Dear Zorg,

It is I, a player of this game. I am wondering why you don’t want me to keep playing this game for a long time to come. I have read many hundreds of forum posts with many hundreds more people responding for some game suggestions that would help this game a lot. I have gotten very excited when reading some of these suggestions until I get down to the bottom where you chime in and deny the suggestion. I am at a loss why you want us to leave your game for another one. Perhaps it is that you just don’t understand what you have done with this game. So I will try to tell you.
This game is a raiding game.
Well that was quick.
I know it says it’s a space strategy game on the browser, but that is a lie. It’s a raiding game. Pure and simple. Oh sure, you can go attack someone, try to crash their fleet, or ninja and incoming attack, but if you look at the all-time attacker stats, you see that rarely happens. The rest of the time, it’s just raiding. Sometimes we raid other active players, but mostly it’s the inactive's that we raid. And raid. And raid. And raid. And raid. And raid. And raid. And raid. And raid. (Why so many And raid’s? It’s a raiding game). I’m sure you are saying right now, ‘but player people are miners and turtles’. True, but not without raiding their not. You cannot ever hope to even achieve a level 40 metal, crystal, deut, and solar plant without raiding. You cannot protect the res, period. There is no way you can build enough defenses to let a mere 408k hourly metal and 271k hourly crystal production go, to get the 4.3 billion metal and 2.1billion crystal to build that level 40 crystal mine. So you are just going to have to keep building elite cargo’s to carry around the 439 days of production to get that mine. Oh wait if you keep having to spend 1.5 mil metal and crystal for every 10 mil you carry that will add another 66 days to the build time. Nearly 1.5 years. So no, no one is just a miner. Period. Same principle applies to the turtles. No raid, no turtle.
So that brings us to the fleeters. Well if you want to build a fleet you have to (guess what) raid. It takes about 4 hours of raiding to make 1000bc’s. There are 9 galaxies. If 9 people with at least 16 fleet spots and elite cargos to raid with in one day, and they all raided a different galaxy, 6 hours of hard raiding later, they entire universe is raided out. So 9 people get to make 1250 ships a day, and at that they have to hope 10+ people are not raiding.
This brings us back to the main point. If you had your hopes set on such a raiding game to do anything, why do you constantly want to cut our throats? I use to think if big players crashed little players fleets, that would run off the little players. No, not really. It just makes them have to learn how to fleet save. It’s the inability to do anything that is hurting this game. I would like to compete with the big players in this game, but the cold hard truth is, I would have to raid for almost a year just to have a chance at a fleet to compete.
Here is the catch 22. If the game has more players, it’s harder to get anywhere as the available resources are stretched between more and more people. So what happens is this, a new game comes in and bye bye zorg. Is this what you want Mr. Zorg. Everyone to leave. Perhaps if you want this game to generate you your living income you need to make it to where
1. More people want to play.
2. More people want to stay.
3. More people can compete.
Here are some things you need to quit denying.
1. Recyclers.
2. Mines.
It’s a short list, but it’s very important.
Recyclers.
1. They have next to 0 carrying capacity. 20k is all. Fuel consumption for that is 300. Base speed is 2000. Large cargo capacity is 25k. Fuel consumption is 50 and base speed is 7500.
You’re pretty smart, we hope. Can you not see how messed up that is. 3.75 times slower. 20% less capacity and 6 times more expensive to use. Personally I would shoot the designer of that ship if I was a real emperor. At least I would not spend government money on building them. However, since you really don’t want people to attack each other, only raid, it makes sense.
2. I’m sure it is obvious to everyone else, but just to make sure, they need to carry more, move faster, and cost less deut to operate. As emperor, I would demand it.

