It has been about 2 months since the start of this game, and I think its safe to say that there are a few distinct problems with it. Do not get me wrong, it has been a great deal of fun trying to position myself the best I can, but in recent times the action has been really winding down. In a word, it has simply become boring and I can identify a few reasons as to why this is, so here they are in no particular order.
Lack of Multiple, Legitimate Ideologies The problem with this game is that there is always always only one logical path. Its not that it is only a single, linear path, but when a fork in the road occurs, which route is the best is always obvious. When we encounter a shortage, you look for more of a mineral. When we see an alien race, we conquer it if it is weak and coexist if it is not. When we see ruins, it should obviously be our priority. There may be exceptions, but they are so rare as to be almost completely ignorable. This leads to a obvious lack of any debate anywhere about the best choice and makes choices for ministers largely just a popularity contest and not a choice between ideologies. There simply is not enough room for debate
Aurora is a Single-Player Game No doubt about this one. Aurora was created, I think, to be played by one person. One person controlling all of the aspects of government. Meanwhile, we have 5-6 people, depending on whether or not you count the President as an important position, all controlling various parts of the government that are woefully small. One could argue that controlling the entire military, for example, is a huge job, but I would point to the fact that there is proof, written proof, in the form of all that fiction we have that one person can control the entire military, and the economy, and handle technology of not one but upwards of 8 nations. There simply is not enough work for all these people
Slow Passage of Time I understand the time restraints of Detjen, but I still think that not enough stuff happens. No matter what happens in a 3-month turn, it does not take even the 2 day break in time between the Monday turn and the Thursday turn to come up with a coherent response to it. Even if aliens appear on a jump point, the response from the Military is easy to come up within about 10-20 minutes at most. Now I realize that we all live in different places and will be online at different times, so getting 3-months done in an hour is impossible, so this problem is quite impossible to solve, but the truth is that there simply is not enough to do in the short amount of time covered.
Unequal Distribution of Power Let's be frank, the Ministry of Infrastructure is ridiculously overpowered. It's a bit ridiculous to be honest. I would not have said this when I was there for obvious reasons, and I saw this problem almost immediately after seeing the outline for Ministerial powers. We all know why, the ability to limit and/or control what every other Ministry does, but it's not only Infrastructure that is bizarrely powered.
Some Ministries, I'm talking mostly about Commerce and Military, have almost no use whatsoever while Technology has powers over the other Ministries rivaling Infrastructure. There needs to be a fundamental rethinking in what Ministry does what. Additionally, it may seem a bit selfish of me as I am President, but the President doesn't do much as well. It really only does something when a new term comes rolling around. This means that some people simply sit on their hands whilst others have stuff to do. There simply is an unequal distribution of activity.
Low Level of Technology We didn't spend our starting RP, so our technology is barely enough to get to space. This leads to an incredibly slow pace of events as it takes years to get a functional Jump Engine researched, designed, and built. Those are years where nothing greatly important happens as we all know what will happen at the ruins. This problem will eventually get fixed, but only if there is enough interest to stay with it for 3-4 more months in real time. There simply is not enough happening with our low tech level.
The next problem is perhaps the simplest and the most important
Lack of Players We simply do not have enough people. I count at most 8-9 people, depending on Detjen counting or not, some of which rarely do anything. Its simple math really, there are 6 positions in government for 8 people, so there 75% of people in the Senate have a vested interest in keeping their position strong. Even more heinous is the lack of people to choose for a ministry as I have discovered. If you apply, chances are that you're getting the job whether I like it or not, so there is no real sense of competition. There simply is too much usage of the phrase "there simply is" in this post.
These problems have led to the game becoming largely stale as we wait to see if anything will actually happen.
