Why restrict this to the metaverse? This should be a feature of every game.

Yeah, I agree.

because couldn't someone always copy the autosave file to somewhere else and then copy it back if a decision went badly for the player?

Your right. I can think of one way to thwart it, it's not the most elegant solution. Here it is: after each turn have the game submit an encrypted message to the metaverse and save that encrypted message on the save file. When the user goes to load a game, check the message on the save file against the last message that the metaverse received. Any other ideas? maybe do the same thing, but have the encrypted message saved somewhere on the hard drive instead. More hackable, but much more convenient.

Here it is: after each turn have the game submit an encrypted message to the metaverse and save that encrypted message on the save file.

Not all who play the Meta are connected to the Meta when they play.

For me, reloading if something did not go the way I wanted it, takes the whole fun out of the game!

Agreed. Game crashes, farm and orbital terraformer bug, and missing turn button are the only reasons I reload.

anyone with the time/knowlege to write a program to beat it would probably rather beat the game straight-up. Security by obscurity

Good idea. And it probably is best to leave the non-metaverse game alone. Going back and trying different things is the best way to quicky test out different strategies.

I don't think it's intrinsic to the algorithm that it can only save at end turn. What do you think?

You're absolutely correct. So I amend my statement to say Disable all UI save functionality *except* for being able to press a save button. I don't even think the user should be able to name the file. But, no, it does not matter at what point the game is saved in this instance.

[edit] I think this should be in addition to the automatic save at end turn [/edit]

agreed

Wow, you're hard core. I absolutely *hate* micromanagement.

I agree with that. But the system should still accommodate the hardcore, which is why I overlooked it as well.

I don't know about suicidal, but obscene is still fairly beatable with only 3 or so major turns of micromanagement per game. One planet building setup phase after colonization, one population management phase after I research Xeno Farming II, and one research conversion phase after most of my Industrial Sectors have been built.

Basically I manage my empire like I would manage the zerg in starcraft to avoid mass micromanagement. Maybe that's why I align with evil .

FC for example is a monster at being able to crank out games in a relatively short time but most of his games scored in the mid range

Excuse my ignorance as I've only been here a month, but who's FC?

Wow, just had a look at his stats. His gradual rise in points per game is very impressive.

As far as cranking I can average 1 a week inport and 2 to 3 underway. My profile will get erradic though as I can only submit them while inport.

I can crank out a suicidal tiny galaxy victory in about three hours, hoping to eventually get that down to somewhere between 1 and 2. I do need help with maximizing my score though. Is there any guide out there that can help me?

Any way to access the hard numbers on that stuff?

Any way to access the hard numbers on that stuff?

You want to have as high a pop as possible for as long as possible. Same with tech spending, military rating and economy. By hard numbers I'm not quite sure what you want. Basically I would take the hard numbers to be how high can you actually get pop, economy, military might and tech spending. This is going to vary a lot based on size of galaxy, number and type of mining resources and how early you can get them. For economy I've gotten an average of about 2500 bc per planet per week with 6 econ resources and the economic properity event. For research FC got a 20K RP per week planet with 6 research resources. I've had a 11K per week planet with 4 research resources, I've also had 80K RP per week from 32 research planets. As far as military might I've had 4,000 huge hull battleships each with 16 BHE's along with 3 military resources. There's really not much you can do with population anymore since v1.2 but I maintain 19B on most of my planets.

However, all of this is based on a gigantic map. On smaller maps you should be able to achieve the same kind of per planet performance but everything will be scaled back by the number of resources (and number of planets). The best way to get "hard" numbers is to compare with folks that play the same size map as you. The biggest part of being able to do something is just knowing it can be done. If you know so and so got a military score of X with 1000 BHE battleships and 2 military resources you can pretty much figure out how to duplicate it. One point about tech score is that you need to keep on spending on research even after the tech tree is complete, though maybe on a smaller map you might not ever complete it.

Clearly, you're going to get more points on the bigger game that you play. You essentially want to maximize the area under the 4 curves: pop, tech, military and economy. That's really all there is to it.

As to how many ships over what length of time relates to how high a military score, I certainly don't know and I don't think there's anyone that does know the exact details on scoring. I think these are tightly held Stardock state secrets. Scoring you really play by experience and comparison with what other people have done. That's really about as much "hard" advice as there is to give. Hope it helps though.

do you think it would be worthwhile to conquer all but one planet of the galaxy

I have tried this on 2 different occasions and it does not seem to work for me. The Civ will just surrender thus ending the game.

The way I have found to go about it is leave the weakest Civ, then exploit for points. I grow tired of this and usually just end the game. I like to see how fast I can conquer the others instead of completely overpowering them 15 years after I should have.

By the way, I do like the whole Iron Man thing. Would be good for the Metaverse.