October 2021's update ​

A 2-month Break and a visit to ETHCC ​

As mentioned in the June update, we actually took a break during the summer, and while we did not do any code during that time, we did made some progress. We went to visit ETHCC where we presented our game and how we plan to launch it on L2s. The audience really liked the idea and we got awesome feedback. This gave us food for thoughts and we doubled down on the concept of alliances. See below.

We also participated in ETHVC, a setup in place at ETHCC to pitch idea for potential funding. While we are still figuring out how we want to grow as a company, it was great to dive in the VC/funding space and get feedback. This actually pushed us to grow the team with a web dev, an artist and a web deisgner already helping!

Agent Service ​

One of the biggest task we are working on is the agent service. While in the previous alpha, you could keep your computer running to resolve your fleet for you (for those that do not know, conquest.eth use a commit+reveal scheme to keep your fleet destination secret and this require a 2 tx process), we decided to offer a different system this time, where player will trust a third-party (for now: us) to resolve the fleets on your behalf (and to not reveal the secret to anybody). While this carry a centralisation risk, this is still an option only. You are free to not use it and instead resolve the fleets yourself. We are also brainstorming ways to reduce the centralisation risk of such system.

Note that the old agent running in a tab will not be available anymore but we might re-introduce it later, or maybe provide a command line tool to do it in a more convenient way.

Game Design: on-chain alliances, gifting and selling ​

One of the most ecxiting thing about conquest.eth is that it is foremost a social game, where players increase their chances by collaborating with others. This was clear in our first alpha were the winners formed the strongest alliance. But, the only mechanism available at the time, to collaborate was to do so through secret channels. There were basically no incentives to reveal who your allies were. We want to explore a mechanism that reward public alliances. We believe this will introduce interesting social dynamics.

Basically, players will be able to create public alliances and this would be reflected in the game map. Doing so, would then allow them to gift fleets among each other without any penalties. Yes you heard right, one of the feature coming is the ability for player to gift fleets to each other. This obviously mean, that you can also start selling spaceships now 😃 All of this is still at an early stage though but hopefulyy we can get some of it in the next alpha!

Next Alpha is coming! ​

All these fixtures are I hope as exciting for you as they are for us. And we are happy to say that a new alpha is coming soon. We can't promise a date right now, but a mid-November date seems realistic. Our goal would be to test some of the features mentioned above (Some would require complex UI that we might not have time for) but also some changes in the battle mechanism that we will share when time comes.