Hey

[~Josh~]

Whatsup

[EbilCC]

is this spam?

i see a bird flying he is up in the sky

[~Josh~]

Nah, Im an old player popping in to shout "HELLOOOOOOOO"

[EbilCC]

ah you has supernatural in your sig your fine

[Ashu]

Hey Josh!!! How are you?

[~Josh~]

Not bad hbu?

[Juliette]

Ha Josh. Byrnes reminds us of you whenever he posts.. (No, not the posts themselves, he refers to you in his sig.)

Having a good break? Or are you back for the updates?

[~Josh~]

Nah, I just wanted to say hi xD what new updates though?

[Juliette]

Nah, I just wanted to say hi xD what new updates though?

Shame, would be fun if you came back.

#Updates, Good updates, less good updates, bad updates, but generally a lot of changes.
In the spoiler, the list of all is copied. Careful, it's a LONG list.. From here: http://gatewars.com/updates.php
[spoiler]NOTE: THE BELOW April-June UPDATES ARE PLANNED TO GO LIVE Tuesday, June 29th, about 10am gametime. Game will be brougth down while updates go live...
Forum to discuss: HERE IN FOR ADMIN / UPCOMING CHANGES


ALLIANCE HOUSES
Basics: A concept of an alliance 'house' is being introduced. In simplest terms, it can be viewed as an alliance of alliances. With some twists.
Joining/Voting: To join a house, your alliance leader simply 'pledges' allegiance to that house. It will cost though, price listed in alliance management page (currently 10bil), and the funds come from alliance bank.
Each alliance leader can also vote for which alliance they wish to lead the house (1bil, out of alliance bank). By default it is themselves, although can change at any time via alliance management page (again 1bil per change). This is public information, viewable by clicking on the house from alliance ranking page (you can see more info on each house there too). Note that changing your vote 'resets' your join time, and you must wait 5 days after voting/joining to get any bonuses. You are also safe from being kicked out for 6 days after a vote change.
Once joined (or changing vote), you are on a 'trial' membership for 5 days. During this time, you do not get the house bonuses, nor does your house vote count. The leader is the one who, at each turn change, has the most valid votes. Votes are calculated by alliance POPULATION (no mercs). 1 citizen, equals one vote. You will note the alliance populations listed on the alliance ranking page IF they are in a house. !house!bezwax
Removing/Being Removed: After 6 days, the alliance leader can remove any alliance from the house. It is as simple as a button click (so be careful leaders!).
Bonus: The bonuses are listed also on house page (linked from the alliance&house ranking page) -they are not all that strong, but should help. Bonuses are ontop of previous bonuses, but before planet additions.
Other Benefits: The leader of the alliance leading the house (and 2ic) can message house alliance leaders; or all house members.
House War and Peace: You are automatically at peace with all other house VOTING members. Each house also has an opposite house, with which it is at war (like the Hall of Justice and the Hall of Doom). This is the same type of war as a '2 way war' indivdiually or with alliance general war. Nox is bypassed, limits of damage and deaths are raised, etc...
OF NOTE: Again - you can join/vote a house and be bonus-free and un-removalbe for FIVE(5) days, and kickable after SIX(6) days, giving you one day to outvote the leadership, and then remove them!! You can change your vote immediately, but it takes 5 days to 'take effect' -- the house page shows the results of both voting members, and the 'what if' scenario if all members could vote....so you know how you're doing in taking the leadership!
ALLIANCE BANK PURCHASES
Ontop of joinging house and house voting, the alliance bank can now be used for a number of other items (by the IC and 2IC) including PPT (+1hour), weapon repair, bank increase, etc --all for a cost of course.
LONE WOLF
With more and more benefit for alliances, and houses (which require alliance), the person in no alliance, thus no house, will receive a 'i am so tough i fight alone like chuck norris' bonus of 10% to natural DEFENSE and COVERT. This is ontop of any commander/no commander/own commander bonuses, and deals specificly with alliance or no alliance.
ATTACKING AND DEFENDING
Minimum Attack Strengths and other Limits:
* The Minimum on a normal attack to do damage has been raised from 30 to 35% ..so you now need at least 35% of the defenders defense, in attack power, to mass or otherwise launch a successful assault (or assult).
* The same applies to lifer suicides.
* A fleet on planet attack must be at least 17.5% of the planetary pre-mobile defense. This is up from 12%.
* An account must be over 30 days old to involve itself in planetary thefts. This should stop or at least slow any 'quick account create to steal a planet' issues.
* A minimum time between losing planets has been setup. It is a 24hour delay in getting a new planet (not new) and now an 8 hour delay between losing planets. So you can lose a max of 3 planets per day.
* The minimum attack turns to use in an attack is increased from 1, to 3. No slapfights here.
* Lifers can now take out 1 enemy anti-covert, for each 2 lifers, up from 1 for 3 ... Also - anticovert killed in Lifer Suicides now counts in the military experience points.

