Ape Apps

Due to the current mechanics of bot stacking, stacking bots/rovers/probes which harvest resources will actually reduce the harvesting yield.

Based on my observation, a group of harvesting bots will fill up its resource capacity one-by-one and offload its payload in the resource dropoff one-by-one, instead of simultaneously. For clarity, I use the Draco ether bots as example, but this affects all harvesting type bots/rovers/probes :

a. A single Ether Bot will spend ~1 second to mine and fill its capacity, then another ~1 second to unload its payload onto a Silo. 100 of the Ether Bots working separately will have a total yield of say, 100k ether per minute.

B. When these 100 Ether Bots are merged into 1 group, this 1 group will spend ~100 seconds to fill the capacity of the group, and then spend another ~100 seconds to unload the Ether into a Silo, before starting another harvest cycle. This drops the resource total yield proportionally to almost 1/100 of case (a).

In conclusion, harvesting time and unloading time is extended proportional to the amount of bots present in the group.

I tested and the same thing happened with UE Crystalbots, as well as Draco Enslaved Extremeobugs, so I reckon this happens with all harvesting bots. The drop is less proportional where travel time is involved as there is no travel time difference between separate bots and one grouped bots.

As such, I advise players not to group their harvesting bots if they want to maintain their harvesting yield (although grouping them will reduce lag).

DO group your construction bots and drones though, as grouped construction bots work as intended with the awesome grouping feature.

.51 Chrome When a resource gets filled and bots are still harvesting the games resources stop counting and many types of bots frezz .
Stopping the bots from harvesting and the game once again works .

This is a critical bug as a new colony will have very limited water storage and when water storage gets full the bug happens but stopping the water bots from harvesting is a bad option as a few k storage empty's quickly .
BOTS can NOT IDLE harvest - full storage causes this bug but water bots need to be able to harvest .

Try and see start a new colony put in 2 water storage build a few water bots fill teh storage and watch and bots mining ore the ore will show no ingress any bots building say solar cells will still build BUT again show no ore usage .

and like i say it also causes bots to frezz mainly the higher lv bots every thing above the green bot frezzes .

PS TO the MOD the programmer needs to know of the bug if you delete Real bug post he may not know of the bug .

I haven't posted this because i have no idea how much coding would be needed .
BUT instead of moving bots to the edge of one city into a joining city it would be better if you say added code to the star gate and moved bots to it have a pop up box showing all city's then choose which city the bots move to .
For regions this would be better as a player mite have city's scattered all over or just not have the city they want the bots in joining the city the bots are in .
I will say as i create new regions I will keep in mind how to keep moving bots from one city to the next simpler .
Besides its really not needed for lower bots its is possible to build 300 all the way up to the gold BIG builders fast and gold builders even 40 bots is fast for anything they build only alien turbo bots build slow but even 50 is enough . turbo builders take tons of bots and lots of time to build . ty

humm looks like your a slow builder .
5 rovers
100 ore bots
100 gold bots
60 building bots
60 minim advanced builder bots 80 is better
60 mega bots ( or take long times building dig sites lol .
100 alien bots - minim 150 is better .
40 green bots
20 clay bots ( if you plan to mine NOT buy clay ( its cheep )other wise 3 clay bots
10 lumber bots ( i hate harvesting trees and switch to farms asp or just buy starter wood ( only need 400 for trades or 250 oil for galactic freight . Wood is cheep .
50 Turbo bots OR 200 Construction drones .
Or take days to build Hall of congress .
But from start NO gifts I can have a finished ( all teck all buildings built colony in less then a week - 5 to 7 days including a couple billion coins .

HELLO COMMANDERS!
I just had an amazing discussion with @Luker124 about what will happen in Colony Wars.
Here, I'm presenting the ideas about the story of Colony Wars, involving all 4 civilizations.

Pre-War
In the vast Milky Way Galaxy, lies 3 great civilizations - The Humans, the Insectoids, and the Reptilians.

Humans are the new rising galactic power - The establishment of United Earth government changed everything. The rebirth of humanity from the disastrous failure, with all the humans together. Making achievements beyond what Roman Empire had, the extensive colonization has brought new unimagined opportunities and prosperity.
However, the corruption does not disappear as the dawn of a new era shines on the humans - the desire of the powerful politicians are endless. Further tightened security policy on member colonies, unreasonably heavy taxations, and even legitimating exploitation of labour, all these are just for benefiting those with power, at the cost of those powerless, and breaking their promise of a free and fair society (though the promise had always been a lie since the beginning).
Ruled by a corrupt government, with no will to reform, more and more people of this new commonwealth, especially from the lower classes and colonies, were not happy with this situation. With some of them having strong anti-commonwealth sentiment and advocating overthrowing the General Assembly through revolting against.
The General Assembly, of course, were always prepared to suppress resistance in their colonies using their proud Space Marines, and always actively search and destroy any hidden insurgents in their vast commonwealth. Despite their efforts, the opposition was not silenced, it was growing stronger and stronger, under the support of an organisation they had not discovered yet - LIS.
Meanwhile, with their neglecting attitude on galactic politics, they were not aware that another new threat from afar had already been approaching them.


League of Independent States, abbreviated as LIS, had been working in the shadows for decades, waiting and preparing for a best chance starting a decisive independence war, to free people from tyranny under the United Earth General Assembly.
There was not yet any concrete information about where and when this organisation was founded. Only one thing is surely correct about them - Where people suffer, where they are, and they're here to resist tyranny.
Despite United Earth government already expecting there would be ‘insurgents’, however, their influence were far beyond than they expected, especially in colonies with strong opinions opposing policies of United Earth - LIS influence grew through means of secret propagandas, cooperation with black markets, and even providing planning support to anti-commonwealth activities.
Unlike United Earth, they were aware of the importance of galactic diplomacy, they understood they were not able to fight Space Marines without sufficient external support, even having thousands and millions of militias ready to fight. They had one potent choice, known from the black market intel - Zolarg Empire, which LIS recently established contact with them.

The Insectoid Empire of Zolarg, or simply Zolarg Empire, was also a recent rising power. Once enslaved by Alpha Draconians, they revolted against slavery a century ago and retrieved their civilization from the hands of Reptilians, under the leadership of their wise and brave leader - Emperor Zolarg.
Emperor Zolarg is eager to develop their civilization to a new level, for restoring the dignity of their race, and stop the history of being conquered by anybody else. Through their agricultural knowledge from their ancestors, industrial knowledge stolen from Alpha Draconians, and their own newly pioneered bioengineering, their hard power had been thousand times stronger than the beginning. In the same time, the social and cultural development of the Empire had reached new heights, with ancient religious traditions and technological advancements coexisting in harmony (except the use of… ‘soulless’ robots still under debate), and a successful communal society for large populations.
The new page of Insectoid history was indeed glorious, but not easy. Even they successfully set foot to become a supernova of galactic power, it did not mean Alpha Draconians won't take their revenge someday, sooner or later, and also most of their brothers still not freed from slavery. Their primary mission was still further strengthening their national power, and if possible, finding an ally, in order to fight against the almost all-powerful Alpha Draconians.

The Reptilian Empire of Alpha Draconians, or more referred to as Alpha Draconians, is an old warlike civilization with a strong national pride, that existed longer than other civilizations in the Milky Way Galaxy before The Ancients (that disappeared for unknown reasons). One of their possible origins was they were migrant Reptilians from another galaxy, as told in their historical documents.
Alpha Draconians had vast territories in the Galaxy obtained from conquests and annexation, but their name was not well known in the galaxy - Due to their secret style of ruling. Only some powerful political figures, and those under direct rule, know about their existence. Their spies and covert agents widespread across the Galaxy, watching over people, controlling propagandas, delivering absolute orders to their puppet governments, and assassinating any opposition or disobeyed, everything were under the will of the Inner Circle of Lords, and the supreme leader Overlord.
Not just having a strong secret influence, most of their national power are unmatched. Having the most superior technologies, sophisticated industrial machines, most educated elites and a ruthless robot army (that is especially feared by the Zolarg Empire). What are these national powers being built on? The effort of others - slaves, tributes and stealing.
The old empire might still look well, but with more and more problems rising within. Since the Insectoid Uprising and establishment of the Zolarg Empire, they are losing more cities and slaves, shaking their economy and national pride to their foundations. With economy performance dropping year by year, and the core Reptilian society began questioning the ‘invincibility’ of the empire, the Overlord had been facing heavy pressure. Meanwhile, another political crisis was emerging between the Inner Circle and the Overlord - the competition for the throne of absolute power.
Overlord, eager to strengthen his power, planned to begin another conquest, to search for manpower and resources, and, of course, attempt to prove Alpha Draconians was still invincible. And their eyes were set on a civilization - Humans. At the blink of a civil war, and having a corrupt government, a perfect target for Alpha Draconians to secretly intervene, disrupt, and ultimately, conquer them with the might of war machines once they were exhausted fighting.


The Beginning of the War - Terra Nova Incident
Coincidentally, both LIS and Alpha Draconians were looking for a good chance to start a war, but for different aims, different ways, and they had no connections.
The tension between human colony Terra Nova and the United Earth General Assembly had created an opportunity for them.
Terra Nova was a colony under United Earth, yet with the presence of LIS. People of Terra Nova, from workers to their governor, agreed that the United Earth government was too corrupted to rule them, decided to take action in a non violent way, becoming the first colony ever to refuse paying tax to the General Assembly.
Alpha Draconians understood what LIS was trying to do - try to provoke United Earth to take the strongest military actions ever against their people, to be a reasonable excuse to start the war. To ‘accomodate’ the needs of LIS and make progress on Overlord's plan, Alpha Draconian covert agents in the General Assembly began their covert operations, paving path to the military actions step by step, through persuading works, blackmailing and misinformation campaigns. An embargo was first being passed in 4 days, and then a blockade was passed a week later. And after 3 months of ‘debate’ and ‘arguments’, and the ‘Friday Coup’ (controlled by Alpha Draconian agent) happened within the period that caused the cleanse campaign on the opposition party, a decisive pass was made on the decision taking violent military actions against Terra Nova, ‘without’ any objections, leading to the Terra Nova Incident.

The dispatch of Space Marines 35th Regiment (SM35) had angered hundreds of colonies, and people of Terra Nova as well. Things had progressed as LIS wished, they began rallying up resistance fighters in the hideouts in Terra Nova, preparing for their final phase to begin the first phase of war - a surprise attack.
Without much resistance, SM35 occupied Terra Nova under the lead of Colonel Harold Franklin. Soon Space Marines recognised they were in a weird situation - Terra Nova did not strongly resist at all as they arrived. However, it was too late. Just a few minutes after they had noticed that, LIS militias led by a militia officer Admiral Beuford P. Tots ambushed all major forces of SM35 at every street and alleys of the city, causing heavy loss of well-equipped marines. At the same time, LIS revealed themselves in the public for the first time, declaring war on United Earth - marked the beginning of the Human Civil War.
Very soon United Earth's forces retreated from Terra Nova, leaving the colony under LIS control. LIS declared independence of this colony a day after, renamed it Independent State. This city was the command centre of LIS throughout the war, which will be the capital city of LIS after the war.


Early Human Civil War
The United Earth Security Council was in a big chaos after the Terra Nova Incident - unexpectedly attacked by an enemy and almost lost the entire SM35, and little the Security Council knew about LIS. Even though garrisons and national guards were immediately told to prepare and mobilize to respond any possible LIS attacks, however, still not able to stop LIS - either fighting at broken morale or without enough time for full preparations - Since they had no idea where LIS forces would start their attack, and these rebels were well prepared already.
LIS, taking this advantage, launched a series of scattered yet successful attacks in neighbouring systems. Just within the first two weeks of the war, United Earth lost 15 colonies, 45 main trade routes or supplies, and countless soldiers either captured or killed.
However, LIS did not have the upper hand for long - especially after the original Security Council Chairman, Bofors Kaiserton, was replaced by an experienced Marshal called Bradley R. Johnson. The Security Council was soon reorganized by Bradley to stabilise the mess, launched propaganda campaigns to restore the morale of United Earth forces, and began studying the tactics of LIS forces, which the studies could had begun at the first day of war, but got delayed to 5 days later (day 6), due to Bofors unable to stabilise the chaos.
Around 3 weeks later, under the coordination of the Security Council, LIS began losing their ambush advantage, due to their patterns being tracked by Security Council and United Earth forces began being able to predominate the battlegrounds before LIS did so, forcing LIS forces to fight against United Earth forces directly. The Battle of Ferris Mountains on day 37 was a major defeat for LIS, which the local United Earth garrison of Ferris Mountains, instead of being ambushed, baited LIS forces to their doom. The next day (day 38), LIS changed their general combat tactics from sneak-and-attack based to direct confrontation based. Since that battle the loss of United Earth was stabilized at a lower rate. The civil war reached the second stage, the period when major battles were fought.


Mid Human Civil War
Despite losing early advantages, with the introduction of newer weapons and black market technologies LIS forces were still able to maintain their offensive pose in the war for a while, still surprising United Earth forces, in various battles pushing their front straight towards the Solar System.
The most well known new weapon LIS introduced during the war was the Apollo-3500 Beam Emitter, which were equipped by their heavy infantries and installed on specially designed combat vehicles, the weapon itself is able to melt most armour into slags by emitting high energy beams. They caused large troubles to traditional armoured combat vehicles, especially proven in the Battle of Harbinger Greenlands (which led to United Earth giving up the Ares-4 System) that the 196 th Armour Regiment of United Earth experienced a brutal defeat under devastating laser fire of 44F Laser Battalion and 44G Laser Battalion of LIS.
Another major battle featuring LIS new weaponry was the Siege of New Paris that lasted for 15 days. The introduction of Javelin-E ‘Incognito’ Missiles in the last day (though a bit too late) decisively ended the battle, these missiles were designed not interceptable by AEGIS Theater Missile Defense System used by United Earth and successfully breached the fortifications of New Paris Citadel in an almost effortless way.
Meanwhile, 49 more colonies revolted against United Earth rule under LIS support, providing minor battlefronts for LIS to push forward further into United Earth territory.
Amount of LIS territory occupied reached a peak on day 59, which over one-fifth of United Earth territory was taken over.
The offensive pose of LIS lasted until United Earth, though later, also began introducing (a limited number of) experimental weapons into the battles, and the return of Space Marines Corps with upgraded equipment, reorganization and replenished manpower. From that time on, the tide of war had changed favouring United Earth, they began pushing LIS back.
Just 2 days after New Paris was occupied by LIS, this city was back in the hands of United Earth, under the strong firepower of Space Marines 12th Regiment, and LIS forces here were still too tired to fight. After the Second Battle of New Paris on day 73, LIS lost a large proportion of major forces and the overall offensive formation breached. In later times, LIS major forces were defeated one by one, setting LIS forces back quickly.
With that moment the situation largely disfavored them, LIS decided to take a risky move - Reveal and use their secret weapon stationed in New Bavaria, either to devastate United Earth capital city that would put United Earth into mess again, or at least buy some time to find a foreign ally.
The risky move was well known as the ‘Interstellar Missile Crisis’ event. On day 88, LIS broadcasted a message through hijacking the communication hub in Coloniae Leon, threatening they had a secret mass destruction weapon that could never be intercepted once launched, and its range could cover all United Earth territories - Interstellar Warp-Speed Missile (IWSM) with Disaster Warheads derived from Instant Terraforming Bomb Project data found in occupied government labs. And, the first missile, to be launched within 24 hours, would fly straight to the capital city of United Earth - planet Earth.
United Earth offensive operations were halted due to the short chaos caused by the seemed inevitable threat. The United Earth Security Council soon ordered the search for their missile base as the countdown had begun. 7 hours later they located the missile base, and 9 hours later Space Marines 2th Division arrived in New Bavaria. The battle in New Bavaria lasted for 7 hours, at the last hour the missile base was captured, with most of the IWSMs destroyed at the site immediately.
LIS did not waste the time by sacrificing their secret weapons. During the Crisis, LIS secretly contacted the Zolarg Empire and shortly reached an alliance agreement with them - for their common pursuit of freedom and liberating people from suffering, and they needed each other. The entry of the Zolarg Empire would bring the war to the third stage, the time when things had been becoming more complicated than just a civil war between Humans.
What about Alpha Draconians? The Overlord was pleased by the situation so far, the plan had been successful. While humans were busy killing each other, the Overlord ordered mobilizing their robot armies into the back of United Earth territory through means of secret portals prepared by covert agents. While Alpha Draconians were making preparations for the takeover plan, one thing the Overlord was not expected to, and not knowing would happen - the Zolarg Empire, their nemesis, would interfere with the war very soon. On the other hand, the political enemies from the Inner Circle, were scheming a plan to pull Overlord off his throne.


