, it’s finally over.
Brian plans on posting some ending screenshots.
As I believe it was a full team win, and being told there is some precedence, Jay, can you also give wins to Brian and Chris (infini8eye)? I was just the lucky dog who was in the first place spot, but I wouldn’t have won anything and we wouldn’t have won anything without the dedication and support of my team.
They did the heavy lifting on the tech , prep, and calculation side. I just went out and executed orders
Thanks to Chris and Brian for being great teammates and everyone else for a very fun game.
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Well, it is over. It didn’t play out exactly as hoped, since we had some players bow out when life got in the way, but that is expected with long epic games. I want to thank everyone that played, especially my teammates.
Maybe Qwerty can do his magic and show a team map of the end.
A couple things we learned playing the game:
8h Turn Limits can be a bit rough, as you go out of town for a weekend and AFK. It also can fall directly over someone’s sleep pattern and force them to miss a turn. We had wanted to do the 10h Limit, but we started about a day before Jay added that for us. I still think a real time game would work better for this, but we need an odd Tick length, so the Cycle rotates around the world. Maybe 75m or 90m would be good.
Maybe having AFK be an optional setting would help in Team games. We had several times where someone logged in an hour after being kicked.
Maybe have the option to select a secondary Admin for a game would be really useful too. There were a couple times where I had to wake up in the middle of the night to pause the game to prevent another player from going AFK since we wanted to avoid inter-team tech trades the AI would have pushed.
Team colors would be really helpful. I know of several times when players mistook one player for another because they weren’t paying close enough attention.
I’m sure others can chime in with things as they think of them.
I’m going give it a couple weeks, then see what kind of interest we have in playing a different map format.
Depending on how many players/teams we have interested, I have a couple samples:
Thanks again everyone, it was a lot of fun!
Here’s my Reader’s Digest version of the game - as typical in NP, I’m sure there are other opinions!
Reminder that the game layout was 24 players total - 3X6 teams at various points of the compass Commoners-NE, RG3-East, Enders-SE, Foxy-SW, West-West, FIST-NW on the outer ring with 6 AI players at similar positions on the inner ring.
Since there was a big gap between the left/right hemispheres, the West and East teams were basically doomed from the beginning as they got squeezed by the respective North and South teams above/below 'em.
Team FIST (HULK, Captain America/Neogrendal, and Sekoms) jumped out to early strong lead by aggressively going after the AI.
Our big lead in star count cemented the team alliances between the Commoners (SW) and Enders (SE) who mutually clobbered the RG3’s while starting to take action against FIST … who were taking out the last of West as Foxy also joined that party, but they were a bit behind.
Due to come miscommunication (or actually lack thereof), Hulk (your truly!) continued to expand into West territory, taking it all away from Foxy.
Foxy then aligned with Enders (allowing them access into their stars) …
so then it was FIST against everyone - D’OH!
As stated before the game started, I had to bail in early June (not a whole lotta Internet access when you are white-water rafting the Middle Fork of the Salmon River in Idaho) but this seemed to (unfortunately) cause a lot of drama - I’ll let someone else comment on that!
I felt it was already obvious some time before then that the Ender’s would win - they were a well-oiled machine plus there was no reason for Commoners to break that alliance when FIST had a numerical advantage.
Having said that, the Commoners did switch sides after I bailed … so nice job keeping the game “sporty” and while this tipped the scales, but at least IMHO, would not have been enough. Regardless, about a week later, Captain America had something some up in RL and had to bail, so then is was really obvious the Ender’s were going to win.
After pushing ships around for another week or so, my guess is there was concensus that the game was truly over … and players did the honorable thing by quitting in sequence so the Enders could take the top-3 spots … the best team won this game - well done!
As I said in the game, thanks again Brian for setting up the game (and the he-man job of managing it), congrats to the Enders on some excellent game playing, and thank you everyone for an enjoyable game.
Here’s a final expansion map - click to see big
Bummer QWERTY’s excellent javascripts to color code weren’t available from the beginning
The best part of this game? Meeting all the other people who play this game. We set up a google chatroom for this, and we’re still using it as we discuss the game, and plot and backstab in other galaxies. I’ve learnt so much.
If there’s one thing I’d like in future, a dedicated NP general chat room would be amazing!!!
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Is that Google chat room invitation only? I would like to join if possible
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I wouldn’t want to just add everyone to the existing one, as the people that joined it did so specifically for the purpose of the team game. We had 15 of 18 of the players participate in it. I think we should definitely make a new one open to everyone.
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I agree a ‘general NP chat’ room would be great. Then there would always be someone to have a little moan or gloat with 
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Since I talked about the Middle Fork of the Salmon River above, here’s a picture of our group;
with my wife and two boys - care to guess which one is me?!?
This is through the middle of the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness … a couple of million acres that is “protected” primitive - no roads and only a handful of grandfather’ed airstrips and lodges for a 100 miles of river.
It’s very cool - highly recommended if you want a break from the hustle-bustle of life … or NP!
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This thread is really amazing. I am utmost envious for not being able to participate, but all this happened at a time a had to step away from the forum, and completely missed this.
While reading the messages, I saw some discussion about the HR10 gaps and how nearly impossible is to attack through it. I would like to know if someone tried and how did that go. Maybe it was already told in the amazing reviews written, but I did not follow the names, so may have missed that.
It made me wonder if having fixed Scanning in this situations wouldn’t be really interesting, so the empires can’t see each other fleets on these stars but also can’t see attacks arriving so early. What do you think?
I recall that I had an HR6 jump (might have been HR5) to make … and it was HARD to do … but the defender accidentally left a Warp Gate open that I was able to take advantage of. HR10 would be much, much more difficult, especially if the defender saw the gathering forces and destroyed the WG plus had a star nearby (but slightly back) to create a WG on to bring reinforcements.
I did see a player make an HR10 jump, but given that they then made something like an HR12 jump right into the middle of the other player’s empire strongly suggests they were invited in.
I hadn’t thought about it … but yea, limiting Scanning would be interesting (could not be a dark galaxy of course) … because then you wouldn’t see the attack until “late” - good idea!