Chosen Space – Probably not your best choice

Before I start and not sure if there’s a disclaimer on this site. The views expressed here are purely my own and don’t necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the owner of this site.

It’s been a long time since I’ve posted on this game, and given my glowing review from when I first started, it saddens me to give such a critical review. This has been prompted by growing discord with decisions made by the developer and his following blindly suggestions made by some members of it’s community, whose sole interest is to change game mechanics to suit their own agenda.

So let’s start with what has happened since I first started playing. I had settled into the role of trader and eventually ran for planetary leader of the one of 84 planets available as a choice. Won’t go much into the details of how you win an election, as this post is more a rant. There was a bug with starbases in the game, which allowed you to store unlimited amounts of items. Person and faction I was running against was using this exploit to in effect win the elections. Sad thing is, the developer took several months to fix the bug, and that was almost the end of CS for me, as I didn’t see any other viable career for me in the game.

Now, there was always some conflict in the game, and an opening appeared in the special operations branch of the faction. All hush hush at what was actually done, but I joined that group and was given several warships to complete tasks we were assigned to do. In peacetime, we’d track and kill targets that were a nuisance to the faction and in war time, we’d gather Intel and provide support for our militia. Our faction was primarily an economic based faction, but when war broke out that activity would cease and everyone was called to arms. Our tasks usually involved finding targets, knocking out shields or knocking ships out of docks for others to kill. Game mechanics were heavily in favor of the attacker, and at that time, if you were running a script to run an operation called scrubbing ions, you were pretty much guaranteed to get away. The developer eventually made a good change there and got rid of that, replacing with something more realistic based on the output of your ship, with trails from larger output ships lasting longer.

After a few wars, more changes were made among them a multi-faction feature. It was more a hindrance than a feature which allowed you to switch factions at will and attack under the flag of an alternate faction. That went on for some time and during that time, game was leaking players like a sieve with more leaving than joining. It was also becoming apparent that resources and items owned by players was piling up. This is just my opinion, but under the guise of game being hacked, the developer decided to wipe out everyones resources stored in their starbases. Unless you had already assembled your ores and resources into ship parts and had them stored in your dry dock or shipyard, all was lost. No ships are physical assets were lost, as the developer claimed that was backed up and that all the hacker managed to do was delete contents of the storage bases. How convenient!

Ships have always been expensive to make and buy in the game, given that you need to vote to acquire the points or donate real life money, severely unbalancing things for the casual gamer, or someone who can’t afford to donate. Several changes were made on how points were earned. One such change was to no longer give out points in the several games that were being run by the developer and to give them out just in the hub account which was linked to all the games being run. That effectively forced people to chose just one game, and pretty much killing off most of the less popular games. Now I had mentioned earlier some good changes were made regarding combat. Unfortunately it came at a price added to cost of ships. New devices were introduced called externals to make ships more expensive, but also easier to get away. Changes were also made to the game mechanics of beacons, the way a faction knows ships of other members are being attacked. Now operations outside of planetary systems only had beacons sent out to ships in the actual area of operation. And the already unfavorable advantage to attacker gets tipped even more in their favor.

Now back to the community and some player’s self serving interests in suggestions under the guise of game improvements. Eventually the multi-faction feature got removed. Well that’s what the developer says… It really just go renamed to ambassadorship, where you can be ambassador to another faction. Here lies the stupidity of the whole system. There is a limit on how many factions you can join as ambassador, but an entire faction can become ambassador in another faction. Now wait, being ambassador to a faction comes with features, I’d sooner call exploits. As ambassador to a faction, you’re granted free passage through that factions minefields. So you’re free to attack anyone you wish with full diplomatic immunity and should they follow you through any such minefield. Now even worst, and I won’t mention factions here. Minefields were present for over a year, without anyone bringing up that there may be a problem with size of fields built. A new war breaks out, and a faction that hasn’t yet used minefields decides they should look into them as a defensive option and once deployed, it now becomes an issue that minefields are over powered and for the good of the game!

It was a great game while it lasted, but it’s just not fun to play any longer! I’d suggest if you play one of the developer’s other dying games, specifically Interstellar War or Galactic Fleets, you Google “The Lacuna Expanse” and give that a shot. Unfortunately if Chosen Space is what you’re into, the recommended game will unlikely interest you.

ELF – Eternal Lifetime Feud?

The ban has now reached the 600 day mark…

It’s quite admirable that Dragelet has stuck to his principles, and continues to deny me access to the only remaining SST server, yet still refuses to divulge the reason for the ban.

But that is where my admiration now ends… I now consider his server an abomination to the memories I had of SST.

SST began as a BBS text game, but you have destroyed it’s heritage by disabling this method of play… and your reason why? It’s the source of all things evil… bots, scripts, clients? Or is it because those were the tools that you used to rape and pillage the original SST game, and you’re worried someone may use your own tactics against your server?

I’ve been wondering why Ray shutdown his server and has been unavailable to explain why… I’m beginning to suspect that he was embarrassed that he didn’t do anything to prevent you from ruining the game.

So to wrap it up, if you’re a real die hard SST fan, treasure your memories of SST as there no longer exists any game servers that continues the true spirit of the game, and that the creator of the game would be proud of.

Updates

Yes, the site does look different… I’m going to try out a few different themes until I find one that I like…

Most themes leave a signature at the bottom of the page, if you see one you like leave a comment… if you hate it leave a comment…

I may or may not take your comments into consideration 😛

Cheers,
Kry

End of an era

That’s it, the IOResort server is no longer responding as of 15:00 AEST (+10:00).

