User:Jesus Saves

Hi everyone! I'm Jesus_Saves, and that's the name I even use in-game. As you might expect, I am a Christian and I try my hardest to be an excellent example for Jesus Christ.

The Gospel of Jesus

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes him shall not perish but have eternal life. - John 3:16

Have you ever heard the Gospel? It's quite simple, really. God sent his Son, Jesus, to die on the cross and pay the penalty for our sins - death.

That may not make much sense so I'll make it a little clearer. Jesus is God's Son. In essence, he IS God. He died so that we wouldn't have to be held accountable for our sins. Sin is going against God's perfect will. Have you ever lied, cheat, steal? That is sin. And one characteristic of God is that he is holy - pure, free of sin. And the problem is, holiness and sin are like light and darkness, which means that they can't be in the same place. So if you die, and you haven't accepted Jesus as your Lord (leader of your life) and Saviour (rescuer from Hell), then you can't go to Heaven because of your sin. But, Jesus, who didn't sin at all during his life, willingly gave himself as the ultimate sacrifice. He died and took on all of our sins - he became our scapegoat, assuming responsibility for all our nastiness. Now, if we will accept Jesus, we get to go to Heaven! That's it, that's all. No long lists of "Do this!" and "Don't do that!" needed to enter Heaven. The most important commandment is to love God with all you are, and then love others with the same passion. The rest just fall in line.

By the way, Heaven is NOT angels with halos strumming harps on clouds. Heaven is full of music, with everyone doing things assigned to them, praising God, and spending an eternity having a blast! The place is so awesome that even things considered valuable here on Earth are used as building materials - streets of gold and Pearly Gates, for example.

So don't let people with bad attitudes towards Christianity give you the wrong impression. God is not all about smiting sinners and torturing people for eternity, nor is he about a long list of do's and don't's. I hope I explained it all well enough for you.

(Did I lose you yet? No? OK, good.)

More About Me

I'm a high school graduate whose taking a year off to build up the money to pay for college. I plan on attending Independence Community College in the fall 2010 semester. In the meantime, I'm working about 15-20 hours a week at McDonald's. I'm part of the cleanup crew, and I usually work during lunch hours and a little after that.

My favorite TV shows, outside of Christian television, are the Star Trek series (except Star Trek: Enterprise), Meerkat Manor and Ben 10: Alien Force. I have a wide variety of musical interests which encompass most Western genres except jazz. I am especially fond of techno and variations thereof. My favorite bands are Hillsong London, Chris Tomlin and Newsboys. My hobbies include computer programming and writing science fiction. I maintain a personal website for programming practice and other things, http://shawntc.x10hosting.com. My ultimate programming goal is to make a multiplayer strategy game like Starfleet Commander although it would be significantly different from this. In order to do this, I need to learn one more scripting language and a database language.

I will probably use this as my mission log. I plan on being a little more structured with my ships, i.e., x amount of Athenas, x amount of Ares, etc. I'll also give ships names if possible, and fleets named. (Although so far, this hasn't worked out quite as well as I'd hoped...

• Also, I should mention I'm very
  • bulleted
  • list
  • happy!

Alliances

January - 19 February 2010: Nobunaga's Overachieving Bastards, a training alliance where I can ask questions and receive help from experienced players. The former leader was once the leader of Empire. I don't plan on being in the alliance forever, just long enough for me to get stable footing.

19 February 2010 - present: The Borg, an alliance with more aggression, democracy and (hopefully) availability to suit my likings. As of 14 April 2010, it is the sixth oldest alliance in existence. I have been appointed chief diplomat of the alliance. As of 16 March 2010, I have been made the Leader to allow my predecessor more time to focus on a project going on in the alliance. Although it is expected to be a short, week-long tenure, realistically the length will be much longer.

Operation Dominion

In keeping with my new alliance, I am going to adopt a new way of playing the game. It shall be done by destroying and assimilating all worthwhile targets. Here are the plans for who I will/will not attack:

• I will not attack a fellow Borg.
• I will not attack a member of an alliance with whom the Borg have a NAP.
• If your ranking is very low, I will ignore you as you are unworthy of my attentions.
• If your ranking is more than 10k above me, I will ignore you as you are more likely to blow me out of the waters.

