The last month has been somewhat unusual and challenging, but not without benefit. Firstly, despite our freezing our codebase in February to focus on the new Alpha, we've started working on the current game again unexpectedly.

The impetus for the change in direction was two seperate but very related issues:

1. Plans to engage in email updates
2. Recent changes to data security and privacy laws

Checkin ze email!

Imperial Conflict has never properly engaged its players via email. We did it infrequently and when we did, it was done incorrectly. Getting this right has never been much of a priority.

At the risk of throwing the past owners under the bus, I do think this has been a sorely missed opportunity to not only keep players abreast of the latest game developments in general, but also keep them informed of game news that is relevant to them specifically.

I've been putting this off myself for far too long, but by coincidence, data security and privacy laws have changed recently which has put a renewed urgency behind us to get ourselves properly situated.

We have to use caution

I've had more than a few players chastise me for not just "pulling the trigger" and blasting a bunch of spam out to everybody.

For what it's worth, I do find actual spam to be pretty damned tasty.

Anyway, while I understand that nike-ish "just do it" attitude, we don't really want to handle email communications so aggressively. This is for a few reasons:

1. It's obnoxious
2. It's counter-productive
3. It's potentially illegal

We don't want to be obnoxious

We want to provide useful information to our players. We all get bombarded with enough unwanted commercial messaging every single day, we don't need Imperial Conflict contributing to the problem.

That might sound strange given that I openly monetize the game, and yes, while I am running Imperial Conflcit as a business, and I will plug our Patreon link (see?), it doesn't mean we have to cram emails down anybody's throat just for the sake of site traffic. There's a balance to be had for this stuff.

In that regard, we want to take the time to make sure we're messaging players with care and attention to their interests. For the same reason that we've eschewed traditional in-game ads for a donation-based system, we also want take an abundance of caution with how we engage with our email audience.

It comes down to being respectful to our players and the quality of the experience we aim to provide.

We don't want to be counter-productive

Email marketing is a complex beast, and being overly aggressive can backfire very quickly.

A measured approach ensures we have a framework in place to send only to the people who actually want to be reached, and allows those who don't to get off of our mailing lists with ease. No Dark Patterns!

Failing to do this can cause all sorts of problems; from lower deliverability rates (and more email in spam folders), to getting blacklisted outright.

We want to be legally complient

Failing to handle these things properly can also get people into legal trouble.

If we plan to step up our email game, we have to do what we can to ensure compliance.

Being careful takes time

It's taken a fair amount of work to get us to a place where we can say we feel prepared to take email seriously. This last month in particular has been a whole lot of code cleanup, server upgrades, and integration with 3rd-party services. This all involves a non-trivial amount of time and effort invested into a codebase that we were supposed to have retired half a year ago.

For that reason, we've been putting work on the Alpha rewrite aside (along with pretty much everything else) while we focus on getting our general affairs in order.

Less Boring Things

With all that out of the way, let's get onto some actual game news!

Sirius

I'm happy to announce that Sirius has the honor of becoming our first official 15-minute-tick Galaxy. After 4 rounds of experimentation, Vegnarok's baby is graduating!

We're still determining a timeline for Sirius 5, but as always keep an eye on our Universal News to stay up to date on in-game announcements.

Manthano 2

Our training/retiree galaxy has been reset and redesigned to focus on families and economic mentorship. As useful as Manthano 1 was as a solo galaxy, it's a huge improvement to have the actual family structure presented to new players. In retrospect, we should have done this from the start.

As a reminder, Manthano isn't just for new players; it's for anybody who wants to play the econ game without worrying about war. If you're an oldbie just looking for some relaxation and a more casual type of play, this is your place!

Dev Revival

We've officially revived The Dev Server for our Patron Fighters (and higher). The Alpha Server, while interesting, isn't all that playable just yet.

The Dev Server by contrast is an exact copy of the currently running game, but running 1-minute ticks and highly experimental. Even more exciting, is that those who access to it can set up any type of galaxy they want to mess around with. Custom units, custom maps, custom resources, you name it!

