It is never too late to write an Alpha session report! So, with our apologies for taking so much time, all our thanks to the participants of this session, and some catch-up for those who didn't!

Technical Heaven

No technical trouble to report during this session.

Back to the features

The new display of conquest time seems more understandable to everyone.

In the same vein, the new conquest progress system fixed most issues of previous versions, by enabling reasonable conquest durations in any circumstances.

But now, the lack of diversity of systems to conquer is showing more and more...

---

The new settings for game resolution have seen a 100% positive response, by allowing everyone to have a bit more space to put all the various UI elements!

---

Finally, the big one of this session was the PvP test.

Unfortunately, 3 weeks was not enough time to come up with a decent enough implementation of the feature in order for the test to be meaningful. During this session, it was way too difficult to hit other players because of the way player-to-player hits are currently computed, and this made the fights way too long, or even impossible in some cases.

We still think that PvP might be a interesting gameplay element to add to Gangs of Space. We will keep on working on better implementations of this feature, and do further tests to give our final verdict.

For the info, the first 2 player kills have been on Grouroux's tab. The first one was JiuZhongBaXian, the leader of Clementine Space Industries. The second one was Arsdant, leader of Thanatonauthes, which took the first place of the Hero Ladder (by a wide margin!) "thanks" to this death. But then Grouroux met justice, and got killed quite a lot after that!

The Gang Times

The Gang Ladder has been completely thrown all over during this session! A few big Gangs didn't mobilize enough troops to defend their territories, and have fallen quite drastically.

• Foxy Gang managed to pull off a miracle, and jumped from #7 straight to #1, with a total territory of 6,608 u². A big round of applause to the new Administrators of the Quadrant!
• On the opposite, Clementine Space Industries have suffered a lot. They managed to keep rank #2 with 4,702 u² of territory, but lost 1,518 u² because of enemy attacks. Quite hard on them! Let's hope they can raise back and make up for their losses...
• Thanatonautes managed to reach #3 (2,788 u²) by overtaking their lifelong rivals Supremacy Inc.!
• At #4 (2,027 u²), Kusaribe make a remarkable entry in the ladder. This is one of the biggest Polish Gangs, and they have the potential to shake the Universe. Be careful, CSI and Foxy Gang!
• Supremacy Inc. lost 2 ranks with their 1,834 u², because of a total loss of 1,204 u². This is quite a downer for this old Gang that was used to the top positions!
• In #6 (1,498 u²), great performance of Questionable Fatherly Dragons, entering in the top 10 for the first time!
• In #7 (1,398 u²), Rest In Pieces climb slowly the ladder, by almost doubling up their territory.
• In #8 (1,237 u²), Les Enfants d'Illuvatar fell down 4 ranks, even though they managed to keep their territory intact.
• In #9 (1,172 u²), Les Gentlemen also lose 4 ranks, even though they lost only 3 u²!?
• And finally, in #10 (560 u²), Pitigang managed to snatch the last ladder rank from Lazuli.

Let's end this section with a few words for those Gangs who left the rankings:

• The first "Big Gang" of Gangs of Space, TMG has definitely lost its former glory. Here ends their agony which started a few months ago.
• BitGang which had been the first mostly-English-speaking Gang has now lost most of their territories.
• And finally, Lazuli, with a territory of 424 u², ends up evicted by Pitigang.

Postmortem of this version

Not good

• PvP is not yet "there", in big part because of immaturity of the implementation
• The Universe doesn't really feel "alive"
• The difficulty curve of conquest might have been smoothed too much

Good

• The concept of PvP
• Multi-resolution support
• The new conquest system

Stats, stats, stats!

Fearsome PKs

• #1 with 7 kills
  • didia
  • Skullbot
  • Grouroux

• #4 with 3 kills

  • elfaus
  • arsdant

• #6 with 2 kills

  • privetbenladen
  • Kinder Pingu
  • cpinpon
  • RodZilla

Harvest

• 36,695 Medals (--)
  • 15,793 for contracts (--)
  • 3,134 for pacifications (---)
  • 17,768 for the killboard (++) (thanks Arsdant!)

Losses

• 194 ships destroyed forever (--)
• 6,640 items lost on board (-)

Conquest of the Universe

• 384 sectors conquered by the players (+++)
• 223 reconquered by the enemy forces (+++)
• 223 sectors pacified (---)
• 8 sectors sold (stable)

Dead things

• 171,630 Pirnats atomized (--)
• 32,397 Asteroids mined (---)
• 24,746 Vermillons liquidated (---)
• 59 Enemy portals closed (+++)

And in details:

• 46,321 Pirnat Wasp
• 37,471 Pirnat Scout
• 31,178 Asteroid S0
• 22,168 Pirnat Scout MKII
• 20,969 Pirnat Spike
• 16,973 Pirnat Miner
• 11,447 Vermillon Hermios
• 9,237 Pirnat Hunter
• 6,033 Vermillon Melenos
• 4,607 Pirnat Hunter MKII
• 4,386 Pirnat Pickelhaube
• 4,255 Vermillon Berthos
• 4,004 Pirnat Miner MKII
• 3,665 Pirnat Drake
• 1,964 Vermillon Berthos Evo
• 1,028 Pirnat Hunter X2
• 880 Asteroid S1
• 741 Vermillon Melenos Evo
• 732 Pirnat Lobstor
• 306 Vermillon Merros
• 251 Asteroid S2
• 69 Asteroid S3
• 59 Enemy Portal
• 19 Asteroid S4
• 6 Pirnat Mega Blade
• 4 Pirnat Giga Blade

Which makes...

• 1,515 enemies per player (+)

And finally, the players that earned most Medals by their deaths:

• 6,104 arsdant - Thanatonautes
• 1,410 Kakos - Clementine Space Industries
• 1,104 Melitas - independant
• 969 Kinder Pingu - Foxy Gang
• 965 Kinder Pingu - Foxy Gang
• 848 privetbenladen - Rest In Pieces
• 528 JiuZhongBaXian - Clementine Space Industries
• 528 didia - Foxy Gang
• 468 StalkerC - Clementine Space Industries
• 457 RodZilla - Thanatonautes

#