A few weeks ago I was thinking about other turn-based games and Worms popped into my head. I always loved shooting missiles and watching the enemy worms go flying into the air. The I asked myself, why can't we shoot missiles in GC? That opened my mind up to a whole new side of the gameplay - ranged attacks. Right now you have one central focus in the game, to take over other players planets. That's the main focus, but how about some spice? If you can't take over anyone during a turn why not launch a missile at them instead? Over time the idea evolved into what I now call Special Actions. These actions can be carried out in lieu of placing a planet on the board and cost the player rings from the planet selected to carry out the action. The more rings a planet has, the farther the range of the action from that planet. There are 5 special actions:

• Missile Attack - (1 ring) Launches a missile at a planet in range and blows a ring off. If the planey has no rings than you can't attack it.


• Defense Wall - (1 ring) Puts up a wall to one side of the system that blocks a single missile attack/nova/takeover. The wall remains up until it is used to repel something or the planet in the system explodes. Only one wal can be erected per turn but a system can be completely walled in.


• Planetary Shield - (2 rings) Places a shield around a planet that prevents the player from using it for a turn, but also protects it from all actions/events for that turn.


• Star Buster - (3 rings) Forces any Solar Body in range to go supernova regardless of its current life stage


• Reinforcement - (1-3 rings) The selected planet can distribute its rings to any other planets in range, but cannot add a ring to a planet that would cause it to overload and explode.

Another benefit to these actions is that it gives players a reason to occupy the center of the map. Currently the best strategy is to stick to any sides and corners because it's easier to overload and explode planets, thus taking over other players, but you can't get a planet with three rings unless it's on the inside of the map and not the edges.

So last night I drew up the new ingame panel where these special action buttons will reside, which also gave me a good place to put the game and turn timers. Only thing left to do now is code in the functionality, hopefully I'll get some up and running by the end of the week. I have some screens but for some reason FireFTP seems to want to keep crashing on me when I try and upload them so screw it for now. Post them later hopefully.