Shores of Hazeron Attempt v2: Electric Universe Restart - Games

[url=http://hazeron.com/]Shores of Hazeron[/url] is a space-empire MMO that Facepunch briefly played (and whose thread has apparently vanished). Apparently, there is going to be a new universe starting on the 31st of December. I think this is a prime time to build up a lasting FP presence. The problem, however, are the need for people. I'm not particulary good with finding people and any attempt I made would probably be inefficient. I think we need at least 10 people at first to build our empire up. Then, we'll need as many people as possible to fly ships, colonize planets, and destroy our enemies. [quote=Durandir's article/database entry] Overview Shores of Hazeron is a free space empire MMO which is still in the pre-alpha stage. You begin either as the humble leader of your own future empire, with nothing but a knife, or you join an existing empire. There are no quests, no missions and only one NPC you can actually talk to. That NPC is your guide in the start of the game, teaching you how to move and pick up items. He has mostly been made to show what the "story editor" can do eventually, which means players can make own missions with talking and moving NPCs. In many ways it can be similar to the idea behind Spore. The game has everything you want in a space game. There are countless of solar systems in the galaxy, and finding systems without planets are rare. Every planet and every moon can be landed on and colonized, save for the dangerous Gas Giant. There are Binary Systems and Ringworlds, and there are even rumors of (and images of actually) of Binary Ringworlds. Flow of the game The game has several stages so to speak, but it plays out differently if you make an empire or join one. Making a new Empire Note: The tutorial for the game, found [url=http://shoresofhazeron.com/manualf.html]here[/url], is a must the first time you play it. Creating your race: When you make a new empire, you have to choose how your race looks like. The editor for this is not as robust as the Creature Editor in Spore, but you can make a lot of weird creatures. You have basic skin choices, like wet scales, dry scales, skin, feathers etc. Different heads can be chosen, number of arms, legs, height of spine etc. Most parts can also be customized further, making it possible to create something unique. A lot of players go with something distinctly humanoid, while others create crazy beings with four legs, wings and horns. All of the wildlife in the game seem to be randomized, so you are usually killed by creatures only a horror writer could conjur up. You of course name your character and the empire. You also have to pick a flag for your empire. This is not done with a list, but with an upload screen. That's right, you have to draw, or at least find an image for your flag. Once you are done with this you are put on a random planet in a random un-colonized system. Start phase: In the beginning you learn how to move, where the different menus are, how to interact with the environment etc. Once you got it down, you make a flag and find a nice spot to build your first city. In this game you actually build each individual building and roads. So finding a good spot with a lot of resources is important for the first city. When you place the flag you have to name your city. This is where you can do a huge mistake. Naming the first city in a new system also sets that name as the system name. If the sector haven't been named yet, it is also called what you name your city. So naming your cities should always be done careful. If not, there will besectors, systems and cities called "FurFag". Building cities: Cities are fun to build, but also a bit tedious. When you are alone, without any NPC or player citizens, you have to manually fetch materials and build each building. Fetching is easy, as you only need to press one button. Building the building is also just pressing a button, but you have to press it several times. Once the city starts to fill up with people, they can build instead. The same procedure is done when producing things, ranging from electricity to plastic clothing. Every process like this can be "locked" so that no NPC citizens can do them. Every process in the game has requirements. To make metal armor you need metal. To make metal, you first have to mine some ore. To mine ore, you of course need a mine placed on an ore deposit, which thankfully never runs out. Most processes also need specific tools to be done, like hammers, shovels, wrenches etc. There are heaps of buildings, and a lot of different things to do with each of them, making the city-building aspect of the game really good. But eventually you want to go out to the stars. First space trip: The first trip into space will be in a rocket, because the primary material you need to build spaceships can only be found on moons and other cold planets. Once you got that material you can build