I’ve been working on stuff that I can’t talk too much about since that would spoil it, but there are some QoL improvements I’d made a couple of months ago that I wanted to talk about, but hadn’t had a chance to just yet. Talking about it so much after the fact is a bit tricky – I don’t remember all that was going through my mind as I was working on it. I did take a bunch of notes at the time, though, so hopefully that’ll refresh my memory!

The old planet list (that is, the one in the currently-released version of the game) is one of the older pieces of UI in the game, and it’s definitely showing its age. Part of the problem is that I’d designed it around the same time as the initial implementation of colonies – possibly even before colonies – so while I had some ideas about what might important to show or filter on, it was more speculative and not based on “hey, this is what actual players playing the game need out of this screen”. But at this point, there’s a lot more information to base a redesign on!
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One of the design goals for the campaign layer of the game is that it should present the player with opportunities for combat. This doesn’t mean that everything you do in the campaign has to lead to it, but it’s a good thing to always keep in mind, regardless – how does a feature of a mechanic give context (and meaning) to combat, or lead into it directly?

If you’ve been following the game, this is something you’ve probably read before. So, in brief: this post is going to talk about some aspects of how establishing colonies leads the player towards combat. This already happens in the currently-released version of the game, and the changes I’ll talk about here are about three things: cleaning up some of the rough edges of the current approach, creating a system that makes it easy to add a variety of encounters, and building some infrastructure that can be used for other purposes, in particular implementing the endgame.

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I’d started out trying to add a story point option that would, to quote my TODO list, “make ground raids more of an early-game activity the player can engage in”. Some time later, I ended up with a total revamp of the ground-raid system, and no story point option. I promise, I can explain!

(If you’re unfamiliar with story points, see this blog post. In brief, they’re limited “do cool things” points that you’ll gain as you level up. Both the points and the cool things to spend them on will be in the next release.)

Now then, back to how this happened. Story points are not an end unto themselves – the goal of the TODO item was, after all, entirely about ground raids in the early game; story points were just a possible way to do it. So, the first thing I’d tried was letting the player use a story point to stage a “surprise” raid, with higher effectiveness. This means you don’t need as many marines to accomplish something useful, which in turn means you can do it earlier in the game. Technically correct (the best kind!), but also, doesn’t hold up.
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If you’ve been keeping up with development progress, you’re probably aware that I’ve been doing some playtesting in preparation for making the next release. Sometimes, playtesting results in relatively small balance tweaks or content and mechanics adjustments. Other times, one finds themselves redoing the economy system for – if I’ve been keeping track correctly – the 5th time. So, that’s what I want to talk about today – briefly! – before diving back into the depths of my TODO list.

The good news is, this iteration of the economy 1) is simple, 2) keeps most of the elements of the previous one, 3) is based on colony playtesting, so is likely to actually really stick this time, and 4) as of this writing, fully implemented. This ended up being roughly a week-long detour, by the way, so, all things considered, not too bad.

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Ever since reading Space Viking, I’ve wanted to add planet-raiding to Starsector. Of course, one simply doesn’t add a feature because one has read about something cool; we need to have good reasons for adding raiding to the game, and in particular for adding it for this release, which already has quite a lot of stuff in it.

What makes it necessary at this stage? The new economy system allows the player to generate a constant income stream by becoming the best supplier of, say, fuel or transplutonics. One way to do that is for them to build up their own operation and improve its accessibility. The flip side is knocking the competition down a peg or two, and raiding is a natural fit here.

So, that’s the main reason – but adding a new feature also presents an opportunity to make other improvements to the overall design.

After establishing the main goals, it’s natural to move on to the question of choices. After all, a game is more or less just a series of interesting choices. “What interesting choices does raiding offer to the player?”, then, seems like a reasonable starting point. Unfortunately, it’s a lazily phrased question, and that could get us in trouble.
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