Attack, Defense, Covert and Anti-Covert Power Calculations
* Attack and Defense (not fleets) values are double what they were before (in effect weapons are twice as powerful - call it progress...)
* Covert & Anti-covert: To move all ranked powers closer to the same values, and make planet types more equal, covert and anti-covert are decreased by a factor of 5. Within reason, att/def/cov/ac/ms should be able to be equal in power levels. (MS less, as it is more permanent, and does not have planets to assist it.)
SABOTAGE AND SPY AND COVERT CAPACITY
* Ability to damage enemy increased. This is to keep the sab potential in line with growing power bases.
* The percent max damage per sabotage attempt went from 2 to 4% of their total weapons (double if 2way war is in place).
* The 'count' of spy actions against the realm, after successful sab, went from 3, to 2...SO in short you can do double sab damage, compared to before, and sab 33% more often before they hit the maximum amount of covert activity.
* Spying no longer uses covert capacity -you can either spy, or not. Covert capacity is left for sabotage.
CONFIRMATION BOXES, DISPLAYS, ETC
* There is now a checkbox is now on 'reset Relations'.
* Time Display will show- hh:mm for current day | mmm dd, hh:mm for current year (but not current day) | mmm dd, YYYY for previous years.
* Planet Summary On Base Page linked to planet page, so clicking on planet name takes you directly to the management of that planet on the planets management page.
* Officer Management, Alliance Management, Alliance Wars, etc -- are more obvious on the base page where applicable.
* Race Ranking: If a race has enough members, it will be ranked. You can then also click through to see all memebers of said race. The link can be seen from the 'attack' menu option, or any of the ranking screens.
SURVEYS FOR NAQ
We are adding an option to get Naq (as if from the black market), but instead of $$ you can simply do a survey or other such online activities.
You can get it for yourself, or others (with their ID).
This is a trial, and if successful, we may add the ability to acquire turns or other ingame resources as well.
Keep in mind that this is a 3rd party that wants surveys done, not associated with the game beyond the agreement that if you do their surveys, we will give you ingame resources. Never give away personal information you are not comfortble sharing, here, there, or anywhere online...
PLANTES
* Planet 50% of max 'natural' value corrected: Previously, the AVERAGE of all planets of one type (ie attack) could not count for more than (planet count x 50% natural strike action). This has now been changed (to reflect what the planet description actually says) that ANY GIVEN PLANET cannot contribute more than 50% of natural (post bonus) value (in this example, to attack.) The same goes for defense, covert, anti-covert, and UP. Income planets are not affected.
* Merlins Planetary Dimensional Shifting Device (MPDSD) from market turn now gives 5, up from 3, days protection.
* Planet Defence Costs: Decreased so planets are more defendable. The multiplier for increasing the cost of each planet defence upgrade, as you get more and more, is: 1.5 * (existingDefenses / 200000 ) whereas it WAS: multiplier = 2.0 * (existingDefenses / 100000 ). In short, the over 700k defenses got less incrementally expensive, with jumps in cost less, and the frequency of jumps halved.
* A minimum time between losing planets has been setup. It is a 24hour delay in getting a new planet (not new) and now an 8 hour delay between losing planets. So you can lose a max of 3 planets per day.
PERGATORY
* Requirements now listed on the personelle summary grid. The entry is 15% of 'max units' (max units is 1/2 of plague threshold, and is listed as well...it grows with time), and you are booted at 20% of the same value. Only the entry maximum is listed. The time between attacking/protection and moving back to pergatory, is now 48hours (from 24). It is meant to be a place to be, not a place to go to and from...