More Than Just a Civil War
Just when people of United Earth thought the war would be over soon with the defeat of LIS. 8 days after the Interstellar Missile Crisis (day 96), the Zolarg Empire declared war on United Earth, in the name of helping their allies - LIS, and officially began mobilizing their troops to the borders of United Earth.
War from another civilization put the United Earth under mass panic. Not just because the war that was supposed to end soon would become even longer, such a scale of invasion from another civilization of a different race was something humanity never had experienced.
Zolarg forces flanked United Earth from the other side, putting United Earth in an unfavorable situation - A war of two fronts. The back of the United Earth was left underdefended (not undefended) due to major forces being put into LIS fronts, leaving the borders only garrisoned with only a small number of troops. Even though the Security Council ordered splitting the troops to the borders in order to stop the Zolarg offensive, the border defenses were breached faster than imagined, garrisons were unable to hold the line before reinforcements had arrived. When the reinforcements reached the Zolarg fronts, a couple of cities and colonies had already been occupied by the new enemy.
At first United Earth forces on the Zolarg fronts attempted to make quick offensives against Zolarg forces in order to re-concentrate on LIS again. However, after a few offensives they found Zolarg forces were difficult to remove - Everytime an Insectoid base was ‘removed’, a new base was rebuilt quickly and pumping out loads of new troops as nothing had happened. Later they found out it was due to the Insectoids established complicated yet useful subterranean tunnel networks that allowed rapid reinforcement on the planets, with entrances hard to be detected using traditional sensors. United Earth troops on Zolarg fronts quickly changed their tactics to mainly defensive with very minimal offensive progress, until their sappers were equipped with new tunnel sensors they began able to retake some territories.
Meanwhile on the LIS fronts. Thanks to the Zolarg Empire entry into war, LIS now faced much less pressure from United Earth forces. Now they were able to at least sustain their defensive lines. After their IWPM were modified to smaller missiles and cheaper designs and put under use, they were able to make small offensive progress for a few days, still threatening some of the strategic locations of United Earth. However, the LIS fronts fell into a stalemate for the rest of time.
The unexpected news of the Zolarg Empire's intervention in the Human Civil War delivered to Alpha Draconians. Overlord was not informed about that until 6 days after the entry of the Zolarg Empire into the war - his political enemies from the Inner Circle controlled information flow in Overlord’s chamber through bribing the Imperial Informats (internal messengers of Overlord’s Chamber). The Overlord, knowing schemed by his political enemies, was angered, but also worried about his plans to secure his position in the throne. The Zolarg fronts in United Earth was exactly the location where the secret mobilization concentrated at. At this rate, his great plan would fail easily if the troops were discovered by either humans or insectoids, and it was just a matter of time, sooner or later.
With his ominous worries, the Overlord assigned extra supervisors into the Ministry of Expedition in order to secure his control on the conquest of the human race. However the Inner Circle had an upper hand - the Ministry had already been hijacked by their covert agents. The newly assigned supervisors of Overlord were soon silenced and puppeted by the Inner Circle.
The Lords of Inner Circle now had control of the Overlord’s expeditionary forces in United Earth - With just a slight attention created by the expeditionary forces to let Zolarg forces to notice, it was enough to ruin the plans of the Overlord, to further destroy his reputation, and ultimately pulling him off the throne.


The Incident that Changed the War - Barracuda Blues Events
On day 165 of the war, an event took place on colony Barracuda Blues, a colony lying behind the Zolarg fronts, inside the territories of United Earth. This incident had changed the entire war - from confrontations between mainly United Earth and LIS, to a war that 3 civilizations together defending against Alpha Draconian invasion.
Just within a night, the base on Barracuda Blues disappeared, with remains of weared-off tank armour and charred grounds indicating there was combat. The only thing left was reports about unknown alien contact of hostile inorganic objects and strong energy sources detected by base on neighbouring planets. The United Earth Security Council received the reports 8 hours after the incident had taken place. A global investigation on Barracuda Blues was ordered 2 hours later.
4 days after the investigation had launched, inspectors reported an unimaginable discovery - a hidden facility, camouflaged by cutting-edge field generators of unknown origin, full of unidentified machines in dormant status, and a colossal device suspected to be a long range stargate portal that was the origin of energy detected.
Informed about such discovery, the United Earth Security Council (cautiously) saw that as an opportunity to obtain superior military technologies that could help break the stalemate of the war. Scientist teams and more military staff were sent to the site for further secret investigation.
Despite the news being a secret, the information about such ‘discovery’ had reached the ears of LIS, their hackers intercepted the intel. The intel was shared to forces of the Zolarg Empire, in order to figure out what it was.
Zolarg forces seemed to know something - Just a couple of hours later LIS received replies from the Zolarg Empire, about warnings of a common threat from the other side of the Milky Way Galaxy had infiltrated into human civilization - Alpha Draconians. The Zolarg Empire had also sent a similar message to United Earth, and demanded evacuating the investigation site and destroying it as soon as possible.
The United Earth Security Council, at first, did not take the warning seriously, suspecting it was just a deception from both LIS and Zolarg Empire, trying to prevent United Earth from obtaining technologies that could help them win the war. Later events proved them wrong - 2 days later, the site was under attack - not by LIS, not by Zolarg Empire, but those unidentified machines they were supposed investigating. The machines were suddenly animated, hovered into the air, and revealed what they were - war machines, with the emblem of Alpha Draconians. Almost all staff at the site were killed in the matter of minutes, only a group of soldiers managed to escape, and reported their terrible story (with solid evidence recorded) to the Security Council.
Heard of such an event taking place, and reconsidering warnings from the Zolarg Empire, the Security Council decided to have the big issue discussed in the General Assembly, hopefully they could recognise the dangerous situation they were in.
Meanwhile, LIS and Zolarg Empire had also begun their search for Alpha Draconian existence within their occupation zones, and counter-ops against Alpha Draconian influence.
Under a common threat that could not be repelled with the power of a nation, three participant nations of this civil war held a close-door summit on day 178 in an United Earth city Neo Floridas under maximum security measures. On the next day, all leaders of the military came to an agreement - a ceasefire treaty that put a pause on the civil war, and a temporary alliance pact - known as ‘Delta Alliance’ by humans - that would last until the Alpha Draconians were repelled.
Exposures of Alpha Draconian expeditionary forces and the formation of a temporary alliance were quickly reported to Overlord by the covert agents within the United Earth General Assembly. Shocked to know his plan had gone wrong, the Overlord, immediately contacted his supervisors in the Ministry of Expedition. Without any response, the Overlord understood what had happened - His plan had been hijacked by the Inner Circle.
Indeed, the exposure of expeditionary forces in Barracuda Blues was the order of the Inner Circle, through the Ministry of Expedition which was under their control.
The Inner Circle also received reports of their successful sabotage on the Overlord’s plan. With now they knew the Overlord was in trouble, they began spreading the scandals of the Overlord ‘might even be unable to conquer a lesser civilization’, to cut down Overlord’s support from core Reptilian society. Now, with the information of this invasion leaked to both humans and Insectoids, and further pressured by the scandals, the Overlord had only one choice left for the invasion plan - launch the attacks immediately.


Alpha Draconian Invasion
On day 186, the day known as the ‘Invasion Day’, the remaining dormant expeditionary forces of Alpha Draconians inside human territory were activated under the orders of the Overlord himself, launched the Invasion of Humans, beginning from Barracuda Blues where their forces and one of their main portals were exposed.
The Allies were prepared, they had located and destroyed a few hidden Alpha Draconian facilities, and shared any intelligence known about Alpha Draconians. Yet were not on the upper hand. The cutting-edge war machines of Alpha Draconians was not something humans were able to deal with easily, the superior armour strength and stealth capabilities of Alpha Draconian forces had caused some significant loss of Allied forces.
On the other hand, Overlord tried to keep Zolarg Empire forces outside the war theater of human territory as first priority, preventing the Zolarg Empire from assisting humans with their intelligence and troops. Alpha Draconians inserted blockade fleets in neutral zones between the Zolarg Empire and United Earth, as well began rallying troops at Zolarg borders. The Zolarg Empire not just had difficulty helping humans defending against the invasion as their forces in United Earth were encircled, intensified conflicts and battles at Alpha Draconian borders were something they had to put more focus onto.
The invasion broke out from the inside spread like wildfire in human territory as the Zolarg Empire was not able to provide assistance. Just within a week, Alpha Draconian presence was reported in all human territories (in terms of before the civil war broke out). 58% of original human territories were occupied by Alpha Draconians within a week, mainly the areas around the Zolarg fronts.
Humans had no chances of counter strike at this moment, as the Overlord predicted. However, the Overlord had underestimated humanity. Instead of keeping an eye, he ‘confidently’ set the expeditionary to spontaneous mode, promising the core Reptilian society that humans would be brought under Alpha Draconians in no time (in order to retain his supporters).


The Counter Strike
Alpha Draconian domination on the battlefield lasted until United Earth deployed their new superweapon.
United Earth lacked new weapons of instant destruction needed to change the tide of war since the total decommission of the nuclear arsenal right after the establishment of the United Earth General Assembly. Considering reactivating the nuclear arsenal project would cause large discontent from both the General Assembly and the public due to the long term consequence of detonating nuclear weapons, the Security Council, long ago reviewed older military research projects to seek for a powerful weapon with minimal impacts upon use. And when the invasion broke out, they already had a weapon project at almost completion that came into handy - Particle Cannon. The research of this surgical-space-strike (accurate strike instead of mass destruction) weapon was greatly accelerated by the data from Alpha Draconian facility on Barracuda Blues. 14 days after the Invasion Day (day 200), the first Space Strike group had completed construction at United Earth’s capital shipyard on Earth orbit, assigned into and escorted by the only 3 main starship fleets.
Upon the new weapons were ready, Marshal Bradley of the United Earth Security Council authorized the largest military campaign in the war - Operation Zeus, which began from day 205, aimed to retake territories beyond the Zolarg fronts occupied by Alpha Draconians. Mobilizing over 54 land forces divisions, 6 Space Marines divisions, 31 space fighter wings and 2 starship fleets.
The first use of Particle Cannon was used in Battle of Leo-34, showing the impressive firepower to the entire humanity. The Alpha Draconian stronghold on the planet was reduced to scraps in the matter of a few Particle Cannon bombardments of the 3th Starship Fleet.
The particle cannon also shone on other major battles, including the largest starship battle Battle of Kelvin Rings that the superweapon put the end to Alpha Draconian ‘Eradicator’ class battleship (though that was not their strongest warship in service), and Siege of Venet-35 that the weapon critically broke the siege of Alpha Draconian forces on the colony.
Operation Zeus had achieved a massive success within two months. The Operation recovered 21% of original territories, and some post-war statistics estimated that the Operation had also destroyed almost half of the Alpha Draconian expeditionary forces.
LIS had also achieved victories after their deployment of Type-X EMP warheads that effectively paralyses robot-based Alpha Draconian forces and facilities upon detonation. Just within half of a month after the deployment, LIS was able to uproot all Alpha Draconian facilities and portals within their occupation zones and freed up a large amount of troops for offensive operations beyond their territories (to ‘liberate’ more colonies, of course). At the same time, LIS had also completed an counterintelligence research Project Beacon that analyses the activities and signals of Alpha Draconian covert agents and communications (using information provided by Zolarg and harnessing their expert knowledge of cybertechnology), greatly preventing further Alpha Draconian sabotages on Allied forces, and made the hidden movements of Alpha Draconians predictable from that time on.
The human counterattack progress stopped at regions around Barracuda Blues. At this moment Barracuda Blues was one of the last strategic locations for these intruders - where their last functional long range portal was located, the only available reinforcement station for them. However, also the most fortified position of Alpha Draconian intruders - not only the main portal was protected by the state-of-the-art fortress setup, other strongholds around Barracuda Blues formed a complete exterior defense system that was able to stop any starships approaching this critical site.
The counterattack of humans was reported back to the Ministry of Expedition for multiple times, however nobody read the report - The fierce political competition inside the Ministry between Overlord loyalist and Inner Circle had disrupted literally everything, ignited a few days after the blockade on the Zolarg Empire. Military officers and staff were being assassinated or replaced by the two parties very frequently, they had no time and effort to care about any operations of the expeditionary forces but tried to protect themselves or seek extra interest in this internal political rivalry.
As the regular functioning of the Ministry of Expedition came to a halt, the blockade fleet between Zolarg Empire and United Earth was soon out of control, without any coordination the blockade was breached by Zolarg fleets, like the blockade fleet was just a dull asteroid belt. Regaining the supply line to their occupation zones, the Zolarg Empire began sending their fleet and elite force Imperial Templars to the battlefronts in human territory against Alpha Draconians.
Overlord regained information and control of his expedition plan after Overlord loyalists successfully retaken control of the Ministry of Expedition as a series of bloody political events took place. Knowing his miscalculation on humans and he had missed a lot of events during the Ministry was handicapped, the Overlord ordered a regroup of all remaining expeditionary forces at Barracuda Blues, as well as authorising the expeditionary force access to advanced reserves of Alpha Draconian war machines, the Apocalypse Order, to terminate human resistance before it was too late to remedy the situation. An invasion fleet was also ordered to dispatch for securing the invasion plans, either backing the reinforcement up, or in case the last portal falls the fleet could still devastate the remaining human forces and do the occupation.

