I’ve added a few new feature today that I would love your help testing.
Trade in scanning range only.
When creating games you can now specify that a player must be able to scan another players stars before they can send them cash or tech.
I will be turning it on by default in the 64 player games. I recommend it for all large games.
Please join this game and help me test it out.
I hope this will make the politics of trade much more interesting in the larger games.
Customisable Trade Costs
You can now choose how much per level it costs to trade tech. You can reduce the cost and let the tech flow free, or make it very expensive and effectively shutdown trade in your games.
AI Trade Restrictions
AI now trade with each other less often. (Especially if they have to be in scanning range of each other.)
Here is a screenshot that show the AI taking over 2 days to distribute a tech. (this might be too slow.)
So I’m guessing it is a small step to then limit trades to Formal Allies only for our Team games?
Anyway, I think it will be great in 64p games. You may have players that are effectively tech brokers, and just have a thin network of stars to have access to more trade opportunities.
I agree. Tactically taking a planet to increase trade partners is a great touch, I also think this is a great levelling tool for smaller games. Players surrounded by enemies also have more opportunities to trade than players who are more secure in a corner.
I didn’t get home in time to join the 64p game. Probably a good thing!
Anyway, we can do a trial game to test the Formal override. In chatting with some others, someone pointed out that it may be a way around, but you would really have to pay for that privilege. I personally think that is fine. It should be a perk of the $150 alliance fee, especially when you are far away from your ally and won’t be sharing ships with each other.
Looks like a great improvement to the large scale games- I am in the new 64 and am already loving the diplomacy this feature is creating. Still have quite a few people in the game that haven’t figured out the change.
I also want to test the formal alliance impact (are they then considered to be in your scan range?) as i will be creating a custom game shortly for some friends and want to make sure I understand the impact of this before enabling it.
Just play tested, formal alliance scan data counts as a valid trade partner with this mode enabled.
I encountered Error Messages while trying to send money to another player within Scanning Range, worked after 15 minutes but now they are having Error Messages trying to send Tech back to me. Any Ideas?
Edit: I was able to send them Tech also but they are still having Errors, so might just be a problem on their end.
I have realized that for a trade to work both sides must be within scanning range, obvious maybe, but if one person has a higher scanning than the other then this could happen, so I guess the first thing to be traded in this case should be the scanning tech itself.
In this case we have the same scan tech level. I’ve tried clearing my cache but it has been consistently throwing an error for over an hour. I tried sending the cash back and can’t do that either.
I’m playing in a different 64p game and I’m able to send tech and cash with no issues in that one. Seems like it’s specific to this game.
The Scanning Tech is a game option, so it is game specific to that new test game.
And as I said before, IF you are paying the $150 for the Formal Alliance, you probably should be able to trade with that person regardless of how far away they are. I can see that it might be an issue since you would then be able to trade with others they can see, but since they couldn’t send you tech back, it might not be a problem.
The question is
What is stopping the exchange of tech?
We are allowed to message outside scanning range, but not allowed to exchange money and tech.
Could this be another advantage of the formal alliance, i.e. extends your scanning range and therefore extends trading.
if you are willing to pay for it, why not? If you join with friends, and want to be allied, and the game has Formal enabled (which it isn’t in the standard settings) then why not?
Despite the restriction on trading, I am already seeing a player who has all of the level 2 tech in the test 64 player game and cycle 2 is just ending.
If you share your tech with two or three neighbors, and they with theirs and back to you, it doesn’t take long. I think the bigger change will come when people start fighting. In the first day or two most people haven’t started fighting yet and are happy to trade with anyone to take advantage of all the techs. Once they start breaking some of those agreements and attack then the lines of trade should slow down a lot more.
