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[Alex]

Blog post here.

[JT]

The only observation I have so far, at least as far as trade fleets go, is that it doesn't seem to represent the "windfall" singletons that occasionally operate -- your average schmoe who thinks "by God, I can turn a profit of 500 credits a bottle if I take X to Y!" and attempts to work their way up from the bottom in a lone freighter.  While these opportunities often fail in reality, they're part and parcel of interesting science-fiction, and they provide viable targets for bandits and raiders.

Or would that simply be handled with a different, more random spawning scheme?

[Alex]

Its actually handled, to some degree - the size of the trade fleet depends on the trade volume going across that route in the economy sim, and smaller-size fleets have a chance to spawn as independent as opposed to faction-controlled. If it's needed in larger/more reliable numbers for gameplay reasons, that'd be a good candidate for some "hand-crafting".

[FasterThanSleepyfish]

So, will there be a need for .faction files with predefined fleet role stuff? And I assume that the game will handle the amount of fleets (and their ship role content) based loosely on the economy?

Good stuff

[silentstormpt]

Why despawning said fleets after doing their "bidding". Why not instead only despawn/refit them based on its faction needs (faction wasted too much money building/upgrading the fleet, sell the older/not needed/stolen ships)?

[Alex]

So, will there be a need for .faction files with predefined fleet role stuff?

Yeah. There's a file with the defaults, and there's an optional element in the .faction file which can override whatever is defined in the default. New ship roles can also be added if they're needed/used by mod scripts creating their own types of fleets.

And I assume that the game will handle the amount of fleets (and their ship role content) based loosely on the economy?

Not sure what you mean, could you elaborate?

Why despawning said fleets after doing their "bidding". Why not instead only despawn/refit them based on its faction needs (faction wasted too much money building/upgrading the fleet, sell the older ships not needed ships)?

It works kind of like that for patrols - they go back and orbit the world for a while, then go out on a new mission, and only despawn if they get below a certain fleet point threshold. For trade fleets, it'd get really messy, since you need different size fleets for different trade runs, and reuse is less likely. It's added complexity without a compelling reason, I think. It's not much different functionally. It might not even be better feel-wise, since updating a fleet on the fly probably might not look better than despawn/respawn, not without some graphical changes to go with it.

If there were explicit mechanics around keeping fleets around, supporting them, upgrading them, etc, then that kind of approach would make sense.

[kazi]

Really excited for this next update. Although the fleet creation process isn't particularly mind-blowing (the newer versions of Exerelin and UsS already have similar systems at work), it's definitely a much needed addition that will really improve player quality of life/replayability.

Strangely enough, the part of the blog post that I was most excited about was the night time city lights for planets. It adds so much more "feeling" to things, its not even funny. I actually tried to make my own hacked version by spawning another planet (set as a star) on top of the planet I wanted to draw lights on. Ended up not including it when it became apparent that I couldn't sync up the two planet's rotation haha... the whole "cities in the middle of lakes thing" wasn't really a good look (not to mention it played havoc with hyperspace travel/jump points).

Spoiler

[close]

On the topic of "adding feeling," I think it would be cool to have the ability to add more useless junk floating through space and give them descriptions (comets, derelict hulks, alien artifacts, etc.).  One of my absolute favorite things so far from both a modding perspective and a gameplay perspective is just flying around the universe and sightseeing around all the different planets/lore people have made. It would also be pretty cool to have a codex page for factions, planets, and star systems.

I know the next update is huge, but the fact that you are now adding content gives me hope that a release is imminent-ish. I don't want to make you commit to any deadlines or anything, but do you have a feeling as to when the next update will come out? Is it weeks, a month, multiple months?

[Alex]

(the newer versions of Exerelin and UsS already have similar systems at work)

Not surprising at all - it's really a pretty natural approach, once you start generating fleets through code.

Strangely enough, the part of the blog post that I was most excited about was the night time city lights for planets. It adds so much more "feeling" to things, its not even funny. I actually tried to make my own hacked version by spawning another planet (set as a star) on top of the planet I wanted to draw lights on. Ended up not including it when it became apparent that I couldn't sync up the two planet's rotation haha... the whole "cities in the middle of lakes thing" wasn't really a good look (not to mention it played havoc with hyperspace travel/jump points).

Spoiler

[close]

Hah, nice, especially considering what you had to work with One thing to note about it is the lights layer uses a light in the opposite direction from the light coming from the star, so lights showing up in weird places on the planet surface isn't an issue - you only see them on the dark side.

On the topic of "adding feeling," I think it would be cool to have the ability to add more useless junk floating through space and give them descriptions (comets, derelict hulks, alien artifacts, etc.).  One of my absolute favorite things so far from both a modding perspective and a gameplay perspective is just flying around the universe and sightseeing around all the different planets/lore people have made. It would also be pretty cool to have a codex page for factions, planets, and star systems.

I think this is in the patch notes somewhere, but in any case, custom entities will be possible in the next release. Don't know if you caught a ring of orbital junk around Sindia in the second screenshot, but that's how those are implemented. (Playing around with the idea of using orbital junk - in addition to the hab lights - to signify habitated planets.)

Comm relays are also implemented as "custom entities", and so are some of the stations. You can add tags to say what type of thing it is, for example a "station" tag or a "comm_relay" tag are checked for in various places to allow the right set of player interactions.

I know the next update is huge, but the fact that you are now adding content gives me hope that a release is imminent-ish. I don't want to make you commit to any deadlines or anything, but do you have a feeling as to when the next update will come out? Is it weeks, a month, multiple months?

You're right re: content being indicative of where in the release cycle things are, but, you know... soon(tm)

[icepick37]

Ah another sweet blog post. It's fun seeing how your mind works. Can't wait to play with all of this. Sounds reasonable.

What do trade fleets do on arrival? Same orbit thing? Then head back?

[Alex]

What do trade fleets do on arrival? Same orbit thing? Then head back?

Yep. Spawn -> load -> travel -> unload -> load -> travel -> unload -> despawn.

[Degraine]

Is there provision in ship roles for multiple ships fulfilling a single preference? Eg, if an outpost is really short on gear and can't even field a medium combat ship, it falls back even further to a pair of frigates, for instance. Or a strike force would prefer to have several frigates and fighter wings, but has to swap in a couple of fast destroyers in a pinch.

[Dark.Revenant]

Based on how it appears to be set up, that might already be possible; see the "1" next to combatMedium.

[Debido]

To help make the sector feel busy and make it feel alive, I'd like to see lots of 'individual' transport and courier style ships. People still need to travel from planet A to planet B whether on a high speed transport or a bus, and people need the stuff express delivered in un-catchable millennium falcon archetypes.

[Midnight Kitsune]

Based on how it appears to be set up, that might already be possible; see the "1" next to combatMedium.

I think that 1 is the "weight" of the choice, not the number

[Linnis]

... It might not even be better feel-wise, since updating a fleet on the fly probably might not look better than despawn/respawn, not without some graphical changes to go with it.

If there were explicit mechanics around keeping fleets around, supporting them, upgrading them, etc, then that kind of approach would make sense.

So instead of the ring of space junk, why not make a dynamic ring of civilian ships orbiting the planet and stations whos size increase and decrease depending on market stability that trade fleets emerge and vanish from and to.
Also can add a simple visual indicator of how well a planet is generally doing.