For those of you who want to try some custom fun, this is a cheaper option at or $5 donation tier compared to our regular custom galaxies at $15.

Sound interesting to you? Check it out!

Where's that tourney?!

The tourney is still coming, rest assured. Now that other matters have settled, we'll be resuming prep for the 2018 showdown.

We're on Reddit!

After years of being a dead subreddit spam trap, the /r/ImperialConflict subreddit has finally come under our control. Feel free to drop by!

That's it for now!

Thank you for your time, and as always your support is appreciated!

Ticks in The Alpha are now running, and they come with some snazzy upgrades.

Tick-speed options are built in by default and won't require different games to be on different servers. You'll be able to access any of your active games from a unified dashboard — as it should be!

On top of this, games themselves can be ticked individually instead of all games having to be ticked at the same time. This also sets the stage for things like game-pausing and manual ticking.

Pausing Ticks

The ability to pause an individual universe will give players more control over when they play Imperial Conflict. For example, universe creators could run games where:

• there is a schedule that automatically ticks during a predefined window for daily (or weekly) IC sessions
• there is no defined schedule and the game can be manually paused/resumed by a host depending on when its players are around to actively play
• a 1v1 match that pauses itself if either player hits an inactivity threshold.

These might not seem obviously useful for hourly ticks, but for faster-ticking rounds it could keep action quick but without simply giving the win to whoever can be online the most.

Manual Ticking

Universe creators will also have the option to run a game where at any time they can push the tick forward whenever they want and however many ticks they want.

This isn't intented for "real" games, but rather as a means for players to experiment with different strategies. It will be useful as a tool for solo practice as well as a way for mentors to train new teammates.

This will likely also be the mechanism we use to build an official tutorial "round" for new players before they jump into a real game with others.

Casual Outreach

These new tick options are a huge gain for flexibility. The general goal here is to expand our options for a more casual experience.

The primary game will still be there and will absolutely be the larger overall focus, but we are long overdue on giving players the ability to play IC on their own terms and on their own time.

Really, what this gives us is a larger role in the community for custom games.

Universe Seeding

We now have the foundation in place for configurable game seeding.

This was originally built out to quickly generate test data for test universes, but we'll be able to leverage the same functionality to start a universe in post-exploration-phase states. We could create things like:

• a round where everybody starts out with a massive fleet and an equal distribution of all the universe's planets and it's a battle royal from tick #1.
• a round that includes a number of passive NPC empire targets with prebuilt economies
• handicap matches where top tier players can give their competition a starting build advantage

Pictured above is 1 of 6 test empires in our current primary test universe. It'd be trivial to generate hundreds of these.

There are a lot of possibilities to explore.

Other Updates

Units and Orders have been re-introduced, and although they won't be changing dramatically right now, support for Custom Units exists out of the box.

Most of the work this month has been behind the scenes. For the most part, not a lot has changed visually from the last update. While the new tick and data seeders are functional, they won't be much use until The Universe Creator also catches up. Similarly, making use of units is dependent on UI that still needs to be built. A tease, I know!

We do have a small update that you can actually see; empires are starting to resolve into something familiar. Now that the game is actually ticking, empires are actually growing and stats are being collected. It's only a taste right now, but things are starting to come alive.

As usual, if you are curious about any of the above or the new version in general, you can get an invite code by donating $1 or more via Patreon. The more the merrier!

Some Non-Alpha Stuff

We have some updates for the current game too. Huzzah!

Tournament

We've been figuring out the details for the 2018 Tournament which just wrapped up its test round. Much thanks to everybody for brainstorming and contributing their ideas. Shout out to @Random for taking the lead for the next steps and to @Suicidal_Sushi
for his expertise with tournaments in meatspace.

You can expect an announcement in the aforementioned thread when this goes live. If this is something you're interested in, you can also signup in that same thread.

Customs

Our Patrons are doing good work with custom games, including some 3 on 3 action in a new galaxy called Sirius, and a creative use of custom maps for a Risk-inspired map in the new Terra galaxy.

