OGame SK

Dear OGame Players,

It’s no secret anymore: We are working on the universe fusion, a tool to transfer players from one or more universes to another. This feature was your biggest wish according to the survey. Therefore we focused our efforts on it.

As the first internal tests are coming closer, we want to give you a glimpse of how the whole thing works.

Unifusion procedure:

To start with one or more universes will be marked as Exodus-Universes. These are the unis that players will be moving away from to settle in what we call Target-Universes.

The criteria by which Exodus- and Target-Universes are determined are the number of players, the age of the uni and the points of the top players in each uni.

The Exodus-Phase will be announced a couple of weeks before it actually starts. From now on until the end of the Exodus-Phase, players in the Exodus-Uni can pick their choice out of the list of Target-Unis.

The duration of the Exodus-Phase itself depends on how long it takes for the players to make their choice. In this phase, all accounts will be frozen. Flying fleets, active build orders and everything else will be canceled. As mentioned above, players can still log into their frozen accounts and choose a Target-Uni. This phase marks the end of the Exodus-Universe. In a celebratory act, the final score will be collected and posted in the Hall of Fame.

Once a day during the Exodus-Phase, players that have made a choice will be copied to the Target-Uni. Everything is copied: Planets, resources, fleets…, we even hope to be able to transfer the message box and the alliance affiliation.

Players will enter the Target-Uni in the same frozen state that they left the Exodus-Uni. They can now login to both unis and check if everything moved correctly. The planet positions are likely to change, but we have invested a lot of effort in finding the closest free positions. In general it will be a matter of first come, first serve. The earlier a player makes his Target-Uni choice, the more likely it is for his planet positions to still be free. Once the player is ready he can reactivate his planets and, after a short warm-up period, start his conquest of the Target-Universe.

As you can imagine there are many edge cases that we need to take care of, for example when a player already has an account in the Target-Universe. We will see how good our solutions are once the prototype Exodus starts in the German OGame community (and maybe an other one).

Stay tuned for more information on this subject, the other developments and our plans for the future.

Best regards,

Your OGame.skTeam

P.S: conversation here

more info:




General information about uni merging

Quoted

Is it possible to stay in an Exodus universe or do you have to move?

The Exodus universes will be moved completely and will also be closed afterwards.
It's not possible for 10 or 20 players to stay behind on their own.

Quoted

Can you only choose your target uni once? Or is it still possible to change to a different target uni during the Exodus-Phase when your account has already been moved to your new universe? For example, if you're not happy with your planet locations.

You can only choose your target universe once, so you have to live with your choice.
This means each account in an Exodus universe will only receive one resettlement.

Quoted

What happens if you already have an account in each Target Universe and you still have an account left in an Exodus Universe?

There will be enough Target Universes to prevent this problem.

Quoted

Will Number universes be merged with ABC-Universes?

First of all, that isn't likely to happen.
If they merge all universes together it will end badly.
There will be a long process in which we decide again which universes will be merged.
It's clear that there are more important universes than the ABC-Universes where there's still activity.

Quoted

Will you be moved automatically when you select your Target Universe? What exactly do they mean by "frozen"?

The move will be done automatically. The accounts will be in a sort of artificial vacation mode. Of course you can change this status back to normal again as soon as you have moved to a Target Universe.

Quoted

What will happen to the players who were in vacation mode during the Exodus-Phase?
Will there be some sort of cemetery where the accounts from inactives, who couldn't respond in time, will be stored?

An announcement will be made before the start of the Exodus-Phase, and the Exodus-Phase itself will take at least a month.
During this period they'll try to contact the player in every possible way, e.g. by Email, board announcements etc.
Accounts that haven't been moved after all these announcements and messages will be deleted from the system.
Otherwise they won't have the possibilty to remove DM-inactives or other long term inactives, since they don't return on their own.
We can delete players at the end of the Exodus-Phase, the universe will be at it's end then.
We will definitely not remove players in Target Universes.
So, in this case a "cemetery" for inactives isn't needed.
Though they have discussed this proposal.

Quoted

Which universes will become Exodus-universes?

Based on the age of the playing round, the points of the top players and the active players, we will decide which universes can merge together and which will be marked as Exodus and Target Universes.
We will announce this early enough.

Quoted

Do I see this correctly? The "prototype" isn't a test version anymore but already the "real" uni merging? The field test is being done with some of the existing universes?

They will also do a preceding test. This will probably be a more internal one, in which we will merge some universes and we'll see the impact of it. The prototype itself will already be a "field test" with real universes.

Quoted

I come from Uni 18 which has a larger number of galaxies. What will happen with my planets that are located in galaxies that other universes don't have?

We of course respect the characteristics of the universe with the selection. If indeed a different universe and uni 18 are merged, there will be no difference however.

Quoted

What will happen to the special universes?

We will take special features into account. It's not our intention to get rid of the special universes.

Quoted

What will happen to speed unis like uni 35 and uni 40?

Special-Universes will potentially also be listed in the selection of Target universes.
It's rather unlikely that they will become an Exodus universe.

Quoted

Will it be possible to move from a normal universe to a speed universe?

Most likely there will be multiple target universes to choose from, special universes may also play a role here.
Though it will never happen that you lose your special features.

Account specific:

Quoted

Will the coordinates be changed with the move?

First come first serve. The system will try to keep the coordinates the same as well as possible.
However, it's also possible that your planet will be moved by the system. The coordinates will remain almost the same (no galaxy change from 1 to 9 for example).

Quoted

There is also the relocation with DM. Why don't you get a free relocation in case your spot has already been taken by another player, so you can choose a new spot yourself?

We are still discussing how we can decrease this impact. For this we also have to check how often this occurs.

Quoted

Will planet sizes and temperatures change if you change coordinates?

