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[joe130794]

bloody hell. that didnt go well. Do you know when there will be a stable release for us to try, we are really looking forward to it

[Rushyo]

Soon™

I don't want to make any promises as I'm currently studying for a professional certification and, obviously, it's also Christmas and I want to spend time with the family. Then straight after that, my time's booked up at well. C'est la vie.

The campaign is fairly stable, but isn't yet much fun due to a lack of content. The main duty at the moment is adding enough political events to be able to enjoyably play through the first half of 'Stage 2' of the game (i.e. between the colonies and, say, Kobol), even if it won't be enough for extensive re-playability yet. There's only one type of battle in Stage 2 presently, an ambush that has the fleet retreating from two Basestars, which will be the case for the foreseeable future as I get feedback on the rest of the game mechanics.

With a decent 'starter pack' of political events in place I'll finally have something worth user testing. The combat balance and the campaign balance will be all shot to hell. I'll leave that to my closed play-testing team to iron out once I've got enough events to make it worth their while. Depending on their feedback about the rest of the gameplay aethestics, I'll either make an open alpha release or go back to the drawing board on some things.

After that, the combat gameplay will need to be fleshed out, and Stage 1 and Stage 2 post-Kobol gameplay will be on the radar.

The addition of abilities to Starsector has greatly simplified certain aspects of the game, and I've stripped out some of my old code and replaced it with much more architecturally elegant equivalents. This has actually really helped, and is part of the reason I'm approaching it more enthusiastically than I have in the past.

Also, today I added music. BSG music is bloody great and works really nicely with Starsector.

[joe130794]

I take it that basestars are a bit more powerful now since I think any armed ship can easily take 2 basestars.
Looking forward to it and would love to test it when available.

[Rushyo]

The campaign is rather different than a single battle. The captain could not engage a number of Basestars, and their raider complements, without risking damage to the civilian fleet, expending vipers, spending scant supplies on repairs, and exhausting crews. Intentionally getting in to furballs all the time will lead to a fleet unable to repair itself with no vipers, low readiness, and a lot of dead civilians. At absolute minimum, civilians are end-game score, and frequent civilian losses will also crush fleet morale and risk ripping the fleet apart via coups, uprisings, religious 'diversions', etc.

[joe130794]

Sounds cool. A whole new gameplay mechanic. Looking forward to playing.

[Rushyo]

https://youtu.be/lWMwvG3jn1E

[joe130794]

looks good, nice video.

[Rushyo]

Ta.

As the political system is working quite well and is stable, I've decided to add some depth in the form of characters; VIP personalities who have more nuanced viewpoints. Morale of each faction is now a product of the individuals within that faction. If a faction gets lots of religious folk, for example, then keeping them happy means keeping the religion happy. Also, individuals can have different Cylon attributes. So your Deck Chief might be a sleeper agent, and the President could be a knowing Cylon   rather than just dealing with an abstract number of Cylon spies (those still exist, but they're separate). The interaction dialog is wholly inadequate for expressing this sort of thing, though, so I'm thinking I might need to write a new UI.

There are some neat emergent properties from this system. Characters have to live on ships. So if your main political ship gets destroyed, you effectively lose the political faction (a few might be elsewhere at the time, but the bulk of the Quorum, assuming you had one, would be lost). Civil wars and coups can be much more interesting too There might even be the (extreme) option to annihilate a particular ship in the fleet to get rid of known Cylon. The fact that removes the rebellious trade union leader also on that ship is just a fringe benefit...

I also really need to reduce the missile spam. However, in order to do that I need to find some way to make the flak shield viable and authentic when used by both the player and AI. That will probably mean some heavy-duty weapon + AI customisation.

[joe130794]

I know that the flak guns on the galactica and pegasus can nearly shoot down and amount of missiles. Cylons dont have point defences in the new series because missiles aren't used that much by humans. The galactica had a few nukes, pegasus had a few nukes and a couple of missile turrets I think for when they tag teamed the two basestars, Cant remember what episode. And the valkyrie had at least 1 missile turret per hanger pod. Might be able to incorporate small missile turrets on both valkyrie and pegasus and maybe give galactica a couple more gun batteries instead. Basestars should be able to have more raiders I think. Maybe a bit more health too.

[Rushyo]

I know what the ships can do in the series; Battlestars are very well documented. Unfortunately, as I've stated in more detail previously, some aspect can't simply be placed in the game as it stands without breaking the game entirely. Further ground work needs to be laid. I'm not focused on the combat work ATM.

[joe130794]

Ah right, well when the time comes for more balancing I think they might be able to have a small low damage missile launcher fitted without too much trouble. And shouldn't upset the balance much either. Really looking forward to having a go   

[Rushyo]

Wireframe for the new character UI.

I was recently play-testing and was dealing with a democratic President who had really low morale due to my decision to stuff a few folks out of the airlock. The whole political faction was following her lead, and were causing a huge ruckus throughout the fleet, trying to introduce laws to curtail military privileges and then eventually going so far as to decree that Tylium and other supplies were to be rationed away from the military.

A little bit later, a few Cylon Basestars showed up... and I just happened to order the President's vessel towards the Cylons. When the rest of the fleet jumped out, it turned out only one of the Quorum had survived the attack (oh no, gasp!) and their positions were largely taken up by characters from the people's faction. No more unrest!

I should probably add a new mechanic to prevent the player from ordering civilians to their obvious doom... 

[joe130794]

Maybe make it so that Civilian ships automatically retreat.

[Rushyo]

Maybe make it so that Civilian ships automatically retreat.

They already do, but the standard Starsector logic allows you to override their retreat orders with your own orders.

There's a bunch of different mechanical possibilities though. The obvious, and probably worst, change is I could make it so you simply can't give them orders at all. I could make it so the civilians only accept orders that don't look blatantly suicidal.  I could make it so they actively seek military ships for cover whilst retreating; or if the appropriate faction is too powerful they could even refuse to let you get too far away from them until you sort it out!

The case of the exploding politicians is not a difficult technical problem to solve. I bring it up because this is the first time that particular gameplay dynamic has reared its head in playtesting. It's always interesting to see how the emergent properties of the a new set of mechanics result in new and different playstyles, some of them really bad for the game experience. I'm just openly musing on the possibilities to turn a negative dynamic in to a positive one. Simply taking away a negative dynamic by ripping out the mechanics that create it risks being arbitrary, dull, non-interactive, and limiting emergent gameplay. Better to consider replacing it with a new dynamic that serves the overall aesthetic of the game, such as (in this case) tying it to the political system or making civilian ships behave more intelligently so the player has to account for their behaviour.

It's a natural part of the process, when playtesting, that new dynamics emerge as new mechanics are implemented. How the game's design responds to those dynamics is what ultimately makes the game meet its aesthetic goals (i.e. be fun to play) or feel ultimately uninteresting and disjointed. Responding to negative dynamics (whether that's camping, spamming, politician genocide, etc.) by always removing the mechanics that create them is basically just shooting yourself in the foot.

EDIT: Not to mention, none of this would stop the player just shooting the civilian ship themselves

[joe130794]

I know on tv they stay close to galactica but with the weapon ranges I don't think it's feaseble in game. Much easier to just make them always retreat or make it so you can't select them, That way you can't accidentally order them close to a basestar.