Sirius

@Vegnarok brings us a new galaxy in the form of 3v3 15-minute tick battle. We're on round 2 with a spot still open if you're lookin to jump into the battle.

Terra

@Picklearmy's latest creation is a galaxy called Terra is and it's got perhaps the most creative custom map that we've seen so far. It's actually wrapping up now and will likely be over by the time you're reading this, but a second round will follow shortly after.

Years ago we had countries battle eachother in the original custom galaxies, and now we finally have the map to match.

Thanks for reading!

As always, we welcome your support as well any questions and/or comments below. Have a good day!

In our last update, I mentioned the following:

There are a lot of other considerations we're going to make with regard to the actual space of our universe and how we define other terms like solar system, galaxy, etc. I'll save that discussion for until we have some more dev work to show for it. For now, we'll be assuming a universe that looks mostly like the one we already know.

We've got some work to show for this, so let's dive in!

Planets and Solar Systems

The only change right now for solar systems is with their planet distribution. This will be something that will be determined upon universe creation, and we will be forcing a maximum of 11 planets per solar system across the board. This was initially a result of space constraints with the new solar system view, but there is another and possibly more important consideration that higher planets-per-system tends to balance the game away from actual conflict and more towards planet hoarding.

As for that new solar system view, it is changing in a small but significant way in that you'll be able to view planets "underneath" them within a single map visualization. This is different than the current game where you have to actually click on solar systems to access their planets. The example below shows this new view in action.

Reducing clicks is going to be a driving factor in alot of our design decisions for the new version. We want players to be able to process information and make decisions with as little friction as possible. The map will play a significant role in achieving this goal.

As for the planets themselves; it's going to be somewhat of an experiment as we slowly reintroduce basic game mechanics. At the bare mininum we're expecting to reconsider planet sizes, which will also impact (1) population handling and (2) how we balance available building space.

We do have to be careful to not take this too far, as we're not trying to operate a complete world simulator on a per-planet basis. The goal isn't realism for realism's sake, but rather we want to see if there are opportunities for increased thematic and gameplay depth that we can attain without sacrifice to playability.

Other Entities

The groundwork is now in place for some of our new entities. In particular:

• We once again have Sectors, which is actually a very very old feature from early Imperial Conflict that slices the map into different sub-territories.
• We have redefined Galaxies to reflect a collection of sectors in a larger universal map. This will allow us to support the concept of intergalactic expansion and conflict.
• Independent games are now called Universes which already supports player-created maps and even some new game types. For example:
  • Static: The universe doesn't change size. This is IC as it's been since its inception.
  • Expanding: The universe will grow over time, allowing for more exploration opportunities.
  • Collapsing: The universe will continually shrink around its empires, destroying solar systems and driving conflict over shrinking territory.

Utilizing Dead Space

The grid above is a new overlay for the game map. This isn't aesthetic fluff; we're now allowing interaction with the space in between solar systems, which is something we've talked about for a very long time. You'll actually be able to send units to individual map coordinates, where before you were limited to targeting individual solar systems.

This will open up a ton of tactical depth as conflict will no longer be solely focused on overtaking planets. This will also open up other long-requested features such as re-routing fleets in transit.

This will likely be a per-universe option that players can turn off if they want to run a "classic" custom game. In general, we want to treat new features more as optional additions than full replacements.

Next Up: Empire Relationships

We've made good progress in our first month in alpha, but there hasn't been a whole lot of game to actually play. We can expect that to change in this next phase of development.

Now that the basic space entities are in place, we'll be focusing on rebuilding how you interact with your empire itself. This will include the redesigned family unit, the re-introduction of alliances, and most importantly rebuilding the experience of expansion.

We've got another productive month ahead. If you're interested in getting in on the pre-release action, a donation of any amount will get you access, and support our development efforts as well.

Thanks for reading, and we'll see you out in the cosmos!

The alpha went live recently, though it is still in a very early form. As of now, it isn't accessable further than the title page but very soon we'll be rolling out access along with the basic user functionality.

