(1) In what way will Galaxy Throne balance the power of individual players and alliances.
(2) How difficult will it be for players to form alliances.
(3) What are the benefits and drawbacks of forming an alliance.
(4) How will alliances be able to coordinate their activities.
(5) How can individual players be able to defend themselves against larger alliances,and what role will diplomacy play in the game.
Hello there, thanks for your questions!
Alrighty, lets start with (1):
Thats a tough one, and one that we have worked on significantly. We currently have several combat mechanics in place to even the playing field, where large fleets dont scale as well as specialized smaller fleets in certain combat scenarios.
Another one is a small governance malus on innate planet defenses / production the larger your empire grows ( who wants to work hard if you are on planet #49, Moon 7 of the empire? 
).
We are also working on a NPC Faction that would balance things out, but havent quite finished the design phase of this yet.
This would actually make a good medium post writeup with more detail, which I will link in here later.
Regarding (2), its seamless. Alliances should be easy to build, and bit harder to leave. Currently the only requirement is owning a spaceport to create one. To leave it, there is a minimum cooldown of 3 days before you can rejoin ( to prevent turncoats).
About (3/4), the benefits are logistical and social in nature. You could move your ships to your alliance members planets to launch quicker raids. You could hoard your resources on a different planet than your own if you are getting focussed. Protecting one another with assistance, gifting resources, all of that is possible with Alliances. Our gitbook page about alliances is due for a refresh, thanks for pointing that out!
About (5), Diplomacy will have its own wiki-page & medium blog post, since its a bit more in-depth.
To condense it a bit, the diplomacy feature enables players to create binding contracts for resources and military with one another. You could demand resources from a player while offering peace for a month in exchange, or agree to a ceasefire for a week. Its supposed to give the gameplay another layer of strategy, and therefore requires a bit more explanation.
I hope that answered your questions a but, we are also still working on updating our documentation as we implement those features right now. Cheers!
Asset Trading has certain innate balancing mechanics, specifically the logistical side of it.
Say you bought a million tokens and are now able to pick it up from a Trade-Hub planet, you still have to transport the resources back to your home planet! That takes a ton a cargo ships, but thats not the largest issue.
Now once those resources arrive at your planet, you could use them to craft whatever you want indeed with time, but at the same time you painted a huge target on your planetā¦ and those resources might not stay yours to enjoy.
We are still working on balancing that aspect, but looking at it from other games, its less about resource distribution and more about the monopolization of resource generation, so we will tread carefully in limiting the decentralization of those resources.
Thanks for replying, noticed almost took a month to get one. Makes me to wonder, how does the team value community engagements and prioritizes user feedback?
Fair point! Our team currently only consists of Developers(like myself) and UI/UX Design, so we usually schedule everyone to work on community management when our schedules permit. Given that we are in between open test rounds and in the midst of wrapping up major features, this kind of got neglected, sorry about that!
Community feedback is pretty much what drives our game rounds. We come up with ideas, introduce them out in the game, and based on the actual player feedback we balance / add new mechanics / remove mechanics. Once our community grows, weād like to more actively poll for new features as well.
We are also actively recruiting a community manager for our team before the beta, so things like these dont go unanswered so long.
Thanks for the clarification, do yāall have vacancies for the community manager slot out or the spot has been filled already?
Greetings @Lukret ! Your project seems to be missing details on:
HackerEarth Project Link:
Smart Contract Links:
Please add them to your project. Thank you!
DMād, will respond there
Glad to have you back in S5 @Lukret
I had a question and was hoping you could shed light on the foundational mechanics that empower players to securely form alliances, trade resources, and partake in diplomatic interactions on the blockchain?
Iām particularly interested in understanding the method/solutions employed to ensure the security of these in-game interactions.
Hi @EMerchant,
Thanks, Great to be back for S5!
Good question!
At the heart of our gameās diplomatic and alliance mechanics is our smart contract on-chain, providing transparency and security. When players engage in alliances or diplomatic interactions, theyāre solidified on-chain, ensuring unbreakable commitments once agreements are made.
Alliances on Blockchain: All alliance functions are also fully on-chain. This ensures that alliance actions like resource trading & sharing, defense pacts and even providing shelter for ships are secured and verifiable by all involved parties, and these agreements are binding and immutable.
Diplomacy on Blockchain: Diplomatic negotiations, once agreed upon, are also encoded on-chain. This means that once a deal is struck, it becomes unbreakable until its specified duration. The blockchainās immutable nature assures players that the terms of their agreements will be honored without any alterations.
So, both alliance formations and diplomatic interactions are not only transparent but also tamper-proof, thanks to the foundational mechanics of the blockchain. Since all game-logic is executed on-chain, this principle applies to all game mechanics.
We also made the choice to keep diplomatic negotiations unbreakable for now (unless we come up with a good trade-off for more player freedom), and breaking alliance structures a cumbersome process with time-delays and forced ship evacuations
Cheers
Everything about this idea, the information, and the designs is fantastic. Youāve developed into an authority in this area. Weāre hoping you can reach new heights. One of the most ambitious projects in the Builder category is the one you have built. Best wishes.
@Lukret Who will be managing the supply of TRC721 like Ships, Planets ? and what will be the process of buying/minting new items ?
Seeing you have participated in the hackathon a few times . Where can we test the game ?
Hello there!
Good question, nobody would be the answer. We set up a hard-cap on planets, and thats pretty much all we do, since the rest are dynamic items.
Every new player who signs up gets one planet NFT, which enables them to build ships, gain resources and terraform & conquer new planets on their own. More here: Wiki
We will not sell any items, except for cosmetical purposes.
Our signup process is still in its beta-stage. Itās free to encourage newcomers. Weāve implemented various sybil-resistance mechanisms, which will be fully activated during the open beta phase. These include a (free) whitelist signup,(free) proof of humanity,(free) soulbound tokens, and (if those arent used) alternatively a small nominal fee to deter bots and multi-boxing.
Hello there, for that I would refer you to the Beta Announcement on Medium: Beta Release Annoucement
For the previous alpha rounds, Iād link my previous reply: alpha-rounds
Hi @Lukret
For Galaxy Throne - is there smart contracts on mainnet or a plan to before end of this month?
Could you also help me understand the future roadmap?
Thank You!
Hi @EMerchant
Yes! Galaxy Throne has completed several alpha testing rounds on the BTTC Mainnet, and our smart contracts are currently live. You can view them at the contract addresses listed in the forum post above.
Our open beta will go live on the 21st of November ( ā in 2 Weeks) on BTTC Mainnet, you can read more about that here:
Regarding our future roadmap (post-Season 5), we are diligently working on developing a mobile client and implementing account abstraction (via session keys) to improve onboarding for non-native crypto users. This is the next significant milestone in our roadmap.
Hereās a sneak peek at whatās to come!
We are now in an excellent position with all the features of the game we wanted in place (and battle-tested) as we conclude Season 5. This upcoming release is set to be the most significant milestone achieved yet!
