Indefinitely Postponed

Hello once again!

We've been receiving great amounts of registration over the past few months. It's wonderful to see so much interest in The Far Reaches of Space!
Working on this game can be rough at times, but is really one of the most liberating feelings for us developers and programmers, unfortunately, for the time, these people are being tied down by other projects. Although our interest in the production and development of the game is still keen, time and resources do not permit us to continue the beta period. This means we will be temporarily closing our hosting server and registration until life and work permits us to continue.
You, the users, have provided us with excellent and vital feedback over the beta period so far, and we hope you will continue when we can once again develop and operate The Far Reaches!

~PingPirate

Long Time, No Update.

Hello everybody, this is Ping from the Far Reaches development team.

Lately things may have seemed slow around here. We can assure you though, we have not forgotten about all of our players!

Here at Far Reaches, we've been undergoing some staff changes, which is one of the lead causes of our delay. All is back in order now, and we are ready to move forward!

Speaking of moving forward, we've been brainstorming some major improvements for the game that we plan to be adding in the coming months that will make the gameplay easier, more fun, and, in some cases, just plain cool!

As a repercussion to these new features, we are planning a universal reset. Current imbalances in the game have set certain players too high in the rungs to make things even. This reset will also allow us to add the improvements. Players from the previous universe will have loyalty bonuses at first login. The date of the reset is TBA, projected sometime in the next couple of months. We will do our best to keep you posted on this event.

One of the many features to be added to the next update is an entirely new interface. This will enhance the look and feel of the game as well as provide a more slick, easy, and informative display!

Keep on playing!
-PingPirate

INVASION!

update 1.4.3 Brings about the culmination of many features we've been working on for quite some time!

Even though the changes from the Dev Team have few and far between, they are substantial!

The Short List of Changes:

Military units are in. your Planets can now train troops

Custom Ship Designs. Have changed. You can now pick the appearance of your custom design, from designs available for that size of ship.

A Big Bang is coming.

There’s plenty of small changes, bug fixes, and improvements in this version, and it’s all possible because of you, the players of Far Reaches. Thanks for all your input, and keep the reports coming!

Now. For The Details:

In the last update, we enabled the construction of military units for a planet, we now enabled you to load them up and cargo, and drop them off on a planet.

What if the planet is not yours?

Invasion. Combat.. somebody wins, somebody looses.

Key Points to remember?

Strength of an invading force is calculated by the following means:
Attacking:
Number of Troops * Tech Level of Troops X* 10;

Defending:
Number of Troops * Tech Level of Troops X* 15;

Defending troops receive a bonus for the home field advantage.

A percentage of a planets population will fight to defend the planet as a militia. They are scored basically the same as troops, without the 15 multiplier.

You can attack with population as an ad hoc militia. If the population comes from a planet you own, they act as militia as their native planet’s tech level. If you pick them up from a planet you do not own, they fight as tech level 4.
To attack a planet, load up troops, and go the planet. With the troop transport selected, right click the planet. One of the choices is “Invade”

Planetary Combat is not instantaneous! Although the effects of launching an invasion are immediate, the battle may rage for minutes, hours. .or even a day.

You (and your opponents) can land more troops on the planet at any time, provided of course the ship is not attacked and destroyed by opposing ships

More then one Faction may be present, and combating on a planet simultaneously.

In communications, you will receive regular updates on the progress of the battle. When it ends, you will be informed.. win or loose.

IN OTHER NEWS

The planetary appearance bug has been fixed. One of the planet textures was corrupted on the server

Ship and system Generated messages are back in the comms menu

Ship Movement, has been adjusted to reflect some important changes in combat, along with missle flight times.

Missile flight time has been significantly shortened.

Ships. Now accelerate at a much slower rate, and then jump to light speed. Jump times vary dependent upon the tech level of the engine.

Besides having an effect on some other fundamentals of the game, this combat scheme moves the ships up close and personal when they duke it out.

Select your own skin for custom ships!
Once your planet has a shipyard, you can design your own ships, within the tech limit of the planet. Each size/class of ship has multiple appearances.. you can pick the one that best suits your tastes!