The Battle of Barracuda Blues - Twilight of the Intruders
All human major forces from both the United Earth and LIS, and later a small number of Zolarg forces from occupation zones, gathered near minor strongholds around Barracuda Blues. Deployments began on day 274, preparing for the last battle to stop Alpha Draconian invasion - which Allied forces had thrown literally everything they had into it, almost all of their major forces and types of weapons.
Alpha Draonians had gathered a majority of the first group of Apocalypse Order from Alpha Draconia arrived at Barracuda Blues, standing by at the site.
The Battle of Barracuda Blues broke out on day 277. The 2nd Vanguard Group led by United Earth Space Marines 1st Division secured a minor portal stronghold on Baston-36, under the support of the United Earth 3th Starship Fleet and Particle Cannons. Hackers from LIS performed a follow-up hacking of the portal control immediately, opening up a route to Barracuda Blues for major forces after 4.5 hours.
Commando platoon headed by the legendary United Earth elite Sarge led the charge into the Barracuda Blues through the portal, securing an area on the east wing of the main portal stronghold. The remaining forces of 2nd Vanguard Group established a forward base for providing support, with Main Battle Command led by Marshal Bradley of United Earth responsible for the main offensive operations following behind.
Other battle groups were told to tie up other minor strongholds to prevent their reinforcements to Barracuda Blues, and if possible, take over the portals in the minor strongholds.
The first attempts of siege, on the same day, had been unsuccessful. The defense of the main fortress complex was far more defended than imagined. The point laser defense system rendered conventional artillery fire useless, the firepower of the newly arrived Apocalypse Order outrunned offensives of the Allied forces, even the Allied forces were supported by 5th Battle Group later which successfully broke into the south wing through the portal of another stronghold. At the end of the day, the offensive operations had been temporarily halted under the order of Marshal Bradley to prevent further losses.
On day 288 Allied forces detected a larger group of Apocalypse Order reinforced Alpha Draconian forces in the fortress. Few hours later, Alpha Draconians began taking offensives targeting the Allied Main Command Group. Facing even stronger enemies than before, main forces of the Main Command Group were tied at their forward base and fell into a badly passive status, until 5th Battle Group received EMP missiles from LIS and sent help to break the enemy offensives.
On day 289, the 3rd Battle Group composed mainly of Zolarg forces entered the battle at the southern forward base, launching subterranean infiltration attacks into the west part of the fortress. Although the infiltration forces experienced heavy casualties as they broke into, however, provided an important internal structure intel of the main stronghold - there was an antenna structure acting as an command node of stronghold defense, which when sabotaged, it could weaken the coordination of, or even paralysing, the stronghold defenses. However, the infiltration forces also reported there was a massive energy flow towards the centre part of the facility, where the main portal was located, presumably sending in core forces, or worse, a destruction device known as ‘Annihilator’ by Zolarg forces which capable of releasing an energy blast that could destroy any non-Alpha Draconian machines and living being within 50 lightyears radius. The enemy reinforcement was predicted to arrive in three or four days.
The reports from the infiltration forces had put the Main Command into an anxious mood, since this meant not much time was left for them - longer the battle goes, worse the situation becomes. The Main Command Group decided to take another offensive the next day, after the United Earth 1st Starship Fleet sent Particle Cannons to provide heavy bombardments.
Still, Alpha Draconians were prepared, they had set up energy barriers to neutralize Particle Cannon fire. With even the superweapon of United Earth proven ineffective on this base, the Main Command Group offensive once again ended up with extra losses.
On the other hand, the portal stronghold connecting the Allied forward base on the south wing was under attack by Alpha Draconian forces from another minor stronghold, the 5th Battle Group and the 3th Battle group had their most convenient supply lines cut and now had to rely supplies from either the 1st Starship Fleet or the Main Command.
During the hardest times having almost no means to break the fortifications of this stronghold, the hackers and engineers controlling the portal in Baston-36 brought a good news in the late night of day 232, they managed to hack into the heavily encrypted internal portal system and obtained a segment of access code that allowed them to teleport at most a commando squad into the stronghold (due to limitations of incomplete access codes), which this chance could be used to sabotage the command node, allow the major forces destroying the fortification when it was disrupted. However, the code was estimated to be expired in approximately 7 hours.
In the same night, but a bit earlier, a small group of Zolarg Imperial Templars joined the Main Command Group, providing limited but valuable replenishment of Allied forces.
With an irreplaceable opportunity to break into this almost invincible fortress, the Main Command immediately reorganized the existing forces, preparing for an all-out attack in the next day - It was either the Alpha Draconians or humanity being defeated, this would be the last assault to terminate their ambitions, once and for all.
4 hours later, a squad with the best commandos from United Earth, LIS and Zolarg was organized for the most dangerous mission, they were teleported to the west block of the stronghold, and later assisted by another Zolarg subterranean assault force from the 3th Battle Group. Meanwhile, all the other Allied forces on Barracuda Blues, advancing towards the stronghold.
The major forces expected the defenses to be disarmed as they reached the enemy defense lines. Yet the infiltration forces had trouble making their way to the command node, encircled by the stronghold guards as the Allied forces entered the alert zones around the stronghold. The main forces could only hold their position, forced to fight with the enemy elite forces, until the commandos finished their task.
After approximately an hour of brutal battles inside and outside the stronghold, the commando squad, finally made their way to the command node, and installed a disruption device onto it.
The defenses of the stronghold were immediately turned down under the effect of the disruption device, including turrets, energy barriers and point laser defense system. The stronghold, now vulnerable to any human and Insectoid weaponry, soon the main defense was destroyed under intensive artillery barrage bombardments. Alpha Draconian forces were also affected by the disruption effects, their combat efficiency was greatly lowered - the coordination errors broke their formation, these steel machines of destruction began ramming into each other. At this moment, Alpha Draconians had lost their overwhelming advantage in this battle, every force defending the fortress were soon eliminated by the Allied forces, leaving the central portal defendless. Allied forces very quickly flooded into the stronghold, reaching their ultimate target of the battle - the main portal, which was seen charging up for receiving new reinforcements - that could make short work on the last human forces if unstopped.
The decisive battle defining the date of humans, ended with a Particle Cannon strike onto the portal, tearing the portal into pieces of scraps. The dawn on Barracuda Blues after the particle beam dissipated, marked the victory of the Allies.
Remaining Alpha Draconian threats in human territory were eliminated within two days after the victory in Battle of Barracuda Blues under the efforts of human forces. For the first time, the entire humanity successfully repelled an massive alien invasion.
The invasion had not ended yet, Alpha Draconian invasion fleet was still advancing towards human territory. It was until Zolarg fleets attacked Alpha Draconian starbases that forced Overlord to draw the entire fleet back for defense and postpone the invasion… infinitely.


Battle of Kaisergrounds - Conclusion Battle to the Human Civil War
The invasion was over, ending with the defeat of Alpha Draconians.
But not everything was over. The Delta Alliance Pact had expired, now United Earth and LIS had to put their focus back onto their civil war… only after they had taken a necessary break from a month of fierce battles.
The Zolarg Empire had most of their forces tired of the battles in human territory, and they needed more forces and officiers to manage their conflicts between them and Alpha Draconians. On day 312, about a month after the end of the invasion, they agreed to withdraw from the Human Civil War, returning all occupied territories to the United Earth and evacuate all their forces after taking some necessary responsibility (mostly repairing damages they had made), as requested by the United Earth General Assembly and agreed by LIS. The civil war was now and finally kept just between humans.
Things had been peaceful (if not considering some minor skirmishes on conflict site planets) until the war was continued with the last major battle broke out on day 351 - the Battle of Kaisergrouds, which both sides hoped to ‘conclude’ the war in this battle (as not much war supplies were left for large scale conflicts), on this strategic stronghold occupied by LIS - To LIS, a foothold for liberating the core economic regions of United Earth in the future. To United Earth, an important barrier to keep LIS away from the most resourceful colonies.
The extremely rare ion fog winters of Kaisergrounds disrupted communication devices and sensors, which however favoured United Earth offensive - their landing forces could sneak onto the planet without triggering the alarms of LIS forces.
It was not clear how the battle had fought due to the unavailability of communications and battlefield monitoring in ion fogs. However, two outcomes were confirmed for sure - First, it might have been a ‘fierce’ battle, in which United Earth recorded 78% losses of troops in the battle while LIS recorded 85% loss of their forces. Either killed or (less likely) lost in fogs. Second, it was the victory of United Earth, after 4 days of battle United Earth 12th Space Marines Regiment managed to take control of the entire planet and sent a shuttle for delivering a battle report.


Aftermath
10 days after the last battle (day 365), the military leaders of two sides met in the Roundtable Summit in the colony of New London.
The Armistice of Hoxton was signed, with the following details:

• Armistice: Military actions must not be taken inside territories of the United Earth and LIS for the upcoming 100 years.
• Border Regulations: Border lines between United Earth and LIS, named Hoxton Line, are maintained. No space vessels should cross the line, both sides have the right to shoot down any vessels that crossed the line, unless the vessel has authorised access.
• Embargo: Trades and shipments to and from LIS are forbidden. United Earth will enforce a blockade fleet along the Hoxton Line.
• Colonization restriction: LIS must not carry out colonization near or along the Hoxton Line.
• Trade Route Protection: Any LIS vessels with armaments equal to or more than corvettes will be regarded as violating United Earth trade routes.
• Violation of any of these regulations will be regarded as breaking the treaty.
• Any forms of independence by LIS will not be recognized and accepted by the United Earth General Assembly.

Though this is an armistice treaty, it had indeed ended the Human Civil War - at least it had ended direct military confrontations, another civil war is just a matter of time.
Eventually nobody achieved total victory in the Human Civil War, however, LIS actually ‘won’ the war. Colonies and cities occupied by LIS are no longer under the control of United Earth bureaucrats, they are freed from any forms of suppression and exploits, at least a better life can be started with ture fairness and autonomy guaranteed by the League.
Yet United Earth has also earned a ‘strategic’ victory, since they successfully defended most major regions, leaving LIS only able to have mostly barren planets of outer territories. The Armistice of Hoxton also allowed them to have limited control on the development of LIS.
The United Earth General Assembly was not satisfied with the outcome of the war - They understood that LIS had achieved their aim in the war. Now, the capabilities of the United Earth military were being questioned nationwide, even managed to repel the Alpha Draconian invasion - It shall be stopped to restore the reputation of the General Assembly. The General Assembly originally wanted to ‘retire’ Marshal Bradley to pacify the doubts of people, but changed their mind after reconsidering his achievements repelling an alien Invasion and read about his big military project to retake territories occupied by LIS, which the plan actually helped people put a larger confidence onto the military than before.
Speaking of the support, a tragedy for the Overlord of Alpha Draconians. The Overlord tried to cover up the failures of his expedition plans, however, the Inner Circle intercepted the intel. The scandal was soon delivered to all members of core Reptilian society, they now lost all confidence in the ‘weak’ Overlord that had completely ruined their national pride. Several days later, the Overlord was assassinated in a coup planned by the Inner Circle.
The seat of ultimate power was empty, but that is not a seat for many. A more intense, almost endless political rivalry took place between the Lords of Inner Circles beginning right after the death of Overlord, leading the entire empire into a state of political instability. Without a stable and powerful leader to rule the vast empire, the corruption in administration of Alpha Draconians is getting ten times more serious than before. Social order also began to collapse, leading to the disparity between the nobles and common civilians, and social unrests.
The instability of Alpha Draconians, and one more defeat for their seemed invincible military, gave confidence to the conspiracists hidden all over the empire. Some puppet regions began attempting to break away from Alpha Draconians. Though not all of them had been successful, more new powers have risen - Especially the New Galactic Empire, thirsted for galactic domination, is slowly overtaking the influence of Alpha Draconians in the shadows.
The Zolarg Empire finally found themselves a powerful ally to support each other against Alpha Draconian influence - Humans’ capability defending themselves against Alpha Draconian forces impressed not only the Insectoids of every hive, the Emperor is also glad to see this. A few months after the end of the Human Civil War, Zolarg Empire signed diplomatic memorandums with both LIS and United Earth, on the basis of cooperation during the invasion, to begin official peaceful interaction between Insectoids and Humans.
Zolarg forces returned from human territory also brought back some human technologies along with them. The inspiring foreign knowledge have stimulated further development of the Zolarg Empire in terms of economy, science, society and military, and indirectly led to an innovative invention of Insectoids - Mind Network.
While the human cities and colonies were rebuilding, humans also obtained interesting information from the remains of Alpha Draconian machines in Barracuda Blues. These cutting-edge machines have some linkage with the ancient aliens, which the scientists and archaeologists figured out these engines are derived from the ancient alien knowledge recorded on the artifacts scattered all around the galaxy. This discovery will bring drastic changes to human history, a new era of future technologies is predictable in the future not so far away.
Understanding they are not alone in the Galaxy, United Earth begin recognizing the importance of galactic diplomacy, in order to protect themselves (from Alpha Draconians that might return someday in a larger war), as well as seeking for new opportunities. they begin establishing contacts between alien civilizations as they colonize new planets, not just the major civilization like the Zolarg Empire, but also more minor ones.


The Milky Way Galaxy had changed a lot - although there had been wars, costing thousands of lives. Does the war worth anything in the end? Nobody will have an ultimate conclusion, what we know is, war, is always changing our history.




THAT IS ALL!
We also hope @bastecklein can leave some comments on the story idea so far.

