Oops. Fixed now. There is a selection for easy or hard, but hard isn’t that hard yet.
sweet, beat hard 
what could be a cool add on is like special planets…?where with a different symbol it creates ships faster or has better defense etc…its looking good tho
Quick suggestion: if you’re having issues making hard mode hard (maybe you have enough good ideas, I don’t know), just “cheat” a little and make the cpu start out with more planets. I messed up the beginning of my last game (hard mode), because I managed to send, on three consecutive attempts, just not enough ships to take over a planet (due to me sending them “out of sync” and just not waiting long enough). By the time I started capturing planets, the cpu had 5 or 6 planets already, while I just had 3. I found it a healthy challenge trying to beat the computer then, but could still overcome it.
Also, there’s a greater feeling of satisfaction if you beat an opponent who actually has more forces than you, as you just feel like you’re all that much smarter. 
Lots of good ideas coming in. Thanks.
I uploaded a new version.
Now the you are limited in the amount of ships that you can send. The maximum number of ships you can send is half that are orbiting each planet. So if you have 2 planets selected with 5 on the first and 8 on the second and you send them to attack a planet, the first will send 3 and the second will send 4.
If you select the hard setting, the computer will start with 4 planets and will make decisions a lot quicker.
Also note that each time you play, the map is randomly generated.(It always has been)
I have tried fixing the problems with clicking sometimes not working, but it is difficult to pin down the solution.
There was kind of a bug with the way I moved ships around. They would belong to their source until the reached their destination. So if the source planet was attacked those ships would take damage. I separate moving ships from the planets now until they reach their destination. This also prevents you from getting ships in flight to go to a new destination before reaching the old one.
battling the enemy is fun! 
some notes:
- I dunno about the send limitation, seems you just have to wait longer to make a move… a bit boring
- also it seems the limitation does not apply to the enemy ships, which is just unfair
- maybe use the second mouse button: left click - send half your ships (to leave the planet protected), right click - send all (oops, just reread your original post :))
- I really would like to see distance limitation, so you have to conquer with a strategy
- and I still vote for ship production rate dependent of the planet size
- I would skip the maximum ship limit
- add some special planets like
o “Industrial” - if conquered doubles the ship production of nearby planets
o “Fortress” - if conquered, every ship in orbit has double defence value
o “Thinktank” - if conquered, your ships range is doubled (due hi-tech equipment from the scientists ;))
o etc. - make the enemy a bit smarter (like conquering your planets with the lowest defence first)
After 4K suggestions:
- polish
- create more chalenging maps by hand
- make it 4 player online playable
Edit: some more thought
- ship production rate is too high once many planets are conquered, you end up furiously clicking around without any strategy
(combined with the occasional missed clicks it’s no fun…) - it seems to be random in which orbit the ships appear once your ship limit is reached,
skipping the maximum limit and using planet size based production rate would imo fix this…
You are right. I was just tring to make it more challenging this way.
This is still a possibility. Though I don’t know if I could show it graphically.
This is also a good one. So if you send 20 ships to a planet that supports 3 you lose the rest.
Doing this while making the computer think about the types would blow the size off the top. I just think I could make it fit.
I do have some room left so I can work on the AI.
I think I will try the x ships / planet and see how that works.
Thanks, all great comments.
i like the idea of limiting the fleet per click but:
-keep the outgoing planet selected
–>multiple clicks multiple fleets; this is IMO the best way to distribute an overpopulated planet
-fix the missed clicks issue
what about a mother planet? you have to conquer all moons (small planets around the mother planet) to land on the planet and win. Moons don’t produce ships very fast but the mother planet does.
good work!
A simple green circle around each selected planet would be sufficient. No space left?
Sorry, I don’t understand what you mean. I would like the planets to produce ships steadily with no limit at all, just let the production speed depend on the size of the planet.
What did you understand or what do you have in mind?
It’s just the way I programmed it. I go through all the planets making decisions and drawing them all at once, also checking for mouse clicks and everything else. So to show range would be a challenge structurally. Although now that I think of it I could move the mouse click and that might fix the click not registering problem.
I was thinking each planet can only support a certain amount of ships in orbit. If you go past that you lose the rest that try to go there. If I did this I would go back to letting you move all your ships instead of limiting you to half.
Hmm, I don’t know how this would affect the gameplay, but it seems a bit unlogical from a real world perspective. Also I fear this could lead to some frustration in the heat of the action.
Hoooly crap you made hard mode hard :o
I didn’t even think it was possible to beat it at first. I had a good 4 or 5 completely failed attempts at first.
Then finally amidst a game of frantic offensive/defensive clicking, I managed to take out the evil blue menace. If you’re wondering whether you should make it harder, I would say you’ve gone far enough, at this point. Really quite a challenge now, enjoying it
As a side note, however, I depending mostly on rapid right-left alternating clicking to send units, since there was no good way to send ships fast enough using the current controls. I noticed you have changed both left and middle click to sending only half the ships at once. I know I kind of said I liked the left click to send half the units, but it doesn’t work so well if you deselect every time you do it. The only way I could select fast enough was to abuse select-all rapidly. I would say either switch left click back, or stop deselecting after the click.
Also, have you actually beat the current hard mode? Curious.
Yes I could see it leading to a lot of frustration in later stages.
I think your original idea is good, so I will give it a shot.
Some more changes. Now each planet you own independantly generates ships. There is still an overall limit. I only have 4 bytes left, so the computer won’t get smarter, but it is fast in hard mode. It also now starts with 5 planets in hard mode.
Middle click will no longer work now. You can use Shift-Left click to send half your ships.
I’ll see if I can squeeze some more space into it for more improvements.
By (gameplay) design or because you just didn’t change it?
By design. I still want there to be a limit. Let me know if you find it too hard with a limit.
An overall limit would still cause the random appearance of ships, once you reached that limit and some of your ships are destroyed. Maybe make that a production limit per planet instead, so you are forced to move your ships away to get new ones. This way you can collect your forces on the front while being able to produce more reinforcement at your base planets.
You can still collect your forces at the front. It’s just that each planet independantly creates ships at a certain rate. Bigger planets produce ships faster than smaller ones.
I was refering to the fact, that you can’t know where the new ships appear, when you have an overall limit.
- maximum limit reached -> no ships get produced
- you loose some ships -> somewhere (don’t know what rule) a ship appears
-> somewhere else a ship appears - maximum limit reached -> no ships get produced
this imho leads to unpredictable gameplay
Thats not what I saw, my best planets (that were pumping out ships at an astonishing rate) were the tiny ones.
I put it down to it being easier to build stuff in lower gravity.
However you are handling the mouse input for selection & sending orders is realy flakey, i’m finding it’s frequently missing clicks.