Planet Baen: Web Game for free eBooks

[Freeshadow]

Just be happy we don't have a "Ringo's lonely hero" whack: "A frustrated male shooting loner lands on your planet. While he shoots every local predator down, he also shoots his own loads into every female colonist he can get hold on.

Food and Population blast. "

[plib]

Originally Posted by Freeshadow

Food and Population blast. "

What about Bliss?

[kaleissin]

I'm back to energy-positive, surging a level 20 Cryocomb whenever I have 500K Energy extra. The big system gifts sure make a difference!

[Freeshadow]

Originally Posted by plib

What about Bliss?

huge blissloss
said hero is far to frustrated sexually to make it a blissfull experience for the female colonists.

@kaleissin:
yo're right - I just hope I'll manage it to 25 before reset on 15th

[colleenFL]

I've made it to level 23 so far and I'm going to try to make it to 25 before the reset.

The last free book I chose was The Monster Hunters by Larry Correia. I really enjoyed it. Lots of werewolves, vampires and violence.

[Freeshadow]

BOTK made it. Past Level 25
Gratulations I hope I'll manage it too.

[Ginwen]

I'm not exactly worrying about energy anymore. Since I thought 25 was out of the question, I took on a whole bunch of population (from about half a million to over 5 million) which put me in a huge energy deficit, but I usually get enough big bliss gifts to cover the loss, which gets me about 125,000 a round, so got 24 yesterday, and hopefully 25 tomorrow. 30 is probably a bit out of reach (but maybe I'll take on a few million more population after I get to 25 and see how it goes). The bad thing about playing this way is if I don't play for a round (like late at night), or if I don't get enough Bliss, I only get 25-50k instead of the 125.

[Freeshadow]

Gonna try that maybe

[koland]

Originally Posted by Freeshadow

BOTK made it. Past Level 25
Gratulations I hope I'll manage it too.

Thanks!

I've also hit 33 allies, both in my main freehold and the one I took over for a family member that lost interest (the freehold now known as Archer).

I'm racing to hit 30 before the reset (and Archer is actually ahead of BOTK, for the moment).

[DHNightshadow]

I think, I get to 25 today. But I msut say, it is not fun anymore.

I'll hope with the reset, we get the fun to the game back. This big gifts give the fun away and it is not nice to play anymore.

[colleenFL]

I made it to level 25 and 29 allies. Looking forward to the reset.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by DHNightshadow

I think, I get to 25 today. But I msut say, it is not fun anymore.

I'll hope with the reset, we get the fun to the game back. This big gifts give the fun away and it is not nice to play anymore.

The big gifts cover for a design flaw: at the higher levels, surges aren't enough to keep up with population, and there's nothing else to do but increase pop to increase money to increase levels. The game *desperately* needs social aspects--a twitter-ish feed for alliance members, or that marketplace, or something else to distract from the push to go up levels.

(Also it needs to fix the problems when pop & penalties get too high, but that's a coding issue, not a design issue.)

I think the pop-scaled gifts shouldn't kick in until level 7 or 8, maybe not 10--after the projects are all done. Among other things, it's really annoying to get pop-scaled gifts that are smaller than the standard system gifts.

I'm gonna try to get to level 25 by the reboot; less sure of getting to 29 allies. For that, I'm switching from the energy-based strategy (keep everything green, let natural pop growth put energy red, spend a couple of cycles getting back to green; use super-gifts for food & milit as necessary) to the bliss-based strategy where it's just expected to stay red, surge pop & get super-bliss gifts to cover.

Those seem to be the only long-term strategies, and the bliss-based on is definitely better for quick advancement.

Elf the Sock, holding at level 10, just picked up 25 allies; next is catching up on energy & seeing if I can get ahead on that, then seeing how quickly I can get to level 15. I want to know how scrambled everything gets if you jump two levels in a cycle. (I mean, after the first five.)

[DHNightshadow]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

Elf the Sock, holding at level 10, just picked up 25 allies; next is catching up on energy & seeing if I can get ahead on that, then seeing how quickly I can get to level 15. I want to know how scrambled everything gets if you jump two levels in a cycle. (I mean, after the first five.)

Do you need anything fot Elf the Sock?
Population, Military, Food, Bliss?

[mewmartigan]

What happens at the reboot? Do the free books stop?
I just hit level 15, I have 3 free "freehold" books and 2 free books from alliances.

If I got 5 free books for playing the beta and then it all ends, I am fine with that. Just another reason to love Baen!

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by DHNightshadow

Do you need anything fot Elf the Sock?
Population, Military, Food, Bliss?

At this point, Elf the Sock needs bucks, but I'm not sure anyone else can help with that. (And energy. Always energy. But again... not at a level that non-scaled gifts can help with.) I leveled from 10 to 13 in one cycle (wheeee!) and ran myself broke trying to upgrade my thorium reactors. Oops.

I'm swamped with military and food, and since leveling, I have almost amillion bliss for my 200k population. I hope all my surge points will carry over so I can get energy back.

Baen Bucks: 5,016
Baen Bliss: 879,929
Population: 218,248
Food: 274,550
Energy: 2,298,050
Military: 174,892
Surge Pts Left this Cycle: 182/65
Total Bucks per Cycle: 2,908,834
from Assets: 71,610
from Pop.: 2,837,224
Political Adj to Asset Bucks: -45%
Bliss - Base Need: 655,681
Low-Bliss Cost: 0
Energy - Base Need: -539,174
Low-Energy Bliss Cost: -19%
Food - Base Need: 56,302
Low Food Bliss Pct Penalty: 0%
Famine Population Loss: 0

As you can see, my $$ problem will go away at the next cycle, and it's back to catching up with energy.