* Needs 48 hours of no attacking, ppt or vacation, to LEAVE (used to be just to get there...now it is also to leave). The curtain between realms of existence requires a clean soul!
* We are looking to see if some type of further power or rank limitation needs to be incorporated, but it will not be released at this time.
WEEKLY MARKET AND TURNS
* Turns from Market increased (well, turns stayed same, but now takes 1 market turn, not 3, to get them.)
* Market Merlins (MPDSD) gives 5 days, up from 3
* The value of turns has been brought in line with other resources - in effect making market turns less expensive.
* The base values of trade goods are increased, allowing for more of a specific good to be exchanged with each transaction.
* Non Ascended, Non-Pergatory accounts NOT over the turn generation max (currently 5000) in normal and non-tradable turns combined, will receive a 50% turn bonus in non-transferable turns.
WAR EXPERIENCE VALUES
The tide has turned - of value now, is holding a decent defense (value for killing attackers increased). The value of destroying defensive units decreased.
The new values are as follows:
* Naq Gained= .000001
* UU Gained = 100
* DefMerc Killed= 10
* DefSold Killed= 20
* DefSuper Killed=100
* AttMerc Killed= 30
* AttSold Killed= 60
* AttSuper Killed=300
* Spy Killed= 50
* SpyKiller Killed= 50
* PlanetDef Killed=300
* MS Fleet Killed=200
* MS Weap Killed=300
* MS Shield Killed=300
* Planets Taken=5000
* Turn Used =1
* Weap Point Killed=0.0001
WEAPONS
* Def weapons can resell for 60% of their initial value
* Attack weapons sell for just 10% of their initial value. The logic here is that massing is costly if you want to 'hit then hide' while a good defense is always in demand.
* Fleets resell at 90% of initial value.
* Defense weapons are damaged at about 1/3 of their previous values.
* Defense weapon damage is adjusted by defcon rate - ranging from a 10 to 50% further reduction in weapon damage rates.
NOX AND REALM ALERT
* Adding / Removing / Changing either costs 10 turns (up from 3).
* The min/max of realm alert changed from 10-70 to 10-50.
* Nox is removed if more than (240) attack turns are used in 24 hours. (no warning given..they just get flustered at your warlike actions and revoke policy). Sabotage is not noticed by the Nox so does not affect the policy.
* The max hits on you before phasing out (while on nox) is raised from base of 140 to base of 200 (x15 turns). (since weapons are harder to damage...) -reminder that realm alert decreases the base by a % from 10 to 50 (used to be 70).
* The max insurance delay between attacks went from 7 to 5 seconds.
BUG FIXES
* Double Count Military Experience fixed.
* Alliance Wars fixed.
* There were spurratic reports of PPT ending 'early'. We have thus added a double check mechanism, and a log, to all ending PPT. If there continues to be a problem, it will be relatively easy now to find (opposed to before where we had no log of PPT removal by the system...)
* Planets now max at 50% natural value for the type, like it says they do.
COMPLAINTS AND COMPLIMENTS
While this has been flushed out in beta, chats, forums and such for a number of months, I fully expect a wider feedback now that we have the official 'go live' list.
Please use the following forum topic to discuss: HERE (a mod can split off any 'hot subtopic' if necessary)
I also understand that this is a lot of changes ... with the game as 'integrated' as it is now, with thing A affecting thing B and C, which in turn affect A and D and E, etc etc -- changing the game code/design at this point is a lot like working with marmelade figurenes on your mothers wedding cake, and we all know what thats like!!! Nuff said.
Thank you!!
jason.[/spoiler]