Mines.
1. Stupid to build. Yep I said it. The only reason anyone should build any mines is
a. First planet. Only high enough to get to cargo ships.
b. Perma Points.
c. Give the rest of us something to raid.
2. Economically speaking, only an idiot (in real life) would build a mine system that never pays off. There is no magic number that you can hit and your mines start to become profitable. As a matter of fact to build a level 40 metal, crystal, deut, and solar plant, you are giving up on 5.8 million light fighters, or 1.9 million heavy fighters or 396,000 battle ships or…. You get the point. You are giving up a huge fleet to build those mines that only produce 408k metal 271k crystal and approximately 176k deut per hour. Sending 1 elite cargo on 1 raid will get you that in 20-30 min depending on engine research.
3. “If you don't like the rates, don't build them.” Zorg. So in other words, raid, raid, raid. Wake up Zorg, the rates are HORIBLE, HORIBLE, HORIBLE. If it cost 50% more to make the next level, you should expect a return on investment. No one EVER invests without a return on investment. Where is our return? And if we all adopt the policy of not building those HORIBLE mines, guess what happens to the raiding? (it goes away), and then so does your game, and then so does your income from your game.
4. So you absolutely don’t want to make mines profitable!!!! THEN MAKE RAIDING PROFITABLE. Increase the mine output of all inactive (black) players by 10,000%. Don’t make me spend 250 days at 4 hours a day to get a fleet to compete with. Give the people at the top of the game some competition. They have a 2-3 year jump on the new players. It’s a no win situation. I guess you just want us to move up in ranks with retiring players like BFC. Well they probably wouldn’t retire if they had something to do. I’m sure even they are getting bored raiding little players.

In summary
Zorg. You’re not the only one out there who can program. If you don’t make the game move faster for the growing players, you will not have one before too much longer. Someone already made a Zorg game with all the player suggestions, and its taking people away. Probably only temporary at this point because they went too far to the other side and it’s too easy. But soon someone will find a good balance in the middle between (obsolete mines, raid only) and (where is the challenge). When that happens, you’re out. Unless you move on your policies a little bit more. Quit playing your old account and start a brand new account and follow your rules. See how frustrating it is for 90% of the people who play this game. Keep us here!!!!!!!!

well put stempf i recently have been building my mines up and just using daily mine production to do so and after every upgrade the time it takes to mine enough resources for the upgrade doubles along with the cost.... and trust me i have been researching other game options not because i want to leave zorg but because it seems impossable some days to catch the big guys without spending 24 hours aday raiding

I agree with lots of his points. Some of his math I have issues with ("It takes about 4 hours of raiding to make 1000bc’s" I wish...)

1. Suggestions do need to be looked at more, and seriously considered rather than best case scenario: Eh... Good idea. We'll add it in 6 months... worst case: No.
2. Recycs are currently ****, and I too would shoot the designer. (*COUGH ELITE RECYC COUGH!!!!*)
3. Mines suck. That's why I raid.
4. Deut is hard. Too hard to support a large fleet. I'm trying to build up to medium sized, and deut is hard. Real hard. Costs me 120k every night to fs my crap as it is. (*COUGH ELITE BATTLECRUISER/ELITE RAIDER COUGH!!!*)
5. Raising the production of black players is actually a good idea. Maybe not X101, but like X20.

you have to spend a zorg ruby to convert the excess metal to duet. then you will have enough from 4 horus of hard raiding.

Ok. You need to give me some of your targets lol.

i raid all day every day. my highest mine level is 23. mines are useless. i do raid enough to build 4k bc a day but that is 16 hours of non stop raiding. Why even ask players for suggestions if they will be denied every time. To keep player base I think you should listen to them. Plenty of other games much like this out there and from what i have seen they have a bigger player base, why? I must agree with Stempf on this.

Stempf wrote:...THEN MAKE RAIDING PROFITABLE. Increase the mine output of all inactive (black) players by 10,000%. Don’t make me spend 250 days at 4 hours a day to get a fleet to compete with. Give the people at the top of the game some competition....

There is a problem with your logic. Most of the people at the top now are heavy raiders (largely as a result of that raiding), so increasing inactive income will benefit the people already at the top as much as the newcomers. Net result = 0.

Stempf wrote:Mines.
1. Stupid to build. ...
2. Economically speaking, only an idiot (in real life) would build a mine system that never pays off.

Damn, what were Weresloth, Gp41 and myself thinking? How will we ever get into the Top 10 ranks with mine systems that never pay off? I guess Gozar and Thorr suffer from the same stupidity too though, being no. 1 and 2 in building rank. Strange how so many top ranks were stupid like that isn't it?

1st off, yea, i guess if you want to spend 3 years building mines, go ahead.