This will happen in the form of invite tokens that will be required to register an account. These will be provided to any/all Patreon subscribers as well as current staff.

It starts with Data

The user account system is already mostly functional, but is pending initial integration with our data feed functionality, which is going to be powered by Stream. This is going to be our foundation for an improved version of things like attack notifications, empire history, and improved bookmarking features.

The feed system is the first of 2 major improvements we're going to make in our approach to data handling. We're also going to be using a platform called Algolia to provide us with the search experience that IC's always deserved. Imagine typing a planet's coordinates, or an empire's name, and being able to nearly instantly evaluate and compare opportunities to expand your empire. Things like this are not only possible, they're relatively easy to implement given that we'll be sourcing the heavy lifting off to other entities.

As great as that is, both of these are not entirely free products. Although they have free tiers for smaller projects, which we'll be using for the alpha, we'll likely eventually incur an additional operating cost of around $100/mo. So let's once again show appreciation to our Patreon subscribers because we can only reasonably expect to use services like this thanks to the financial support that we've been fortunate enough to receive. Thank you!

(Re)Defining our Universe

The alpha by definition is going to be highly experimental. From your perspective as a player this will mostly mean changes to the user interface and visual design. However, here are a few game design things that you can expect to be different.

Permanent vs Round-Based

The most obvious one that we've talked about before is that the "main" game is no longer going to be round-based. We will still have round-based competitions with rankings and everything that you're used to, but they will be optional, and part of a larger and more long term experience.

To put your minds at ease, if you don't want to play a long term IC you won't have to. There will be "rounds" as you have always known them, but they not be the star of the show.

We can think of this as less of a game change and more of a game addition.

An alternative to forced teams

At least within the primary game, we will no longer be forcing players to be part of a team at random. Instead, players will be able to create, dissolve, join, or leave alliances at will.

They may find themselves starting in a system with other players, in a way that resembles our current "family" system, but they will not be forced into any particular relationship with their fellow solar system inhabitants. In fact, people in the same home system will be able to be in different alliances. They will even be able to go to war with eachother if they so choose.

This is part of a larger shift towards giving players more control over their experience. Even in IC's prime it was plagued by inactives and never really solved the problem well, despite its best efforts. The forced family concept is inherently flawed in that way, as a team has no means to rid themselves of dead weight.

Starting Planet and Initial Exploration

Another change that is going to come is a shared and neutral starting planet. The current idea is to have a planet within a system at 0,0 to be the literal center of our universe. This planet is going to serve as an introductory tool for users to get familiar with the game's interface before they decide to further commit. In this way it will also double as a gate against inactive players.

When a player is ready to move onto the game proper, they'll be able to decide where they want to establish their home planet from a list of available systems.

There are a lot of other considerations we're going to make with regard to the actual space of our universe and how we define other terms like solar system, galaxy, etc. I'll save that discussion for until we have some more dev work to show for it. For now, we'll be assuming a universe that looks mostly like the one we already know.

That's it for now!

The next thing for you will be seeing actual activity on the new site. Even though registration will initially be invite-only, there will be no restrictions on watching the game. Indeed, there is another larger goal in mind to make IC more accessable as a specator game, so we'll be testing that experience as well.

Anyway, there's enough above to describe our near term focus. There's a lot I haven't talked about yet but as usual I'd rather just show you. I am happy to discuss things generally though, so if you guys have any questions feel free to ask!

A code freeze!

Development on the current version of Imperial Conflict has officially halted.

We've come to a point where building upon the current codebase is no longer viable. It's come a long way in the last ~2 years, but despite its improvements, introducing changes has become prohibitively unwieldy. As of earlier this month, no more changes will be happening on the current site. 100% of our effort is now going towards the new codebase.

Some have suggested that we should have done this from the start when the ownership transfer happened, but I still believe that there's a lot of value to be had in understanding why something has problems, and working on IC's code has been a great learning experience, even if we do eventually shelve it.

Anyway, this doesn't mean that the current game itself is going anywhere. It will continue to be supported and maintained while we work on the new version of Imperial Conflict. The next rounds of Milky Way and Supernova will continue on as usual, and you can safely ignore all of this for the time being if you're not interested.