[Ashu]

Maybe we'll see you back someday!

[Clarkey]

Hey Josh.

[BlacK Oblivion]

came back.

#Updates, Good updates, less good updates, bad updates, but generally a lot of changes.
In the spoiler, the list of all is copied. Careful, it's a LONG list.. From here: http://gatewars.com/updates.php
[spoiler]NOTE: THE BELOW April-June UPDATES ARE PLANNED TO GO LIVE Tuesday, June 29th, about 10am gametime. Game will be brougth down while updates go live...
Forum to discuss: HERE IN FOR ADMIN / UPCOMING CHANGES


ALLIANCE HOUSES
Basics: A concept of an alliance 'house' is being introduced. In simplest terms, it can be viewed as an alliance of alliances. With some twists.
Joining/Voting: To join a house, your alliance leader simply 'pledges' allegiance to that house. It will cost though, price listed in alliance management page (currently 10bil), and the funds come from alliance bank.
Each alliance leader can also vote for which alliance they wish to lead the house (1bil, out of alliance bank). By default it is themselves, although can change at any time via alliance management page (again 1bil per change). This is public information, viewable by clicking on the house from alliance ranking page (you can see more info on each house there too). Note that changing your vote 'resets' your join time, and you must wait 5 days after voting/joining to get any bonuses. You are also safe from being kicked out for 6 days after a vote change.
Once joined (or changing vote), you are on a 'trial' membership for 5 days. During this time, you do not get the house bonuses, nor does your house vote count. The leader is the one who, at each turn change, has the most valid votes. Votes are calculated by alliance POPULATION (no mercs). 1 citizen, equals one vote. You will note the alliance populations listed on the alliance ranking page IF they are in a house. !house!bezwax
Removing/Being Removed: After 6 days, the alliance leader can remove any alliance from the house. It is as simple as a button click (so be careful leaders!).
Bonus: The bonuses are listed also on house page (linked from the alliance&house ranking page) -they are not all that strong, but should help. Bonuses are ontop of previous bonuses, but before planet additions.
Other Benefits: The leader of the alliance leading the house (and 2ic) can message house alliance leaders; or all house members.
House War and Peace: You are automatically at peace with all other house VOTING members. Each house also has an opposite house, with which it is at war (like the Hall of Justice and the Hall of Doom). This is the same type of war as a '2 way war' indivdiually or with alliance general war. Nox is bypassed, limits of damage and deaths are raised, etc...
OF NOTE: Again - you can join/vote a house and be bonus-free and un-removalbe for FIVE(5) days, and kickable after SIX(6) days, giving you one day to outvote the leadership, and then remove them!! You can change your vote immediately, but it takes 5 days to 'take effect' -- the house page shows the results of both voting members, and the 'what if' scenario if all members could vote....so you know how you're doing in taking the leadership!
ALLIANCE BANK PURCHASES
Ontop of joinging house and house voting, the alliance bank can now be used for a number of other items (by the IC and 2IC) including PPT (+1hour), weapon repair, bank increase, etc --all for a cost of course.
LONE WOLF
With more and more benefit for alliances, and houses (which require alliance), the person in no alliance, thus no house, will receive a 'i am so tough i fight alone like chuck norris' bonus of 10% to natural DEFENSE and COVERT. This is ontop of any commander/no commander/own commander bonuses, and deals specificly with alliance or no alliance.
ATTACKING AND DEFENDING
Minimum Attack Strengths and other Limits:
* The Minimum on a normal attack to do damage has been raised from 30 to 35% ..so you now need at least 35% of the defenders defense, in attack power, to mass or otherwise launch a successful assault (or assult).
* The same applies to lifer suicides.
* A fleet on planet attack must be at least 17.5% of the planetary pre-mobile defense. This is up from 12%.
* An account must be over 30 days old to involve itself in planetary thefts. This should stop or at least slow any 'quick account create to steal a planet' issues.
* A minimum time between losing planets has been setup. It is a 24hour delay in getting a new planet (not new) and now an 8 hour delay between losing planets. So you can lose a max of 3 planets per day.
* The minimum attack turns to use in an attack is increased from 1, to 3. No slapfights here.
* Lifers can now take out 1 enemy anti-covert, for each 2 lifers, up from 1 for 3 ... Also - anticovert killed in Lifer Suicides now counts in the military experience points.

