Fixed some bugs tonight, and updated the Game Guide (with some help from Kalvan, who's earned himself a shiny new ribbon on his game profile).  Among other things, working shore batteries.

I also bumped up the effect of clinics to 10% growth each, and schools to 7.5% tax increase each.

Merry Christmas, guys.

No changes quite so massive this time.  My weekend of relative free time has ended, so I'm back to fitting my fixes around my shifts at work.  Did make a couple changes this morning that might interest you guys.

• Resource raiding is now in
• jacked the refinery output back up to 100 per update, and massively jacked a ships oil use. Right now it's a quarter of the ships crew per supply, but this is a temporary value that I'll be changing depending on how things go.
• expect some changes to how supply ships work in the future.  Nothing massively nerfy, just some tweaks to make them more interesting/realistic.

So aside from some bugfixes and a couple secondary traits/buildings, the new economic systems are pretty much in.  A big surprise change is that I wound up clearing out all the extra unclaimed islands, and getting rid of the colonization thing.  From here on out, new islands will only be available from the store and from the unclaimed islands area.  Islands will occasionally spawn in there, randomly a couple times a day.  But other then that the new island supplies will pretty much be static.  This is intentional to increase the demand for land space here in the game.  As a side effect to this, I've removed the 3 islands limit on a players ability to take islands from the unclaimed section.

Just finished updating the economy page to give you guys an idea of what you're looking at in the long term.  I'm about to start adding resource costs to things, and will be changing over the hourchange code in a bit.  I've also decided to jack the food production of farms to 200, so that farms and houses can support population on a 1:1 basis.

Additionally, I'm temporarily scrapping the harbours thing until I can put some proper thought into making it work well.

OK folks, I've got semi-finalized details of everything for your viewing pleasure.  Bear in mind that all numbers are subject to change pending response/testing.

The Buildings plan.  Each building will also soon have a lumber cost on top of it's money cost.

• Farms:  Will produce 100 food per update
• Silos: Provides long term storage for 10000 food, unstored food will rot and dissappear
• Houses: Provides housing for 200 citizens
• Apartments: Provides housing for 500 citizens
• Shipyards: Builds ships
• Docks: Resupplies ships
• Schools: Increases island tax income by 2%
• Clinics: Increases island pop growth by 2%
• Laboratories: Allows for tech research
• Barracks: Provides garrison of 500 troops
• Gun Battery: prevents up to 1000 enemy troops from landing
• Police Stations reduces corruption
• Lumber Mill:  Will produce 100 lumber per update
• Oil Refinery:  Will produce 100 oil per update
• Smelter:  Will produce 100 steel per update

The Traits plan.  an island will have from 1 to 4 traits, and multiples of the same trait will stack for added bonus (2x becomes 3x, 3x becomes 4x)

• Shallow Harbour:  Limits ships attacking/defending island to 4000 tons
• Medium Harbour:  Limits ships attacking/defending island to 15000 tons
• Deep Harbour:  No limit on ship size
• Iron Ore:  doubles local steel production
• Oil Deposits:  doubles local oil production
• Iron Ore:  doubles local steel production
• Wild Game:  doubles local food production
• Forests:  doubles local lumber production
• Natural Cliffs:  doubles effectiveness of Gun Batteries
• Rare Minerals:  increases local tax rates by 25%
• Ancient Caves:  increases local lab effectiveness rates by 25%
• Local Legends:  increases local police stationeffectiveness rates by 25%
• Natural Reefs:  prevents operation of subs in/around the island

Summary:
-fleet/population sizes for everyone will be reduced across the board, down to something a little more realistic and a lot less involving of ship spam.
-relative scarcity of resources, combined with market functionality, will create a viable economy system, with solid choices of alternate income then taxes. (selling excess resources from islands kitted for it)
-the trait generation script will be modified and rerun so that each capital island is guaranteed a deep harbour and at least 1 other trait
-population food consumption per update is still up in the air, but I'm thinking either 1 food / 1 person or 1 food / 2 people.  If anyone has some good mathamancy on why this should be different, let me know
-ship's steel costs also in the air, but balparkable around 10% of monetary cost
-conversion of pop support from farms to farms/houses will hopefully take place tomorrow evening
-effectiveness of police stations/etc against pop might be lowered a touch due to presence of Local Legends trait. this is still very much in the air
-did I mention that the stupid spamming for large numbers of ships will go away?

Any questions?

Also, resource buildings now actually generate resources.

The framework for the new stuff went in.  There are new buildings and resources and island traits that all ought to be self explanatory.  So far it's all just been front end coded, but you can expect code on the back end to come into play after I get off work tomorrow...though you can actually start building all those new buildings now, if you so choose.  Expect numbers to be changed, and resource costs to be added to all kinds of stuff. 

Islands can get up to 3 traits...and of the very many islands in the game, there are exactly 158 that have a full set of 3.  (I reserve the right to alter the odds of islands having traits, and regenerate the traits at any time between now and sunday night)

If anyone has any complaints/suggestions they want to get in before I start coding the rest of it, get them posted before I get home from work tomorrow.

The long range weather forecast for the Christmas break is for significant changes to the game's balance mechanics.  Keep your economic belts nice and loose, just in case I decide to start editing the economic stuff on top of everything else.

Update:  Possible became probable.  Emphasis on the looseness.

Over the past few days, I've gone back and worked on the user interfaces on many of the game's different pages. Some of you may have noticed the new logo (which features the silhouette of the Alaska-class cruiser, drawn by me ), as well as numerous improvements to the Tech, Econ, Fleet and Shipyard pages. Rest assured that I'm doing my level best to get every page improved to the point where it will no longer make blood shoot out of my eyes to look at it. I'm working with watchwood to make some more "simulation"-type upgrades, such as island descriptions, more accurate tech descriptions, and (later on) weather effects. I'm also planning to reincorporate linearts into the game at some point. They'll probably come from Shipbucket, my other site.

Some of the changes involved a stylesheet update, so make sure to manually refresh your page at least once (hit the Refresh button or F5 on the keyboard).

To the best of my knowledge, I haven't broken anything yet. But please let us know if you encounter any problems with forms, dropdown boxes and the like. Thanks for your continued support.

Made a couple changes today that might appeal to you guys.

• Found what appears to be a solid fix to the IE Fleets bug.  If it still gives anyone trouble, send me a message with some details.
• Caught up on the ship pics backlog
• Made building queue construction into a standard feature
• Battleships will now destroy the occasional (non-wonder) building
• Added some fixes into wonders and attack limits
• Added some code so that if any single player ever captures and holds all 7 wonders for a week, said player will win the game.

OK, I haven't actually done that last one yet...but I will be soon, and will at least be tracking it cause that's how anyone who's interested can actually beat the game from here on out.  (Offer doesn't apply to anyone from Sparta.  I've seen that alliance's bank account balance  :p )

Should be entertaining.  As always, you guys know what to do with your complaints.