Thank to everyone who paticipated in this 11th testing session!

Before the report itself, here is a few things of importance:

• The next session (#12) will take place from May 17 to 19, starting at 12:00 GMT.
• We're still very much interested in your impressions and suggestions. Please write them on the forum!
• Artofgaming published a 6-page interview of Grouroux** (in French) about GoS and the origins of the game. If you read French, there is a lot to learn there!
• Cpinpon added GoS to the idea box of the French website JVC. Anyone can vote there once per day, and if we reach the top of the box, we might get very interesting press coverage on this very big website!

At last, we want to thank all English-speaking participants in last session. For the first time, we had as many English speakers as French speakers, which is very encouraging the us! Thank you to all for playing together, independently of all language barriers!

DJ Erhune on the Floor.

The game client was published a little bit in advance, and the servers opened just on time. We had a small nasty bug in the beginning (keyboard shortcuts still active when you were typing in the chat) but it was quickly fixed by a facultative patch. Aside from that, no blocking issue was found during these 48 hours.

Fingers crossed for keeping this stability for the next sessions!

A version jammed with new features.

The biggest new feature of this version was of course enemy attacks on colonized systems. Every 4 to 48 hours, each player-colonized system could be attacked by enemy gates from which came hords of hostile ships ready to reclaim their lost systems. To stop them, only one solution: destroy the gates as fast as possible!

The first attacks were quite fun, but soon we realized that in its current state, this system was becoming boring quite fast. Having come to this realization, we decided to show a bit of compassion to the players that couldn't get enough sleep, and deactivated the feature on Synday to avoid useless frustration.

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Thanks to the new page on the website listing all the items and sectors for sale in the universe, the trading between players started to take some form. Let's hope this is only the beginning, and that Gangs of Space economy will soon flourish!

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Behind the scenes, we also changed how random item characteristics were computed. Before that, drops and items from the medal shop didn't obey to the same rules as the items researched by players. They could actually be much better sometimes, which is something we didn't want. We want the research to be THE long-term way to get the best items in the game.

So now, with all items obeying the same rules, drops are on average a bit worse than they were before. We still have to see if this will work or not, but what we have now is a good step before we can do more work on the research system.

Gangs, Gangs, Gangs...

Because of the enemy attacks, the Gangs that controlled the most territory were pretty busy defending it. On the other hand, the smaller Gangs could use the opportunity to expand without having to compete too much with the bigger ones. That's why the top of the Gang ladder didn't move much, but much of the action happened on the middle and bottom parts.

Clementine Space Industries (5,620u²) stay the incontested Administrators of Quadrant Alpha. Even though they were on the frontlines of enemy attacks, they managed to expand their already huge territory by 120u² without losing too much existing structures.

Supremacy kept a lower profile and kept their #2 position (2,666u²), but thanatonautes in 3rd position (2,066u²) are getting close to them and might break it in the next session!

TMG didn't come back in activity, and kept 1,322u², even though they would have fallen much further if we didn't disabled the attacks on Sunday.

From there, lots of things happened:

• Les Gentlemen are now #5 (1,039u²), breaking through Lazuli and Ascendance with whom they were in competition in last session.
• They are followed by 2 new Gangs: Les Enfants D'Illuvatar in #6, commanded by BSK who streamed a 36h marathon of the game. He managed to gather around him a very nice and efficient team.
• They are followed by BitGang in #7 (566u²), the first English-only Gang to enter the ladder. They were very active during the whole session!
• Then Lazuli gain a position in #8 (452u²) and beat the 2 oldest Gangs in the ladder...
• LesLutinsPsychopathes and BiereChausetteCorp are now very close to leave the ladder, being #9 and #10 respectively (434u² and 398u²). If they don't react, their presence will only be known in History books!

If you want tons of info and details on the Gangs of Space Gangs and universe, we invite you to have a look at one of the finest websites that use the GoS API. GoS Watcher, created by Zaltais, is a huge mine of data just waiting for you!

What we made out of it

Not good

• Enemy attacks (not yet there...)
• Access to Nitrogen is too complex
• Grouroux' accent when he's speaking English

Good

• The universe looks much nicer when systems are renamed by their governors!
• Trading is starting to take shape
• English speakers continuing to play despite Grouroux' accent ^_^

Session stats

Harvest

63,160 Medals (++)

• 31,216 for contracts (++)
• 14,904 for pacifications (++)
• 17,040 for killboard (++)

Losses

• 498 ships lost forever (+++)
• 11,051 items destroyed on board (+++)

Conquest of the Universe

• 250 sectors conquered by players (+)
• 183 sectors reconquered by enemies (+++)
• 1.002 sectors “pacified” (++)
• 7 sectors sold (+)

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Extermination

• 139,158 Asteroid S0
• 74,102 Pirnat Scout
• 67,299 Pirnat Wasp
• 46,640 Pirnat Scout MkII
• 43,891 Pirnat Spike
• 36,350 Pirnat Miner
• 29,819 Vermillon Hermios
• 22,573 Pirnat Hunter
• 14,654 Pirnat Pickelhaube
• 10,358 Pirnat Drake
• 10,067 Pirnat Miner MkII
• 9,518 Pirnat Hunter MkII
• 8,767 Vermillon Melenos
• 6,890 Vermillon Berthos Evo
• 5,397 Vermillon Berthos
• 4,173 Asteroid S1
• 3,099 Vermillon Melenos Evo
• 2,818 Pirnat Hunter X2
• 1,503 Pirnat Lobstor
• 1,275 Asteroid S2
• 1,045 Vermillon Merros
• 347 Asteroid S3
• 82 Asteroid S4
• 48 Enemy Portal
• 30 Pirnat Mega Blade
• 14 Pirnat Giga Blade

Which makes:

• 1,641 enemies per player (++)

At least, the top 10 medal wins for our fallen comrades:

• 3,236 elfaus
• 1,246 Sangoo35
• 1,120 JiuZhongBaXian
• 951 willouu
• 900 Khilas
• 475 zarnes
• 473 Skorpiox
• 453 Eniotan
• 410 Ethinn
• 409 Kakos

In our crystal ball...

For the next version, we will try to add in the game:

• The new UI for ships
• Ship skills
• The first pre-order gift ship: Gemeter Fox

And we'll also try to make a "Road Map" somewhere to explain what we have in mind in the longer run for Gangs of Space.

Thank you for reading so far, and see you next Saturday for the 12th Alpha Test Session!

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