We need ways to monitor the station when we own it. Right now, it can be done by parking a bot in the sector and setting up automated notifications and stuff through that, but it's not ideal.

First, there should be an option to notify any owners and users currently online if a turret is attacked. The notification should just come through as a HUD/chat message saying "Latos i8 Station is under attack". The message should be displayed a maximum of once every half hour. If the station is still under attack 30 minutes later, the message would appear again, etc... You should be able to turn this feature off from either end. An owner would be able to disable the feature completely for everyone, and each individual user would be able to select if they want to be personally notified or not, in case some people find it annoying or something.

There should also be a way to monitor the station in more detail from the webpage. Make a link that brings up a page that shows any station that any character on our account currently has an active key for. Have this page show the health of each turret and the time elapsed since the station has been attacked. Also add a simple big round colored indicator that shows if the station has been attacked in the last 30 minutes. Have it be green if it has not been attacked and red if it has.

Later, we could have optional email notifications or something too, although I wouldn't use that personally.

The in-game thing at least, we can and should do.

The website thing.. we'll see. Although I do want to push this into other communication areas, I don't want more reasons to scrape our website with scripts over and over again. A better solution would be to publicize our XMPP/Jabber API, or something along those lines. The website could also retain some info, such as whether the station belonged to someone, but delayed, and nothing as specific as turret health.

Thanks for the response, inc. I don't care so much about seeing the turrets' health, but some way for owners and users to at least see if the station has been fired on in the last 30 minutes (from outside the game) would be very useful.

phleg isn't a bot he is just a very devoted and loyal servant of Kharon

No to both of them. Its much more fun if you actually have to log in and look at your station and defend it than just getting told.

You would be able to turn the notifications off if you didn't want to see them, Chaosis. People can set this up currently through bots anyway if they want to, so there's no reason not to have it as an actual built-in game feature.

You would be able to turn the notifications off if you didn't want to see them, Chaosis. People can set this up currently through bots anyway if they want to, so there's no reason not to have it as an actual built-in game feature.

You missed the point by about 3.14 radians there, strat. The game is more fun when people actually log in and play it. Any system which enables or encourages people to not log in, but receive info about the game through other methods (active players list, station attack notifications, etc) detracts from the fun of the game for themselves and everyone else, and makes it more like a part-time job that you pay for.

Heh. This seems ironic coming from the players with a bot sitting constantly in i8, who not coincidentally log on en masse, seconds after anyone attacks one of their turrets. I'm not saying that isn't something you should do, but don't sit here and tell the rest of us that it's wrong for us to want to do the same. We could easily camp our own bot there too, but I thought a more elegant solution would be better for everyone.

Well, Strat, why don't you move O'Malley down to i8 in the mean time so that you too can have some first hand experience on the pros and cons of this?

I know it is beside the point but I'd like it be pointed out that saying that we log in en masse, seconds after anyone attacks one of our turrets is a cruel lie.

An owner would be able to disable the feature completely for everyone

It would be too easy then for an individual to sabotage everyone.

But yeah, I'm not against the idea.

Well, Strat, why don't you move O'Malley down to i8 in the mean time

Because he knows that phleg would kick O'Malley's ass.

I know it is beside the point but I'd like it be pointed out that saying that we log in en masse, seconds after anyone attacks one of our turrets is a cruel lie.

Mmhmm...

The fact that you can't tell the difference between moving from H2 or B8 to I8 when necessary and "logging in en masse" is of little concern to us. Now, do you have something to talk about, or are you just trolling?

Given that our defensive groups usually only start with 2-3 people (to fend off ~5-8 attackers) and given that at least one of us is almost always already online, I'd say yes, Strat, your statement is both untrue and hurtful.

Who are you trying to convince? Me or yourself? I really don't care how you use your little bot or the active players page. It makes no difference to me, so I don't know why you're getting so flustered. And it really is off-topic, so let's move on.

You posted lies and I corrected them. If you don't want me to contradict you then don't lie in the first place. Your attitude helps nothing.

like i said before phelg is not a bot but a dedicated servant of Kharon. really the only reason we get more people to log on is because i scream over our skype conference call BATTLE STATIONS BATTLE STATIONS and then wait for someone to reply.

Why do people keep thinking I am a bot? Is it not possible for one to be on at all times?

We use a live person because he can use our pagers.

Anyways, back on topic...
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This thread is just useless and total flamebait, and Strat knows this.

Why else would he have posted?