@bastecklein
the last error log was on 3rd December named `my-colony-v0.76.0-error` which stated
```v0.76.0 1543861400235 utils.js: 409 Uncaught The "path" argument must be one of type string, Buffer, or URL. Received type undefined```

however i found one more file under C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\My colony named 'debug' which was modified on 16th december which said
```[1107/233728.487:ERROR:settings.cc(324)] Settings version is not 1
[1108/064417.897:ERROR:settings.cc(324)] Settings version is not 1
[1108/085010.972:ERROR:settings.cc(324)] Settings version is not 1
[1108/095056.315:ERROR:settings.cc(324)] Settings version is not 1
[1108/223543.993:ERROR:settings.cc(324)] Settings version is not 1
[1108/234427.785:ERROR:settings.cc(324)] Settings version is not 1
[1109/054842.957:ERROR:settings.cc(324)] Settings version is not 1
[1109/081843.239:ERROR:settings.cc(324)] Settings version is not 1
[1109/113305.405:ERROR:settings.cc(324)] Settings version is not 1
[1110/091652.236:ERROR:settings.cc(324)] Settings version is not 1
[1110/092330.003:ERROR:settings.cc(324)] Settings version is not 1
[1110/131913.882:ERROR:settings.cc(324)] Settings version is not 1
[1110/135058.198:ERROR:settings.cc(324)] Settings version is not 1
[1110/140436.158:ERROR:settings.cc(324)] Settings version is not 1
[1113/150111.155:ERROR:settings.cc(324)] Settings version is not 1
[1115/142501.602:ERROR:settings.cc(324)] Settings version is not 1
[1117/153739.615:ERROR:settings.cc(324)] Settings version is not 1
[1118/042601.553:ERROR:settings.cc(324)] Settings version is not 1
[1118/070921.072:ERROR:settings.cc(324)] Settings version is not 1
[1118/151127.722:ERROR:settings.cc(324)] Settings version is not 1
[1118/155848.216:ERROR:settings.cc(324)] Settings version is not 1
[1121/101340.967:ERROR:settings.cc(324)] Settings version is not 1
[1122/044700.461:ERROR:settings.cc(324)] Settings version is not 1
[1122/064742.647:ERROR:settings.cc(324)] Settings version is not 1
[1123/023140.944:ERROR:settings.cc(324)] Settings version is not 1
[1123/025755.453:ERROR:settings.cc(324)] Settings version is not 1
[1123/135150.995:ERROR:settings.cc(324)] Settings version is not 1
[1124/145857.108:ERROR:settings.cc(324)] Settings version is not 1
[1126/104356.504:ERROR:settings.cc(324)] Settings version is not 1
[1126/145730.653:ERROR:settings.cc(324)] Settings version is not 1
[1127/053944.615:ERROR:settings.cc(324)] Settings version is not 1
[1127/060224.967:ERROR:settings.cc(324)] Settings version is not 1
[1128/005618.179:ERROR:settings.cc(324)] Settings version is not 1
[1128/012258.285:ERROR:settings.cc(324)] Settings version is not 1
[1128/090138.422:ERROR:settings.cc(324)] Settings version is not 1
[1129/122613.815:ERROR:settings.cc(324)] Settings version is not 1
[1130/095221.483:ERROR:settings.cc(324)] Settings version is not 1
[1130/101156.787:ERROR:settings.cc(324)] Settings version is not 1
[1201/031708.448:ERROR:settings.cc(324)] Settings version is not 1
[1201/152528.206:ERROR:settings.cc(324)] Settings version is not 1
[1204/110934.348:ERROR:settings.cc(324)] Settings version is not 1
[1210/102819.019:ERROR:settings.cc(324)] Settings version is not 1
[1211/011832.590:ERROR:settings.cc(324)] Settings version is not 1
[1215/022914.191:ERROR:settings.cc(324)] Settings version is not 1
[1215/032454.702:ERROR:settings.cc(324)] Settings version is not 1
[1216/085258.302:ERROR:settings.cc(324)] Settings version is not 1```

.45 chrome
Been tryng to iggy it but keep having no choice but to destroy them when it happens .
thing is I place buildings to be built ( say 5 Al plants )
Now bots go to build them but a few bots will go into the building spot next to the one they are building . In other words they are going into a unbuilt building then building the one next to it then stay stuck ( can not use move to move them out even and end up destroying them .

Unless you can cancel the built building then they are freed but when they start building both at once you lose resource canceling just to replace every time .

Its the old stuck under a building ( that is also back build 5 advanced refinery's then use them to make a bunch of ore bots some will be built under the buildings and be stuck )
I probably had to destroy 10 to build 50 .
ore bots are cheep' Drones and alien bots are not and build slow .so far I managed to avoid destroying any alien bots but just had to destroy 2 drones as they got stuck under a unbuilt 1100 house and could not be moved out .
next time it happens ill add a photo to this post .

This suggestion has likely been suggested before, but I think now that we have education, maybe we could take a crack at these and see if these ideas stick.

Bast wants to model My colony to be like Sim city, which is very apparent in many ways. For instance, like sim city, we have to manage utilities like water, power, trash, and also air pollution to an extent, all of which are factors that cim city employs. In addition to those needs, the player also needs to have fire protection coverage by placing fire departments at certain intervals to ensure that all of the city is protected, and law enforcement by spacing police stations around the city. Crime and fires are both very realistic factors in any given city and should not be an exception in mc.

The implications of fire feature would be very simple. All structures already take damage over time in mc, so it would be nothing to add a factor that increases the chance for a fire to occur in a structure as it's health gets closer to zero. The fires could be entities that appear around a structure when triggered.. If a fire is left at full health for enough time, it will spawn one or two other fires around adjacent buildings that weren't burning before. Those fires would spawn more fires if left a full health.This creates a sort of hydra effect. If a fire is damaged but then left alone, it will quickly replenish it's health and spawn more fires after remaining at max health for a few moments. Of course, when a structure's health drops to 0, it will explode as it does normally now in mc, except it should leave an ash pile that cannot be bulldozed and would require workers to decrease it's health and eventually cause it to explode and leave a space that can be used again.

In order to combat this, the player needs to make sure that this build fire stations at regular intervals so that the entire map is covered. The fire station will only trigger if it senses a fire within it's range of effectiveness, and more advanced fire stations will have larger ranges. The station carries a certain number of fire bots that are built with the station. The bots remain in the station until the station is triggered, upon which they are filled with water from the colony reserves and released from the station to go and fight the fire before it spreads. The fire station itself should provide a certain number of living spaces and consume food, wheels, lots of water, and rum. This is because some stations have living spaces where firefighters can spend a couple nights while they are on patrol. The station would direct the fire bots, once release, would path find on their own to the nearest fire, then once they've killed the fire, they pathfind to another nearest fire. If no other fires are in range of the station, the bots return. Another cool feature would be if when fire bots ran out of water, they had to return to the station to be refilled and then relased to go back to the fire they were fighting.

As for police and crime, there may be several ways to implement this feature, but here are two:

The first way is to simply cause unhappiness in colonists that walk through areas outside the ranges of any police station, which would motivate the player to space the stations appropriately.

The second way, which is a more interactive way, would be to implement robberies in mc, and decrease the likelihood of those happening in areas inside the range of police stations. Where the ranges of the multiple stations overlap, the reducing of the likelihood of robberies should stack. Whenever a robbery happens inside a certain building, everyone passing through that building for a time should become unhappy because of crime, and crime should be added to the pie of unhappiness reasons. After a while, the building should stop making people unhappy. In order for a robbery to happen, a working colonist will randomly become a robber and randomly pick a building to rob. Police bots would be stored in the police station and would be dispatched of a robbery happens in the range of a station. The bots will chase the robber and only have a certain window to catch the robber before he gets out of the stations range. If the robber is able to flee to an area out of range of any stations, he recieves a large amount of the colonies money reserve and turns back into a regular colonist and find work again. If the robber is caught, his occupation will become prisoner, and he will have to live in jail cells for a certain amount of time and then be released to find another job.Unhappy colonists should have a more likelihood to become a robber, so the player should definitely place multiple police stations around the capital to prevent a protesting colonist turned robber from getting away with the robbery. Banks and money producing buildings should be the most likely target for a robbery, with factories, sweatshops, power plants, food and water producing buildings being among the least likely. The robber should be able to take a larger amount of money depending on how many people are working, touring, living, being entertained in the structure at that time, so gaurd your arcologies heavily.

Prisons: these structures would have a value of jail cells, which prisoners would occupy. The prison would consume food, water, and steel, and some higher teir prisons would consume cloth, rum, and money as well. When you are out of Jail cells to put the prisoners in, then police stations will let the robber go, but without the money they tried to steal. If you want, you could implement some policies on what to do with robbers to give the player the choice on what to do with them. You could deport them, execute them on the spot, have them fight to the death in arenas(which would probably help out antiquitas since Romans used to force their criminals to fight to the death in arenas). Each option may need other buildings to designed for the purpose of doing your choice of punishment to the robbers.

Finally, yes, I know that robberies aren't the only form of crime. There's fraud, smuggling, drug dealing, prostitution, murder, and the list goes on. But for this game's needs, I think that robbery would be enough crime on it's own motivate a player to work towards protecting their colonies with law enforcement.

Thanks for reading my ramblings. And again, please don't comment saying that these ideas have already been suggested. I know, I'm just adding to those Ideas with my own little twist. I truly like my colony and I want to come up with ideas that can help improve it. I just don't want to have someone give me a two bit comment that this has been suggested before and my ideas go unconsidered, especially after all of the work that i put into making these ideas so descriptive.

I have a few ideas about builder bots (of any type).

1. A toggle (in engine settings maybe) to choose from one of two behaviors for builders: one where all bots of that type focus on the building that's closest to being done and one where they spread out so that each bot is building it's own thing. In some cases I've found I prefer one way or the other so it would be nice to be able to command the bots.

2. I notice many times where I am attempting to manually force bots into one or the other of the two modes described above that they don't listen. I click the bot and tell it to move to X building but it goes there and builds Y building instead (a neighbor). This happens with large buildings while zoomed in so I know for sure I'm clicking the right one. Example: I may have told all my dig sites to upgrade but they all need artifacts to do so (and I don't have enough). I want all bots to finish one site first before moving to the next one. So I click each one and click the site I want to start with so that the artifacts I do have all go to that one building and get it done instead of having ten that are almost done and having to wait.

3. The ability to summon all bots of a certain type to a tile. Or all idle bots. Example: I've got a bunch of buildings in process but suddenly want them to all stop and build something else right away.

These are just a few ideas that may be obvious things that bast has already decided he will implement, but hopefully some of these ideas may help. And Before you start blasting me about how bast won't ever put a pvp element into my colony, you should check the updates and announcements page under update 75, since bast includes the possibility of a pvp element with federations.

The ideas below represent an entire concept when applied together. This is how I would implement pvp between federations in my colony, but like all of my other concept ideas, it's mainly here to present new thoughts to the developer on how certain concepts could come together, and I don't expect him to just take this entire concept and put it in the game.

First off, I think that any pvp feature should be optional, just as bast said. But I do think that there should be some risk involved with enabling pvp and joining in federation wars/rivalries. I don't think that the risk should be catastrophic, but being attacked by someone else should come with some major disadvantages.

I think that in order for a rivalry/war between two federations to continue, a certain percentage of the federation should be regularly and actively involved. This way, people have to be actively participating in the rivalry in order for it to continue, so time and effort would need to be put in. While a rivalry is going on, all colonies in those federations are given buffs that increase income and production speeds of certain resources, so a rivalry would be good for business, as it also is in real life.

However, those that chose not to participate in a rivalry will not benefit at all from any benefits that come about by attacking enemy colonies, only active colonies do. This way there will be no freeloaders. I also think that there should be a cooldown timer that forces players to remain pvp active for a while after they've attacked another colony. This way colonies can't attack other colonies and then quickly disable pvp mode to avoid retaliation. However, if you accidentally enable pvp and haven't attacked anyone, you can immediately disable pvp. I also think that each colony should only be able to have one debuff affecting them at a time, but they could have multiple buffs in effect. Any further attempts to double-debuff an enemy would result in the attacker wasting a debuff chance and using resources that they could have used on another target.

Now, here comes a system of buffs and debuffs that I think would fit the pvp feature nicely. With these status effects, each colony could specialize in a certain kind of attack, or take on a certain support role in a rivalry, thus adding a bit of an rpg element to this system, but shouldn't need to get too in depth or complex with it. Below is a system of classes, point systems, and buffs and debuffs that a player can cast on other friendly or enemy colonies. Bear in mind that in order to receive a buff or debuff, you need to be in pvp mode. All buffs and debuffs require certain buildings in order to be unlocked and improved, and the best status effects require more complex buildings.

There would also be four different scores attributed to each colony that tell what kind of contribution that colony makes to the war effort and what their specialty/class is. Each class would be specified by a certain building, and only one of six of these buildings can be constructed at once in a colony. Whichever building is built determines the war class of the colony and what it specializes in. The buildings can be upgraded in tiers, giving more and more unique advantages for each tier, but also becoming more expensive. The classes are as follows:

A vanguard heads straight in and attacks the enemy headlong, splitting their focus between offense and defense. They can be capable attackers and defenders, but would more often than not pose as a distraction to the enemy, spreading their attacks and defenses onto multiple colonies at once with the splitter cast, and protecting themselves with the feedback loop cast. They focus on collecting offense and defense points.

Unique advantages: the vanguard's unique advantages focus on reducing the durations of all debuffs that they are targeted with, reducing buff/debuff cooldowns, increasing the amount of targets that a vanguarde can hit with the splitter cast, and on the highest tier, enabling the vanguard to attack an enemy and "taunt" them, thus forcing them to target the vanguard for their next attack. The taunt can also be used in combination with splitter to affect multiple enemies, forcing them all to wait on each other to take turns attacking the same vanguard before they can target another colony.

An empowerer is good at preparing their allies for an initial attack on an unsuspecting enemy. The buff their allies to strengthen them for the battle to come, and they join the ranks of vanguards in attacking and distracting the enemy. The Empowerer can counter some debuffs with buffs, but it proves to be a very inefficient counterer and can easily be picked out by an assassin if it causes too much bother in the heat of battle. It's best for this class to do all of it's buffs before battle and save the debuffs until the heat of battle. An empowerer will rack up offense and utility points, with relatively few defense points.

Unique advantages: The empowerer's unique abilities focus on buff potency, the amount of targets that splitter can reach, duration reduction to any debuffs that it experiences. And on the highest tier buildings, Empowerers gain a 1 in 5 chance to apply a buff to themselves automatically if they cast that same buff onto an ally without negating a debuff or being negated by a debuff. This allows the Empowerer to easily empower themselves while they are empowering other colonies in preparation for a battle, but doesn't help the empowerer during the heat of battle.

An assassin makes calculated strikes. Their attacks are very potent and can be made even more potent thanks to the charge cast. They are often supported by vanguards that strike before the assassins to get the initial attention from the enemies. They need not worry about protecting themselves in battle because of this. Even if they are attacked, they can retaliate quickly by using the dimensional reflection buff, thus giving their enemy a taste of their own medicine. An assassin can be good at countering buffs with debuffs, but not as effectively as they can attack an unprotected enemy. This class will have mostly offense points, with a little bit of silencer points as well.

Unique advantages: the Assassin's unique advantages focus on debuff potency and cooldown, dimensional mirror cooldown and cost reduction, increased potency and decreased cooldown on a buff affected by the charge cast, and on the highest tier, giving the assassin the ability to attack an enemy with an "evasive" attack, thus forcing the enemy to not be able to retaliate against the assassin for a certain amount of time. The enemy can target other colonies during that time though, just not that particular assassin.

The counterer focuses on offense and defense. They use their casts to negate a buff or debuff. They use the splitter and feedback loop buffs to cast negating buffs and debuffs onto themselves and other allies. The assassin might target a counterer with a potent attack at just the right time, during the counterer's cooldown time, if the counterer becomes a bother to it's enemies. So learning when to take action to help your allies and when let up for a while to lose attention from enemy colonies is a must for this class. The counterer gains equal amounts of defense and silencer points.

Unique advantages:The counterer's unique advantages focus on cooldown and resource cost reduction to all buffs and debuffs, increasing the amount of extra targets that splitter can give you, and on the highest tier, a counterer can "silence" an enemy, preventing them from attacking or defending any target for a duration, if they successfully negate that enemy's debuff or buff. The silence effect has a 1 in 5 chance of happening for each successful counter.