I grabbed a copy of the rankings about 4 hours ago, which I’ll post later today. If anyone has a newer version let me know.

Farewell TLF & TLR! It’s been a blast!

On a related note, Space Tryant has also disappeared.

TLR-20080622-13W Rankings

That’s it for another round (and potentially the last full round ever)…

The newcomers in LOD put up one hell of a struggle this round and made sure that RDC had to work hard for this win!

The next round has started, the doors are still apparently open, so everyone should get online now! If we’re playing, Ray may feel guilty about pulling the pin. 😛

______Player_Name_______ ____Title+Level____Gang  Rank Pack __Score__ _Region_
BESTARK                  +Czar+             [RDC]   1  CFp  422065143  Siarnaq
KRAZY                    +Czar+             [RDC]   2  Fpa  418999283     Rhea
GUMBY                    +Czar+             [RDC]   3  CFp  391783792  Siarnaq
STARFURY                 +Czar+             [RDC]   4  CFp  381281498  Siarnaq
TRESCA                   Self-fueled Only!  [LOD]   5  CFp  379478828   Bianca
SINCRO                   Gatekeeper         [LOD]   6  CFp  371805920   Bianca
FASHAD                   +Czar+             [LOD]   7  CFp  371599763   Bianca
TIERCE                   Imperial Guardsman [LOD]   8  CFp  367473397   Bianca
POKEY                    +Czar+             [RDC]   9  CFp  365430356  Siarnaq
KRANKY                   +Czar+             [RDC]  10  JFp  357858754     Rhea

______________Gang_Name________________  Abbrev.  Rank   Score (1000s)
Resort Development Cooperative            [RDC]      1       2860864
Lords of Devastation                      [LOD]      2       2045958
United Earth Federation                   [UEF]      3        146602

Omnious announcement!

The following announcement has appeared on the web login pages on both TLR & TLF


This game is going down soon!

(The entire server is going offline shortly)


I don’t have any other details yet…

TLR-20080323-13W Rankings

Another round has ended, and I’ve just realised this is my first post for 2008!!

RDC took out all the top spots (again)

An honourable mention for LOD for their first round as well!

______Player_Name_______ ____Title+Level____Gang  Rank Pack __Score__ _Region_
POKEY                    +Czar+             [RDC]   1  CFp  424039515    Dione
BESTARK                  +Czar+             [RDC]   2  CFp  423097654    Dione
KRAZY                    +Czar+             [RDC]   3  JFp  379412632  Calypso
GUMBY                    +Czar+             [RDC]   4  CFp  363560733    Dione
STARFURY                 Voyager+2          [RDC]   5  CFp  344780143    Dione
KREEPY                   +Czar+             [RDC]   6  JFp  342641347  Calypso
KRAFTY                   +Czar+             [RDC]   7  JFp  341713959  Calypso
KRANKY                   +Czar+             [RDC]   8  JFp  312517676  Calypso
FASHAD                   +Overlord+         [LOD]   9  CFp  255026236  Ophelia
SINCRO                   +Czar+             [LOD]  10  CFp  245484050  Ophelia

______________Gang_Name________________  Abbrev.  Rank   Score (1000s)
Resort Development Cooperative            [RDC]      1       3012679
Lords of Devastation                      [LOD]      2       1159319
Resort Farmers Inc.                       [RFI]      3        487139
When Darkness Falls                       [WDF]      4        216432

TLR-20071223-13W Rankings

That’s the end of another round. RDC dominated the rankings again, but only due to some players falling victim to real life…

______Player_Name_______ ____Title+Level____Gang  Rank Pack __Score__ _Region_
GUMBY                    +Czar+             [RDC]   1  CFp  390428238   Europa
BESTARK                  +Czar+             [RDC]   2  CFp  382151043   Europa
POKEY                    +Czar+             [RDC]   3  JFp  367285753   Europa
KRAZY                    +Czar+             [RDC]   4  JFp  344524623    Dione
KRAFTY                   +Czar+             [RDC]   5  JFp  322626438    Dione
KREEPY                   +Czar+             [RDC]   6  JFp  320546921    Dione
KRANKY                   +Czar+             [RDC]   7  JFp  316760675    Dione
STARFURY                 +Czar+             [RDC]   8  CFp  313520898   Europa
SOLDIER                  ~Buffalo~          [SAS]   9  HBa  182348726  480001s
TRINITY                  Tycoon+1           [---]  10  JFp   86946680   Tethys

______________Gang_Name________________  Abbrev.  Rank   Score (1000s)
Resort Development Cooperative            [RDC]      1       2757840
Saints And Soldiers                       [SAS]      2        182348
Hell's Satans                             [666]      3        114898

Tactic #1: Know your game server(s)!

Here’s the first post in a (hopefully) ongoing series of hints and tips…

What do you do if the game server doesn’t appear to be working? You try to browse to IOResort.com and your web browser times out or gives you some type of error message.

Unless the server has completely died or the hosting ISP has gone out of business, there’s a good chance it’s only a minor problem with DNS or a rogue process on the server.

That’s where this handy table comes into play… it’s got all the info that a player needs to access the games directly! 😀

Game Server IP Address Http Telnet Client
TLR ioresort.com 69.55.229.31 80 23 666
TLF ioresort.com 69.55.229.31 1880 1823 1866
ST ioresort.com 69.55.229.31 N/A 9999 N/A
ELF starshiptraders.net 207.191.194.245 1080 23 N/A

 

Note: The problem this past weekend on ioresort.com only affected the TLR game… TLF & ST were still up and running, you just needed to remember what ports they use!
Note: I’m unable to confirm the ELF information as I still seem to be banned/blocked… 😛

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