Attack, Defense, Covert and Anti-Covert Power Calculations
* Attack and Defense (not fleets) values are double what they were before (in effect weapons are twice as powerful - call it progress...)
* Covert & Anti-covert: To move all ranked powers closer to the same values, and make planet types more equal, covert and anti-covert are decreased by a factor of 5. Within reason, att/def/cov/ac/ms should be able to be equal in power levels. (MS less, as it is more permanent, and does not have planets to assist it.)
SABOTAGE AND SPY AND COVERT CAPACITY
* Ability to damage enemy increased. This is to keep the sab potential in line with growing power bases.
* The percent max damage per sabotage attempt went from 2 to 4% of their total weapons (double if 2way war is in place).
* The 'count' of spy actions against the realm, after successful sab, went from 3, to 2...SO in short you can do double sab damage, compared to before, and sab 33% more often before they hit the maximum amount of covert activity.
* Spying no longer uses covert capacity -you can either spy, or not. Covert capacity is left for sabotage.
CONFIRMATION BOXES, DISPLAYS, ETC
* There is now a checkbox is now on 'reset Relations'.
* Time Display will show- hh:mm for current day | mmm dd, hh:mm for current year (but not current day) | mmm dd, YYYY for previous years.
* Planet Summary On Base Page linked to planet page, so clicking on planet name takes you directly to the management of that planet on the planets management page.
* Officer Management, Alliance Management, Alliance Wars, etc -- are more obvious on the base page where applicable.
* Race Ranking: If a race has enough members, it will be ranked. You can then also click through to see all memebers of said race. The link can be seen from the 'attack' menu option, or any of the ranking screens.
SURVEYS FOR NAQ
We are adding an option to get Naq (as if from the black market), but instead of $$ you can simply do a survey or other such online activities.
You can get it for yourself, or others (with their ID).
This is a trial, and if successful, we may add the ability to acquire turns or other ingame resources as well.
Keep in mind that this is a 3rd party that wants surveys done, not associated with the game beyond the agreement that if you do their surveys, we will give you ingame resources. Never give away personal information you are not comfortble sharing, here, there, or anywhere online...
PLANTES
* Planet 50% of max 'natural' value corrected: Previously, the AVERAGE of all planets of one type (ie attack) could not count for more than (planet count x 50% natural strike action). This has now been changed (to reflect what the planet description actually says) that ANY GIVEN PLANET cannot contribute more than 50% of natural (post bonus) value (in this example, to attack.) The same goes for defense, covert, anti-covert, and UP. Income planets are not affected.
* Merlins Planetary Dimensional Shifting Device (MPDSD) from market turn now gives 5, up from 3, days protection.
* Planet Defence Costs: Decreased so planets are more defendable. The multiplier for increasing the cost of each planet defence upgrade, as you get more and more, is: 1.5 * (existingDefenses / 200000 ) whereas it WAS: multiplier = 2.0 * (existingDefenses / 100000 ). In short, the over 700k defenses got less incrementally expensive, with jumps in cost less, and the frequency of jumps halved.
* A minimum time between losing planets has been setup. It is a 24hour delay in getting a new planet (not new) and now an 8 hour delay between losing planets. So you can lose a max of 3 planets per day.
PERGATORY
* Requirements now listed on the personelle summary grid. The entry is 15% of 'max units' (max units is 1/2 of plague threshold, and is listed as well...it grows with time), and you are booted at 20% of the same value. Only the entry maximum is listed. The time between attacking/protection and moving back to pergatory, is now 48hours (from 24). It is meant to be a place to be, not a place to go to and from...