The healer is solely a supporter and defender, defending colonists by negating debuffs with their buffs and using buffs on allies just as utilities to boost their performance. The healer gives potent buffs and defenses to other players and is the pillar that holds up the federation in the war. They can use the charge cast to further increase the potency of a buff, which they would use to further strengthen allies. Assassins will target these the most to slow them down so the enemy will be without support, and counterers can also silence Healers by negating their buffs with debuffs. But healers are really good at empowering all of the other classes, which in turn will retaliate if one of their healers is attacked. The healer focuses on collecting defense and utility points.

Unique advantages: The healer's advantages focus on buff potency and cooldown, increased potency and decreased cooldown effects of the charge buff on all buffs, and on the highest tier, if they successfully counter a debuff with a buff, that buff's cooldown is reduced by 75%, allowing them to deal large amounts of counters in rapid succession as long as their buffs aren't re-countered/negated by an enemy.

The Commando is like an empowerer in that it buffs allies in preparation for battle, but instead of joining in the frontline assault like empowerers, commandos hide under cover of distraction and take out enemy defenses with tactical casts. They are extremely efficient with countering buffs with debuffs, yet they can't defend allies against debuffs. The commando is the hardest class to play as their position on the battlefield is an awkward one. And while they are really good at ripping enemy defenses away and preparing allies for battle, they themselves can't directly attack or defend anyone. Only choose this class if you're experienced with the pvp feature and your federation needs people of this class, otherwise you'll find yourself having a really bad experience with the pvp element.

Unique advantages: The commando looses the ability to buff people that are already affected with a debuff and the ability to debuff an enemy that's not protected by a buff, and debuff potency and duration is set to 0 so that if a commando successfully negates a buff, the debuff doesn't affect the enemy as an attack like it regularly would. This forces the commando into it's role turns debuffs solely into a means of breaking defenses instead of attacking directly. The commando also gets cooldown reduction to all debuffs, buff potency, increased splitter targets, and on the highest tier structure, the commando has a 1 in 5 chance of completely removing a buff or debuff's cooldown after casting it successfully. This means that the commando can hit many more targets than any other class in a period of time, allowing it to somewhat carpet-bomb enemy defenses or empower massive amounts of allies before the battle.

Major Benefits in participating in PVP: As factions war against each other, the colonies contributing to the war effect will share in the spoils of war. In order for Federations to start a war, both Federations must fromt a certain amount of money, and then each week after that start of the war, that same amount of money must be paid by each federation. Each week, a tally would be taken of how many successful attacks and counters were dealt by each federation. Both numbers are added together to get the Federation's battle score, and the federation with the highest score wins all of the money from all participating federations for that week. This can be used in a free-for-all war that includes multple federations as well as just a regular rivalry between two federations, and the war can continue as long as the federations want it to continue, provided they have enough money to put forward. The winning federation is required to split the winnings among it's participating colonies, but how much a percentage of the win that it keeps to itself is optional. Just bear in mind that nobody will participate if there is not a big enough reward.

Debuffs:

Benefits of debuffing enemies: When you debuff an enemy that doesn't currently have any status effects without being negated, you permanently gain a small amount of potency towards the debuff you casted and you get offense points that go to your offense score, which can be seen by other members of your federation. If you successfully negate a buffed enemy with a debuff, you gain silencer points towards your silencer score that other members can see and you permanenty gain a very small percentage chance of not being negated each time you cast a debuff or buff, even if your buff or debuff was countered correctly by a defending enemy(this also applies to buffs/debuffs casted with feedback loop). Finally, if you successfully negated a buff or debuff that negated your original buff/debuff on the same enemy, you will gain 2x silencer points and you get 2x more percentage added to your negation-block chance.

Brownout: Forcefully syphon energy from your enemy to temporarily add to your power capacity. Is negated by the Syphon buff but can negate the repair nanites buff. Casting this debuff successfully without having it negated will permanently add a 2% increase to the caster's power capacity that scales with their power capacity.
Category: Techno-warfare

EMP Blast: Blast your enemy with EMP waves that temporarily damage power producing buildings, causing a complete power blackout. the effects of the emp blast are shorter in duration than the brownout, but cannot be countered by simply increasing power production like brownout could. Negates the Syphon Buff but is negated by the repair nanites buff. Successfully casting this debuff without negation would award the caster with a permanent 2% faster build speed on all power producing buildings.

Plague: Inflict an enemy with a nasty plague that lowers the health of it's colonists over time. By treating the population of that colony like guinea pigs, you gain a boost towards research production. A plague will never kill a colonist directly, the lowest that a plague would bring a colonist would be 5%. This is avoid any colony from dying out because of warfare. Negated by the healing nanites buff but negates the probiotic bursts buff. Successfully casting this buff without negation will grant the caster a 2% increase in build speed of hospitals and scientific structures.

Famine: Target your enemy's food supply and reduce the amount of food they produce for a time. Negated by the probiotic bursts buff but negates the healing nanites buff since people can't heal without eating food. Successfully casting this buff without negation will grant the caster a permanent 2% increase in food storage.

World eater: You release a rare silicon-based life form that eats stone and metal into your enemy's colony. The creature quickly reproduces and infests all of the enemy's ore mines, viciously attacking the miners.. The enemy suffers a substantial reduction in production rates from any structure that relies on holes in the ground, including excavation sites, core mines, regolith extraction co.s, fracking plants, etc. The world eaters are trained to build storehouses for the ore they collect and share it with their masters. Successfully casting this debuff without having it negated will permanent multiply the attacker's total storage capacity for raw resources by 1.02, thus adding an extra 2% capacity in relation to the capacity they already have. This scales with resource capacity and applies to all resources that come from the ground, including alien arts, ore, gold, ura, alu, rego,
Category: Geo-warfare

Tectonic disruption: Pummel your enemy with earthquakes that make working in tall buildings extremely hard. The target suffers reduced work productivity depending on how potent your attack is and can't build or destroy any buildings during the duration of the debuff. Successfully casting this buff without negation will grant the caster 2% faster construction of any structure that classifies as a tall building.
Category: Geo-warfare

Splitter: A very costly and high tech buff that allows you to direct your buffs and debuffs toward two targets at once. In order to successfully target two allies/enemies with a particular status effect, you need to cast splitter on both targets in rapid succession(casts are no more than 5 minutes apart), otherwise the splitter buff/debuff would be wasted on only one target and the caster would have to wait the long cooldown in order to cast it again.
Category: Offensive Warfare

Malicious Sanctioning campaign: you target an enemy with a campaign to invite it's population to immigrate to your colony, thus leaching population away from them. Requires tons of civics to cast and a colony would have to be well established in order to have access to this attack and would need to have tons of space for new colonists. Negated by the repopulate buff but negates the Friendly sanctioning buff. Once a caster's housing space is filled up, the campaign will be ended, thus avoiding any homeless people. Successfully casting this debuff without running out of housing space or being negated will grant the caster a 2% increase in build speeds on all housing structures.
Category: Political Warfare

Purge: Purge your colony of any overly complacent colonists, forcing them to immigrate to your enemy. These colonists will immigrate to the enemy regardless of whether they have housing room or not. If the enemy doesn't have housing room, the immigrants because homeless and detract from their happiness score. This buff requires a lot of civics and would have a huge cooldown. Successfully casting this debuff would grant the caster a 2% increase in build speeds for all tourism structures.
Category: Political warfare

Blockade: Block and enemy's trade via gbt and all import/export/immigration buildings other than the Stargate. is negated by the subspace detour buff but negates the hyperspace transport buff. Requires starships to cast. During the blockade, the prices of all of the import/export stuctures besides your highest tier import/export building(stargate for humans) are reduced by 20% and the rewards gain from the exports are increased by 20%
Category: Economic Warfare

Subspace disruption: Disruption your enemy's Stargate connection, rendering their most advanced immigration and trade building useless. Negates the subspace detour buff but is negated by the hyperspace transport buff. During a disruption, your highest tier import/export building gains a 20% import price reduction and a 20% export reward increase.
Category: Economic Warfare

Buffs:

Benefits of buffing allies: There are good benefits to turning your colony unto a support colony that buffs it's allies. When you successfully negate a debuff, you permanently gain a small amount of resistance to the debuff that you negated, and you get defense points that go to your overall defense score that other members can see. When you cast a buff onto an ally while they aren't affected by any status affects, then you gain points towards your utility score, which other members can see as well, and you gain a potency increase to that buff.

Syphon: You temporarily sacrifice a portion of your power to add to an ally colony's power levels. Designed to negate the brownout debuff as long as the caster has enough extra power to successfully supplement that colony's needs as well as the extra demand for power that the brownout debuff adds. Unfortunately, the emp burst debuff negates this buff.
Category: Techno-warfare

Repair nanites: sends a swarm of nanites to repair any damage in an ally's technology caused by an EMP blast, immidiately negating the debuff. The brownout debuff destroys these nanites as the high electric demand causes electronics to overheat, vaporizing the nanites as they try to fix the damage. One side effect of getting hit with this buff is that they repair damage caused by other means, thereby repairing building infrastructure by a significant percentage.
Category: techno-warfare

Healing nanites: you send a swarm of healing nanites to an ally colony to heal it's occupants. Completely negates the plague debuff, but is negated by the dyson sphere debuff. Hospitals also heal sick colonists faster depending on buff potency.
Category: Bio-warfare

Probiotic bursts: gives an ally colony rapid food production for some time. This buff requires a large amount of food and water to charge, but when casted onto an ally colony, it releases massive clouds of genetically modified probiotics in the atmosphere, which help crops grow fast. negates the dyson sphere debuff, but is negated by the plague debuff.
Category: Bio-warfare

Ultrasonic resonance: Blast your ally with ultrasonic waves that purify the earth of any world eaters. Obviously this counters the world eater debuff. The resonance shakes ores and minerals loose from the rocks for easier collection. This adds a significant boost to production in all buildings that rely on holes in the ground. However, this buff does nothing against the tectonic disruption debuff.
Category: Geo-warfare

Cryonic infusion: calm an ally's planet down with the freezing power of cryo-science. Negates tectonic disruption, but world eaters are impervious to the extreme cold. The severe cold causes blue crystalline to grow on the surface of the planet, no matter what planet it is, and there is a percentage chance for each lava tile on a lava map to instantly turn into obsidian. Both of these benefits depend on buff potency.
Category: Geo-warfare

Repopulate: you sacrifice a portion of your population to save an ally from dying off by repopulating their colony. No resource or tech requirements. Not designed to negate any debuff, but designed to prevent any colony from dying off. This is a very low tier buff, and would be the first buff to be unlocked, so it really shouldn't be possible to kill off an enemy colony to where they can't recover, since they could always get reinforcements from allies. In fact, I could see some colonies specializing in this buff by increasing their population size way beyond their population requirements. Negates the sanctioning campaign debuff but people won't want to move to that colony if it been afflicted by a purge from another colony.
Category: Political Warfare

Friendly Sanctioning campaign: Help your ally by welcoming all of their homeless into your colony. The buff only stops when either the caster runs out of housing or the target runs out of homeless. negates the Purge debuff but is negated by the Malicious sanctioning debuff.
Category: Political Warfare

Subspace detour: Allow your ally to connect to your gbt via their stargate, thus allowing them to make trades. This negates a blockade debuff, but is negated by the subspace disruption debuff. Side effects from this buff include a reduced cost in civics for each gbt transaction and the reduction of cost and increase of reward from importing/exporting from the stargate or highest tier import/export building, depending on buff potency.

Wormhole: You create a wormhole above your planet that links to a wormhole above your allie's planet. Because of this, allies can travel more effectively without the need of a stargate. Negates subspace disruption but is negated by blockade. Has the same effect on gbt as subspace detour, but applies the cost and benefit modifiers to every tier other than the top tier import/export building.

SOS: This buff can only be applied to the colony casting it. It's basically a cry for help. Other allies can see a list of SOS reports for their federation and see the colony being attacked and identify the attacker. Afterward they can proceed to buff their ally in danger, or retaliate against the attacker with a debilitating debuff. There is no requirement or cost to cast this buff, you just have to have a communications device, consulate, or capital.
Category: Defensive Warfare

Feedback loop: Can only be applied to the caster, casting requires large amounts of power and the tech required with be pretty high to unlock this buff. Once this buff is casted, the caster can target themselves once with any buff, essentially being able to defend themselves instead of having to rely on another colony for counters. The feedback loop would come with a large cooldown, so the caster would have to choose wisely on.
Category: Defensive Warfare

Dimensional reflection: Reflect a buff or debuff back onto an enemy or ally, thus negating any effect on the caster completely and immediately. A high tech and a lot of resources required to cast this buff and comes with a long cooldown. This buff doesn't prevent an attack, you have to cast this buff during when you are experiencing a buff or debuff.
Category: Defensive Warfare

Charge: cast this buff before casting another buff or debuff to multiply the potency by 5. This also increases the cooldown of the buff being affected by 5. The most expensive buff in the game and comes with the highest cooldown.

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Now with all of that out of the way, I want to remind everyone that I'm not expecting this whole beast of a concept to be plopped into the game. I hope that bast at least takes a consideration of the concept and uses pieces and parts from it, but I mainly just want to see the game grow to become more popular and hopefully some of my ideas play a part in making that happen. I will be making changes to this post to constantly refine it based on what I learn about what is feasible to do and what bast's plans are, so stay tuned.

Most of this suggestion, can be implemented only for premium account :D

Thank you for the feedback @Luker124 , I will address your suggestions here!

Luker124 said:When creating a structure, rovers will automatically prioritize building the structure over collecting resources.

Yes, I agree to this. I think it does this in some way in MC1 (don't remember for sure).

Luker124 said:Path finding for rovers will prioritize taking pavement over no pavement to their destination.

Also yes. That is how it is supposed to work anyway, I have just not gotten to it yet :-/

Luker124 said:Optional flashing effects for rovers on their voxels(Could be used to signal authority, or to move colonists out of the way in the future) OPTIONAL

Do you mean like a blinking light? That shouldn't be too difficult. Shouldn't...

Luker124 said:A realistic animation for the lander pad, such as a small space ship landing then departing after colonists are offloaded. Changing the "generation" speed of the building would also be essential to this. This would also open the door for custom building animations!

This is basically planned as well. If you look at the data object in the editor for the Landing Pad for example, you will see it has the Lander set as the "Population Delivery Unit," and the Landing Field lists the Shuttlepod. So this too is in the works!

Luker124 said:Why is water a utility but food is not? I suggest either changing water back into a resource or making food a utility too, for organizational sake.

Here I do not agree with you. The reasoning behind this is that, in a real life city, water is a utility, but food is not. For instance, you don't have a food pipe connected to your house that delivers food on demand for a monthly rate (although come to think of it, that would be pretty sweet).

Luker124 said:Pavement places between two buildings sometimes doesn't build, and even when it does, it sometimes just vanishes into thin air. Would make an amazing party trick, but not a good game mechanic.

This is a bug I did not notice until after publishing this update, but pavements that are 1x1 tile cannot be built and do not show up on the map. I think I know why it is happening, but I will have to verify in the code during the next update.

