Sam on Maui

Game Dev Tycoon is available for a variety of platforms, and is just a great little game. No DRM, even! I’ll be posting impressions later on, but for now? A little something to help you along! When you make a new combination of game type and genre, you get a  New Combo x.2 bonus for it. But, if it’s a Great Combo? Add in another .2. You’ll go from x1 to x1.2 to x1.4! To help you out, I sat down and went through the first six genres and available combinations I’ve found so far. Use the garage studio to experiment; each genre and game style has things they like during development. As such, go through the various combinations, figure them out, regardless of whether they're a one-time bonus or not. It'll help in the long run. Fantasy + Action = Great Combo Fantasy + Adventure = Great Combo Fantasy + RPG = Great Combo Fantasy + Simulation = no bonus Fantasy + Strategy = Great Combo Fantasy + Casual = no bonus Racing + Action = no bonus Racing + Adventure = no bonus Racing +...

Week 4 and doing pretty well! I’m not entirely sure how I should decide which way to really track my weight. The weekly, predictable fluctuation makes me wonder if I should pick the results from a certain day (say, Friday or Saturday) as my milestone or not.

Last October I posted a blog on buying Zen via Energy Credits . Well, since then the Z:D rate has changed dramatically, and I wasn’t sure how the requisite bits were being priced on the Exchange. Now, both of these factors are constantly in motion, so it was, and is, a snapshot at best. So, time for another snapshot.

I've already gone over how to buy Master Keys without spending a dime . But, because there are so many uses for Dilithium and Zen, suppose you don't want to use such a precious resource for buying Master Keys? This is perfectly understandable. So, how else can you buy them? Energy Credits! Many players are more adept at earning Energy Credits than they are anything else. If anything, once you become a Vice Admiral, the need for Energy Credits goes down. You can get most anything you want through enough play and a bit of luck. Moreover, as you go through the end-game content, you will continue to earn drops and other rewards. You will need to make use of the Exchange in order to really earn credits, however. Keeping track of changes in the game will also help you find needs other players may have. This is important, as the more necessary the item is, and the more inconvenient it is to get, the more its potentially worth. Additionally, if things fluctuate in value, k...

Dan Stahl announced that Fleet Actions were going to see increased rewards , as following: Gold = Purple + 1920 Dilithium Silver = Purple + 960 Dilithium Bronze = Blue + 960 Dilithium All others = Green + 960 Dilithium One of the posters politely pointed out they were concerned that this could be damaging to the social atmosphere of Star Trek Online. Dan acknowledged this , had already spoken to the other developers, and said he was bringing the feedback from the thread to the rest of the team. Today? Dan posted a followup : In addition, we have decided to nix the X2 Dilithium bonus for Gold and instead provide a x2 Purple gear and keep the Dilithium consistent across all players. Its still a good reward, but not nearly as overbearing as the double Dilithium in my opinion. Will it get tweaked further? Its entirely possible. But the economics of double Dilithium was too good; some people immediately quit STFs if the team misses secondary objectives, after all....

At the moment, Season 7 has plans to increase the costs associated with Reassigning Under-performing Officers. This is an area of concern for some players. Those who are looking for improved Duty Officers for the DOFF system are understandably upset, as are those who are actively working on starbase projects (higher tier projects sometimes require Uncommon Duty Officers in large quantities). So, are there any other options? Enter the Recruitment Duty Officer Missions.