An Overview of Milky Way Beta 1

General Overview

In Beta 1 IC was small, about 250 players. No one had a clou about the game nor about any strats. There wasn't any Guide or FAQ or help available and the game was discovered by its players in a try & error style.

Families weren't organized in any way. The game was mainly run by a handful of good players. Accordingly wars were actually fought between players and not really between families. Roleplay was done on a massive scale. NAPs didn't exist because with only a handful of players those did respect when one of them was already at war.

Admins

One big difference to today, both admins: Stefan and MasterMike were daily available in the forums. Actually say seemed not to sleep at all thus excited they were about their game going online and now actually played. After several weeks they went on holiday and most of the players advised them to keep away from any computer and to do some serious sleeping and holidaying instead. But nevertheless some hours later after Stefan and MasterMike had arrived in the Netherlands, the very first thing they did: finding an internet-cafe, going online and asking wether everything would be ok with the game *grin

Features of Beta 1

• no custom races but only Wardancers, Quantams and Partaxians
• no fleet readiness, no morale, no NW-restrictions (what's today called hardcore rules)
• most of the agent operations and wizards' spells weren't implemented yet
• alliance restriction: no more than 2 allies
• map

From today's view the alliance restriction and having a map naming a feature of IC looks rather weird and people might think "Well, that's IC, isn't it". But back then Stefan, MasterMike and many players came from games like Utopia or Earth 2025 and were quite fed up from huge alliances. And the introduction of a map was kind of a revolution with all the new tactics it brought and the until today overwhelming area of diplomacy.

Biggest bugs

• Fighters and recalling transports
  It was possible to send out a fleet and then to recall only the transporters while the troops would continue to move... after more and more players discovered this "feature", troops were generally refered to as equipped with parachutes. One of the sideeffects of having troops attacking without being in transports, the airfight became basically obsolete since it wasn't possible to shoot down those troops.
• missing planets
  Sometimes the universe file went mad. Planets vanished or it wasn't possible to attack them. How crazy wars can develop this way one can see in the big Harkonnens vs Vjun Cluster war which was made even more insane when suddenly...
• reports no longer showed up
  and everybody had to count their planets every few minutes to discover wether he might have lost some or not.
• Population growth was bugged in the beginning and much higher than intended.

Severe inbalances and "features"

• No caps on losses in fights and a different combat engine which resulted often enough in players loosing ALL their fighters and troops when attacked by someone stronger.
• The higher costs of overbuilding were calculated on the base of how many buildings already existed. Which meant building 10.000 buildings in one row resulted in no overbuilding costs at all. Everybody knew of this but only Starstrike had the idea to use this to the max with the very first big eco-jump in the history of IC.
• 1 pop was worth 1 NW.

Important Players

(for sure only an incomplete list)

• Dance of Blades from the Fist of North Star
• Universal Mob from the Harkonnens
• Altruist from the Harkonnens
• Starstrike from the Vjun Cluster
• Land of the Dorkos from the Vjun Cluster
• Gorfest
• Hells Will from Dark Reign
• Warrior Federation, better known as Zane
• MadChillEmpire better known as Chili

The Harkonnens had the luck to start with 2 good players: Universal Mob and Altruist, thus they were the absolute dominant duo or as they called it "enlighted the galaxy with their rightful reign of terror". Well, at least until Starstrike made his jump. For the jump one can also speak about the first true sign of a family, the Vjun Cluster, organizing instead of just lone players going berzerk on the galaxy.

Exploration Phase

1. Universal Mob's rise to fame revealed

Major Events

1. The "Starstrike vs Gorfest" massacre (story lost or never finished)
2. The "Harkonnens vs Fist of North Star" War
3. The "Dark Reign vs Vjun Cluster" War
4. Altruist's challenge to the Galaxy
5. The "Universal Mob vs Triforce" Fiasco (story lost or never finished)
6. The "Harkonnens vs Vjun Cluster" War

End of Round

1. The last days (story lost or never finished)
2. The End of the line ...