Luker124 said:Individual selection for drop-off points for resource collecting rovers(Preferably some sort of selection on the map, maybe highlight possible places in green)

Not exactly sure what you mean by this :-/

Luker124 said:Voxels can be made into the -y axis, allowing for holes in the voxel models, and realistic depth.

Maybe. This sort of comes back to the terraforming requests, structures will need to be able to override the world seed while the engine is building the 3d geometry for the ground terrain. It's not insurmountable though, as roads already do this (you can see that pavements are slightly depressed into the terrain)

Luker124 said:Some sort of better construction animation, instead of the building emerging from the ground like the undead.

I thought it would be cool originally to have the buildings go up voxel-by-voxel or row-by-row while being built. In practice it ended up being incredibly RAM expensive as a new 3D model needs to be created by the engine for each step of the build phase. This is a similar problem to having animated buildings, each frame of the animation needs to be its own model, although on an animated building, you can get around that by having the building just being made of multiple models, and one rotates or moves independent of the others. Anyway, I probably will not change this any time soon, but it might come about eventually if I make some sort of performance breakthrough on the Scroll3D engine.

Anyway, that you for all of the suggestions and feedback!

Yep that is rovers or any bot build bug worlds type .
they can Teleport ( neat hu ? ) see bots become virtual when not in view so when bots are mining and the area is not in view they exist in quantum space . Which means they ecist in every part of the my colony universe at once .
PA alien teck who needs it lol .anyway the bots can teleport through walls buildings what every ( got bot stuck in a building find another of the same type dobble click move to a out of view area and bot becomes unstuck .

Many people consider this a Bug even bast has once or twice But I consider it a game tool .
PS thsi also means bots can INSTANCE Travel ( hard to get them to do it but can be done .
slect all bots you want to go to far side of map select move then go to far side let go then move out of view quickly and poof bots start popping in .

The flying idea is NIX unless bast speeds them up tremendously .
The bots path find because they are moving ON not over the tiles thus the faster TILES with pavement the bot moves faster .
the flying bots ( and there are two ) only go at one programmed speed probly 30 times slower then a AL road .
what the guy who talks about the program aspect knows mite work . BUT the merg bots idea would be simpler and cooler as a added befit is teh more you merge the faster they build .
I do know anything over 100 bots building at once the game slows .
so even a 100 Turbo construction bots building converters is SLOWWW taking about 2 mints each and wile one converter is no big deal when you are building 500 that is 1000 MINTS lol .

Here is a collection on concepts that I am leaning towards for My Colony 2 as of today (20200624). This is all subject to change and I can be convinced by the community of anything, so keep the suggestions and feedback coming. This is going to be a super long post featuring all of my thoughts on MC2 thus far. Feel free to criticize anything and everything here. My feelings will not be hurt and nothing is set in stone. This is a starting point for community discussion to help make MC2 the best game it can be!

Relationship to My Colony 1
MC2 is an entire new game, not an upgrade to the original, or a version 2.0. It may use completely different concepts. It will not be tied in to the same server. Game files will not transfer over, as MC2 will probably have completely different buildings/tech tree, etc.

This does not mean that MC1 will be going away. I will continue to support the original and the server indefinitely. I realize that a lot of people like the style of game that MC1 is and do not want anything to change, so the original is staying where it is. It may continue to receive new content as well as bug fixes, but I do not plan on any further changes to the gameplay mechanics or core engine going forward.

That said, as long as MC1 remains popular and people keep playing it and paying for it, I will keep the game going.

Business Model/Monetizing
This is the least fun part of development, but a necessary one in order to make creating a game feasible. The business model for MC1 was tacked on as an afterthought, and reflecting back I do not like the concept of certain structures and units being premium.

None of this is set in stone, but here are my initial thoughts on the business model. My Colony 2 will be a straight paid app on all app stores, with everything unlocked at the base price, no in-app purchases. No advertising anywhere. The exception is on Ape Web Apps and the Ape Market, where it will be free, everything unlocked, but with no access to multiplayer or custom content. Maybe only one map type available.

Current My Colony 1 is basically already like this on Desktop, with the mobile client being free with additional IAP, so this change just makes the mobile version match up with what is already on desktop.

Now, I do anticipate the dissatisfaction of Android players not having the free version in the Play Store. However, Android support for Progressive Web Apps is sufficiently advanced now that you can just install the Web version to your homescreen like an app and it's hardly any different. Same with iOS. And MC1 will still be available for free like it always has been.

No free version on the mobile app stores will likely mean less players, and I understand this. But I like the idea of just buying a game and having the whole thing, not worrying about IAP's and not having any advertising.

Client/Server Structure
The biggest change to MC2 is it's design from the ground up as a multiplayer game. This does not mean that you cannot play single player, but it is being designed specifically for multiplayer.

MC1 has limited multiplayer, which basically consists of chat and trading/gifting resources. You can play together on a multiplayer region, but all you are really doing is sharing atmosphere and seeing thumbnails of other players' colonies. Not really very multiplayery (is that a word?). The MC1 multiplayer is also global and centralized, meaning everything has to go through the global My Colony server.

My Colony 2 multiplayer will be decentralized, meaning no global server that everybody plays on. Why am I doing this, because it seems like a downgrade? Look at every game out there with real global multiplayer, not just chat and trading. That takes massive infrastructure, and you pay for it with either a monthly subscription or endless IAP's. That's the only way it's really possible, and I don't think anybody wants that if you really stop and think it through.

The only realistic way to add real multiplayer to the game without investing in a massive infrastructure and charging big money for the game is to decentralize it. And since I am not Blizzard and do not want to spend my whole life maintaining MC2 servers, I am adopting a decentralized approach.

What does this mean? My Colony 2 will actually be designed as two separate applications in one, the client and the server.

The game client will be fairly light weight. It's job is to receive data from the server application and render it to the screen, and pass instructions as to what the player wants to do onto the server. That's pretty much it, and it should be fairly performant. Even though the game is moving to 3d, I still expect it to perform better than MC1, simply because 3d hardware rendering performs better than 2d software rendering.

The game server is much more interesting and is where all of the game mechanics take place, but since the server does not have to worry about handling the UI or making drawing calls, it actually has a bit more overhead to work with than on MC1. The two most expensive operations in MC1 are the rendering and the pathfinding. In MC2, the server is eliminating the rendering, and I also want to greatly reduce the pathfinding, leaving more headroom for actual fun stuff, like game mechanics simulation.

So in MC2, the game relationship is between client(s) and server. Whenever you create a new game in MC2, you are creating a new server, and then connecting to it with a client. The server is saved and retained between plays, where the client only exists while it is in use, and is not saved. So the point I just want to get across is that the client is really not that important, the server is.

The server and client code are both included in the My Colony 2 game. You will have the option of starting a regular game or creating a dedicated server. When you start a regular game, you are spinning up both a client and server and creating a 1-1 connection between the two right on your device. You can also make your game joinable by friends or others on your local network for multiplayer.

You can also create a dedicated server. When you create a MC2 dedicated server, you will be presented with a special server GUI that allows you to be in full control of the game. The server will continue to process game data as long as it is running, even if no players/clients are connected. A dedicated server will be able to establish custom game rules and parameters, and have mods installed that will be transferred to any client who connects. You will be able to make a dedicated server open to the public, or by invite only, or by specifying a list of accounts who are able to join. It's up to the server. A dedicated server will be able to moderate it's players however they want, the server can adjust resource levels, ban players for cheating, or anything. It's all up to the server owner.

The game data is saved only on the server, and the server owner will be responsible for making backups. I expect game files to be a lot bigger than MC1, so I am not going to be implementing Cloud Sync, which is known to cause corruption on larger files anyway. The ability to export and backup data will be built right into the game as usual.

Because of the way it's designed, even if you only want to play single player, it still may be desirable to set up a private dedicated server. For instance, you could run a private MC2 dedicated server on your powerful home PC that is always on/connected to the internet. Then you can connect to your server from your tablet/phone/laptop/another window on your computer, wherever you are, and your game is always there waiting for you, and all of the processing is being done on the more powerful computer.

The Game World/Game Files
In MC1, the game world is divided into cities and regions, and each city is a separate game file. In MC2, there are no cities and regions, there are planets.

This is something I am aping from Minecraft. A planet is like a regular city file in MC1, except is extends out in every direction to infinity, so you do not have to worry about running out of space for your city. A planet can have multiple cities and multiple players building cities at the same time.

Planets will be procedurally generated, and new areas will be generated in real-time as needed. Each planet type will have different biomes like in Minecraft, so that different environments and different resources are available in different parts on the planet.

This system means that you will have to build up trade networks with other cities or make additional settlement outposts across the planet in order to bring more resource types back to your colony. In MC1, practically every resource in the game is available with a square mile of your lander. This doesn't really make sense. In MC2 you will have to go out and find resources, and then build up a network for bringing them back into your city.

Technically, the MC2 world is still a big 2d grid like in MC1, but each tile does have an elevation, a z-index, for varied terrain elevations. Different resources might be found at different elevations and in different biomes. You will also be able to adjust the terrain in-game, like building up dirt to level out construction areas. There will be flat areas good for building, low canyons, and hilly or mountainous areas.

Also like in Minecraft, the terrain is generated on the fly and only transferred to the client in "chunks" as needed. So your client will only contain the data for the area that you are currently looking at, and the immediate surrounding areas. As you scroll around the map, areas you are no longer looking at will be disposed from memory as new areas are loaded from the server.

Construction / Resource Gathering and Rovers
I would really like to get rid of Rovers completely and simulate everything. It's not that I hate rovers, they are so helpful and adorable. The issue is with the pathfinding. Just driving rovers around the map takes up a huge percentage of the MC1 processing time, for what is essentially a visual effect.

Pathfinding is both CPU and memory intensive on anything larger than a medium sized MC1 map, and in MC2 the map sizes are being expanded infinitely larger. It's not just as simple as "only path finding around a certain area from the rover." Before you can even calculate pathfinding operations, you first have to generate a pathfinding map and load it into memory. The maps will be more expensive than in MC1 owing to the introduction of terrain elevation, as there will now be cliffs to work around. Each time a new structure is placed the pathfinding map needs to be recalculated. With the game being multiplayer, this will have to be taking place on a larger scale. It is one of the features holding MC1 back, due to all of the CPU time that must be dedicated to solving rover paths.

The issue of course, is that everybody likes rovers. Even I like rovers. Would the game be less fun without them? I don't know. If you could just turn off Rover Rendering in the engine settings and you didn't even see them, but everything continued to operate as normal, would it make a difference to the game, or would it matter? Maybe it would, maybe it wouldn't.

Everything a Rover does can be simulated for a fraction of the CPU and memory cost.

This is the largest part of MC2 that I don't have an answer to. I can't just remove rovers because that would be a blow to the fans of MC1. I also cringe thinking of all of the months wasted on optimizing path finding and the 1 star complaints about performance, all relating to a path finding feature in what is essentially a city building game.

There are options.

I could always just keep rovers in the game as they are and just keep working around the processing issues that come with it. In a single player game or a server with only a few active players at once, it probably wouldn't be a very big hit.

I have also considered just simulating rovers, sort of like colonists are just simulated in MC1. For example, you don't even have to build your own rovers. But when you place a new construction order, little rovers drive up onto the construction site and build your building anyway. These rovers do not exist on the server, but you see them building on the client. Same way for moving resources around. On the server it is just simulated, but on the client, you see a rover driving around doing all of the work. This would still require path finding, but each client would be doing their own path finding on the visual rover effect, and the player could turn it off if it became a performance issue.

If the client could just visually simulate things like rovers, colonists, police cars, busses, etc, they would all still be there visually making your city look alive, but the server wouldn't even have to worry about them.

Maybe there are other options too that I am not thinking of? All feedback on Rovers is welcome. I want the game to be performant, but I also don't want to go against the fans, so please let me know what you think either way.

Graphics
MC1 is a software rendered game using the HTML5 canvas element, arranging .png and .svg tile images onto a 2d isometric grid. Most of the graphics processing is done by the main CPU and not the graphics card, so graphics performance is largely defined by how good your processor is. This is why the game runs a lot better on desktop vs mobile, or even on iPhone vs android, and iPhone processors tend to be a bit better.

The problems is that the CPU also has to process the game, so trying to do everything at once gets expensive, especially on mobile devices.

My Colony 2 is moving to WebGL for graphics processing, which is a javascript based implementation of OpenGL that handles rendering on the GPU. This should lead to far better performance on most devices.

My original idea was to use Blender for all of the games building models. The graphics were going to be awesome. But when I dug into Blender and started working with it, I remembered how I am not actually a graphics designer, and it was going to take me forever to make all of the models for this game.

My other idea was to make blocky pixelated type graphics using my own Voxel Paint application (https://www.apewebapps.com/voxel-paint/). This means lower quality visuals but much higher output and probably better rendering performance as well. It's also so easy to use that anybody could make their own MC2 models, my wife even offering to help design structures for the game (she is a big Minecraft fan).

At the end of the day, My Colony 1 was never known for high quality graphics, but I thought that with MC2 I could really make it look great. After putzing around with Blender though, I have to acknowledge my own personal limitations. Basically, I can either spend months learning how to make great 3d models in Blender, or I can spend months working on the game code. I know which one I'd rather do. So I am probably going to go with the pixelated look, simply because it is something that I can actually do myself within a realistic timeframe, and it will also go well with the next point I'm about to explain, which is modding.

I know some people will not like a pixelated looking game. This is one of those areas where I have to say "tough," unless somebody is willing so supply me with hundreds of 3d models free of charge, which is what it is going to take in order to do this properly.

Modding
Customization is going to be huge in MC2 compared to the original. Given the global online multiplayer in MC1, custom content could not realistically be allowed in the game. The decentralized nature of MC2 changes everything though, and modding and customization, as well as all of the tools needed to make it happen, are going to be baked right into the client.

In MC2, the basic "unit" of the game is the building. Everything is going to be pretty much based on buildings, and their relationship to each other. This is basically how MC1 works as well, so this is nothing new. What is going to be knew is My Colony 2's build in Building Editor.

I am going to be creating MC2 using the games' bulit-in editor, and so the same editor I use to make the game is going to be available to all players.

Each building in the game is going to be stored as a building file, and the base game will ship with all of its standard building files, which will be loaded at runtime. This differs from MC1 where all building data is stored in a single JSON file that is shipped with the game, which cannot be easily edited.

A building file will contain three parts.

The first is the JSON formatted definition data, with information about the name of the building, what it does, what it generates, etc. All of the properties that a building can have will be stored in that data.

The second part is the model information, which will essentially be an embedded Voxel Paint file.

The third part is a small (maybe like 64x64 pixel) thumbnail or icon representing the building, which will show up on the construction sidebar and various places throughout the UI.

The three above parts are all packaged into a single file which can be added to the game client, posted online for easy sharing, or what have you. A dedicated server can include custom building files that will automatically be distributed to clients when they join the game. Each building file will have a unique UUID and version information, so if a client already has the same version of a building file that a server does, it will not need to re-transfer the data upon connection.