As part of this I have decided to attempt to organize my ships into several fleets.

• Attack Fleet 1 - Judgment Fleet: My main attack force, it will also be my flagship fleet of sorts, to be the first one that received the newer ships that I unlock.
• Attack Fleet 2 - Iscariot Fleet: My normal attack force, to be comprised of the regular types of ships and meant for attacks that don't require the strongest craft.
• Attack Fleet 3 - Archangel Fleet: The reserve forces, used primarily for raids and emergencies. Also can be used in group events.
• Manna Fleet: A group of Atlas and perhaps Hercules ships that transport resources from my mining colony to the homeworld.
• White Horse Fleet: All my Dionysus-class ships grouped together. However, as more recyclers are built a second or even third fleet may be established.
• Diaspora Fleet: A Gaia with enough resources accompanying it to start off a new colony.
• Caleb Fleet: Just a fancy term for my Hermes probes...

I have temporarily gone in do vacation mode. I had gotten bogged down in planning and didn't consistently act out on my plans, causing frustration and boredom. Also, the game had consumed a large portion of my free time. I have assigned a subordinate officer to take my place as leader for the duration of the time I am out.

My Goals

This game will only remain fun so long as you make it fun. Once the excitement of joining and getting your first few kills has passed, thing can get boring and routine and eventually players quit. My way of avoiding this is to set detailed goals for myself to accomplish and then work at them in step-by-step increments. The key is to thing long-term, while making little steps which ultimately lead to the main goal's completion. So here are my goals:

• Be the #1 player in the game.
  • Attack any good target I can find using just enough ships to minimize losses on my part.
  • Accumulate plenty of resources.
    • Keep a record of all local inactives and regularly send fleets to collect resources from them when the net total is more than 25,000 (enough to fill one Hercules).
    • If there are no worthwhile inactives, run the most efficient missions with all available fleets.
    • Upgrade mines whenever there are enough resources available to do so.
  • Unlock all ships, defenses, missions and technologies available.
• Fill up all my colony slots.
  • Seek new planets, preferably the 4th-6th from the sun, every 30 or so solar systems apart.
  • Send a Diaspora fleet to each one and settle it.
• Get a moon around each planet.
  • Contact powerful friends and cooperatively build up enough ships to maximize the chance of getting a moon.
  • Perform the moonshot.
  • Repeat as necessary.
• Learn everything that needs to be known about the game in order to play as well and efficiently as I can.
  • Read the wiki and do it in increments.
    • First start with the ships, going from the wee little Hermes all the way up to the massive Hephaestus.
    • Move on to the defensive structures.
    • Then continue on to the technologies.
    • Etc.
• Create a training program for the alliance I am in, whatever that may be.
  • After learning about the game's mechanics, create a series of classes and grade levels.
  • Also set up scenarios using planets inside the game.
  • If needed, use a free message board provider to create a classroom environment for students.

In order to accomplish these goals quickly, I will do something similar to how computers are able to perform multiple things at once. Although it may seem like your browser is running at the exact same time as your text editor and music player, it's actually not. For Windows users, open Task Manager through Ctrl+Alt+Del. Click on the Processes tab. See that list of .exe files? Each one is a process of something the computer is running. And your computer switches through those processes, saving and loading their statuses multiple times per second - so fast that to a human it's almost instantaneous.

That is something like how I plan on doing this. I'm going to have several "processes" running (i.e., maximizing mine output and colonizing) in my game play. Each "process" will, like a computer, be composed of one or more "threads" (i.e. collecting the needed ore to upgrade a mine, or dispatching a Diaspora fleet). This is going to take a little bit of figuring out, but figuring things out is my niche. Plus it will make the game deeper, more stimulating and more entertaining for me. Yes making detailed lists and planning out things long in advance is fun for me.