* Needs 48 hours of no attacking, ppt or vacation, to LEAVE (used to be just to get there...now it is also to leave). The curtain between realms of existence requires a clean soul!
* We are looking to see if some type of further power or rank limitation needs to be incorporated, but it will not be released at this time.
WEEKLY MARKET AND TURNS
* Turns from Market increased (well, turns stayed same, but now takes 1 market turn, not 3, to get them.)
* Market Merlins (MPDSD) gives 5 days, up from 3
* The value of turns has been brought in line with other resources - in effect making market turns less expensive.
* The base values of trade goods are increased, allowing for more of a specific good to be exchanged with each transaction.
* Non Ascended, Non-Pergatory accounts NOT over the turn generation max (currently 5000) in normal and non-tradable turns combined, will receive a 50% turn bonus in non-transferable turns.
WAR EXPERIENCE VALUES
The tide has turned - of value now, is holding a decent defense (value for killing attackers increased). The value of destroying defensive units decreased.
The new values are as follows:
* Naq Gained= .000001
* UU Gained = 100
* DefMerc Killed= 10
* DefSold Killed= 20
* DefSuper Killed=100
* AttMerc Killed= 30
* AttSold Killed= 60
* AttSuper Killed=300
* Spy Killed= 50
* SpyKiller Killed= 50
* PlanetDef Killed=300
* MS Fleet Killed=200
* MS Weap Killed=300
* MS Shield Killed=300
* Planets Taken=5000
* Turn Used =1
* Weap Point Killed=0.0001
WEAPONS
* Def weapons can resell for 60% of their initial value
* Attack weapons sell for just 10% of their initial value. The logic here is that massing is costly if you want to 'hit then hide' while a good defense is always in demand.
* Fleets resell at 90% of initial value.
* Defense weapons are damaged at about 1/3 of their previous values.
* Defense weapon damage is adjusted by defcon rate - ranging from a 10 to 50% further reduction in weapon damage rates.
NOX AND REALM ALERT
* Adding / Removing / Changing either costs 10 turns (up from 3).
* The min/max of realm alert changed from 10-70 to 10-50.
* Nox is removed if more than (240) attack turns are used in 24 hours. (no warning given..they just get flustered at your warlike actions and revoke policy). Sabotage is not noticed by the Nox so does not affect the policy.
* The max hits on you before phasing out (while on nox) is raised from base of 140 to base of 200 (x15 turns). (since weapons are harder to damage...) -reminder that realm alert decreases the base by a % from 10 to 50 (used to be 70).
* The max insurance delay between attacks went from 7 to 5 seconds.
BUG FIXES
* Double Count Military Experience fixed.
* Alliance Wars fixed.
* There were spurratic reports of PPT ending 'early'. We have thus added a double check mechanism, and a log, to all ending PPT. If there continues to be a problem, it will be relatively easy now to find (opposed to before where we had no log of PPT removal by the system...)
* Planets now max at 50% natural value for the type, like it says they do.
COMPLAINTS AND COMPLIMENTS
While this has been flushed out in beta, chats, forums and such for a number of months, I fully expect a wider feedback now that we have the official 'go live' list.
Please use the following forum topic to discuss: HERE (a mod can split off any 'hot subtopic' if necessary)
I also understand that this is a lot of changes ... with the game as 'integrated' as it is now, with thing A affecting thing B and C, which in turn affect A and D and E, etc etc -- changing the game code/design at this point is a lot like working with marmelade figurenes on your mothers wedding cake, and we all know what thats like!!! Nuff said.
Thank you!!
jason.[/spoiler]

Jul wasnt kidding! it is long! i dont think my eyes can read anymore after looking at that post.

G'day mate!

[Calibretto]

Josh come back...I am farming you nowadays...its insane...

[Kjarkur]

Hiya m8.

You should come back, the game is getting better.

-KJ

[BenjaminMS]

Josh Hey, how are you?