Kaylie S. won first place in the Space Flowers competition last Saturday with an overall time of 2hrs and 37minutes. She had the good fortune of having several high value trade routes near the center of the map to start the game, and stumbled upon 2 relatives (including her grandfather) in the first 30 minutes to quickly open up many trade routes.

After quickly amassing a small fortune, she concentrated on allying as many systems as possible before the first change over. After upgrading her engine to speed 10, she managed to get 18 systems allied in the first hour. She then used those influence points to search for lost relatives. She managed to locate 5 relatives in the first 6 systems she tried. Ignoring the Baby James systems, she upgraded her weapons, shield and armor and then purchased the pirate bait from The Junkyard and went grinding for power absorbers.


She parked her ship 600k outside a red system and kept luring in pirate ships until she had collected another 20 or so cargo holds and a red power absorber. She then moved outside a blue system and destroyed pirate ships until she had a level 1 blue power absorber. Then she went straight to the first bably James purple system and camped outside of it and collected level 2 and 3 blue and red power absorbers. Another quick upgrade to a level 4 attack console, and she then hit a few level 1 and level 2 systems that immediately surrendered to her... by the end of the second hour she had 38 allied systems and all of her ship systems at level 4 or better.

She then used indirect influence to bring the last 8 systems up to wary, and began trading with them to finally win the game without having to fight the remaining systems.

All in all it was a great run for her... congratulations kaylie! :)

Space Flowers received a few minor changes this week including some variable changes to improve game play. Family member quests were updated to give more information in order to help locate them.

- finding your father now gives you unlimited fuel for your starship

- disrupter costs were lowered

- the number of enemy star systems you need to capture to get weapon upgrades has been lowered

- some of the artwork was redesigned and/or replaced

- the introduction section was reworked to add the additional game information

I hope these changes make the game more exciting as some upgrades and quests now occur earlier in the game. It now takes a little less than 3 hours, on average, to finish all quests and play a complete game.

Thank you for playing... as always, any comments and/or suggestions are always welcome. If you think of anything you would like added or changed to the game, just let me know and I will consider it :)

~Jim