• Resource Collection - HIGH PRIORITY
  • Get the mine levels of all nearby inactives.
  • Reference the wiki to see how long it takes the combined output of the mines to reach 50,000 (the amount needed to fill one Hercules given the plunder rules.)
  • Before sending any resource ships, send a probe to ensure the resources have not been plundered by anyone else. If it has, reset the planet to be plundered in the next wave.
  • Once this time has been reached, send out a Hercules and perhaps an Atlas to collect the resources.
  • Send out waves of plunder fleets to planets. The total number of fleets per wave should equal current amount of fleet slots - 2.
  • Cycle through planets, allowing plundered ones to regain their resources.
  • Repeat as necessary.
    • A fleet of 5 or more Atlas class ships should be used for raiding.
    • A fleet of 1 Hercules and however many extra ships required should be used for overnight slow raids.
  • In any situation where a planet is being used by other players as a farm, form deals where peace or something else is offered in exchange for cooperative use of the planet.
• Fleet and Defense Balance - HIGH PRIORITY
  • Determine the total weapon, shield, and hull strengths of my combat ships and ground defenses.
  • Find what an acceptable balance between them would be - i.e., should all three numbers be equal for both or should they have a certain ratio in relation to each other?
  • Devote time and resources to constructing needed ships and defenses to make a balance and maintain it.
• Fleet Optimization - HIGH PRIORITY
  • Determine what the strengths and weaknesses of all ship types are.
  • Develop a squad-system way of thinking (like bomber squads made of Ares or fodder elimination squads of Poseidon craft.)
  • Devote time and resources to construct the needed ships.
• Education of Game - HIGH PRIORITY
  • The most desired thing here is to learn about the numerical facts of ships and defenses:
    • Ore, crystal and hydrogen costs.
    • Tech requirements
    • Hull rating
    • Shield rating
    • Weapons rating
    • Cargo capacity
    • Base speed
    • Hydrogen consumption
    • Rapid fire
  • Specific technologies and buildings and how they affect ships and defenses:
    • Jet Drive
    • Laser Tech
    • Armor Tech
    • Pulse Drive
    • Particle Tech
    • Plasma Tech
    • Weapons Tech
    • Shield Tech
    • FTL Tech
    • Warp Drive
    • Shipyard
    • Capitol
    • Foundry
  • More to be added!

Proposed Ideas

Being part inventor, part organizer and part leader, I've thought up some things that I've figured would be good additions to the game for others and myself. None have actually been implemented but could at some point gain attention.

• United Alliance of Commanders (UAC) - an alliance that I've flirted with the idea of founding, it emphasizes aggressiveness, activeness and fair play. Diplomacy mode and inactiveness would be frowned upon. Would also include the UAC Academy, a fact and experience-oriented training program.
• Wiki Editors Council - I thought it would be a good idea for those who regularly patrol the wiki to communicate with each other so our efforts at keeping the wiki proper would be more concerted. For instance, everyone would have free reign to undo all vandalism and spam, but everyone would also have a special group of pages they gave extra attention to.
• Ceres Class Mine Layer and Persephone Class Minesweeper - the idea of explosive mines in the game is somewhat popular, and I wanted to see more ships available to middle-range players (in the 30,000-50,000 range for me) so I suggested the Ceres would generate mines for a cost and then place them around a planet and the Persephone would be able to detect and explode them without taking damage.
• Masterminds of Starfleet Commander (MSC) - my latest idea. I want to take some time and thoroughly study the wiki so I can have more factual knowledge about how to play the game and it seemed like a good idea to make it a group effort. Perhaps after I've completed learning this might become an official project of mine.
• Starfleet Commander Offline Reference (SCORE) - since players don't always have access to the Internet, it would be good for there to be an encyclopedia of data that could be downloaded. It would cover all the relevant information on the wiki, converted into HTML files, and updated monthly.

Miscellaneous Goodies

My homeworld is called First Extrasolar Church and my mining colony is Victory Extrasolar Church. I think the next planet I colonize will be called Redemption E.C.

Wiki Skillz

This is where I will do tests to improve my wiki editing skillz. One day I will be uber-1337 at it.