This was posted about in another thread, but that one kinda died down due to the first server going out so I figured this one deserved a new thread. Was hoping someone more knowledgeable about the game would post (I never even heard about it during its release), but since nobody has I'll cobble some information together
The game was a subcription game that went live back in November 2008 and ran for a few years, but in April 2011 it closed down. Instead of letting it die they released the game as open source on sourceforge in May. Recently two folks who played it since beta testing picked it up and started a free server (Anxcon and SirParadox). It's still a pretty new thing, but it's stable and they've been steadily working out bugs that were left in by the original devs and changing it for the better. It's been picking up steam and growing pretty well (40 players in the last few days I heard Anxcon say yesterday), but it wouldn't hurt to get more new players.
Link to the game:
http://www.afterprotocol.com/index.php Thats their website, it isn't very pretty since they don't have a web guy, but registering there makes you a game account and you can grab the game updater there.
Basically it's a highly customizeable space MMORTS where you build colonies, research, mine resources, build fleets, fight other players, hire agents to spy, etc - with plenty of room for diplomacy and intrigue. You have to design all your own stuff - buildings, ships, metal alloys, engines, weapons, radars, armor, etc. The design interface can get a bit clunky at times, but it's got some real depth in the design system. I've been having fun with it.
Heres some screenshots from the game's marketing files on sourceforge (look the same ingame, im just too lazy to make my own
):
There are some more good images in the other thread here.
You'll start out in a tutorial system, and can play there a bit to learn the game before self destructing to get to the main system.
Also, the game has a faction system with potentially huge research bonuses for fitting people into the slots. I believe
this page has the current info (correct me if I'm wrong). You can rank up, but can't rank down - so if you want to fit into a faction you have to limit yourself (-edit- was wrong about this one, you can rank down - it just takes 7 days after losing your lands).
The biggest bonuses possible are from the bottom two ranks, but you can't have more than 200k to rank to governor or 500k pop or you'll rank up to overseer. You can still get a 50% research reduction at overseer though, and all that requires is that you keep from ever getting control of a planet (control being a majority share of the population) which should be safe if you stick with low population cities. Populations of 100,000 make good money because you can charge 80% tax. King also gets a nice bonus, but he has to have up to 5 overseer or below people in his faction.
-edit- Woops, I was wrong about the title thing. Apparently you CAN derank down after losing your lands, you just have to wait 7 days.
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Topic: After Protocol (Beyond Protocol Private Server) (Read 7749 times)