This system is actually a very powerful change over the original My Colony, and unlocks essentially limitless possibilities for the game. This also makes it a lot easier for the community to participate in development of the game. A creator who makes a great building idea can distribute it online where it is tested out and balanced by the community. If it works in practice and everyone likes it, the file can be included in the base game.

If you want to host a crazy dedicated server with a bunch of custom buildings that totally change the game, you can do so.

I have no idea what kind of buildings people will dream up, but including the content creation tools right into the base game will be huge, I hope. And I plan on making the process as easy as I possibly can, so that anybody can create a building. Using Voxel Paint, if you have an idea and the ability to build a house in Minecraft, you should be able to make it a reality. And being able to make something and then instantly import it into your game makes it simple to test out concepts and balance them right there on your own device.

It's possibly that nobody will care about modding or making buildings, but it still doesn't hurt to add the tools right into the game. If nothing else, it will still make it easier for me to create new content for updates, versus having to go through and edit JSON data manually.

However, it's also possible that everybody will be making custom content and the game takes off in crazy directions that we never even imagined!

It could even be possible to allow mod creators to somehow sell their mods in-game and get paid in real money, maybe through PayPal or something. That is a thought for another day though, and not a current actual plan.

Conclusion
These are my current thoughts on MC2 as of this day. Like I said, nothing is set in stone yet and everything is subject to change. I wanted to put everything out there so that the community knows what page I am on and where I am headed, and has time to stop me if I am about to drive over a cliff.

Remember that I am open to all feedback, so if you have ideas, please don't just be quite about it, or don't just complain about them in a Discord chat somewhere, because I probably will not see them. Part of being a game developer is getting hate e-mail on a regular basis on why my games suck, so believe me that your being critical of the above ideas will not hurt my feelings, and will be nothing new to me.

The whole purpose of doing all of this beforehand is to get real feedback from the community so that MC2 can go in a direction that we all like and we will all have fun playing. Once I start getting into the code, it gets harder and harder to make changes, so if there is something you don't like, now is the time to mention it. Think of all of the things I could not effectively implement in MC1 because they would require massive time-consuming changes to the entire engine. So getting ideas in right now is how we avoid that.

Like MC1, I'm trying to make something fun that I myself want to play, not a game that is going to just nickel and dime players with constant ads and IAPs so I can sit on a yacht somewhere. I think the new decentralized play model will allow the game to outlast the original. Basically, if I get in a wreck and die, the MC1 server will be forever down within a few weeks. With MC2, once players can make their own servers and create their own content right from within the game, what happens to me becomes more irrelevant, which is the way it should be.

Anyway, if you got this far, then thanks for reading my small novel. Please give some thoughts to where you want to see the game go, or discuss it with other players and really think about all of the concepts I laid out here. I want to start working on the game soon, maybe as early as mid-next month. I plan to start with the world-generating engine and the in-game building creation tools first, so people can start testing that out and seeing what it is like to make their own content.

So between now and then, if any of the above ideas are way off the mark, I need to know now. So think about it, let me know, and thanks for helping me create the follow-up to My Colony. I think it's going to be fun!

Today I am finishing up and releasing the v1.22.0 update to the original My Colony, which includes a whole bunch of under-the-hood changes and a bit of new content. So what are we looking at in this release? Let's find out!


In the previous release notes for MC1, I mentioned that I was thinking about offering limited time release "collectors" edition buildings that you could get with Ape Coins for those who were interested. In this update I am testing the system out to see how it works, with the trial of a Dev Solar Panel structure (which you can see in the image above, modeled after the MC2 solar panel somewhat).

Here is how the system is (supposed) to work, which will probably need ironed out over the coming updates, but is in active testing right now. From time to time, new limited edition buildings will be made available that you can get with Ape Coins. When there is a new building available, you will see a notice on the construction sidebar like this:


Clicking on the notification will bring up a window that shows all of the current limited edition structures that are available (currently, only the testing structure is there).


This structures are purchased with Ape Coins and are tied to your Ape Apps Account, meaning that you can use them on any city on your account, and you can build as many of them as you wish. You will notice that you are able to buy multiple "copies" of them as well. The reasoning is to facilitate either trade, or to allow you to gift them to your friends who may not be able to afford them.

To trade structures with other players, you can bring up their profile card by either clicking on one of their chat messages as usual, or selecting them from your Friends list in the statistics window. Once opened, you will see two new buttons in the corner.


The Coin button allows you to just gift Ape Coins to another player. This is generally so that you can help a friend/family member buy Premium or extra content themselves using Ape Coins. You could already donate Ape Coins to another player using the Ape Apps website, but this just makes it easier, and since people have asked for the feature, they obviously did not know that the option existed on the website anyway.

The Trade looking button allows you to offer one of your purchased buildings to another player. You first select one of your owned buildings, and you then select a price. You are able to select anything between Free and 500 Ape Coins. If you want to work out a deal for more than 500 Ape Coins or for something other than Ape Coins, you will have to facilitate it outside of the app, and that is up to you. Once the offer is made, it is sent to the other player who then has one week to either accept or reject it. If they accept, the ownership of the structure is transferred over to their account.

If you look at the image above, the little golden wrench in the corner of the solar panel icon is the Set/Series icon for the structure. Collectable structures will be grouped into different sets. I am going to be working on adding a Collectables section to the Encyclopedia that will show all of the sets, all of the buildings in them, and their rarity, or how many "copies" of each building are in existence, this way in the future, people who are collecting or trading them will have an idea of their relative value.

So that is what I have so far on the collectables system. This update is for testing and refining the system, and in mid-October I plan to start releasing the first "real" buildings and sets, starting with a Halloween themed set.

I want to note that the whole collectable buildings system is meant for people who are interested in collecting things and also just want to add some extra "flare" to their colonies, and also to help support the further development of the game. There will not be any OP type structures, or structures that give a big leg up in the game. This system is going to be more for fun.

Ok so moving past the collectables stuff, this update makes a change to Poverty and Wages. Before now, it really didn't matter if you paid your colonists or not, but now it does. Colonists living under the poverty line will contribute to your disapproval rating, as will colonists earning a wage that is far below your GDP per capita. To help work your numbers out, I have added a breakdown of the monthly income and poverty levels, since the colonist salary settings are set on a monthly basis.


Right now excessive poverty will cause the crime rate in your city to rise, further damaging work efficiency and approval rating. I was planning on also making the workers go on strike, but upon testing it ended up bring pretty brutal, so I will hold off on implementing that part of it, until people can get their workers wages normalized.

This update also brings a change to Charter Codes. Since there have been a lot of charter code collisions with new colonies, all new charter codes are now 10 characters long instead of 8. @Sobeirannovaocc I hope that does not cause problems for Coloniae or any of your other tools!

Moving on. I have also basically rewritten the entire layout for Desktop, Mobile and TV of the game. I have done testing on each platform, so I hope it's not messed up, but please let me know in this thread if the layout is jacked up anywhere so I can get it fixed. For those who do not know, My Colony is written in HTML/Javascript, and I have moved the HUD UI from using absolute positioned elements to using CSS grid, like My Colony 2 does. Again, I pretty much changed everything in the stylesheets, and I think it basically looks the same as it did before, but please let me know if I borked something!

Next up, buildings in the Construction sidebar are now sorted, instead of just being thrown in there in the order that they were added to the game. The sorting uses pretty much the same scheme that My Colony 2 does, putting roads at the top, and then sorting everything else by price. Whether or not you think this is better or worse I suppose will depend on the player.

Finally, let's get to the new content in this update! I have added a new tech called the Military Industrial Complex, which in turn unlocks a new Weapons Factory which produces a new resource of Weapons of Mass Destruction! Once you have some WMD's, you can create the new Octagon structure, a military HQ that sends Starships and WMD's out into space and brings back plunder. It should be noted that the Octagon was originally going to be the Hexagon which I think sounds cooler, but I tell you that I spent a whole afternoon trying to draw a decent looking Hexagon shaped building and I just couldn't make it look right, so here we are with an Octagon instead. Deal with it!

So anyway, that about covers it for this release. The new Starship and Military content I think will fit hand-in-hand with the content coming next update, a new Dark Matter tech tree with accompanying structures that is being created by @Electrogamer1943 that you can all expect in the next update. On top of that, you can look for the new Halloween content pack coming later next month!

As always, thanks for playing the game, let me know what issues you find, and stay tuned for more!

#mycolony

This is a little long winded I'm afraid, still I think it's worth considering.

So it seems to me that a problem with the game is how the bots keep slowing down the game. Now I know that there has been in fact quite a bit of improvement and bravo to the people making this game. In fact this change is far less sorely needed than it once was because of how much they've improved.
That said I made a lot of clay miners recently, before the .43 with it's new glitches, and it significantly slowed down the game. Now obviously this was an unwise choice on my part, but I think the game would be better if the choice of using vehicles as opposed to building for resource production didn't penalize the user.

To this end I think it would be good if there was a building upgraded from the chop shop that combined vehicles together. I'm thinking we'd call it robot reassembly. I'm thinking that on the actual bot there would be a counter, one for each type of robot, that would increment every time you clicked on the building with a bot, as in what already happens with the chop shop.
Ultimately the bots would be a particular resource that would be used in the production of a new bot. Practical upshot you can combine bots, and have all the power of a massive working force with far less slowdown.
I'm thinking there would simply be some preset levels of combination

I'm thinking that only two stats really would need to be changed. First for those that gather resources the max number of resources carried would be multiplied by the number of bots combined. The second would be a counter kept internally on each vehicle. Basic vehicles would have a count of one . More advanced vehicles would have a count of how many it took to make that vehicle. Ten builder bots used to make this one builder botX10 the counter will be at ten. This would be used for construction. So instead of getting the count of how many bots are building a building from the number of, I'm assuming your using objects, it would be based upon the internal number within that object.

I would suggest that the vehicles produced are in lots of 10, 50,100, and possibly even 1000 for those who really want to build things quickly. There should also for harvesters be one extra for however many it takes to completely use up say an ore mine in one go. so their harvesting capacity is equal to, or slightly exceeds the largest deposit it might use.

Obviously this is predicated that the reason vehicles slow down the game is ultimately because they all have to do path finding. As I perceive it making it so one vehicle is tracked, albeit with higher stats, as opposed to twenty will effectively nullify the slowdown that vehicles can still cause.

It is Not your phone I get the same issue on PC
When you have say 50 bots mining the game lags UNTILL you move out of view of the mines .
This trick is place the mines then move out of view and to speed up the agme even more zoom all the way down to ground lv and move to a place with blank tiles .

Same thing goes for Big builds and building mining at the same time .
Use this and you can have 100 bots mining 9-gold @ ore and 100 bots building more then one type of bot building at the same time .
But if you zoom out the game will lag its all the bots moving that cause the lagg and there is probly not much more that he can do about it . Limitations of Java Script and all .

The game was NOT designed to be a massive resource - building game just use ten bots of any type at a time it does not happen . But like you I push the game way way beyond the game engines limits .

quite Honstly I can do the same with many other games as well . My colony is not just a simple clicker .

It is DEFINTLY when storage is full and a bot trys to mine that causes ( Megas ( except one meaga bot does not frezz - alien bot and lumber bot do frezz I sold 1 k clay and bought 1 k clay each time the storage was not full the bots worked fine .
It does not effect the builder bot nore the advanced builder bot nore green bots .
have not tested teh construction bot .
It effects all bots above green bot i just built my very first turbo bot worked fine ( started teh clay miner mining and it froz stopped th clay miner it worked again .
FULL storage and MINING wile it is full is causing all bots above green bot to frezz .

Well congrads Bast you finly got me to buy the game .
Yea some of the prim buildings are nice and I sortive wanted them but not enough to pay for a bata game .
Yea Creative mode is neat But not enough to get me to pay .

((((( what finly got me to pay is the suped up CONSTRUCTION BOT !!!!)
I really want to build more of that new hall of congress and that bot really is a must have it took me 2 days ( would have been 1.5 if i had used 1200 bots to begin with lol 1200 bots lololol
anyway so How about adding a prim (((( ALIEN BOT ))))
The rest are ok they way they are and even though I have 300 of the alien bots and man can they build fast .
t would be nice only needing 50

So How about a suped up ALIEN bots for prim

Yes exactly it does two things one its something to be worked for being you need alien teck for star gate .
and yes both city's would need a gate OR revamp the lander once you HAVE the teck to be a lander - stargate . Lands then lets ship to be a star gate .With a new cooler looking ship like say using two crystal power plants for the sides the middle being open like a gate with a copit on top for the astronauts
and the power planet would work like normal as well so a new city that HAS the TEK starts with 50 k power and a stargate ship .
PS remember though a player would need the TCK first . NOT wanting things easer just easer moving bots
ether way by the time a player has the teck building gates in new city's can be first just enough bots to build one gate .
after all you will only need one gate and ether turbo bot or alien turbo bot builds them and it does not take more then five to build fast I usually build a gate alest untill transcendence or how ever its spelled lol .
anyway its really about being able to move bots to any city even ten city,s away thought
And the most use will be Turbo builders as research converter takes 500 turbo bots if your building 300 of them lol

As I mentioned in my dyson sphere idea, I know that bast is focusing on game quality, I just like to share ideas.

The bog, a treacherous planet, known mainly for the dense swampy climate covering most of it's surface, will give you a run for your money. Similar to the water world in the amount of land available to build on, the terrain consists mostly of bog water and swamp water. The swamp water is impassible and bridges can be built over it, but the bog water is dangerous for reasons we will discuss below. however, it yeilds a very lucrative bounty... oil! Not only are oil patches abundant on the surface of bog water, but the motherload of all oil can be found several hundred feet below bog water. I wonder how many poor creatures had to die to the bog to create this much oil! Sugarcanes also provide a ready source of sugar to all factions, and they can also grow on bog water.

The key challenges of this map are below:
- land is scarce
- colonists and bots can travel on bog water, but very slowly. They also sink into the bog slowly as they traverse it, and if they sink fully into the bog they instantly die or blow up, so be careful not to let your colonists wander, or you might find them at the bottom of the bog. There should be a standard of how many tiles can be traversed on bog water before certain death.
- there is a large chance of disease that comes with swampy and jungle-like areas. Be sure to build ample hospitals from the start as you will need them for sure.
- getting water is not a problem, but drinking it without dying from disease is another. When water bots try to collect water from a bog or swamp water tile, they end up collecting a new untradeable resource called defiled water. This defiled water needs to be purified before drinking, so you would need to implement a way to do that for this map. Eventually you'll get condensers or wet cones and you can forget about purifying your water.
-This planets atmosphere is twice the earthlike atmosphere, and that's what causes it to be a thick and swampy mess. Drain the atmosphere to earthlike levels and you will get rid of the disease and all that bog and swamp water. Basically, a bog planet should become a waterworld planet once it's atmosphere is drained down to earthlike levels, but don't let your industry drive the atmosphere back up, or you could end up with bog water once again, and don't reduce it too much either, or you might end up with a red planet landscape.
-Mines cannot be built on this map until the atmosphere is drained and the soil hardens enough to not collapse when deep holes are dug into it. This means that ore and gold need to be obtained from another source. Swamp rovers are equipped to pump and filter bog water for ore and gold particles, but this eventually turns the bog water permanently into swamp water, which is worthless and won't produce oil later on. The only way to get more bog water would be to reduce atmosphere to earthlike and then increase it again. When you get the ability to extract oil from bog water, you should be able to do so indefinitely, so eventually you will want to stop wasting your bog water in this manner and find another way to get ore and gold.