If you are interested though, you have an opportunity to get involved.

A Closed Alpha

This new version of Imperial Conflict is actively under development. New as in entirely new. New server, new tech stack, new everything. The new backend itself has been under experimentation for a few months now, but we're getting to a point where we'll soon be able to actually see the fruits of this labor.

I wanted to have the alpha up by end of February, but that is unfortunately no longer viable. The new deadline is March 10. The first thing that will be online will be the bare bones site functionality, as in more website than playable game. Once that is all tested and working as expected, we'll start rebuilding the Imperial Conflict universe.

Access and Expectations

The Alpha is going to be closed; initial access will be given to Staff and Patreon subscribers only. If this sounds interesting to you, you can become a Patron for access.

As for what we'll be testing, I have a general plan of game features I want to implement, but it is going to be a highly interactive and collaborative process. That is, you as a tester will influence the priorities we focus on.

Long Term Vision

We'll be keeping the core of Imperial Conflict the same; we're not looking to make an entirely different game here. That said, there will likely be at least a few significant departures. We sometimes look back on "the good ol' days" somewhat blinded by nostalgia and forget that even in IC's heyday it wasn't perfect.

I won't get into too much detail here as I'd rather not talk about these changes until I can show them, but rest assured the overall goal is to keep the game true to its spirit. IC, despite its flaws, is still a great game. The last thing we want to do is make it something unrecognizeable.

Thanks for Reading!

This was a short update, but there really isn't much to talk about until the alpha is up. On that note, back to work I go!

Once again though, I would like to first thank all of you for keeping the game alive. IC's had a tough few recent years but thanks to your enthusiasm and support, I do believe we are experiencing the early stages of a revival.

This just isn't me hoping and dreaming; it's in the numbers.

These are the number of unique players that managed an empire, year over year, since 2004.

We do have to be careful about reading too much into these numbers as they don't represent "active players". Unfortunately, we don't have that data collected prior to mid-2016. Still, this does show more than a 3x increase in the number of players who managed an empire at some time this year. It's also the first time we've broken 1,000 players in a year since 2011, 6 years ago.

A big chunk of this increase, nearly half in fact, is a result of a paid ad campaign I tested in March. Unfortunately, due to a drop in Patreon subscriptions (more on that later), we're now farther away from running continuous promotions that would help sustain this kind of growth.

The good news is, even without those players we still saw roughly a 2x increase over 2016.

This isn't the only metric that matters, but to me it is an important one. It's proof that interest in the game has increased, and our job now is to make sure said interest is not only rewarded, but sustained.

On that note, let's get onto features and plans:

Mobile App: Nope =(

Our plans for the mobile app didn't come to fruition this year. Unfortunately, there are still enough significant dependencies on the backend that are preventing us from moving forward on this.

We are not without progress, however. The backend itself is in the middle of being transitioned onto a new tech stack that is going to impact nearly everything, including a proper interface redesign. This isn't just talk either; I'm actively using a new admin interface that is built on the new backend to help me manage the game. In fact, it helped me suss out and ban several naughty IA-ers (cheaters) a few Milky Way rounds ago.

Anyway, the new backend is going to continue to open up a lot of possibilities, but whether or not one of those possibilities is the mobile app will depend on how much time I can dedicate to IC in general.

Tick Variations: Hell Yes! =)

We split the tick!

In April of this year, we opened up our first ever semi-public test server, running minute-long ticks. It proved to work quite well, and just this month we announced our first every official "chaos" round. In a few days our first group of chaos empires will be capping off 2017 with an intense 48 hour flash round.

There is still work to be done, including allowing for game pauses, other tick variants, and other features. I am very happy though to be able to say that we're finally seeing this happen after literally years of requests.

Patreon: Kicking Ass

We raised $1,569 this year, which is just over $130 per month. Thanks to you guys, Imperial Conflict was able to cover its costs of operation. Not only that, but we did this all without having to resort to pay to win type features or ad banners on the site. It makes me incredibly happy that our community, which includes you reading this, is able to keep the game afloat without compromising the experience. At our height, we nearly hit the $300 per month mark.

