Re: Is It Just Me Or....
 

I prefer long drawn out games that foster a great deal of RPG and give time for the player to expand his empire into a true military force. It is far more rewarding IMHO.

Re: Is It Just Me Or....
 

Pst Atrocities, I guess I cannot interest you in a Devnull game by turn 100 or so? You will have a nice Empire based on external income, the asset of the Talisman, and the most impressive intelligence powerhouse around. This Empire is doing well, with the usual amount of Stellar Manipulation, and a huge focus on remote-mining. Just thought I would point it for you, as such games seem to quite fit your tastes.

Erh, this shameless plug aside... *Glowers at Fyron*

Re: Is It Just Me Or....
 

I myself find PBW a little slow, I know playing solo goes a lot faster and the PBW game I am in is only <110 turns at this time and we have been playing for a few months, this is what I have a hard time with when you forget just what the heck you were planing when the time between turns is a few days/weeks http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/Injured.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/fear.gif

Re: Is It Just Me Or....
 

I'm also cutting down the amount of games I'm playing. I'll have to do my military service after the turn of the year so it's not reasonable to start new games now (I don't like to drop out of games).

Re: Is It Just Me Or....
 

Sorry, I am on a PBW diet at the moment. I play when I have time otherwise my Ministers handle the turn. I even have a game going with Intimidator that I don't have time to play.

Re: Is It Just Me Or....
 

Your answer brings another question Atrocities: who is NOT cranking down on SEIV play? It looks like quite a fashionable trend of late, and replacing players are rarer than a peace-loving tree-hugging Klingon.

Re: Is It Just Me Or....
 

I wonder if there is a way for Geo to determine if there are fewer PBW games than there used to be, say, a year or two ago.

Re: Is It Just Me Or....
 

We are all preparing for the release of SE5... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Re: Is It Just Me Or....
 

A couple other factors:

Fyrons Quadrant Mod. I love this mod and it's used in a lot of PBW games so I assume many of us love it. The problem is, it doubles (or more?) the number of planets and thereby doubles the ships, units, resources etc. but most especiallly micro-management. I find I can handle only half the games I could handle 2 years ago; the turns take twice as long!

High resource asteroids. These make remote miners etc. very profitable. Even better, when you have enough stellar manip. you can build your own planets, build a space yard then monoliths and before you know it you can't build ships fast enough to spend it all. In the end, once again you have more ships, more resources and more micro-management... and fewer games ongoing.

Yes I'm a little burned out myself, but I am looking forward to starting a small scale game when things calm down. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Re: Is It Just Me Or....
 

The server doesn't keep track, but I'd say there are definetly fewer games running now. As far as Users, for the first couple years we were pretty steady at about 350 Users a day and around 500 Users a week. Those have dropped now to about 275 a day and 400 a week. Still busy, but measurably less so.

Finding replacement players has always been tough though, even at our height. Most people just don't like taking over for other people.