gravity drives, which means you can build spaceships. But first you need to get to a moon and build a mining colony. This needs planning. A lot of it. But when you actually succeed in going into space... it is a great feeling. Building a moon colony is pretty much the same as building a normal city, except one thing: You need more materials to build everything. Since there is no air in such places, everything must be built into a pressurized box. For that you need metal, plastic and electronic components. So you should never think of going to space without those things. You will also have to either import air, or make it yourself on the moon with water. So you can see, this is not an easy game, as it is pretty complex. Once you got your first mines going on the moon, you can design your first spaceship. Designing: Designing things in SoH is not the same as in Spore. In Spore you have more freedom in making the shell of the ship, effectively making it possible to make whatever you want. In SoH you can make the shell however you like, but you cannot make anything rounded. But, you also design the interior of the ship, from the placements of different rooms to the placement of equipment and ship consoles. This is because you can actually walk around in your ship whenever you want. This also goes for space stations. Space travel: Once you got a functioning spaceship, you are officially ready to take on the galaxy! Almost at least. In order to really play the game, you need to upgrade your Tech Level. You start with TL1, but you can go as high as TL32. A few things are locked until you reach a specific TL, like Transporter Pads for your ships (TL7). In order to reach higher TLs you need money in your cities. For your cities to make money you need taxes. And in order to collect taxes you have to declare a capitol and make your empire official. Once you do that you can either invite other players, or set your "immigration policy" to open. If you are the leader of the empire, you can control every aspect of it, but it also depends on the style of government. A Dictatorship is easier to manage, while you can be overthrown in a Democratic Empire. Once you reach this stage, the game becomes all about exploring, reaching higher TL to build bigger and better ships, colonize more worlds to get resources you need, trade with other players or go to war. The galaxy is a big place, and there is plenty to do. Complexity of Spaceships Spaceships are of course a big part of the game, and the developers have done everything they can to make it fun to fly them. As it is now there are several ways to fly spaceships. Solo: It can be done to fly a ship solo. It is not an easy feat to get from system to system, but you can still do it. The captains chair has the ability to open all the other consoles on the ship, making it a perfect place to sit if you want to fly it yourself. With an NPC crew: This is the most used way to fly a spaceship. With a crew all you need to do is to give orders. This can easily be done when you are on the ship, but if you are not on it yourself you need to have an officer on board to receive and execute the orders. With a player crew: Yes. If you have enough friends, and you have an easy means to communicate (voice chat is mandatory when doing this I think) you can actually recreate the bridge of The Enterprise. You can man the captains chair, order the Nav Officer to set course for Yavin IV. After plotting the course, the Helmsman can set the power to 50% while the Engineering Crewmember fine tunes the engines. The Sensor Officer can scan everything nearby, and the Gunner can keep the weapons on standby, ready to fire. Every console in the ship can be interacted with in some way, even the Transporter pads. Facepunch Empire This is the empire to join if you want to play with fellow Facepunchers. Spanning several systems and sectors, we still have some way to go to become a really good empire. Off to a rocky start, with too much expansion instead of cultivating what we have, we have now started to pick up speed. How to Join When creating a character, just select "Facepunch Empire" in the empire dropdown. This should create a character for you. Positions in the Empire Supreme Emperor: Master Bob Prime Minister: ARock Viceroy (Sector Adminstrator) for Luaville: Trogdorius Viceroy for Long Shot: Marigi Other positions are world and city adminstrators. It's easy to become one yourself; just bum a ride on a ship (or buy one), find an unihabited planet, then build a town square. You will automatically be assigned as a world administrator, and can build up your city however you like. Please don't do any research off the capital, though; it's inefficent, since all money is sent to the capital. Note: Please read the manual throughly. It is really irritating for someone asking a simple question that could be answered through the manual. [/quote] I'm getting some pictures for here, so it'll look better.