THE BIG BANG IS COMING

In July we will Reset the Universe. The Current layout has been used to test and refine game play, ship types, and new features . With most of that work complete, we will be adding new features such as missions, trade zones, factions, and most importantly location specific bonuses. To accomplish this, its will be necessary to reset the universe, and player assets.

Tired of the same old ship?

It's been a long time coming: in game custom ship designs!
Although this feature has been sitting around a while, we waited until we had planets, and facility creatioin in, and working..
So, think that Deocron Harvester is a bit sluggish? design a new one with ramped up engines! Want more scanner range out of a corvette? put in the best scanner your planet can build!
How it works:
if you own a planet, you can access the custom ship design window from the ship construction tab of planet management.
From there, start with one of the designs your planet can build, what your planet can build, is limited by the tech level of it's ship yard.
Swap out components as you see fit, then save the design
if you save it to the default folder, it will automatically appear in the ship construction window, when you close the editor.
if you save it elsewhere (or, trade files with someone) you can always open the file, in the editor, or in construction.
Plenty more features coming soon!

Introducing... Fleet Command!

This is an update that many of our more serious players have been asking about for some time: Control of Fleets.

Fleet control is dovetailed into the existing intercept command in instructions. Although intercepting/following is a great way to go for having a bunch of ships moving around, following the leader, it's limiting, especially if you dont want your command ship (freigher or harvester going first)

How Does it work?
A fleet designation occurs any time your instructions are set for on ship to follow/intercept the other in instructions. the interceptor is a fleet member, the intercepted, the commander.
you can access fleet controls from the hotkey "G" or in ship instruction, or the ship list windows.
For the fleet as a whole, you can preset items like how they move to the location, their stance, and what they do under special circumstances. Although many items are in and working, you'll notice some blanks we left for ideas in the works.

For each fleet member you can tell them to follow along (as they've always done) or set their position, relative to the commnader, and their commanders heading. these are express in the good old pilot terms relaticve to a clock dial, with each tick on the clock equaling roughly 30 degrees.

if you set the a fleet member to 12 oclock in the horizontal and vertical.. they will be in FRONT of the command ship. 6 and 6 oclock, trail behind.
there's also a few new icons, to represent all of thes ships.. check out the help section/icons for a complete description

Now for the real fun. you can break your fleet into chunks. by adding commanders to an existing fleet! It's the easiest way. sub divide large fleets. your ships will even have seperate icons.

Fleet comander

Fleet Member

Fleet commander, and member of another fleet




IN OTHER NEWS
the occasional sideways flying ship has been corrected! thanks for your help in debugging this one, and the others coming along.

YOUR INPUT
is what keeps FRS ,moving along. and moving forward growing into the game you want.. How can you contribute?Ship ModelsShip DesignsVideos, great screen caps, and how to's.
We offering rewards for any and all that contribute these items.. so send an email if you're interested.
thanks, for all your help!
Dan aka Sideovs

Own your own Planet!

After many, many long testing and debug sessions, planet ownership is in!

The help files will be updated shortly with full tutorial on planet ownership, but for now, here is a summary of what, and how.

First, and foremost: colonizing a planet is not CHEAP! And them pesky little colonists require a lot of support before they are able to get off the ground. Not enough food, water, and medical support? They rebel, leave the planet or die from starvation!

In the planet list, locate an uninhabited planet, capable of supporting life. The more natural resources it has, the better, the full sweep is a planet that has Water, Agriculture, Organics, and Metals.

The planet cannot be in the central cluster, you must find one out on the fringes.
Using the planet list again, set the search to planets capable of trade, and the farthest right columns will tell you the status of it’s population: how many wish to leave (refugees) and how many a populated planet can/will accept. Not enough of the basics to sustain life? They look for a new home. Booming economy on a planet? It needs more people to man its economic engine, and sends out a call for more.

You are not paid, nor do you have to pay for loading up refugees, colonists. Same goes for dropping them off.

So, now that you’ve loaded up on colonists, take them to the uninhabited planet. With the ship containing colonists selected, and in orbit, right click on the planet, and choose “drop off colonists”. Your cargo holds of crammed in, in stasis, colonists are now to free to roam the planet, make it on their own, and most likely die of starvation, that is unless you help out…..