Luckily, swamps have trees, which can turned into ore the old fashion way. Once you get this method started you can continue. You won't be able to get a better source of gold though until you either progress to the point of making ore labs, or decrease the atmosphere to 9 million, where you can then dig gold mines. Be careful not to decrease the atmosphere to under 6 million or you'll lose your bog water entirely, unless you're main goal is terraforming that is.

To counter the initial gold situation, I have another research structure in mind that doesn't require it, but is made of ore and wood and consumes defiled water to produce research. The idea behind this structure is that it takes defiled water and studies the microbes contained within, producing research. This is just to make sure that players can progress through the game without being too bottlenecked or have to mine all of their bog water tiles to be able to progress.

Other than that, these are my ideas for The Bog. Hope yall enjoyed them.

I have a similar problem (there, I humour you Patch):
The problem, simply put, is that the pathfinding (which I believe runs in a seperate thread) simply doesn't work. Anytime I have more than around 20 bots (vehicles) of any one type, getting them to build anything is simply impossible - they remain stuck where they are.

Even when they aren't all stuck, many of them remain stuck where they are. I tried to manually move each bot, but even that doesn't work most of the times. As a result, I'm forced to have just 20 bots of every type, and that is really difficult to manage with.

I would go further as to add a suggestion - please virtualize the bots so that less than ten bots (of a type) need to really exist (and hence do pathfinding), and they will be able to account for all the bots of that type.

Details :
Exists since - 0.41.0 (I think, if not that then from whichever version put the pathfinding in a seperate thread) (it definitely wasn't there in 0.39.0), sorry for late report.
Platform - Chrome Web app, and HTML 5 Web app
OS - Windows 8.1
UPDATE - Chrome is Version 60.0.3112.113 (Official Build) (64-bit)
Also checked with Chrome Version 60.0.3112.113 (Official Build) (64-bit), doesn't work.
I have sufficient RAM, but my processor is an old AMD one that uses Clustered Multithreading.

Forest bot iggys using charoal hut as a drop point for harvest palms . seams to work at times others not /
works as normal for planted trees
.77 chrome just FYI
pss AT map start with palms forest bot will keep trying to harvest palms that are going sometimes . Moving ship solves issue .
Just build AL bots and have placed raw materials depots at each deposit the bots then preceded to go around to each one but harvests Nothing .
Parking bots right next to deposit then clicking harvest makes them mine the AL .
then once mined out Must be REparked next to another deposit then they will harvest once again .
so in order to mine game placed AL deposits you Must park bots next to each then repark harvesting each
UR deposits do the excact same thing only way to get bots to mine is parking them by hand next to each deposit then click harvest otherwise they iggy it .

@bastecklein the current system is ok, for me don't need to be reworkerd.

If you order:

bots order < factories (10 bots order in 50 factories)
or
1-2 x bots order <= factories ( 10-20 bots order in 10 factories)

you can have the situation described by @cry8wolf9, some factories with 2 order, other with 1, other with 3.

but, in other situation, when the bot order is huge compared to the factories number (at least 5 bot order for each building), the bot/factories are normalized. Yes.. some factories will end sooner, other will still have some order to do, but in any case, the current situation with the new window, permit to build tremendous bot number with no effort and in few minutes.

ps. it is not true that once the order is given, you cannot do anything. You can always delete all buildings by canceling the building of bots.

ok at 300 construction bots all building it i am using 110,000 coins a mint
apx 60 - 65 hour build time
so 2.5 days .
I am going to build 300 alien bots lol this is working .
But no way I am building 600 construction bots lol .
BTW the game could have never ran this many bots at once just a few updates back lol
300 of them lololol
wow my math is off 17 mints 3 million coins used so 9 million used a hour with 300 bots .
2.2 days left lol

well by destroying every bot that was frozen the game has started working again .
and i now when i build new bots they are moving and game resources counter now going .
Thing is NO bots were stuck as it started just as the mega bots were done building and on there way to park and i put in a sugar plant then the bots above all froze

Just throwing an idea out there and see if it sticks.

I often find myself building 50-200 of the same type of bot so i can build/develop faster, as i am sure many of you do as well.

All is fine and dandy, however i sometimes notice that when i have a very large number of bots working on something or heading towards something, the game tends to slow down a bit and lag because of the path mapping each bot has to do. That's a problem on a PC, i couldn't even imagine how crappy it has to be on a phone/tablet/tv.

Now here's the idea : what if we could merge the bots?

From 2 bots we merge into a brand new lvl 2 bot that inherits the properties of both.
So by this logic, if i had a lvl 100 drone and i would merge with another lvl 3 drone let's say, i would end up with one single lvl 103 drone that has the ability of 103 simple drones. Hope i'm making sense.. think of the merging of bots/workers as a lvl up system :)

Such a feature shouldn't be that hard to implement i think/ hope (only the overlord knows that) and it would definitely solve one of the most irritating issues that bast has been struggling with since the inception of the game.

Thoughts anyone?

I have compiled a list of QOL and Structural improvements to the game that (I believe) would be amazing to have. List is alternately colored for easier reading. Here we go:
When creating a structure, rovers will automatically prioritize building the structure over collecting resources.
Path finding for rovers will prioritize taking pavement over no pavement to their destination.
Optional flashing effects for rovers on their voxels(Could be used to signal authority, or to move colonists out of the way in the future) OPTIONAL
A realistic animation for the lander pad, such as a small space ship landing then departing after colonists are offloaded. Changing the "generation" speed of the building would also be essential to this. This would also open the door for custom building animations!
Why is water a utility but food is not? I suggest either changing water back into a resource or making food a utility too, for organizational sake.
Pavement places between two buildings sometimes doesn't build, and even when it does, it sometimes just vanishes into thin air. Would make an amazing party trick, but not a good game mechanic.
Individual selection for drop-off points for resource collecting rovers(Preferably some sort of selection on the map, maybe highlight possible places in green)
Voxels can be made into the -y axis, allowing for holes in the voxel models, and realistic depth.
Some sort of better construction animation, instead of the building emerging from the ground like the undead.
That about wraps it up! I made this while extremely sleep deprived and after a long day at work, so I'm sorry if i come off a bit demanding/dry, but these are only suggestions! Anyways, thanks for reading!

Hi again Bast .
Umm ok when mining say AL or Gold it can take going a far distance for the main base to find deposits .
The way I do it is Building straight roads until i find some . Thing is It can BE far far away from the base .
Now using the builder bot to run the road also miens I can Build a BOT factory ON SITE .
PROBLEM is clicking build a AL bot the game uses a RANDOM bot factory to build it so MANY are built AT THE base leaving being stuck with building 30 to get 10 on site .
Simple fix is once out of MINING range of base the BOT factory could ALSO be out of range leaving the One BUILT on the mining site the ONLY bot factory that builds BOTS at that location only .

Main base having 4 or 5 bot factories would still be ok for what ever one builds a bot . the thought being a out of MINING range A base bot factory will NOT build bots .

Hopefully i explained well enough so you get the idea .

PS for kicks and giggles I found a MY colony BUG in MY colony 2 . Ghost ships LOL a second ship or MORE in random places just floating around non clickable . Ps NOT important just funny .

PSSS some deposits DO not render so you can not see them . The reason I know this is bots will mine a empty looking spot . Really not a big deal either just FYI .

PSSS The game saves VERY very good my pc decided to update I had DONE NO manual saves and Kept all progress anyway .

anyway games progressing well may just have to buy my third Bast program . Thanks

I've been playing the new abandoned world for a while since the ether update and I've been looking forward to collecting and using ether as LIS. However, it appeared that there was no way to gather the new resource. Even upon updating my IOS game to 85, I still see no way to gather ether on My LIS colony except buying fro gbt, and the update doesn't include any indications that LIS were given this ability. Correct me if I'm just not advanced enough in my map to see it. I'm at the point where I'm almost ready to build basic dig sites. I have no industry in clay, wood, oil, obsidian, or uranium as of yet either.

Even if we could just gather ether to a basic warehouse temporarily via ether collector bots, I think that would be enough until a use for ether is fully fleshed out for LIS and Zolarg. Should be a very quick and easy addition since it would only require the addition of one bot and a little programming to turn the basic warehouse into a collection point for ether. If you wanted ether to be gathered a bit later in the game, you could just require that a brick or alien warehouse be built in order to have a collection point for ether.

Again, not trying to be complacent here, I was just really looking forward to this feature and was kind of let down.

Luker124 said:
Bot Repair Station A high tech way to practically duplicate you bots, using ancient alien technology and advances in quantum computing.

Why? we don't need 10 building for make bots, just 2.

Luker124 said:
Tritanium Reactor An extreme feat in engineering involving a drop of lava, a block of Tritaniam, and 2 city blocks have led us to this amazingly powerful core generator!

Seems reasonable. But the power supple need to be balanced. Having just 1-2 reactor is not.. very funny.

Luker124 said:
Nuclear Waste Recycler Impliments 1 resource into the game, nuclear waste, generated from anything that uses uranium in its use. Recycles 60% of that uranium for reuse.

In real world we can't recycles uranium, because after the "break" is not uranium anymore, but other little atoms. And we have already a building for increase. Uranium can be enriched again, but the building is already in game.

Luker124 said:
Advanced Coal generator uses several ingredients on the cosmic table that will make you question its usefulness, but trust me, it gets the job done.

The game in any stage don't need a large Coal quantitative. Humans, only they unlock all tech, are ok.

Luker124 said:
Advanced Underground Housing Module. Uses many base materials to keep residents happy and provide healthcare, schooling, and housing. Holds 250k people.

For keep residents happy, you need to place the houses close to the job, essentially. A 250k single unit.. it's just big no. No way be correctly implemented.

Luker124 said:
Water Vaperizor Uses (Insert resourse here) and vaporizes water to create unholy amounts of Atmosphere

Human already have unholy way to create Atmosphere, the problem is to balance the in/out, specially in region maps.

Luker124 said:
Advanced Ore Mine Uses extreme tech to create an ultra deep 4×2 hole that 100s of miners work at all day(for people that dont have charcoal converters).

Why you ask for something similar to structure already present in game? Different map have different approach.

Luker124 said:
Extere Tree Cutter allows for extremely fast wood collecting, while staying environmentally friendly by using trash as a fertilizer.

This..

In human race, until we build a massive quantitative of converter, wood is a problem (like bricks, or pottery), because we only have old school building, with low production. Specially when we start to build many converter or ship structure.

Luker124 said: yeah but for giant colonys they dont have tons of space and have to have thousands of workers. Maybe raise the cap to 250k?

Because we have already a clean and nice solution, Region Map. I know.. when we play and build pieces after pieces, day after day, month after month a single colony.. start a new colony in region map can be.. hard, like a betrayal. But Region Map are the answer to pretty much all your points.

Even now, the biggest house can be only use in few building, well, 3. Bank, advanced robot factory, maybe with converter.

Ansom said:

Luker124 said:
Bot Repair Station A high tech way to practically duplicate you bots, using ancient alien technology and advances in quantum computing.

Why? we don't need 10 building for make bots, just 2.

Luker124 said:
Tritanium Reactor An extreme feat in engineering involving a drop of lava, a block of Tritaniam, and 2 city blocks have led us to this amazingly powerful core generator!

Seems reasonable. But the power supple need to be balanced. Having just 1-2 reactor is not.. very funny.

Luker124 said:
Nuclear Waste Recycler Impliments 1 resource into the game, nuclear waste, generated from anything that uses uranium in its use. Recycles 60% of that uranium for reuse.

In real world we can't recycles uranium, because after the "break" is not uranium anymore, but other little atoms. And we have already a building for increase. Uranium can be enriched again, but the building is already in game.

Luker124 said:
Advanced Coal generator uses several ingredients on the cosmic table that will make you question its usefulness, but trust me, it gets the job done.

The game in any stage don't need a large Coal quantitative. Humans, only they unlock all tech, are ok.

Luker124 said:
Advanced Underground Housing Module. Uses many base materials to keep residents happy and provide healthcare, schooling, and housing. Holds 250k people.

For keep residents happy, you need to place the houses close to the job, essentially. A 250k single unit.. it's just big no. No way be correctly implemented.

Luker124 said:
Water Vaperizor Uses (Insert resourse here) and vaporizes water to create unholy amounts of Atmosphere

Human already have unholy way to create Atmosphere, the problem is to balance the in/out, specially in region maps.

Luker124 said:
Advanced Ore Mine Uses extreme tech to create an ultra deep 4×2 hole that 100s of miners work at all day(for people that dont have charcoal converters).

Why you ask for something similar to structure already present in game? Different map have different approach.

Luker124 said:
Extere Tree Cutter allows for extremely fast wood collecting, while staying environmentally friendly by using trash as a fertilizer.

This..

In human race, until we build a massive quantitative of converter, wood is a problem (like bricks, or pottery), because we only have old school building, with low production. Specially when we start to build many converter or ship structure.

Luker124 said: yeah but for giant colonys they dont have tons of space and have to have thousands of workers. Maybe raise the cap to 250k?

Because we have already a clean and nice solution, Region Map. I know.. when we play and build pieces after pieces, day after day, month after month a single colony.. start a new colony in region map can be.. hard, like a betrayal. But Region Map are the answer to pretty much all your points.

Even now, the biggest house can be only use in few building, well, 3. Bank, advanced robot factory, maybe with converter.

Alrighty fun police, maybe I'll dial some of it back BUT THIS IS ALPHA THINKING
I am litterly just saying the stuff that comes from my mouth. By brain has no say in this yet. So give me maybe 3-6 days, and I'll get back to you with a "reasonable" idea.

Ya. That is true. On the other hand it might make sense to make the pathfinding go from resource point to resource points until full to handle the issue that some resources were intended to be handled by a swarm, like trees. The trees are so small per resource you need a swarm because instead of going from tree to tree collecting until they only pick up one tree then they are done. At present it doesn't even make sense. The rover will keep collecting without dropping off resources until full. If the trip to the drop off point was eliminated until after the rover was totally full the resource gathering potential of the swarm would be concentrated in these gatherers with no overhead to pathfinding. As it is you still need a slightly smaller swarm to benefit from something like tree gathering.

chashock said:I'm seeing similar things as well. Win 10 Pro, desktop client. Happened a little bit under .41, now takes about 5 minutes and it starts happening under .43.1.

I've got a gold farm and a clay farm with 10 or so bots working mines and after a little while they just start running around in a circle not actually harvesting. If I exit to the desktop it generally works again for some time and then wigs out.

On a FireFox colony I'm not seeing it, but it's tiny compared to my main colony and the bots have to go pretty far to collect the resources on that map, so it may have something to do with size of the map or density of the bots maybe?

How many bots do you have on your big colony? Tons?