I could join up. Remember to centralize research on home planet, research is limited to the city it was researched on. (Obvious exceptions being lumenite/eludium research on respective colonies. Give me a moon, and we will have shitton of lumenite and/or eludium in no time.

Is it still laggy as fuck?

Yeah, last time I played it, it lagged so much that I almost got ripped apart by one side of me finding the game absolutely epic and the other cringing at all the bugs and lag. [editline]23rd December 2010[/editline] Otherwise though, id gladly give it another go.

I'll only be able to check here a few times a day for about a week but I'll try to help organize. So first question, anyone else want to be Dictator?

I tried it for an hour before, but could not understand it, even with the tutorials. I might give it another go...

I'll join in if I can figure out how to play the game

I will join if I am second in command. I am very experienced in empire building, as I have created 3 previous empires of which 2 have achieved TL 15 and the other one was just to learn the game, and it still got pretty up and running.

I guess I'll join in. I may or may not be a regular depending on the lag and how this computer runs it.

OK, so I'll probably be able to start the empire and get to work on the 31st, but if I'm not, I'll ask someone else.

I know it's still laggy but is it generally less laggy?

I'll join and yes it is slightly less laggy than the next leading brand

It ultimately depends if the game is still as unstable as it was a few months ago. I'm not going through that again.

It's not nearly as unstable now. :v they've fixed all the major server asplosions.

the only thing I managed to figure out in this game is how to jack spaceships and motorcycles [editline]26th December 2010[/editline] and then get ripped apart by the atmosphere when trying to escape

I'll join, I suppose.

I'd join, except this computer can't run it and i don't think i can get another one.

Gonna miss my home system with 3 habitable planets.

I'll join when it gets wiped. The mass amount of planets and shit people found made it laggy, the wipe should clear ALL lag.

Should've waited to actually make this thread upon restart.

Would not mind helping to run an empire. I was dictator of the empire "Klondike". We reached atleast TL 20 before the lag threw me off the game...you might also remember us as the empire who took over Facepunchia at one point.

[QUOTE=Frankiscool!;26991447]Would not mind helping to run an empire. I was dictator of the empire "Klondike". We reached atleast TL 20 before the lag threw me off the game...you might also remember us as the empire who took over Facepunchia at one point.[/QUOTE] Me and my buddy recently let our Empire die since we heard of the restart, we were at TL32.

[QUOTE=Fables;26991472]Me and my buddy recently let our Empire die since we heard of the restart, we were at TL32.[/QUOTE] I quit months ago, I'm certain my empire kept growing in TL every day since i quit, before it crumbled.

I think we should've organized differently than what we did with Arceon, we died right after our leaders got bored.

I was thinking we should build a shitload of really cheap jump-capable cargo ships and spread like a cancer across the local area, and then give the person with the largest, most productive city command of their sector. That way there are tons of small, semi-autonomous groups instead of one that could be crippled by the dictator's inactivity.

Rapid expansionism leads to hostility and collapse.

[QUOTE=MrBob1337;26991809]I was thinking we should build a shitload of really cheap jump-capable cargo ships and spread like a cancer across the local area, and then give the person with the largest, most productive city command of their sector. That way there are tons of small, semi-autonomous groups instead of one that could be crippled by the dictator's inactivity.[/QUOTE] I think we should all create separate empires and form a alliance across them all, trading technology and possibly sharing systems and resources, as well defending each other from other empires.

OK that sounds like it could work a little better. The only problem is that there will probably be several dozen one-man empires instead of the 6 or 7 heavily manned empires you are probably thinking of.

[QUOTE=MrBob1337;26992303]OK that sounds like it could work a little better. The only problem is that there will probably be several dozen one-man empires instead of the 6 or 7 heavily manned empires you are probably thinking of.[/QUOTE] All you need is a 2 manned empire and you'll do fine.

As long as we don't use the method that all of the shitty empires use for colonization: huge rewards for finding habitable planets and discovering wormhole routes, and no emphasis on developing existing planets. We need to do what the better empires do, and build up our planets and systems before moving on. The bare minimum of manufacturing food and fuel for bigger ships from the capital or some super-developed shipyard system is not good enough.