The planet sizes won't change. Because of the new setup of planets in a system, the temperatures in a Target universe may differ slightly from the temperatures from the Exodus universes.

Quoted

A lot of players in the number universes haven't researched the necessary astrophysics level yet to be able to own 9 planets . Will they still keep all their planets?

The astrophysics level isn't relevant with the move. All the existing planets will be moved.

Quoted

Will alliances remain after the move, what about the tutorial?

Yes, we will offer the possibility to move the alliance with you to your target universe.
If the alliance name exists there already, your alliance will be renamed.

Quoted

What happens to your nickname when there already is someone with the same nickname in the target universe?

If a username is already being used in the target universe, the player from the exodus universe will get a message and he'll have to change his nick.
There can't be players with the same nickname in the target universe.

Quoted

Will ongoing research be stopped before you move?

We are being told that they will either pause the research or keep it running.
We will see how this can be practically implemented.

Quoted

Will it be possible to attack others as soon as you end the frozen state when you enter a target universe? Or will there be an "attack ban" or "starting protection" during the first 1-2 days so the new players can get used to their new planet locations and their surroundings?

There will be no special protection. You can use the "frozen" state to get used to your new environment.

Quoted

Why can't the players choose their positions themselves after the move?

When all players have to choose their locations themselves, we will have a very bad spread in the end.
In time, the players spread rather "organised" in a universe, not all in one place leaving the other places empty.
Over time players spread through a universe in an organised manner, rather than all clustered together in one area, leaving the rest empty.
We want to preserve this system, so we stick with this variant.
A free spread would create agglomerations or completely empty parts in a universe.

Dark Matter, Payment features, Money:

Quoted

Do you have to pay to move to a target universe?

No.

Quoted

What about planets that have been relocated using money before? Do they have a privilege?
After all, money was paid to move them to a desired position.

They won't get any special priveleges. We are still looking at how can keep the impact of this limited.

Quoted

What happens to Dark Matter and active Officers?

Existing DM will be moved completely. As for active officers, we plan to freeze them as well.

Quoted

Are they working on a way to detach DM from an account, and assign it to an email address for example?

We have not yet considered to detach DM. However, it will be completely moved.

Quoted

What happens to DM that was paid for? They can't just delete the players!

Players will be notified soon before the end of the universe.
If a player still hasn't chosen a universe to move to, or if he still hasn't noticed the uni merging yet, the remaining DM will be sent as coupons to the email belonging to the account.

Quoted from "WeTeHa"

Hi. Today I want to inform your about our current progress related to the merge of universes and our changed noob protection.

Let us begin with the merge of universes Since our public announcement some time ago we already collected a lot of feedback directly out of the communities. Due to it we had to change & adjust several things within our "merge processes" which were not very easy to handle:

-> temperature have to stay
-> research delayed instead of canceling it
-> consideration of more than one planet per system
-> possibly free relocation if planet is moved onto a really bad position
-> activated officers have to be delayed

Some of those changes are still in development even though we already have the first version of it online on our internal test server and already can have a look for the basic functions. We really hope that we can fix all upcoming problems and add the missing content very soon and want to start the first prototype in the beginning new year (so it is NOT delayed for months). We will keep you up to date about the progress and results of our prototype.


Also already this year we wanted to start our new public test server together with our new noob protection. Unfortunately our changes are that extensive that we just have to take some more time to implement them all, check the balancing of the whole new system and for sure have to fix some bugs in it. That`s why we have to delay the new test server again, also till the beginning new year. At least we want to offer some more detailed info about the new system very soon and probably already before we start the public test server.

greetings

A new step into the unimerging proces:

Yesterday there was a start with the last preparations for the merge of universes. Due to it .de 6 has been updated with the new version 2.0. If all works fine on it .de all will follow next week.

Also GF will have to change some settings in their prototype. It won´t be a complete live test, they will use a "copy/paste" onto a new test server. At first severa; universes can copy their accounts onto a new & empty test server. Some days latersome other universes can follow them onto the now already given server.

This server is just temporary and payment will be deactivated on it. The whole procedure is just a "copy & paste the accounts if they want". The old accounts are still there and can be used, nobody HAVE TO do it. Users can choose if they want to help us with it or not.

Sadly all of them will have one disadvantage. During the "copy-phase" the affected universes will have an attack lock between 2am & 7pm (every day) and all active fleets will be removed. This is a security issue and part of our final merge concept to secure the accounts.

greetings

The test of universe merge has finished a few weeks ago. All was good and no major problems were encountered.
In present Gameforge staff is working to change the way servers and software are internally communicating . Additional time is required for this but we can say that the preparations for the universe merge are on the right path.
We'll keep you informed as soon as we'll have news on this.

We got news on unimerging!
Yesterday some last test have been done on .de and the uni's have been checked.
In a few weeks time, first official unimerge will be done!
exodus: .de 32 - 35 - 36 - 37 - 38
target: .de 30 - 31 - 33
fallback unis: .de 34 - 39 (can only be use as target uni's if you have an account in all other target uni's)

timeschedule:
25.07. - 15.08.:- possbile to choose target unis in .de
- payment in exodus unis deactivated
- new registrations for exodus & target unis deactivated

16.08.:
- user in exodus unis into vacation mode (1h before the merge)
- merge (just once)
- highscore of exo unis secured

17.08.:
- registration for target unis will be open again

23.08.:
- exodus unis deactivated

24.-26.08.:
- remaining DM send to deleted accounts

Hello all,

Merging has now been announced for OGame.de:

Quoted

exodus: 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 16, 17, 18 , 19, 22, 23, 33, 31
target: 1, 30, empty universe

Hopefully this will be occuring in about 2 or 3 weeks.

More so hopefully, OGame.sk will not be far behind, as always we'll let you know as soon as we have information.