I liked nearly all of these suggestions, especially your comprehensive approach to the alliance options. It reminds me of what's available in Civilization, really.

One thing I didn't quite understand was how if you 'attack' an allied planet, the ships just orbit until the alliance has been dissolved. It sounds cool, but what function does that serve? As a kind of collateral for an alliance ("break the alliance and I'll rape your homeland!")?

Geez, Chris has his work cut out for him 

Despite what you may have heard, publishers aren't actually evil.

That smacks of PR... you're one of THEM aren't you?!      ...... 

That's totally understandable. Honestly, as a fan of the game, I'd really rather the creator NOT have to side with a big-name publisher -- I know how that can often lead to unwanted compromises. I'm just thinking long-term for this game's success, since And I genuinely want it to do well, financially.

One of my good friends made a game for XBox Community Games along with some coworkers of his (was involved with Totem). He said the experience wasn't that great. Microsoft has pretty much kept them in the dark on everything, including the game's success.

That being said, I really do think you have hit a sweet spot in simplicity/addictiveness/strategy that clearly works well in a "core gamer" demographic (us), but could also work well in even a casual market (ya know... them).

I second the motion for having alliances and diplomacy. Me and a friend experimented with this last night by communicating via IM. (We teamed up on one poor guy, then turned on each other like animals).

Sounds like I haven't explained things very well in the tutorial. Do you have any suggestions for improving that? Anything in particular which put you off?

Well, take what I say with a grain of salt. I learn kinesthetically, and I'm somewhat of a purist when it comes to game explanations. I believe that gameplay design should be accessible enough for players to understand it intuitively within a few moments in the game. This is one of the cornerstones of Shigeru Miyamoto's games.
 
But what struck me in MI was how much text was necessary to explain the basic gameplay. It's daunting to new players, I think, for a game to need much explanation. However, once I launched a quick game and saw that what actually occurred on each turn was relatively simple, I finally got it. Minutes later, I understood (nearly) all the quirks of the game, and how to succeed. And obviously by then I was HOOKED.

A simple way to convey this I think would be to SHOW players the game through a pop-up tutorial in an in-game experience, rather than have a page-by-page explanation. Example:  Tutorial 1: select your main planet. This will show how many ships are docked in the planet (click). Tutorial 2: drag the ships to another planet... etc.

I think a cool feature would be...well this would only work with steam users...but to have chat only be via steam chat...not ingame...so when you hit enter you start a chatroom just for that server and everyone joins and you talk that way...

This would prevent people talking so much that the text scrolls up over all the gameplay in the middle of the screen...which I find very annoying...

The problem there is that not everyone plays this via Steam (myself included). And I think hitting Enter to open a chatroom via steam (which would have to be accessed via Ctrl+enter to see the Steam overlay) could be problematic.

Another possible solution to the chat window thing could be in the way WoW handles it. A small, but wide window in the corner of the screen, with three tabs: 1 for chat and game info, 1 for just chat, and one for just game info. (example of how WoW does it). Clearly it doesn't have to be this elaborate, but I think there should be some way to customize the kind of information that's being spat out of the game -- a way to distinguish between chat and game info.

This is by no means an endorsement of WoW, which I happen to think is a pretty soulless game. But that's beside the point.

Meh...more than half my friends have a wii...any game on it...gets played for like 1-3 days then the system gets put up...the wii...is just a weekend playing system...

If you really think you would enjoy this game...the PC is the way to go...

I am sorry...just giving my opinion I guess you could say...and well truly if I could get my 360 back online I would say that is the dominant system to own...but no...now my PC is...hence I go with it now...

---Stixsmaster

Well, I'd rather not turn this into a "my console is better than yours" thread. I acknowledge the 360 has a far better library of games than the Wii. That's not the issue though. I'm just saying this is a great game and that I think could be successful on multiple platforms, in addition to its home: the PC.

I say the Wii comes to mind the quickest for me because of the control scheme being easily adaptable.

[Rally Points:]

Hi, while playing I came up with the following ideas:

Rally Points:

• Most annoying i found the fact that if one loses a planet all relly routes from and to it are also lost. While that makes sense it is still annoying to reset all routes once the planet is recaptured. Im not sure if one can or should do anything about that, but I had the idea that instead of deleting the routes one could suspend them if a planet ist lost and then resume them once the planet is recaptured.

I actually understand the logic behind the way it is in-game. If you lose a planet, the rally point is cut off. If you resecure that planet, the dynamic of battle has changed, since the enemy was clearly close enough to your front lines to invade it. It's possible (though every game is different) that that planet is no longer the best rallying point.

Some other small suggestions (some already mentioned by others):

• Using ENTER to end turn.

Enter currently opens the chat window, which I use a lot with my friends. Please don't change this  Shift or Control+Enter though...

Thanks so much for the server Chris.

Chris, have you ever given any thought to converting MI to consoles as DLC? I think at a $5-10 pricepoint, this game could be a real hit on something like Wii Ware. The point+click controls particularly lend themselves to the wii remote.

I suppose the hurdle would be in coding the game to fit Nintendo's WiiWare specifications. The 31MB game certainly fits the size limitations.

And jesus, it would give me a reason to dust off my Wii and give it a whirl!

Hey, Walter here. I just bought the game through the website yesterday, after playing the demo for several days on Steam.

You've created a truly awesome, addictive game here Chris, and it's really quite a simple idea. That's tough to do. Many props to you.

Upon first launching the demo and viewing the tutorial, I honestly thought it would be too complicated for me to like it. I closed it out and didn't play it again until a friend convinced me it was simple to learn. Then, I finally got it. And I haven't looked back since.

I've since convinced 2 of my friends to buy it as well, and last night we had our first big multiplayer bash. Though I generally suck at strategy games, I somehow WON the longest and craziest of last night's rounds. Must be all the hours I sunk into the demo finally paying off