Patreon: We Still Need Help

Now, the less fun fact here is that this only covers operational costs; it doesn't cover development costs. That same $1,569 lets me work full time on the game for 82 cents an hour — which just isn't a viable amount for me to dive into development as much as I really want to. Unfortunately, we've also lost a few or our higher-tier subscribers and have overall lost about 49% of our funding from its peak. =( Ouch!

I clearly have more work to do to keep our Patrons happy, and take this loss of funding as constructive criticism. That said, we still have plenty of opportunity for new Patrons, so if you're enjoying the game please consider supporting IC!

The game is going to stay online no matter what; it isn't going anywhere. I'll always be doing my best here to keep moving it forward, but the more subscribers we get, the more we can guarantee further development.

Every subscription makes a difference! Feel free to add yours below:

https://www.patreon.com/imperialconflict

Other 2017 Highlights

We saw a lot of other new features this year. Here are 5 of my personal favorites:

1. Public Facing and Persistent Game Data

Up until this year, you couldn't actually watch the game without having an account. This is no longer true, and guests can peek into the galaxies and click around the map, systems, and planets just as players can. This is an important step in IC becoming a spectator game.

For example: here is Milky Way 54's galaxy, publicly viewable to all. Click the image bleow to actually see it in-game.

Related to this change was the persistence of galaxy data; for years we would literally reset a galaxy after a round, which would wipe its data clean. We no longer do this, and instead set up a new galaxy each time with a new round number.

This is what allows the link above to work; Milky Way 54 ended several months ago but the families and empires who played will now permanently be viewable in their final turn.

2. The New Map!

Our map got entirely rewritten on top of the wonderful and open source Leaflet library. This is the same kind of technology that powers real-life street maps, which is super cool.

This update brought all kinds of cool features, including the ability to see your portalled systems on the map for the first time.

3. Mass Exploration!

This is a good example of long-overdue UX improvements to the game. Instead of having to click and click and click and needlessly go back and forth between pages, we should be able to simply perform actions en-masse where appropriate.

It makes the game easier to play for the player, and reduces server load for the game. I look forward to bringing more of these kinds of improvements in 2018.

4. IC-Radio

Unfortunately short-lived, but still a hell of a great time. I would love to bring this back in 2018 if the stars align. At the very least, I would like to release the 10 episodes we recorded as a short podcast series.

A big thank you to all of you who listened in, interacted with us on air, and especially to @Modnar for getting it started to begin with. Can't forget @Darrk either with his color commentary.

5. Making IC-Wiki Official

12 years ago I had the honor of starting our first, but unofficial, wiki. Thousands of player-contributed articles came together in the form of all kinds of valueble content, including and especially player history and game lore.

Sadly, over time the wiki became a spam farm that we just couldn't keep up with and its usefulness dwindled as a result.

I'm pleased to announce that earlier this month, IC-Wiki came back and for the first time as our official wiki. Select articles are being ported over from the old wiki, and we are actively looking for IC Historians who wish to contribute.

The game is nothing without its community, and 2017 marks 17 years that we've been online. I look forward to our wiki once again becoming a great repository of game and community information. With your help!

Plans for 2018

Here are the 5 features I'm most looking forward to, besides the mobile app and the backend overhaul.

1. Training Galaxy/Interactive Guide
2. The Infintum Galaxy
3. Battle and Operation History
4. Fleet Efficiency
5. A proper, searchable Hall of Fame

Thank you all, and Happy Holidays

2017 marked the first full calendar year that I had the pleasure of running Imperial Conflict, and I want to thank all of you for making it awesome.

I sense great things for 2018, and Imperial Conflict welcomes you to another year of friendly battles. Whether you're blood-thirsty, economy-focused, or anything in between, we look forward to chronicling your empire as a part of our collective history. More importantly than that though, we look forward to you being a continued member of our great community.

Happy Holidays!