After you drop off colonists, the planet management window appears. You can always access this window by right clicking on the planet, or from the manage planet button in the planets list. Your planets will appear green in the list.

Your colony is tech level 4, barely capable of trade, incapable of building ships, and can only build the most basic facilities.

Until the colony is self-supporting, you must drop off supplies for them, if the planet has water available, they can use the supply with no problems. Food, and medical supplies must be imported.

For them to buy things from traders that visit them, and build facilities, the planet must have credits. The planet keeps a separate account from yours. For them to build anything, or buy anything, they must have credits. On the first tab of the window, is the transfer credits tab. be sure to give them plenty of operating capital!
In order to build facilities on the planet, the colonists must have organic compounds and metals. You’ll need to drop these off in large quantities, to meet the demands of the population, and build new facilities.'

Under planet management, there is a facilities tab. This is where you build facilities. Select one to build, and build away, notice that these take time!
You’ll also notice a few other tabs, ship construction and Population Management. When you planet reaches tech level 5, one of the things you can build is a shipyard, capable of building your own ships.. Eventually, you may also have to assign populations to tasks, if there is not enough to go around.

Basic thumbnails rules:

You cannot colonize a central cluster planet

The planet must have a habitable atmosphere (for now)

Planets cannot attack ships, and ships, cannot attack planets. You will (eventually) be able to land military units on the planet, and take over a planet.

Until the population can build facilities to produce food, and medical supplies, they will die off, unless you supply them.

Planets need credits to build things. Unless you give them credits, they cannot build anything.

Transfer credits from you to the planet from the planet management window.

When your ships drop off goods from you, your ship is not paid. Likewise, when your planet starts producing, and you wish to sell off the surplus, it’s free for the pickup!

Other Changes for this update:

Many minor issues and bugs have been addressed. Thanks for all your help and input!

Planets can no longer repair ships of any tech level. The ship must be at or below the tech level of the planet in order to make repairs.

Future changes
Building and repairing ships: Owned planets building ships, still needs just a touch of work, if you progress to this point (a few days at least!) Before the ship is complete, you may have to repair it. Repairs, for all but a Deocron 50 will take time, ship construction still needs a bit of a change, and should be out in a few days.

Stations are going to get an overhaul they will not be able to build ships, but repair them. Along with that, you can order them to claim/repair ships they find abandoned. Other ships, when damaged, will have an additional setting: “go somewhere (a planet or a station) for repair.

Colonizing ships

Colony in a box, suitable for planets of a given class, without atmosphere. Bio dome, and basic facilities will be included in the ship. They’re one shot, that is, you deploy them on a planet, and they convert to the facilities.

Military units.

This, was omitted from this update to give everyone a feel for planet ownership before attacking each other, but the gist is this: planets will be able to train and convert the general population into troops, with military training facilities. These Military units defend the planet, retain law and order, and more importantly can be loaded up on troop transports to do a number on someone else’s planet! In time of needs, colonists will form militia units capable of assisting in a planet’s defense.

Law, Order, Rebellion, and overthrow.

If you’re planet’s population is starving, and, the military is not present. . They will rebel, production will suffer, and credits belonging to the planet will disappear as corruption takes over. Eventually, you may loose control of the planet.

There’s more, much more in the works, but that’s the features that will be showing up next in The Far Reaches of Space….

Dan

aka Sideovs

The real world gets smoked by a beam weapon!

Here in the Midwest of the US, we had some rather torrential storms move thru, and they also seemed to hit the Northeast pretty Hard too.

on April 11th, at about 10:30 EDT (-5GMT) , The utility company supplying power to the farm where our server is housed, was hit repeatedly by lightning. although this did not knock their grid out, it has caused a series of brownouts from malfunctioning equipment. Bownouts, even with backup and alternate powersystems, are much worse on these systems then going completely black!

I've been in constant contact with the server farm, and the situation is this:

The data and internet servers are back up, but, while the utititly company gets the rest of their stuff back to 100%, we may have more brownouts, reduced bandwidth, etc.

So, you're patience is appreciated!