Zorg Empire

There I had a talk with Istalris and we spoke of a Herald issue. The initial topic we discussed was about an idea I had regarding a place in the forums where alliance officers would be able to post news feed for their alliance, so consider this in your replies as well.

Regarding the Universe News, we speak of a newspaper feature in fact. This is an idea we had in the past (I am unaware if it has been posted by any player, probably not though) and has to do with a separate page in-game that will summarize big events in-game.

The newspaper itself will be generated by both user and automatic feed. Automatic feed will detect big events and add them while users will be able to also post (there will be some delay to user submitted content till someone certifies them -> Although we can add such power to current forum moderators and/or more trusted players to save time).

What we need to actually discuss, since this is a dev idea that does not need much efford to get approved, it to help us with what the Automatic Feed should include. Then we can prioritize it properly and perhaps have it done before the new year.

A quick list is as follows for automatic:
-Top50 rank changes by +-1 (players)
-Top200 rank changes by +-20 (players)
-Top10 rank changes (alliances)
-Big hits
-Big Moon losses
-Milestones for players/alliances (A new list is needed here. For example when an alliance reaches 10,50,100 members, power achievement for players/alliances). Milestones will appear only once for each.

Users on the other hand, can think of their own what to post but only major events will be published at top of newspaprer (first page). Such events can be war declarations.

Generally, we will need to sit down and decide all types of user and automatic content and give a priority number to each one because the system will need to decide what to describe first.

We can include the rankings and various other stats in the newspaper (This will eliminate Statistics and Score Board links from the menu but both and more will be accessible through the newspaper - In well visible locations of course!). In this way, we can give a nice feeling in the game.

I do not know if anyone else sees this in the way I do but I am personally very excited in such a feature. Perhaps because it also fits my role in the game

The best format for display I think would be to have a couple of tabs you can cycle between (on the news page) where one is automatically generated news and another is player posted news.

The main cause for concern in the player generated news is that it probably needs a team of GO's to keep it free of spam and random pointless comments.

Also for discussion regarding the game generated news, here is a snippet of mine from the conversation we had prior to this suggestion;

"...leads to a page with automatically generated news displayed on it at every update with things like new alliances, new members to alliances, recent skirmishes (eg. The IGSA detected a huge battle taking place deep in the nebulas of sector G7! Over 10,000 casualties have been reported!) Where IGSA = Inter Galactic Space Agency and casualties = ships lost (Death Stars can equal 500 casualties or something)."

There are and should be many more things that can be added to this suggestion that can turn it into a place of great interest while you wait around in game.

On a side note, there could also be a third tab with administrator generated news on various updates/fixes and their respective forum links.

I think this is a great suggestion and I like the idea of having different tabs as described by Istalris

This is an awesome idea. I can see this as a beneficial part of the In-game feel.

Looking forward to this implementation.

Oh! Can't believe I forgot this.. before you try and do automatic news feeds that display rank changes, you need to first correct the ranking script to include ships that are currently flying in a players points. Otherwise you are going to get overwhelming rank change spam everytime someone fleetsaves or launches a significant attack.

A lot of players probably wont like it, but it's the way it should have been from the start. You shouldn't be able to use update times as a way to hide your fleet points. This probably should be in another topic but it relates to the rank change news feed so what the hey.

I agree with you Istalris. That could become a nightmare.

Since you mentioned the points issue. Why do buildings on the moons not count toward total points? I know that defenses count toward defense points, but the buildings don't.

(Out of topic: If moon buildings do not count, it is a bug and needs to be fixed. If it is true, perhaps it may be the time to create a new rank script that will consume even less time and will fix the issue with fleets on air and will count moon buildings)

The tabs idea is nice and I like the idea about admin announcements too.
Still I would like to focues discussion around news types. Casualties are good as general but we always can have detailed reports (like exact numbers and ship types) and use the casualty idea as title.

Zorg wrote: Casualties are good as general but we always can have detailed reports (like exact numbers and ship types) and use the casualty idea as title.

I thought of that at first, but the generic casualties reported as well as the generic location are for masking purposes, we don't want the information to become too personal. A lot of players will recognise who and where is being hit simply by seeing a fleet composition. It could use some tweaking, but in my opinion showing exact fleets and such isn't wise.

(Out of topic: the moon buildings thing is true and has been since about halfway through 2009, which I believe it was reported, but I might be mistaken. Anyway, new ranking script would be awesome.)

i played another game that actually has a ticker that shows the posted hits or any newses and stuffs.

think this can be a nice addition to the game but i would be inclined for it to be optional so that ppl who dont want it can opt out. or may use rubies to opt out.