2nd off, you are right spaceman. If mines were increased top players would benefit as well. The entire letter was not so much as here is what you need to do, as it was a we need to seriously look at the discrepancies between the people who have 3 year old accounts, and those that have 3 month old accounts, or 3 week old accounts. If you look through the forums, you will see suggestion after suggestion on how to help the smaller players have a chance.

so here is the facts.

Their are only 2 ways to keep the top players from growing exponentially.
1. mandatory retirement. if a player holds the top position for a certain length of time, they get a message like "your superior emperorship skills have proven you to be master of the universe. You decide to retire." And then they have to start over. I'm willing to bet if you ask the top players, they will not like this idea. Even the ones who hope to take down the top players will not like this idea. Probably 999 out of 1000 will not like this idea.
2. mandatory 1/5 requirement. this was proposed and argued against by the top players because they said they would not have any targets. THAT IS THE POINT. it would slow them down so they would have to wait for some players to catch up to them a little bit. This would slow the stem of resources from the new players to the veteran players and allow the new players to grow faster. Once the new players got close to that range they would have been attacked and have attacked other players their size enough to learn how to protect their fleet and resources. Then when they hit that size, the veterans would have to hunt them just like they have to hunt each other. But right now when you got people like God_of_Death who post bragging on how he slammed an entire noob alliance, where is the chance for those people to learn. Well I guess God_of_Death is teaching them, but the flow of resources jumps straight to the top.

If you have any suggestion on how to help the smaller players, here is a novel idea
DON'T beat up me for suggesting , SUGGEST something of your own.

As for the mines here are the cold hard numbers. to build UP TO A level 40 metal mine, crystal mine, deut mine, and solar plant (which is not high enough) you need 19,653,291,490 metal and 8,499,766,947 crystal. At the production of a level 40 metal mine (408,333) that is 48,130.5 hours or 2005.4 days or 5.5 years. At the production of a level 40 crystal mine (spot 8) ( 271,555) that is 31,300.4 hours or 1304.1 days or 3.57 years. using some trading, the mine production to build mines to level 40 will take way more than 3.57 years as these numbers were considering a level 40 production the whole time.
And before someone pops off and says "well i have 11 or 21 planets" guess what if you put a level 40 on all planets, it will still take that long. sure you can cut the time down for one planet if you pool the resources.
However, those numbers does not take into consideration on how you are going to protect the res while you wait on the 447 days it takes a level 39 mine to make the necessary production to make a level 40 mine.

So here is the challenge to all you miners who say im full of it. Make an excel spreadsheet showing the mine production increase to build the next mine. Let the spread sheet start with your 500 res at ground zero. Only use the production from the mines to build the next mine. Start with your 11 or 21 planets, fine by me. Show that all planets you choose can get to a level 40 mines and solar plant under the 3.57 years and I will bow down to your superior knowledge. As a symbol of my bowing I will make the top ruby purchase and send you all the rubies. Put your math where your mouth is, make a profit.

NO imperial support. NO raid income. Any exchange you show must comply with the merchant exchange ratio of 4 2 1. That gives you a bonus as you exchange that excess deut for metal and crystal. Hell with the deut exchange you might just pull it off. but you have to use mine production at each level not level 40. And don't forget your making a game model not a theoretical model so show (including subtraction of costs) how you defend the res while your building those mines.

as expert in creating games similar to zorg a will tell this:
a run for 4 servers private thereand to add new ship
it takes 5 min maybe 10 not more
to chenge resurses production of each universe
ships speed and everything else it takes less then 30 sec

so my question is zorg why it takes 1 year and some months to add 1 single ships : Elite Recyler or others great ships or sugestions
also every day there is tons great sugestions but it takes so long to implant in game.

http://i1097.photobucket.com/albums/g343/Akatcuki/Peinxd2323555.jpg

because how long do those other games last before they fall apart? the player bases of those games disappear and they rarely last longer than a year, every little change can make a drastic difference in how the game is played causing unforeseen consequences that you'll end up complaining about later down the road(We see examples of this with the LG) so before changes to game-play are made they are extensively beta tested and hammered out, also the need for some ships that are great in your opinion could be terrible ideas to another player so feedback from many players is needed.



P.S. Yes you can add a ship in about a minute, how balanced it'll be is the question, it takes time to find a right balance between things like WSA,Deut consumption and speeds...